“Decline is also a form of voluptuousness, just like growth.” ― Iwan Goll
Yesterday in Spitalfields I ran into the most gloriously dilapidated house. Welcome to 4 Princelet Street!
Delightful, isn’t it? Spitalfields has an amazing history deeply tied with religious minority immigration and the textile industries. This is one of a row of houses dating to the 18th century where silk merchants and designers largely lived, an industry brought to the area by French Huguenots. Irish linen workers also made this area their home. Later the area drew large Jewish populations (there is also an old synagogue, somewhat hidden on the street that was left disused for many years, but is preserved in a fragile state, that I hope to visit. It’s only open a few days a year to protect the site from wear and tear). Then – like every other area in London – in the 19th century it turned into a horrible rookery and slum. One of the Jack the Ripper murders took place just around the corner, all of his victims were actually from the area, and it was also one of the areas photographed for Jack London’s 1902 book, The People of the Abyss, which not only exposed the plight of London’s urban poor through a popular and successful author of the time, but allowed photography to visually capture the miserable state of one of London’s worst districts.
Now of course the area is home to that thriving market and is fairly trendy, but I like that the architecture of the surrounding areas is intact from time past. Most of the homes and period shops I passed still retain their half shutters and indoor wooden window blinds that fold out from the walls, there are doors still marked for “Tradesmen,” and Edwardian and Victorian era doorbells and knockers abound.
This crumbling toy in the window is what first caught my eye. I immediately pressed my nose up to the panes and even more glorious decay was revealed.
The blue and white tiling in the fireplace and the rickety stairs just get me. You can’t see it but there’s also an early 20th century light switch in the wall. Apparently this house is used largely for filming (no surprise there) but has been left mostly untouched and the architecture is all original. From the Georgians to now, elements of design have been added without the history being too taken away.
Here’s another post with more artistic shots of the interiors, and here’s a youtube video (the internet, I tell you, ask and you shall receive!) I found of a film maker who got access to the house for a project and decided to take an impromptu tour.
It’s Heaven when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers
It’s Hell when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are lovers And the Italians are bankers.” ― Hidekaz Himaruya
I worked for five years at a police department on a university campus somewhat renowned for the ugliness of most of its architecture. Alternatively, here is the police office of Hyde Park. Brace yourself, Brandie and Sav. You might cry. I nearly did.
“And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky.” ― John Betjeman
London kicked off March (seriously, March already?!) in fine style with a gorgeous day. We were lazy getting up and about this morning but about lunchtime I turned to Jeff and told him I had a craving for a burger. Never a man to disoblige (or turn down beef), we headed to a perennial favorite BRGR CO and indulged.
The weather was a balmy 45 degrees, which is practically summer in our corner of Europe. In honor of the temperature, we wore t-shirts and ordered milkshakes. Then, one craving satisfied, we decided to soak in the Vitamin D and the city as well and went on an epic wander starting in Covent Garden and ending in Kensington. Jeff suggested Hyde Park and I wanted to show him where I lived when a student here.
Hyde Park was a glorious, green expanse.
Dogs were out everywhere and we crossed paths with many a kid atop their pony.
London has a bad weather reputation, some of it earned, but let me tell you when it gets it right, London gets it right!
Buds are shoving their way up and out of the soil and tips of trees, daffodils and crocuses are blooming turbulently, and the birds were singing. With respect, Game of Thrones, Spring is coming!
We passed Queen Victoria’s (in my opinion hideous) Neo-Gothic memorial to Prince Albert, and just down the path a ways and across the street, there it was:
My Kensington stomping grounds! Jeff stood still for a second with this mouth slightly ajar, glanced over his shoulder to where Hyde Park sat a mere 50ft away from the front door, and pronounced me an all my educational cohorts, “Spoiled.” Can’t say he’s wrong, though I will say I much prefer living in our flat south of the river. It might be less rarified than Kensington, but small as it is, it’s about a thousand times more comfortable and a hell of a lot less snobby an area.
We finished up with an amble up Exhibition Road, which turned into a short foray into the V&A (where I do not spend nearly enough time) before heading home.
“Part of growing up is not waiting in line at a hipster breakfast restaurant. The eggs taste the same across the street. I promise.” – Jason Segel
It’s a cliche but somewhat earned: Shoreditch is unspeakably hipster, there are more skinny jeans and slouchy hats in this area than you can shake a stick at. It’s another one of those historically rough areas of London that’s become much more gentrified lately. Particularly hated by the Puritans for being a major theatre district, with all the usual attendant vices, by the 19th century it had become a center of crime and prostitution as well as entertainment. (Honestly, you’d be hard pressed to find an area of London that hasn’t been a hub of crime and prostitution at some point…)
Regardless of its past seediness or present hispter-ness, there is good food to be had and plenty of wandering to do along the streets and canals. A while back when Katie and I visited the Geffrye Museum, we decided to go on a small adventure to find something to eat. At one point a sign caught my eye, because to be honest even in Shoreditch it’s not everyday you see hammocks swinging in place of window seating. And not ironically!
Welcome to Arepa and Co., an award winning Venezuelan deli, specializing in two types of traditional Andean corn breads and cakes, and other South American ingredients. I pride myself in my ability to go native, kittens, but I have missed black beans and Southern spices!
Katie and I parked ourselves at the bar, ordered tea, and enjoyed!
The menu is delightfully customizable with a respectable drinks menus (hot and cold) and a scrumptious brunch – my new favorite meal.
Pardon the mobile quality photos but I am not, and have never claimed to be a photographer. After stuff ourselves, we explored more of the canal, watched the houseboats sail by (one with a row of motorcycles running down it’s center) and chatting. Sadly Katie’s back in the States now, but we’ve made plans to meet up with her and Adam in Paris next month and I’m already getting excited for it!
“Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.” ― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race
My old job did a horrible job at supporting women’s health. There, I said it. No real maternity leave (unless you count 12 weeks without pay, after which time your job is hypothetically up for grabs and much relies on the goodwill of your department), no day care (there is a single care area, but it is a research facility and not open to public enrollment), and frankly less than impressive health care options.
I have my theories about this, but primarily I think it’s because it’s a private religious school that’s part of a traditional gender essentialist cultural. Women with kids should be at home with those kids, goes the thinking. Granted I certainly I never heard anyone at the university say this in an official HR capacity, but I heard it everywhere (including some classes) unofficially, even from administrators of my own department. Let me be clear, I do not believe for one second that the policy and procedural edicts on the subject were the result of some cabal of men evilly stroking cats and scheming in a dark room somewhere, but I do think that this idea of prescribed gender roles passively plays a role in making assumptions about what working women do or do not need long term.
1970’s ad from Australia.
I’m not going to get into the arguments for or against this cultural set up now, except to say that for a school that emphasized family values, I often wondered why I saw so many policies and procedures – and cultural mores – that made it hard for women (employees and students alike) to have one, because that’s a rant for another day. What really bothered me personally was the issue of birth control.
Yes, my birth control was theoretically covered by my work insurance plan. In practice, however, it turned out to be cheaper for me in the long run to go through Planned Parenthood for my annual exams and prescriptions. That is ridiculous. I often wondered what was the point of my healthcare plan if the main thing I used it for besides dentistry (being otherwise a pretty healthy person) turned out to be more financially heavy than services outside its administrative scope. And believe me, Planned Parenthood was not popular or commonly marketed as an option in this state!
But the real challenge came when I quit that job in preparation for our London move. I needed a supply of several months to get me through the summer, the move, the settling in, and the setting up of our new health plan in Britain – we’re covered by the NHS but opted for additional coverage as part of Jeff’s work benefits package. Planned Parenthood could only give me 2-3 month of a prescription at a time, and my GP couldn’t write me a prescription that could account for my change of employment status, since my insurance disappeared with my job. My GP was a great doctor who took them time to listen to my concerns and ultimately wrote me a full year’s prescription and worked with the pharmacy to fill it, since they also normally dispense it in smaller quantities. But it was entirely out of pocket for me and cost nearly $400 to do so – a bit more than a $1 a day to remain child free by choice.
Fast forward to London. When down to my last month of birth control, I make an appointment with the doctor’s office I’ve registered at (coincidentally a 7 minute walk from our flat). My stats and measurements are taken, my health history is reviewed, my current prescription is examined to verify they carry the same or a similar drug, a new prescription is written. The whole process takes 10 minutes. Four days ago I walked to the adjacent pharmacy and filled it, getting two months of BC. It is not as attractively or complexly packaged as what I got in the States, but the dosages are identical.
It cost me nothing.
I don’t pretend that socialized medicine is without consequences, particularly for a country as large and divided as the US. But I grew up in socialized medical care – by which I mean… the system that treats the military and government servicemen and women of the country. It too had some major drawbacks (witness a large scar on one arm when having skin biopsied vs the nearly invisible one I got for the same treatment in private care), but when run properly it works. Astonishingly well. I’m for more of it, particularly more that treats women’s health as an integral part of the system, since we’re 51% of the population, instead of a specialty field.
A couple of weekends ago, Jeff and I went to see The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, a production by Punchdrunk and the National Theatre. It was a very new sort of theatre experience for us but from scope to scale, one of the most ambitious productions I’ve ever seen. Walk with me, kittens. Literally.
First of all, it’s an immersion experience. It’s promenade style theatre so you’re walking around, on your feet the entire time (and performances can last up to three hours). Second of all, you’re supposed to go exploring. Wander through the set, which takes up four floors of an entire building, poke into closets, rifle through papers, open shut doors to see what character or secret passages lurk inside. And lastly, everyone wears masks giving you a sense of anonymity as part of the set, and also the feeling of being a ghoulish sort of voyeur into the scenes you witness.
It’s supposed to be creepy…but I sort of get Donald Duck does Phantom of the Opera.
The play itself is loosely inspired by Georg Büchner’s famously unfinished play Woyzeck, set in a faded Hollywood production studio and the dying town surrounding it where has-beens and wannabes mingle together either waiting for their second chance or big break. There are two main plotlines both involving infidelity and the descent into madness. But, and this is the most interesting part, there are other storylines that intersect and weave throughout the main ones. Wearing your mask, you must follow the characters you wish to throughout their plot to understand what’s going on. All the while, though, you’re crisscrossing other characters, other plotlines and getting hints of other stories. It’s possible to mix up the crowd of other witnesses you’re in and end up following a different character entirely from the one you started.
Like not a few of the minds they are portraying, it’s very fractal and disorienting. Much like most people’s everyday experiences, a lot of things are going on around you as a viewer, but you can only focus on one or two of them at a time and get the sense that you’re missing out on a lot of information.
Wisely the production cycles through itself a couple of times, allowing the audience more than one chance to grasp onto a tale and follow it to its conclusion. But it is impossible to follow every character and every plotline in the time allotted, which means you as the audience member have to decide. The feeling is very similar to those choose-your-own-adventure books for children, but all grown up, adult and darker.
A shabby sort of town, a movie lot, a trailerpark, nightclubs for the beautiful people and honkytonks for the less so, a church, the woods, a cinema, doctors’ offices are all laid out in such a way that if you follow a character, the layout blends together and creates a plot. But if you don’t you’ll find yourself lost and turned around almost immediately. Watch the trailer below to get some idea of the set and creative. The whole thing is a labyrinth fearfully and wonderfully made, I cannot imagine the time it took to coordinate a dozen storylines simultaneous over multiple building stories, multiple sets, and interacting with one another.
For example, at one point one woman looks in a mirror and is clearly contemplating whether she should go through with her affair. The mirror fades to partial transparency and the audience can clearly see that the reflection is not her but her husband. Because there is no “offstage,” the husband’s storyline is proceeding with its own audience at the same time; he’s in a doctor’s office looking at those one-way mirrors, his mental state beginning to deteriorate and hallucinating his wife. Those sorts of integrations run throughout the production. And yet somehow, every audience member ends up at the finale in the same place at the same time. I seriously want to shake the hand of the person who blocked this thing because I have no idea how they did it.
As theatre goes there are times it stumbles – sometimes you can’t even hear the actors speaking because you’re too far away from them, and other technical concerns – but as an immersion experience goes it’s absolutely stellar. It’s intimate, closeup, and deeply personal. Audience members jockey for position to follow and get best views to the storylines, and in the end (as both the main plots end in murder) you’re left very aware of your own voyeurism.
After our excellent brunch, Jeff and I spent the morning wandering through Soho. He was inevitably hungry merely two hours after we ate and expressed a desire for that recent acquaintance of ours, a cronut.
We’ve become “those food trend” people, ugh.
Anyway, the internets informed us that cronuts were to be had at my new favorite coffee joint.
Wild and Wood is a fun little place, all the seating comes from churches, mostly in the form of old pews which I think is fantastic, and most of all it’s tiny! If you go to the last picture of the gallery on the site’s homepage, you are looking at basically the entire shop. In other words, it’s almost a dead ringer for what most coffee houses and small businesses have looked like throughout human history in general and British history in particular.
Seriously, I’m feeling the urge for some ecclesiastically themed redecorating!Still endorsed by the Small Dog team.
“And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don’t want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!” “Good Heavens!” said Pippin. “At breakfast?” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Last week was busy for both of us. Between days in the magazine office and nights spent freelancing for me, and long hours for him as busy season gathers force – all of which interspersed with some truly heinous days of commuting due to strike action on the part of Tube workers (I spent 10 of a 48 hour period commuting by foot and only occasionally bus) – we needed some indulgence on the weekend. And since we were being terribly grown up with grown up problems like commuting, a grownup weekend indulgence like brunch seemed the very thing.
There is something very adult about having brunch, as opposed to breakfast. Anybody can stumble blearily to the cupboard of a morning and slosh some cereal and milk into a bowl. But brunch, at least brunch in the more fashionable areas of London, requires effort, kittens.
I’d been hearing mouthwatering things about Jackson and Rye in Soho so last week I made a reservation for the weekend and Jeff and I trotted off that morning to enjoy ourselves on an uncharacteristically bright winter day. My initial desire to dine there was due to a pretty delectable sounding description of their buttermilk friend chicken sandwich, but the only time I could get us in was 10am. Fried food might be okay in Jeff’s book at that our of the morning, but it’s definitely an abomination in mine. I got a delicious eggs, potato, and fancy vegetable breakfast while Jeff threw himself on the sword of the aforementioned chicken – a great hardship for him, I’m sure – so I could at least taste it in between munches of grilled sourdough toast smothered in avocado.
Lest you think I’m dwelling too much on this, I was incredibly smug because historically Jeff tends to always choose better food than me when we go out to eat. Almost inevitably the dishes he chooses are better presented and tastier than my selections, which irks me greatly. For once at least, I won brunch. It was delicious – Britain has converted me to slightly softer cooked eggs and I haven’t looked back.
The bar area, kept hopping with hot drinks, fresh juices, the acceptable day drinking options like mimosas and Bloody Marys.
We’ll be going back because we quite liked it; I still want to try the Avocado Eggs Benedict (I really love avocados but finding decent ones it’s nigh impossible thus far) and because it felt really nice to “do brunch,” eating nice food in a fun place, leisurely people watching, and chatting about our further weekend plans (spoiler, one of the most interesting theatre experiences I’ve had in a long time). Very responsible and far more put together than many of our usual weekend morning routines. I wouldn’t want to do it every weekend, cereal and milk is frankly sometimes just what I need, but as an occasional treat I think it sounds quite nice. Minions are welcome to join us.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. – Oscar Wilde
I’m pretty sure this will be a continuing feature (my love of British placards and signage being well established).
I’m beyond ready for Game of Thrones to be back – as Kerry, once put it, you can tell a lot about a person by who you think should rule Westeros. Your answers to that immortal question in the comments, please. This guy also looks about as cheerful as Kit Harrington does in character – aka, miserable.
The eventual title of my autobiography, I’ve decided.
One of my favorite pubs every for reasons that will become more clear in a later post.
Self explanatory. (Or if not, a landmark of a restaurant that had to close in October of last year, but petitions were got up to keep it opening and functioning because it’s a Soho mainstay. Also, the name is cheeky, because it’s Soho.)
Small Dog Syndrome 