parakeets – derrickjknight

A Day Of Two Casseroles

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton Station today to facilitate my visit to Wolf and Luci in Clapham. From Waterloo I took the Northern Line underground to Clapham South and walked from there to Hambalt Road. I returned via Clapham Common.

‘Mister God, this is Anna’, by Sydney Hopkins under the pseudonym Fynn is a beautiful fable about a little girl whose ‘middle’ or essential spiritual core enables her to bear and surmount her experience as an abused runaway.

On my up journey today I finished reading ‘I Belong to No One’ by Gwen Wilson. What makes this personal memoir stand out is that the author is gifted writer whose creativity shines through her story told with deep honesty about her own feelings, and a sensitivity to those who fell short in caring for, or mistreated, her.

Albeit on the other side of the world, I have considerable knowledge of the contemporary social circumstances, ignorance, and legal constraints about which Gwen writes so eloquently.

The dramatic cover photograph does depict the despair the author describes, but what is demonstrated throughout the book is the author’s ‘middle’. Her story is for her to tell, so I will repeat none of it here, but simply urge you to read for yourself.

We have learned much since the middle of the 20th century. Nevertheless Gwen Wilson has appended an important epilogue.

The route I chose to walk this lunch-time took me along Clapham Common South Side, where skeletal trees provide a backdrop for the busy traffic.

Despite the careful maintenance of the houses on the side streets, such as these in Lynette Avenue,

you never know what you might find dumped on the pavements.

The Coach House in Shandon Road seems to have been converted into a home.

Other frontages bear the elegant detail of an earlier, more decorative age.

It must be thirty years or so that Abbeville Road has been experiencing the gentrification that brings trendy eating places.

Here is Hambalt Road.

I enjoyed a pleasurable visit with my friends, and the benefit of Luci’s excellent lamb casserole, boiled potatoes and mashed winter vegetables, followed by delicious fruit crumble. She and I drank a very good Kumala cabernet sauvignon shiraz 2013.

On my return walk a screeching and squawking heard above the roar of the traffic on the other side of the road outside Lambeth College emanated from a London Plane in which a pair of parakeets sent a squirrel scarpering.

Just before I reached the tube station the pedestrian crossing had been closed on account of water main works which are a not unusual sight in our capital.

I can’t pretend to understand this advance warning on the main road. I don’t imagine it really has anything to do with the people of Finland. Is it to be abandoned on the given date, because of engineering problems? Any ideas?

On my return home, the smell of Jackie’s sublime boeuf bourguignon was too much for me to resist having a small portion. I passed on dessert and wine.

Gigantism

On this sparkling autumn morning I bade farewell to Morden Park; to its squirrels, its magpies, its rooks, its parakeets; and the many passing acquaintances I have met there in the last eighteen months.

Jackie, during the next couple of days, will be engaged in much more difficult goodbyes, as she leaves Merton Social Services Department after more than thirty years employment during which she has undergone many changes.

Noticing one of the regular dog walkers trying to coax his reluctant labrador out of the park, I commented that it was usually the dog tugging the man. ‘E don’ wanna go ‘ome’, was the reply. ‘E’s all right comin’ in, but now ‘e says: ‘c’mon Dad, let me play a bit longer’. Further on I met a woman with two dogs, talking to a couple with another. She was saying that the pulling dogs really hurt her arm. I told the story of my earlier conversation. They all laughed and she said: ‘If they ‘ad their way they’d stay ‘ere too’. Later a man watching me vainly trying to capture with my Canon a bright green parakeet sunning itself on a oak branch said: ‘There’s loads of ’em round ‘ere’. I guess I will become equally familiar with a rather different accent in The New Forest.

Contemplating fruiting ivy surmounting a wire mesh fence took me back to autumns in Lindum House. The grounds were surrounded by a lias limestone wall, the material of which was centuries old. This had been scavenged by early builders from the ruins of Newark Castle which had, during the Civil War, been destroyed by the Royalists as they were about to be defeated, so that Cromwell’s men could not make use of it. Clambering over this wall was much older ivy than Morden’s. The stems were very thick and I had to prune it every year to prevent it from endangering passers-by. It could poke your eye out.

As, in December 1987, we stood at the two-hundred-year-old cast iron gate watching the removal men depart, Jessica had said: ‘This is it, isn’t it?’, meaning this would be our last move. Sadly, this was not to be, for nineteen years later, I was soon to be widowed for the second time, and to return to London. There have been five changes of abode since then, not counting the holiday home in Sigoules. Maybe Minstead will be the last. It is certainly a very exciting prospect.

Sometimes happily, sometimes not so, I have therefore become quite accustomed to removal men, none so remarkable as the young Maltese who was on the team that moved us from Furzedown to Newark. He was a huge man with massive, powerful, hands. He carried a full tea chest of books on one shoulder, whilst one-handedly wielding an armchair in the other hand. Time and again. When it came to returning the tea chests to the van, he would, by the corners, grip four in each hand. This charming character, full of smiles, could not speak English, but his colleagues, whose task he made much easier, told me his story. He had come to England for what would be a life-saving operation on his pituitary gland. He was suffering from gigantism and needed medical intervention to stop him growing. I have often wondered how he is.

For this evening’s meal I made a lamb jalfrezi. I have never before managed to make one from left over roast lamb, as opposed to balti pre-cooked meat, without it still tasting like an English roast. This time I worked hard at it and succeeded. Jackie drank her usual Hoegaarden with it, and, unusually, I drank Roc de Lussac St. Emilion 2010.

‘A Really Lovely Old Boy’

The way the day began took me back to Leinster Mews. Kasia, who has just moved in downstairs, locked herself out when putting the bins outside at 6 a.m.. Not knowing what else to do, she rang our doorbell. After Jessica’s death in 2007, I returned to London and rented a mews house in that street in W2. I moved in on 23rd. December. After the removal men had gone I looked at all the stuff I had to unpack, and decided to go to the pub on the corner for a meal. As soon as I closed the door I realised I had left the keys inside. When my panic subsided I walked up to Harrow Road police station, which I had known well in my days as a Social Services Area Manager, to ask if they could recommend a locksmith. It was freezing cold. Fortunately I was wearing an overcoat. Given the proximity of the pub, I might well not have been.

Full of the Christmas spirit, the desk sergeant said he would contact locksmiths himself. This turned out to be a rather good idea, since it took him an hour and a half to get anyone to come out. From the waiting room I could hear his patter. This is what he told each person he called: ‘Got one of our elderly parishioners here. Poor old boy’s a bit confused and gone and locked himself out. It’s such a cold night I don’t want him standing outside too long.’ At some stage in the conversation he would interpolate: ‘He’s a really lovely old boy’, and when he finally got someone to agree to a visit, he added: ‘Do your best on price. He’s only a pensioner.’ Once he had been successful, he said to me: ‘I hope that wasn’t too patronising. I wanted to make sure they came out.’ I just found it hilarious.

Two men then met me at the house, got in with a card in about two minutes, and told me I’d done that, hadn’t I? They took the policeman seriously and were doing their best on price. In their report they claimed that by the time they arrived I had got back inside. This, they said, would mean I would not get a bill. Their management must have been wise to this, because I did get a bill, which I happily paid. The next day, I left the house as it was and took my myself off to Mat and Tess for Christmas.

A solitary sandal lying on the pavement in Links Avenue, as I set off this morning, reminded me of Ken. During my first years in employment with the Committee of Lloyd’s (see 6th. July post), Ken had run his own personalised taxi service to work. He collected a number of colleagues, of which I was one, and ferried us to and from South London and The City. He knew the side streets like the back of his hand. Whenever we were stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle he would say: ‘It’s either a woman or a white-haired man.’ I now know that he was both ageist and sexist. One morning he was full of himself. He had just answered what for him had been a conundrum. Having seen a shoe fall off the back of a rag and bone cart, he now knew why you only ever saw one shoe lying in the road. Never a pair. Why that should have troubled him I’ll never know, but then he was at peace with himself.

Using my normal route through Morden Park to London Road, I crossed over to investigate the avenues parallel to the mosque site. There is no vehicular access to Central Road from these. They are linked by a grid of back alleys, most of which contain garages. These paths have not been blocked off to prevent intruders, as have many in Morden. The house owners are, therefore, unable to extend their gardens as has our neighbour, who now has a fine crop of runner beans on his reclaimed territory. In Central Road I noticed another group of memorial homes, one of which carries a barely discernible plaque explaining that they were a post-war gift from a representative of the people of Denmark. Another plaque contains the same image that I photographed yesterday.

Crossing London Road from Central Road, I returned home via Morden Park. A vast flock of birds squawked their way across the sky. As they were against the light, I could not identify them. I speculated that they may have been parakeets who had been instructed to scat by the rooks which were there in abundance.

When I set out, the flytipping rubbish was being removed by Council workmen. They said that the problem had been that the rusting iron gates which are normally padlocked had been left open. This, of course was for Eid (see 15th. August). On my return those gates had been closed, and the concrete slabs placed in front of them.

Just before sunset, I ambled back into the park to contemplate the sky. A young Asian man was giving two small boys catching practice. They had to bowl to him and he would hit the ball, pretty hard, and pretty far, I thought, as they sometimes had to run after it.

This evening’s meal and liquid refreshment was the same as yesterday’s.