Merry Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Holidays, and Happy New Year

I'm going to a land beyond North London* and The Hornsey Road is going on a break until the New Year.

If you're around for New Year's Eve you could go to the stompin' and swingin' dinner dance at Ajani's, or to the prayer party at St. Mark's.

They're both in the new scrolling calendar on the top right hand side of the homepage, which also includes a breastfeeding drop-in and a rock and roll bingo night.

If you want to advertise an event on or around the Hornsey Road then tell me in comments and I'll add it to the calendar unless it's illegal or I take against it.

Thank you all for reading,

DellaMirandola

* I've now got this going round my head. It's the opposite of seasonal but it's also a magnificent song to sing while cycling.

Being alone at Christmas.

Loneliness (as distinct from the bliss of solitude) is wretched and Christmas makes it worse.

This short notice ran in the Tuesday 25 December 1894 edition of the Morning Post.

'Suicide in a Bath

Last evening Dr. G. Danford Thomas held an inquest at the Islington Coroner's court on the body of Frank Cornish, aged 31, a grocer's assistant, lately living at 33 Regina Road, Tollington-park, who committed suicide in the public baths at Hornsey-road on Friday afternoon last.

Evidence was given that Cornish for some weeks had been out of employment and gave way to drink. On Friday afternoon last he asked for a warm bath and was subsequently found by the attendant undressed and dead in the water.

A large wound was in the throat, and when the water was drained a razor was discovered at the bottom. Letters found upon his clothing showed that he had sought for several situations but failed.

The Jury returned a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind.'

Frank Cornish is beyond help, but the NHS advice is that the best thing you can do if you think someone may be feeling suicidal is probably to encourage them to talk about their feelings and to listen to what they say.

If you are having suicidal thoughts please contact the Samaritans by:

E-mail: jo@samaritans.org
Telephone: 08457909090
Post: Chris, PO Box 9090, Stirling FK8 2SA

And if you're lucky enough that neither apply and you can afford to then please donate to Mind (the mental health charity) here.

Emma Morley

Last Sunday I overcame my ex-indie kid horror of reading a book that many many many Other People* like and bought One Day.

I am, of course, an idiot. It's not One Day's fault that it's been weighed down with soul-deadening adjectives like 'heartwarming' and 'page-turning'. It's sweet and it works.

It's also blog-relevant because it does the London thing of showing emotions though place names. A character who lives In Earls Court must be unhappy, moving to Clapton means misery, while owning a house in Richmond condemns you to comfortable despair.

The lead character is happy around the Hornsey Road. Happy in a way that catches the scruffiness of the road, the way it is out of sync with the energetic gentrifying forces across London, the sense (in short) of its existing in a slightly different parallel universe.

'They lapse into silence again as the radio burbles on and Emma closes her eyes once more and tries to imagine herself unpacking cardboard boxes, finding space for her clothes, her books. In truth she prefers the atmosphere of her current flat, a pleasant, vaguely bohemian attic off the Hornsey Road. Belsize Park is just too neat and chichi.'

[...]

'Two miles away, just off the Hornsey Road, Emma climbs the flights of stairs, unlocks the front door and feels the cool, stale air of a flat that has been unoccupied for four days. She makes tea, sits at her desk, turns on her computer, and stares at it for the best part of an hour.'

*People who go to book groups,** read authors' biographies because they want to know what their novels are really about, identify with characters, never read short stories or poetry or things written in other languages or before they were born, and don't feel at home in second hand bookshops. The literary equivalent of the fans of Coldplay*** or We Will Rock You. You know, those people.

** Okay, so I go to a book group. But it's different. No, I can't explain why.

*** Okay, so I'll forgive them for this.

Dr Tibbles' Vi-Cocoa

Today's edition of the blog is brought to you by Quackery Through the Ages (TM).

"Mr. F. H. Demper, 94, Hornsey Road, London, N., writes: 'I am a busy journalist and at times have suffered severely from 'brain fag' and general lassitude.


 I have tried many remedies and have found the after effects worse than the original weakness. Thanks to the advice of a friend, I was induced to experiment with Dr. Tibbles' Vi-Cocoa some months ago, and am very glad I did so.


After a day of the hardest work I find a cup of it will banish the fiend insomnia.


Since I have taken it habitually, I find that I sleep soundly, and on waking the next morning I am as fresh as a lark. I wish I had heard of Dr. Tibbles' Vi-Cocoa years ago.'"

This credible testimonial is from the Friday 31 October 1902 issue of the Northampton Mercury, thanks again to the British Newspaper Archive.

One day my world-conquering range of Hornsey Road themed products will include this:

                                 

It will sell in the millions.

Lucena House

Lucena House are (or were, t'interweb isn't clear) a band.

It's also the block of 1950s flats on the Hornsey Road opposite Yale Terrace where they met.

Listen to them here.

Libertea

Libertea is on Marlborough Road near Hornsey Road rather than on the echt Hornsey Road, but I like it enough to forgive it for that and for having a name I'm not sure how to pronounce. Liberty? Or Liber-teh-ah?

It's where I'd go if I were trying to write a short story. They do proper Moroccan mint tea and croissants for breakfast. There are books (on that shelf you can just see above and on another small bookshelf) I could read to distract myself and trick writers' block. It's quiet enough on a weekday afternoon that I could commandeer a table in peace and I could watch people come and go.

I should try and write a short story.

                                     

Or I could drink carrot, apple and ginger smoothies or white orchard tea and pretend I did sun salutations every day and never overslept.  And then think sod it and have croque monsieur and apple tart instead. 

                                     

 It's across the road from this:

I must find out more.

Where: 159-163 Marlborough Road N19 4NF
When: Mon-Fri 7.30am to 7.00pm; Sat-Sun 8:30am to 6:30pm
Telephone: 020 7272 5627
Contact: info@liberteacafe.com

Wheelchair access and high chairs

Acer campestre

Trees, as all wise people know, are better than flowers.

They are more beautiful, more lasting, and they have better names: Common ash, Bird cherry, Cedar of Lebanon, Douglas fir, Elder, Field maple, Grey willow, Holly, Irish yew, Juniper, London plane, Monkey Puzzle, Norway spruce, Common oak, Purging buckthorn, Rowan, Sycamore, Tulip tree, Variegated sycamore, Western Hemlock.

Paul Wood at the Street Tree has kindly let me share his photograph of a Field maple (Acer campestre) 'a plucky, messy and often overlooked tree' dealing insouciantly with the Hornsey Road.

                   

Go look at his blog. He does orchids and the countryside too, which is all very well if you like that kind of thing, but it's his London tree postings that are a revelation. He's discovered perry trees off the Holloway road, a Persian silk tree (see what I mean about names?) in Southwark and Robinias in Bedford row.

This is why London is infinite. The streets and houses run out eventually, but there is no end to the different ways of seeing it. You can name its trees or model its bus routes or remember streets because a friend you lost touch with lived there decades ago or hold an internal map of all the places where you lost umbrellas.