Living in the chapel

Around the turn of the last century there were Methodists everywhere on the Hornsey Road. The Spiritualist church, the police station and this blue building on Bavaria Road all used to be chapels.

Not a chapel, December 2012.

The blue building got turned into flats and the top flat went on sale with The Modern House last month. It sold quickly. Shame, because I wish I could live there.

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'The apartment was the subject of an award-winning conversion by West Architecture in 2006, and would be ideal for use by an artist or a designer.The project was given a Wood Award in 2006, with the judges commenting: “The delicacy of the structure and the contrast of the steel and timber make this project a delight.” It was also shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects Award, and featured in the book Detail in Contemporary Kitchen Design by Virginia McLeod.'

I keep on thinking about Methodists and Hanley Arms arms patrons glaring at each other and how in the end both sides lost.

How to save money on Christmas presents

Go to the bookshop next door to Hamlet's and opposite North London models with ten pounds.

Leave with eleven books. Eleven proper, actual, beautiful books. 

Wrap. Do not tell recipients how little you paid. 

Sidney reflecting that books do furnish a room.

Emily looking for her favorite book 'Mice - and why they must die'

Ghosts of St Mark's past, present and future

St Mark's on Tollington Park is a Victorian dream of the middle ages. Here it is not long after it opened in 1854, bringing godliness to the edge of the city:

The Methodists opened a chapel on the Hornsey Road four years later. It looked like this: 

Methodists, 1858

Now it looks like this: 

Police station, 2011.

St Mark's, on the other hand, is thriving. There are two hundred adults and ninety children at the average Sunday service. 

In last March's advert for a new Priest in Charge the parish said:  'We have a long evangelical tradition, centred on faithful biblical teaching and preaching. This has matured in more recent decades to include a stronger commitment to being a charismatic church.' From the one service I went to this seems to mean being heavy on power point and low on graceful language. I don't approve, but I suppose churches have the right not to be an aesthetic theme park for non-believers. 

The advert doesn't say what the post pays, but it does say that Vicarage 'is a large, spacious, comfortable Victorian house and has been recently redecorated. It is fully centrally heated with four bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor. The ground floor comprises a vicar’s study, sitting room, kitchen, dining room, pantry and utility room. It also has off-road gated parking for two cars with a large mature garden. The garden has been partitioned so that the vicarage has its own dedicated section with a separate small area for church use. A separate flat above the vicarage is lived in by the Worship Director and his wife.' God (appropriately) knows, he probably works hard enough for it. 

Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People

Today's post is thanks to the British Newspaper Archive and the Saturday 30 November 1901 issue of the Essex Newsman, and proves that alliteration can cure all. 

Fireman's Career Ruined by Rheumatism. 

James Pederson, London Fire Brigade, who lives at 6 Rhodes Place, Hornsey Road, London, N. recounted the following facts to a Weekly Dispatch reporter:

I was one of the most powerful men in the brigade, stood six feet one, and weighed sixteen stone.

 I have good cause to remember an outbreak at  a large printers in Barbican. I got soaked to the skin with hot water thrown back from the building. For three hours I was on duty without a dry stitch on me. The next morning I found I had taken a chill, which developed into high fever and influenza. 

I was as prostrate and helpless as a baby. It was two months before i was able to put a foot out of bed, but I pulled through and put in the rest of my time until I had my second serious illness: I caught another chill, which developed inot rheumatic fever. 

This was followed later on by a third illness- the most serious of all- and the after effects finally settled in my feet and ankles. for 14 months I was an invalid, just able to crawl about, and although I saw many doctors and specialists, none of the seemed to be do me any good. 

In 1897 I was invalided out of the brigade. The doctors certified that I was Totally Unfit for further service, because I was suffering from incurable rheumatism, gout, dropsy, and anemia.

 I do not exaggerate when I say that every bone in my body ached; my ankles finally swelled to double their proper size. I gradually dwindled down until I was a mere skeleton. About this time my wife read of a wonderful cure by Dr Williams' pink pills for pale people. She brought the pills home and I began to take them. 

When I got to the end of the second box. I found that although for something like 2 or 3 years I could not move either of my arms, I could bend my elbows quite easily and without pain/...] I grew quite stout , and my old good spirits came back to me. I am 38 yrs of age, and I feel as strong and as hearty as I did when I was 20. This remarkable return of health is entirely due to Dr Williams' PP, which rescued me from a life of misery and an early grave".'

For more British Newspaper Archive stories, see here, here, here, here and here.

Sort of like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, but more North London-y and much less creepy.

Remember the London Flair Club who throw alcohol around and get paid for it? They've moved into the old Gym Equipment shop next to the Chemitex Pharmacy and you can see them practising through the shutters. 

This is Marcus, and this is what flair looks like: 

He's in training for the world championships on the 25th/26th of November. £10k prize. 

Pakeman ghouls, or how I'm a scaredy-cat

First things first. Pakeman primary, opposite Kinloch Gardens,  is a fine school. Ofsted love it.

Second things second: In daylight, and if you're expecting them, these cut-outs of children decorating its railings are lively, cute, engaging, and all that stuff.

Third things third: If you first notice them in the dark, around Halloween, and in the kind of mood that once saw you jump because you'd mistaken a cow for a hedgehog (long story) they are spooky as all hell.

Proof:

Eenie, meenie, miney mo; catch you and never let you go

This way to Hades

Minion of Mictecacihuatl

Inkie lighting up the streets

The independent supermarkets opposite the new Tesco's have looked forlorn since it opened. Then this happened:

 It turns out that the Savewell Supermarket landlord is friends with Inkie.

Here's Artbelow on Inkie:

'This artist is one of the most notorious graffiti writers in UK history to emerge out of the 80's Bristol scene. Painting alongside 3D and Banksy, coming 2nd in the 1989 World Street Art Championships, the Kingpin was arrested as the head of 72 other writers in the UK's largest ever Graffiti bust, Operation Anderson.

Inkie has since worked as head of design for SEGA, Xbox, and currently resides in Jade Jagger's west London studio. As in-house artist and designer for prints, illustrations, clothing and with his trademark beauty on large-scale pieces, the globally respected artist, whose diverse inspirations collect Mayan architecture, William Morris, Alfons Mucha and Islamic geometry, has exhibited worldwide, been denounced by The Daily Mail and simultaneously lauded by The Times, his art published in the books Banky's Bristol, Children of the Can, Graffiti World and magazines Graphotism and Dazed & Confused.'

There's more in Time Out, the Telegraph and BBC Bristol.

Here is a picture of Inkie with Kanye at Jade Jagger's house. That is not a sentence I expected to write for this blog.

Pic by bigbadbanshee, thanks to the Stevio...LA LA Lovin' It blog.

Proof of the Mucha influence:

Inkie
 

See? You should go and take a look. C'mon, what else have you got planned for tomorrow? 

I now want: 

A) Kanye to go to Ajani's.
B) Inkie and friends to take over the horrid shutters at With Love and Ajani's and Atlas and the Chemitex Pharmacy and hell the whole damn road. 

I'll settle for B. That would make me happier than seeing this Sydenham or this Leyton initiative being replicated on the Hornsey Road. And the world exists to make me happy for I am the centre of all things. 

I'm going to lie down now.