Hamlet, finally

I love the Hamlet Cafe. It's a safe space, a business that flourishes when so many others close. It's a refuge on long cold days when you're tired and want cheering up; and it works just as well when you're happy already and want to share it. It's a Hornsey Road version of Peter Jones, because nothing bad could happen in either.*

It's also tricky to photograph. They keep the lights low, which is wise and good and helps with the atmosphere, but makes pictures come out blurry. So you'll have to trust me when I say that there's a painting of Shakespeare sitting in the cafe, watching over you:

Notice the lights

And that there's an Arsenal poster next to a copy of Delacroix's Gravedigger Scene:

(Photograph turned into fake painting to anonymise faces.)

Delacroix's Gravedigger Scene, original version

The food's decent and cheap (not an easy trick to pull off) but the real flabbergasting miracle is that  they get rich and poor to share a space. I've just been to a free NHS antenatal class where I'd bet on my not-yet-firstborn that the midwife was the worst paid person in the room, and even the hopeful adolescents at Platform know the split between life on the estates and life in the Victorian houses. Hamlet, God bless them, welcomes all. 

Hot chocolate

Go, if you haven't been already. Go again if you have.

*This applies to the cafe, not to the play. Many bad things happen in the play. Standing behind a curtain, for example, is quite unsafe.

I don't think duct tape has legal value.

I want to write a wholesome post about the Hamlet Cafe, but the Aqua Sauna keeps dragging me back. Recap for new readers: The Aqua Sauna is a brothel near the Emirates. It's in trouble for being, well, a brothel, but on the arrest-Al-Capone-for-tax-evasion principle it's likely to be closed for not having a sauna licence.

Okay. Suppose you owned the Aqua Sauna. Would you turn to duct tape to fix things? Because, well, look:

Aqua Sauna, February 2013

Aqua Sauna, February 2013

Cunning, isn't it? 

Richard III the cabinet maker, or Hornsey Road on film

This post is thanks to Miss Annie, founder of the Stroud Green WI and regular on stroudgreen.org, who spotted the Hornsey Road cameo in that Richard III in the car park documentary.

If you're reading this before March 6 2013, then go here and fast-forward to 53:14.  If you're too late the story is that Richard's closest living descendant is a Canadian cabinet maker called Michael who works in the Belgravia Workshops (the same building as the picture framer) between Libertea and Hamlet's.

'It's funny history isnt it? I mean given a different set of circumstances I'd be looking for Michael in a some palace somewhere or a castle. But such is the strange course, we're here in North London. I mean, it's nice, but, you know what I mean.'

Channel 4 has a Hornsey Road habit. See here and here for proof.

I made my excuses and left.

There's a notice pinned to the door of the Aqua Sauna. It gives you until Valentine's day to oppose a renewal of its 'special treatment licence' by writing to the Licensing Team, Public Protection Division, 222 Upper Street, London N1 1XR 'giving in detail the grounds for objection'.

I wonder what they'd do if anyone wrote in to support the application for renewal?

 Anyway, I had this conversation with my friend in Ireland last week:

'How can you tell if a massage parlour isn't really a massage parlour. I mean, apart from going on Punternet?'
'Is it open at night? Are the windows blocked so no-one can see in? Does it radiate seediness?'
'Hmmm. Yes, that would do it.'

We were avoiding arguing about whether Britain has a constitution (long story) and so went on to talk about words.

Here's the thing. The Aqua Sauna's pretence of selling saunas and massages is as transparent as that News of the Screws line I stole for the title of this post, and yet Islington Council's 'community safety update' doesn't say 'we raided a brothel and closed it down', it says 'Aqua Sauna, at 42 Hornsey Road, had no licensed staff on duty [and]  will now face prosecution.'

The Islington Tribune didn't run a 'police close down whorehouse' story; they wrote: 'On Friday, Aqua Sauna in Hornsey Road, Holloway, was found to have no licensed masseuses on duty – although it did have a special treatment licence – and was also temporarily closed.'

The Islington Gazette article says 'Aqua Sauna in Hornsey Road, Holloway, was found to have no licensed masseuses on duty – although it did have a special treatment licence – and was also temporarily closed' and then quotes Cllr Paul Convery:  'We are not turning a blind eye to this any more. This sort of thing should be removed from the neighbourhoods of decent law-abiding people.'

It's as though urologists wrote papers about down below and divorce lawyers accused their clients' spouses of having special friends. It's a funny fit with the Aqua Sauna's brazenness. I get that local papers and councillors would not want to talk about pimps, johns and whores*,  but I don't get why 'brothel' or 'prostitution' are off limits.

Non-brothel blogging will resume shortly.

*Side-note: Those slang words are losing their primary meaning too. I doubt 'ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off' is actually about prostitution, and I'm pretty sure the President doesn't think so either. 

Past and Present at Number 51

Augustus Egg (not a Wodehouse character - you're thinking of Gussie Fink-Nottle) painted a triptych called 'Past and Present'. In the first scene a woman is caught with her lover's letter, in the second her daughters weep in a garret, in the third she sleeps under a bridge.

This is the Hornsey Road version, played out in and around number 51:

Image from here

Both stories start with a woman taking a risk, although Veronica McGannon doesn't have much else in common with Egg's floozy. This Islington Tribune article describes a grandmother of nine who saw her first Arsenal game aged three and who instead of retiring opened Vee's bistro opposite the Emirates. I like the sound of Vee's Bistro, but the Great Recession closed it before I moved to Islington.

Number 51 lay quiet for months and months and months 'walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily'.* Then homeless people turned the recessed doorways into shelters, and then the doorways were boarded over to stop them. The second scene looks like this:

Number 51, January 2013

The third scene is set about about fifty metres south of Number 51:

Under Hornsey Road bridge, January 2013

I don't know how many people are sleeping in that pile of mattresses and bags under the Hornsey Road bridge, or why they've ended up there or how long they'll stay, or even if they're the same people who were sleeping in the doorway of what used to be Vee's. I could ask them, but I doubt they want to be asked.

I'll leave you with a quote from that 2008 Islington Tribune article: 'in a letter to the council, neighbour Sheila Stewart complained about the possible noise and mess the bistro could attract. She said: “I do not wish for my life to be turned upside down for the sake of a social venue. I am already penalised by living right near the stadium, because I cannot have visitors while a match is on".

*Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, go read it.

They fought the law and we'll see what happens next

Photograph taken Tuesday 8 January 2013

Our neighbourhood brothel, the Aqua Sauna, is in trouble. The Islington Tribune says they 'will now face prosecution', though it's not clear for what.

If this finishes them it'll be, well, surprising.The sauna's has been there for decades. It's sailed through recessions. It survived an earlier police raid without even changing its name, which is convenient for the many, many men who land on this blog after searching for it and who, weirdly, seem to stick around. The overlap between 'willing to pay for sex' and 'interested in local history' is greater than I would have guessed. I am trying not think about what this implies.

Incidentally, if you're unsure as to whether a 'sauna' is a sauna or a sauna then a visit to Punternet is a quick, if bloody depressing, way of clarifying things.

Before the Andover Estate: scarlet fever, small pox, English cholera and diptheria

If you look into the Andover and the Six Acres Estates' past you'll hear them described in dry officialese as 1970s slum clearance projects. In 1885 the London Standard ran an article, nowhere near the front page, that shows what those slums had been.* Here it is:

'Dr G. Danford Thomas held an inquest at the Islington's Coroner Court as to the death of Daniel Hemley, aged 6 and a half, lately living with his parents at 51, Alsen-road, Holloway. 

Fanny Hemley, the mother, stated that she had formerly resided at Andover street, from which place she removed, owing to the occupants of the house and the neighbours being all down with various zymotic [infectious] diseases. 

The child was well until Wednesday last, when he complained of pains in his head, and feeling sick, on Thursday saying his neck pained him. On Sunday Witness gave him a powder and put him to bed, but he died the next morning at three o'clock. 

Witness lost a child when at Andover road from diphtheria, and an inquest was held. Mrs Hutchings, landlady of the last Witness, said that she formerly resided at 4, Andover street, Hornsey road and there, owing to the bad drainage all her children were stricken down by disease. 

The drains in the next house were stopped up and the stench was so abominable that it was hardly bearable. The children had had scarlet fever, small pox, English cholera and diptheria there, all these diseases being traceable, in Witness' opinion, to the bad drainage. Witness notified the landlord of the state of the house and he had it disinfected when she left. 

Dr T. H. Wagstaff, of 19, Andover road, stated that he was called to the child, who was then dead, death being due, he found, on making an autopsy, to a severe form of diptheria. 

It arose, in Witness' opinion, from the effects of bad drainage. He believed that the houses were built thirty years ago, under the old system of combination drainage, the effect being that the effluent in one house passed into the next, any foul gas generated in the one passing through the next two or three. The system was not allowed under the New Building Act, and the houses should, Witness thought, be looked to. 

Witness had at present two young people aged 19 and 22 respectively, under his care who were suffering from typhoid fever, and they came from the same infected area. No cases came from the other side of the Hornsey Road.  

Dr Thomas said that he had had many cases from the same district, and in each instance a notice had been sent to the Vestry, but no action had been taken in the matter. 

The following verdict was agreed to unanimously: 'That the deceased was found dying, and did die, from the mortal effects of diphtheria; and the Jury having heard in evidence of the prevalence of this disease and other zymotic diseases in the neighbourhood of the place of the death, desire urgently to call the attention of the Vestry to the matter, in the hope that a thorough inspection of the drainage may be made.'

Thanks again to the British Library's online newspaper archive. And many many thanks to plumbing and medicine.

*As noted in comments I've been lazy and not looked into what happened between this trial and the estates being built. I'm not even sure how to find out what happened - suggestions very welcome.