Mr Pussy In Winter
These are the last remaining solar-powered houses made out of boxes from Whitechapel Market by Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar. If you would like one of these for £45, drop me a line to spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Today I remember my old cat, Mr Pussy. This is an extract from the biography I wrote of him, THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY.
On dark winter nights, Mr Pussy seldom stirred from the chimney corner. Warmed by a fire of burning pallets, he had no need of whisky to bring him solace through the dark hours, instead he frazzled his brain in a heat-induced trance. Outside in the streets, Spitalfields might have lain under snow, the paths might have been coated in sheet ice and icicles might be hanging from the gutters, but this spectacle held no interest for Mr Pussy. Like the cavemen of ancient times, his sole fascination was with the mesmerising dance of flames in the grate. And as the season descended towards its nadir in the plunging temperatures of the frozen byways, at home Mr Pussy fell into his own warm darkness of stupefaction.
When Mr Pussy grew old and the world was no longer new to him, his curiosity was ameliorated by his love of sleeping. Once he was a brat in jet black, yet he became a gentleman in a chenille velvet suit, as tufts of white hair increasingly flecked his glossy pelt. One summer, I noticed he was getting skinny and then I discovered that his teeth had gone which meant he could no longer crunch the hard biscuits that were always his delight. Extraordinarily, he made little protest at this starvation diet, even as he lost weight through lack of food. I learnt to fill his dish with biscuits and top it up with water, so that he might satisfy his hunger by supping the resulting slush. And through this simple accommodation – plus a supplement of raw meat – his weight was restored to normal and he purred in gratification while eating again.
Once Mr Pussy was a wild rover, ranging over the fields in Devon, disappearing for days on end and returning proudly with a dead rabbit in his mouth. Yet in the end, he did not step beyond the end of the alley in Spitalfields and, in sub-zero temperatures, he only ventured outside to do his necessary business. Sprinting up the stairs and calling impatiently outside the door of the living room, he was ever eager to return to the fireside and warm his cold toes afterwards, sore from scraping at the frost in the vain attempt to dig a hole in the frozen earth. Like a visionary poet, Mr Pussy acquired a vivid internal life to insulate himself against the rigours of the world and, in the absence of sunlight, the fire provided his imaginative refuge, engendering a sublime reverie of peace and physical ease.
Yet Mr Pussy still loved to fight. If he heard cats screeching in the yard, he would race from the house to join the fray unless I could shut the door first and prevent him. Even when he had been injured and came back leaking blood from huge wounds, he appeared quite unconcerned. Only two small notches in his ears persisted as permanent evidence of this violent tendency, although I regularly checked his brow for tell-tale scratches and the occasional deep bloody furrows that sometimes caused swelling around his eyes. But I could stop him going out, even though it was a matter of concern to me that – as he aged and his reflexes lessened – he might get blinded in a fight one day, losing one of his soulful golden eyes. Since he was blissfully unaware of this possibility, I had no choice but to take consolation from his response when he could not eat, revealing that Mr Pussy had no expectations of life and consequently no fear of loss. His nature was to make his best accommodation to any exigency with grace.
Be assured, Mr Pussy could still leap up onto the kitchen counter in a single bound. He could still bring in a live mouse from the garden when he pleased and delightedly crunch its skull between his jaws on the bedroom floor. If I worked late into the night, he would still cry and tug on the bed sheets to waken me in the early morning to see the falling snow. When the fancy seized him, he could be as a sprightly as a kitten. Come the spring, he would be running up trees again, even if – in the darkest depth of winter – he only wanted to sleep by the fire.
When I was alone here in the old house in Spitalfields at night, Mr Pussy became my sole companion, the perfect accomplice for a writer. When I took to my bed to keep warm while writing my stories, he was always there as the silent assistant, curled into a ball upon the sheepskin coverlet. As the years passed and Mr Pussy strayed less from the house, I grew accustomed to his constant presence. He taught me that, rather than fear for his well-being, I needed to embrace all the circumstances and seasons that life sends, just as he did.
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Midwinter Light at Christ Church
Each year in December, we get a couple of days of intense sunlight transforming Christ Church Spitalfields. At this time when the sun is at its lowest angle, the church becomes an intricate light box with powerful rays of light entering almost horizontally from the south and illuminating Nicholas Hawksmoor’s baroque architecture in startling ways. The crystalline sunlight of recent days provided the ideal conditions for such phenomena and inspired my to attempt to capture these fleeting effects of light.
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The Oxford Sausage
I am proud to publish these excerpts from THE OXFORD SAUSAGE by a graduate of my writing course. The author set out to write a spicy mix of Oxford stories from a house once belonging to a city sausage maker.
I am taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 7th & 8th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a winter weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog.
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
A MISTLETOE TOUR FROM MAGDALEN COLLEGE TO MUSIC MEADOW
At this low ebb of year, it becomes suddenly visible – when the leaves have fallen from the trees, revealing what appear to be giant birds’ nests perched amongst the bare winter branches. These hanging baskets of vibrant green foliage are huge balls of mistletoe, magically, mysteriously, bearing fruit even through the shortest and darkest days of the year.
As it happens, at Oxford, there is an expert on mistletoe matters right here in the city. Oliver Spacey is studying the ecology and evolution of mistletoe for his PhD, and on a bright afternoon recently he was kind enough to take me on a mistletoe meander. I had always associated the plant with the Welsh border counties, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and the like. But it seems, as we strolled around Christ Church meadows and beyond, Oxford also has its fair share. And what a remarkable creature it turns out to be.
Oliver tells me mistletoe has the largest genome of any wild species in the British Isles – holding thirty times more genetic material than humans. It is also one of the very few plants to have no roots. Not restricted by gravity, it simply attaches itself to the branch of a tree, and then – like some alien high wire act – shoots an invisible tentacle into the bark and begins to grow. It takes about five years for it to form natural spheres of wishbone shaped leaves, by which time the female plant begins to produce those famous ethereal pearl-like berries under which we like to pucker up at Christmas. The plants can grow up to two metres in diameter and live for forty years.
‘Mistletoe is spread by birds,’ Oliver enthuses, as he leads me north up Rose Lane and through the gates of Oxford Botanic Garden where a mass of mistletoe balls decorate a giant lime silhouetted against Magdalen College Tower. He explains that birds like the Blackcap, pick the berries, scoff the juicy and then smear the sticky seed on to the bark of the tree, while the well-named Mistle Thrush, eats the soft fruit and poops it out onto a branch. Mistletoe’s common name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘dung’ (mistel) and ‘twig’ (tan).
Mistletoe’s ability to flourish in the depths of winter has made it as a symbol of fertility and life through the centuries, but it was the Victorians who popularised the ‘kissing ball’, a collection of evergreens that included mistletoe, as a Christmas institution.
Music Meadow, just behind St Catherine’s College on the banks of the Cherwell is a mass of wild flowers in the spring but is now set aside for sheep grazing. Here a clump of tall poplars are home to the most extraordinary collection of mistletoe – fantastical trees with hundreds upon hundreds of huge pom-poms of foliage, magically, mysteriously hanging in the sky.
I stoop to collect a fallen branch of berries, and take it home where I tie the perfect shaped ball with red ribbon and hang it in the same spot in our kitchen as I always have done, as a Christmas tradition.
Oliver Spacey is supported by The Tree Council. You can help him with his research by registering your own pictures of mistletoe on the MistleGO! app.
Oliver Spacey from the University’s Department of Biology at Oxford Botanic Garden
Trees laden with mistletoe in Music Meadow
When propagating mistletoe it is important not to press it into a crevice in the bark as it needs plenty of light to grow
Mistletoe on an apple tree
Christmas At St Hilda’s
Contributing Photographer David Hoffman sent me these glorious pictures of a party he attended at St Hilda’s Community Centre, Club Row – half a century ago – in 1975.
‘St Hilda’s East was established in 1889 by former pupils of Cheltenham Ladies College as ‘a community of people bound together in the service of the poor’. I came across it by chance in 1975. I was twenty-nine, just starting out as a photographer and this window into an East End from long ago immediately fascinated me.
I just walked in, asked if it would be OK to take some photos and got an immediate easy invitation to help myself. Quickly followed by offers of a cup of tea, a sandwich, a slice of cake… I think this was early December and I saw posters for the Christmas party so I invited myself along.
I found the spirit and the energy of what seemed to me to be such aged pensioners hard to believe. When one of the dancers flashed her knickers and winked at me, I wondered if my tea had been spiked and it was all a delirium. These photos, some unseen since I took them, not only prove that this was no hallucination but, rather disconcertingly, that those seemingly ancient people I photographed were all younger than I am now.’
David Hoffman
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
Some Poems By Sally Flood
In celebration of the 100th birthday yesterday of Sally Flood, the Whitechapel poet, here are a selection of her poems accompanied with photographs by John Claridge.
EDUCATION
Life has many doorways
To educate the poor,
The stairway hard to follow
It’s not an open door,
Contacts are important
Opportunities few,
Learning is a process
The rest is up to you.
BUYING DREAMS
The Flower Market – Columbia Road
Sunday morning down Columbia Road
Where florists and gardeners, stand with their load
Each with a patter that flows from the tongue,
Beguiling the old as well as the young.
Barrows and stalls piled high with young blooms
Some to be bought and stood in dark rooms,
Boxes or strips, whatever you may
You take your choice and take them away.
Sunday morning, the market is packed,
Crates of plants being unstacked
So many bargains, you are spoilt for a choice
Just put your money along with your voice.
Join the big spenders with stars in their eyes
Hoping to stock their own Paradise,
Young plants with promise, looking so frail
Dreams for the lonely and all there on sale.
Disappointments forgotten, another year fraught
In Columbia Market you are hooked and are caught.
CABLE STREET
75th ANNIVERSARY
Just a child, I remembered
Living in a two-up and two-down,
So many things to take on
Living in the East End of town,
I remember the talk
When we were in bed
My parents conversed
I heard what was said.
Jews were the target
The bait on the tongue
I remember it well
When I was just young.
Mosley would march
The coming weekend
Leading the fascists
They had to defend?
Just round the corner
We heard the noise
The many feet marching
The angry raised voice,
Down in the cellar
We stayed all day
My father and brother
Were out in the fray.
‘They shall not pass’
The slogan they used
To stop Mosley’s men
We were being abused,
My father came home
The tale that he told
The Dockers, the Communists
The Jews were so bold.
They faced the enemy
The police on horseback,
Barricaded the streets
They truly fought back.
My brother of twelve
Was up at Tower Hill
Watching with others
He tells it still
When out of the blue
He was struck on the head
He fell to the ground
Among others he said,
Like brothers the East End
Had triumphed that day
Stood shoulder to shoulder
And never gave way.
SEPTEMBER BLUES
My washing pile grows higher waiting for the sun
I cannot wait much longer for the washing to get done.
So today I decided, dark pile was to go
So I sorted out the colours hoping winds would blow.
I do like to see my washing blowing on the line
Seasons are uncertain, the sun can’t always shine.
So I hung them out and watched the sky
The clouds that drifted there on high.
‘Oh well’ I thought, ‘At least they’re clean’
There must be sunshine in-between.
Standing in the kitchen, a thunderous roar was heard
Rain poured down, this weather really was absurd.
Now my washing hangs and weeps and I am torn again
To put them in the dryer or leave them in the rain.
THE BAG MAN
He sits by the hospital
Surrounded by bags,
The dustbin lid shows
Where his body sags.
There is a mark on the pavement
Spreads wider each day,
This is his domain
Keeps people at bay.
A rustic grey mac
Covers paddings of clothes,
His ragged drapes fit
From his shoulders to toes.
Feet so wrapped
And hidden from view
Disguised and distorted
No sign of a shoe.
Small gifts from do-gooders
He accepts with a smile,
By the crossing at Whitechapel
He’s been there for a while,
The birds come for crumbs
The cause of the grease
From the bags that surround him
The flow never cease.
Nobody knows
And nobody cares
Where does he come from?
This man with his wares.
Replacing the woman
Who had sat there before,
There is always another
In the ranks of the poor.
Life just goes on
And passes him by
No use for compassion
He doesn’t cry,
Questions are endless
They twirl in my mind
Treading the pathway
That leaves him behind.
MY TIME
Thinking back to childhood
How fast the years have gone,
So many changes to my life
For thoughts to dwell upon.
I remember days of yore
Before the radio would blare,
Before the roar of engines on the road
That made us children stare.
The coalman with his sacks of black
That stained the ceiling and the walls,
The flames that lit the twilight,
My memory now recalls.
So many magic moments
Mark the footsteps of today,
This was my time and season
I can’t wish this away.
Poems copyright © Sally Flood
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
These poems are selected from TALES BY EASTENDERS published by Liminal Books in 2014, containing writing by Sally Flood, Barry Gendler, Ann Hamblin & Dorothy Lloyd. A few copies are available at £10 from sarah.ainslie@btinternet.com
Happy 100th Birthday, Sally Flood
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie visited the poet Sally Flood in Whitechapel last week for this portrait published today, her one hundredth birthday
Portrait by Sarah Ainslie
“I had always written, as a child,” admitted Sally Flood with a shrug, “but it wasn’t stuff you showed.” For years, when her thoughts wandered whilst working in the factory in Princelet St, Sally wrote poems on the paper that backed the embroidery in the machine she operated – but she always tore up her compositions when her boss appeared.
Then, when she was fifty years old, Sally took some of her poems along to the Basement Writers in Cable St and achieved unexpected recognition, giving her the confidence to call herself a poet for the first time. Since then, Sally’s verse has been widely published, studied in schools and universities, and she has become an experienced performer of her own poetry. “At work, I used to write things to make people laugh,” she explained, “I used to say, ‘Embroidery is my trade, but writing is my hobby.'”
“I’ve got drawers full of poems,” she confided to me with a blush, unable to keep track of her prolific writing, now that poetry is her primary occupation and she no longer tears up her compositions. “I’ve got so much here, I don’t know what I’ve got,” she said, rolling her eyes at the craziness of it.
Ambulance helicopters whirl over Sally’s house, night and day, the last in a Georgian terrace which is so close to the hospital in Whitechapel that if you got out of bed on the wrong side you might find yourself in surgery. Sally moved there nearly fifty years ago with her young family, and now she has three grandchildren and five great grandchildren. Framed pictures attest to the family life which filled this house for so many years, while today boxes of toys lie around awaiting visits by the youngest members of her clan.
“In 1975, when my children were growing up and the youngest was fifteen, I decided that I need to do something else, because I didn’t want to be one of those mothers who held onto her children too much.” Sally recalled, “So I joined the Bethnal Green Institute, and it was all ballroom dancing and keep fit, but I found a leaflet Chris Searle had put there for the Basement Writers, so I decided to write a poem and send it along to them. Then I got a letter back asking me to send more – and I was amazed because the poem I sent was one I would otherwise have torn up. Of your own work, you’ve got no real opinion.”
“On my first visit, I went along with my daughter, but there were children of school age and I was turning fifty. I wasn’t sure if I should be there until I met Gladys McGee who was ten years older than me. She was so funny, I learnt so much from her – she had been an unmarried mother in the Land Army. I started going regular, and the first poem I read was published.”
“I think my life is more in poetry than anything else. I sometimes think my writing is like a diary. Chris Searle of the basement writers made such an impression on my life, he gave me the confidence to do this. And when I did my writing, my life took off in a certain direction and I met so many fantastic people.”
Sally’s house is full of cupboards and cabinets filled of files of poems and pictures and embroidery, and the former yard at the back has become a garden with luscious fuchias that are Sally’s favourites. After all these years of activity, it has become her private space for reflection. Sally can now get up when she pleases and enjoy a jam sandwich for breakfast. She can make paintings and tend her garden, and write more poems. The house is full with her thoughts and her memories.
“My grandparents were from Russia and they brought my father over when he was four years old.” Sally told me, taking down the photograph to remind herself,”He became cabinet maker and he was one of the best. In those days, they used to work from six until ten at night, so they knew what work was. I was born in Chambord St, Brick Lane, in 1925, and I grew up there. From there we moved to a two-up two-down in Chicksand St and from there to Bethnal Green, just before the war broke out. We had a bath in the kitchen with a tabletop. It was the first time we had a bath, before that we went to bathhouse. I’m telling you the history of the East End here!”
“I was evacuated to Norfolk at first. We took the surname Morris from father’s first name, so that people wouldn’t know we were Jewish. The people up there had a suspicion against Londoners and they thought we were all the same. But I was lucky, we ended up in a hotel on the river in Torbay in Devon. Life was fantastic, we used to go fishing. It was a different experience from my life in London. I joined the girl guides, I could never have done that otherwise. Where I was evacuated, they wanted to train me to be a teacher, but my mother came and took me back and said, “They’re going to exploit you, you’re going to be a machinist.”
“Being evacuated meant I went outside my culture, and I saw that English people were nice. I think that’s why I married outside my religion. We were together fifty-five years and I always say it wasn’t enough. If I hadn’t been evacuated I wouldn’t have done that.”
Sally put the photograph of her parents back on the shelf carefully, and turned her head to the pictures of her husband, her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, on different sides of the room. I watched her looking back and forth through time, and the room she inhabited became a charged space in between the past and the future. This is the space where she does her writing. And then Sally brought out a book to show me, opening it to reveal it short poems in her handwriting accompanied by lively drawings of people, reminiscent of the sketches of L. S. Lowry or the doodles of Stevie Smith.
Sally is a paradoxical person to meet. A natural writer who resists complacency, she continues to be surprised by her own work, yet she is knowledgeable of literature and an experienced teacher of writing. Appearing at the door in her apron and talking in her tender sing-song voice, Sally wears her erudition lightly, but it does not mean that she is not serious. With innate dignity and a vast repertoire of stories to tell, Sally Flood is a writer who always speaks from the truth of her own experience.
Maurice Grodinsky, Sally’s father is on the left with Sally’s mother, Annie Grodinsky, on the right, and Freda, Maurice’s mother, in between. At four years old, Maurice was brought to Spitalfields from Bessarabia at the end of the nineteenth century. The two children are Marie and Joey – when this picture was taken in 1925, Sally was yet to be born.
Sally with her first child Danny in the early nineteen fifties
Sally’s children, Maureen, Jimmy, Pat and Theresa in the yard in Whitechapel in 1962
Sally’s husband, Joseph Flood
Sally in Whitechapel, early sixties
Sally with her children, Danny, Theresa, Jimmy, Maureen, Pat and Michael
Sitting by the canal in the nineteen seventies
Sally with Gladys McGee at the Basement Writers
Robson Cezar’s Solar-Powered Houses From Whitechapel Market
Each year at this time, we feature Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar’s houses made from boxes collected for him by the stallholders at Whitechapel Market.
This year, Robson has made affordable houses at £45 each and every one is fitted with a solar panel. If you leave it on a window sill, it will charge in daylight, light up automatically at dusk and the light will go off at dawn. And they will do this more or less indefinitely.
Robson has enjoyed employing the colours, printed lettering and images on the boxes, and made windows from coloured mushroom crates. Each house is a day’s work and he has been working for months to create this spectacular new collection. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie visited Robson’s studio in Bow to photograph the houses and take his portrait.
We are selling them on a first-come-first-served basis, so if you would like one please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com giving your first, second and third choice, and we will supply payment details.
Sarah has photographed the houses in darkness and in light to show how they transform.
These houses are sculptures not toys and we do not recommend them for children under the age of twelve.
Robson Cezar in his studio with the fruits of his labours
1. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
1. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
2. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
2. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
3. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
3. From left to right – top row A B C D, middle row E F G, bottom row H I J K
4. From left to right – top row A B C, middle row D E F, bottom row G H I
4. From left to right – top row A B C, middle row D E F, bottom row G H I
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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