Spitalfields Life

Valerie, my mother

What are you to do on Mothering Sunday if you have no mother? My mother died in 2005 and each year I confront this troubling question when the annual celebration comes around.

If I was religious I might light a candle or lay flowers on a grave, yet neither of these is an acceptable option for me. Contemplating advertisements for Mothering Sunday gifts, I deliberate privately over the tender question as my sense of loss deepens in the approach to this particular day, only for it to dissipate afterwards. This uneasy resolution brings no peace, serving to remind me how much I miss her. It is a feeling which grows with each Mothering Sunday that passes, as the distance in time that separates us increases and the memories fade. I do not expect or wish to ‘get over it,’ I seek to live in peace with my sadness.

I wish she could see where I live now and I could share the joys of my life with her. I have a frustrated instinct to communicate delights, still identifying sights and experiences that I know she would enjoy.

My picture of her has changed. The painful experience of her final years when she was reduced to helpless paralysis by the onset of dementia has been supplanted by a string of fragmentary images from my childhood – especially of returning from school on summer afternoons and discovering her at work in her garden.

I think of how she raised her head when she smiled, tossing her hair in assertion of a frail optimism. ‘Not too bad, thank you!’ she is admitting, lifting her head to the light and assuming a confident smile with a flash of her eyes. This was her default answer to any enquiry into her wellbeing – whether it was a routine or genuine question – and she maintained it through the years, irrespective of actual circumstances. When life was smooth, it was a modest understatement and when troubles beset her, it was a discreet expression of personal resilience. For her, it was a phrase capable of infinite nuance and I do not believe she ever said it in the same way. Yet although I could always appreciate the emotional reality that lay behind her words, I think for everyone but me and my father it was an opaque statement which efficiently closed the line of enquiry, shielding her private self from any probing conversation. From her I learnt the value of maintaining equanimity and keeping a sense of proportion, whatever life brings.

I realise that I was lucky to have a mother who taught me to read before I started school at four years old. Denied the possibility of a university education herself, she encouraged me to fulfil her own thwarted ambitions and – perhaps more than I appreciate – I owe my life as a writer to her. Yet there is so much I could say about my mother that it is almost impossible to write anything. I recognise that the truth of what she means to me is in a region of emotion that is beyond language, but I do know that what she was is part of who I am today.

Increasingly, I am aware that many of those around me also share this situation of no longer having mothers. Perhaps I should buy them all flowers this Mothering Sunday? Certainly if anyone enquires, I shall reply ‘Not too bad, thank you!’ with a smile and raise my head. In that moment, I shall conjure her robust spirit from deep inside me and she will be present, in my demeanour and in my words, this Mothering Sunday.

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The Spitalfields Trust presents three free webinars as part of their campaign to save Brick Lane from the ugly shopping mall with floors of corporate offices on top proposed at the Old Truman Brewery. Visit www.battleforbricklane.com

Brick Lane 1978 by Dan Jones

THE THREAT TO BRICK LANE, HEARTLAND OF BRITISH BANGLADESHI CULTURE

7pm Monday 22nd March

A discussion of Brick Lane’s cultural significance for the British Bangladeshi community, its history and the challenges which threaten it.

Speakers include PROFESSOR CLAIRE ALEXANDER, author of the Runnymede Trust report Beyond Banglatown – Continuity, change and new urban economies in Brick Lane, DR FATIMA RAJINA and TASNIMA UDDIN, co-founders of Radical Socialist Bangladeshi Group Nijjor Manush, and COUNCILLOR ABDAL ULLAH, founder of the BBPI Foundation, whose first address was Brick Lane.

As the point of arrival for waves of immigration, Brick Lane is the nearest we have to an ‘Ellis Island’ in this country. It represents centuries of struggle by generations of migrants seeking to build a life and belong, creating the multicultural Britain of today. Yet it is currently under the shadow of redevelopment that threatens the authenticity of Brick Lane, driving up rents and pushing out the local community. We ask what can be done to prevent the undermining of such an important cultural location of national significance.

This session will be used as an opportunity to gather and provide insights to the Mayor of London’s Culture at Risk Office on these timely issues.

Click here to register for free for THE THREAT TO BRICK LANE

Messrs Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co’s Brewery at Brick Lane, published by J. Moore, 1842

THE HISTORY OF THE TRUMAN BREWERY

7pm Tuesday 30th March

Historian DAN CRUICKSHANK outlines the story of the world famous Truman Brewery in Brick Lane.

Legend has it that brewing in Brick Lane dates back to 1666.

Long-term local resident and co-founder of the Spitalfields Trust, Dan Cruickshank, traces the histories of the families who managed the brewery through four centuries, the largest in the world before it closed in 1989.

It was Benjamin Truman who industrialised the process in the eighteenth century by creating a giant brewing plant and was knighted by George III. In the nineteenth century, brewer Thomas Fowell Buxton, made a reputation as an abolitionist, working closely with William Wilberforce to present the London petition of 72,000 signatures against slavery to the House of Commons in 1826.

Today some of the original fabric of the brewery still survives, and Dan has undertaken a survey of what remains to ensure its survival in the face of redevelopment plans by the current owners.

Click here to register for free for THE HISTORY OF THE TRUMAN BREWERY

Corporate block proposed on Brick Lane

A CATALOGUE OF PLANNING DISASTERS IN SPITALFIELDS

7pm Tuesday 6th April

Planning & Heritage Expert, ALEC FORSHAW examines the appalling history of bad planning decisions in Spitalfields.

In recent years, Spitalfields has faced a wave of soulless corporate development spreading from the City of London, inflicting ugly steel and glass blocks that are entirely at odds with the narrow streets of old brick buildings.

First it was the Spitalfields Market, then the Fruit & Wool Exchange and Norton Folgate, and now the wave has reached the historic Truman Brewery.

In this humorous illustrated lecture, Alec shows how the same mistakes have been repeated over and over in Spitalfields, exploring what can be done to prevent this onslaught in future and discussing how more responsible planning could benefit the area and the community.

Click here to register for free for A CATALOGUE OF PLANNING DISASTERS

Shopping mall with corporate offices on top proposed for the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane

HELP US SAVE BRICK LANE

* This development will undermine the authentic cultural quality of Brick Lane.

* The generic architecture is too tall and too bulky, ruining the Brick Lane & Fournier St Conservation Area.

* It offers nothing to local residents whose needs are for genuinely affordable homes and workspaces.

* It is an approach that is irrelevant to a post-Covid world, with more people working from home and shopping locally or online.

* Where it meets the terraces of nineteenth century housing, the development is out of scale and causes up to 60% loss of light.

* Instead of this arbitrary scheme, we need a plan for the entire brewery site that reflects the needs and wishes of residents.

HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY

You can help us stop this bad proposal by writing a letter of objection to the council as soon as possible.

Please write in your own words and head it OBJECTION.

Quote Planning Application PA/20/00415/A1

Anyone can object wherever they live.

Members of one household can each write separately.

You must include your postal address.

Send your objection by email to  Patrick.Harmsworth@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Or by post to Planning Department, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London, E14 2BG

 

Follow the Spitalfields Trust to keep up to date with this story
Twitter @SpitalfieldsT

Facebook /thespitalfieldstrust

Instagram @spitalfields_trust

Statue of John Keats at Guy’s Hospital

It is now almost a year since I had the coronavirus and last week a letter arrived inviting me for a vaccination. Immediately, I booked the next available appointment at the nearest location and then cycled down to Guy’s Hospital at London Bridge yesterday to get it.

I joined the long line of people in masks, snaking through the hospital courtyard and leading into a large white steel-frame tent. There was collective expectation in the air and this sense of excited anticipation was heightened by the low-angled sunlight, blinding us in the queue and causing us all to raise our hands, shielding our eyes from the light as we shuffled forward to ascend the ramp.

The man supervising the line asked me to show him the text on my phone with my reference number, but when I reached the entrance of the tent another man asked my name. When I gave my surname, he checked it on a list and then called my first name through to another seated a desk inside. I was startled at this sudden transition from a number to a family name to my own name. In a moment, I had transformed from one of the masses to an individual and the nature of the experience changed from anonymous to personal.

Thirty metal chairs were arranged in lines, two metres apart, and, once I had sanitised my hands, I sat down upon an empty chair. An attendant walked up and down the lines of chairs, wiping them between occupants. In front of us was a large screen with our names upon it and, to one side, another ramp leading to where the vaccinations were being administered.

I cast my eyes around at my fellows. We were alone in this moment, carers and loved ones were not admitted. No-one spoke as we sat impassively watching our names move up the screen. When they reached the top of the list, each person stood up in turn and walked through to into the next room without looking back.

The diverse list of names revealed the range of our cultural origins and as I looked around the room, there were young and old, and those who were infirm and those evidently fit and healthy. I tried to guess which name belonged to which person from their appearance but failed. I could not discern any common factor between us, beyond that we were all human and Londoners.

Time was suspended as we sat in our shared reverie punctuated only by repeated summons to the next room every few minutes. We were waiting but we were calm. I imagined that perhaps this was how the afterlife could be and that the attendants were angels, shepherding us towards a reckoning.

Quickly, as chairs emptied, were wiped and filled again with new occupants, I moved from being the newest arrival to the one who had been waiting the longest. Then my name came up with the number of the station where I would receive my vaccine, and I stood and walked through into the next room, sanitising my hands again as I did so.

Cubicles with deep blue curtains lined a wide passageway and I walked inside to meet a young nurse who closed the curtain behind us. We sat on either side of a desk while she asked me questions and entered my answers into the computer.

Even though I have lived with the assumption of a degree of immunity since I recovered, which has reduced my fear of the virus, I was surprised at the strength of my emotions on receiving the vaccination. Yet these overwhelming feelings of gratitude were sublimated into a technical conversation about whether I had any recent experience of flu symptoms or whether I had allergies. I was struck that the nurse showed no sign of weariness and spoke to me as if I were the first person to whom she had ever asked these questions.

Automatically, I unbuttoned my shirt so the vaccination could be administered upon my upper arm. The nurse wrote the details of my vaccination upon a small card, the size of calling card, with the date for my next shot. ‘Now take good care of this,’ she said as she handed it over. Once I placed the card in my pocket, it acquired the quality of a magic talisman that will keep me safe.

When I walked back outside into the afternoon sunlight again and was alone, my breath faltered as I filled with a powerful surge of relief. I removed my mask. I felt blessed, as if the vaccination had been a religious experience. I felt relief that I have been fortunate enough only to suffer mild symptoms of the virus and recover last year. And relief that – after the tragedy of over two and a half million people who have died – the end of this collective global nightmare is now in sight.

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