At Odds With Mr Pussy
Mr P
When my old black cat, Mr Pussy, woke me in the night by clawing at the bedclothes and crying out in the dark, I learnt to pick him up and settle him down upon the sheepskin covering the end of the bed, where he would rest peacefully until morning. It was my only option because turning over and going back to sleep would be an invitation to mayhem, with him pulling out the copy of King Lear from the bookshelf to send it crashing onto the floor or jumping on the dresser and knocking everything off. Similarly, shutting the bedroom door granted no peace either, drawing a litany of painful cries that would make sleep impossible.
Privately, I was relieved to have devised the solution to his nocturnal disturbances, calming his anxiety by exerting my authority as a human over an animal. Yet, over time, I found a new pattern had evolved in which he came to the bedside and waited in anticipation. No longer jumping onto the covers to sleep as he once did, now he expects me to lift him up and pet him before he settles down to sleep. Unwittingly, I had become part of a new ritual in which he played the part of the dependent child and I enacted the role of the devoted parent, tucking him up at night. This realisation neatly relieved me of my complacency, returning me to the subtly-troubling question of whether my cat or I have the upper hand.
I cannot resist indulging his favour, since his motive is not duplicity but devotion. As he ages, his need for human contact grows. He strays less from the house and he stays closer and he sleeps more, and with a deeper abandon in his slumber. He has acquired a new sound, an ecstatic cooing that rises from deep inside. I have woken to find him sitting upon my chest with his face inches from mine and he lets out this coo of delighted recognition. He looks at me with his deep golden eyes that are alert yet unknowing, seeking consolation.
These days, he stretches out his right arm when he sleeps as if to get a better purchase upon existence or to prevent it slipping away while he dozes. The external world means less to him and he prefers peace over excitement. He is withdrawing and yet seeking more ways to engage with me. Sometimes when he lies upon me, treating me as the human mattress, he reaches out his right arm in an unspecified exhortation.
I recognise I am his home and my vicinity is his safe place. Thus he takes great pleasure in the things I do for him as my reciprocation of his adoration. After dinner or when he is satiated with heat from lying by the iron stove, he desires to be let out from the room, sitting patiently by the door as an indicator. Once in the stairwell, he will settle upon a pile of paper bags that are conveniently placed to permit him to peer through the uncurtained window and observe life in the street outside. As soon as he tires of this and feels the chill and longs for heat once more, he will cry for re-admittance and I open the door again. Yet within ten minutes, he may wish to go out again and then return five minutes later, entering the room with one of his ecstatic cooing sounds – provoking my realisation that more pleasurable to him than the change of rooms is the opening of the door by yours truly. His prime delight is that I am his flunkey.
Just as when I settle him to sleep, he has drawn reassurance from my action and sought its repetition as a means to engage. He wants something from me, beyond food and shelter, and this is how he expresses it. This is why he reaches out his arm to me. Yet I am caught on the literal surface of things, encouraging him to be quiet so I can sleep or playing the flunkey, letting him in or out of the door. I do my best to comply but I do not understand his language and so I cannot answer the question he is asking of me. This is how I am at odds with Mr Pussy.
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Mr Pussy Gives his First Interview
and take a look at
The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
Adam Dant’s Map Of The Coffee Houses
Click on the map to enlarge and read the stories of the Coffee Houses
These days, London is riddled with Coffee Shops but, at the start, there was just the Jamaica Coffee House, which was opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosee in St Michael’s Alley in the City of London. More than three hundred and fifty years later, it is still open and so I met Adam Dant there yesterday to learn about his new map – which you see above – drawn in the shape of a coffee pot.
“I’ve always wanted to do a map of the Coffee Houses, because it marks a moment when intellectual activity had a parity with mercantile activity. They called them the penny universities,” he explained, eagerly quaffing a glass of Italian red wine in the mid-afternoon. “And it wasn’t just coffee they sold but alcohol too,” he added, fleshing out the historical background as he sipped his glass, “so you could get drunk in one corner and sober up with coffee in another.”
The first Coffee Houses became popular meeting places, facilitating introductions between those of similar interests, fostering deals, trading, and business enterprises. Lloyds of London began as a Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd in Lombard St around 1688, where the customers were sailors, merchants and shipowners who brokered insurance among themselves, leading to the creation of the insurance market.
“People complain about the proliferation of Coffee Houses today,” admitted Adam Dant with a sigh, before emptying his glass, “But there were thirty here in these streets behind the Royal Exchange, until a fire that started in a peruke shop burnt them all down. The only reason we know where they all were is because somebody was commissioned to draw a map of them, assessing the damage.”
Executed in ink of an elegant coffee hue and bordered with Coffee House tokens, Adam Dant’s beautiful map gives you the stories and the locations of nineteen different Coffee Houses in the City. Fulfilled with such devoted attention to detail, Adam’s cartography of caffeine led me to assume this must be a labour of love for one who is addicted to coffee, yet – to my surprise – I discovered this was not the case.”I drink expresso at Allpress in Redchurch St,” Adam confessed to me, “but the best coffee is at Present, the gentlemen’s clothiers, in Shoreditch High St. I like to drink three cups before dinner and one after, but, fortunately, I am not a creature of habit and I could easily go three months without drinking coffee.”
Adam Dant at the Jamaica Coffee House in St Michael’s Alley
Map copyright © Adam Dant
You may like to take a look at some of Adam Dant’s other maps
Map of the History of Shoreditch
Map of Shoreditch in the Year 3000
Map of Shoreditch as the Globe
Map of the History of Clerkenwell
Map of the Journey to the Heart of the East End
Rush Hour At Liverpool St Station
On Blue Monday, I present my account of the mighty phenomenon that is Rush Hour at Liverpool St Station, complemented by the pictures of Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney, who passes through regularly at that time of the morning and always carries his camera.
At seven, the dark streets of Spitalfields were empty, save the traders waiting outside the market in the rain, yet by then the first commuters were already crossing Liverpool St Station, descending from the trains and walking purposefully into the underground. At this hour before dawn, I found the station hushed and barely anyone spoke, walking swiftly and preoccupied, many were almost sleepwalking – as if they still inhabited the dreams of the night, as if the moment of awakening would be the point of arrival at their destination.
More trains were arriving from eastern counties, each one announced by a loud rattle, thump and hiss, reverberating throughout the cavernous station before another wave of passengers in dark raincoats, and clutching umbrellas and briefcases, poured out into the luminous white concourse. Among a crowd seemingly still intent upon their nocturnal journeys, just a few runners and cyclists punctuated the muted rhythm of the multitude.
Lined up along one side of the vast space, brightly-lit kiosks sold hot drinks – but everyone passed them by, heading for the far end where the escalator creaked, at this hour serving only to transport travellers upward and out of the station. Streaming diagonally from the north-east, where the mainline trains arrive, the primary migration courses towards the City of London at the the south-west corner, drawing all as if by some magnetic force.
Arriving from Walton-on-the-Naze, Thorpe-Le-Soken, Turkey St, Brimsdown, Wivenhoe, Seven Sisters and Silver St, after eight o’clock, the current of humanity is swollen and grown animated, no longer pacing in unison, with more chatting and the occasional smile. The day has broken and the bare murmur of an hour earlier has become the hum of a swarm, teeming through the station. Standing in midst of the current of people when it peaks at eight-thirty, you cannot see through the crush to either end of the station. The momentum of the crowd is palpable, acting upon you as it flows around you like water round a stone in a river. You feel as invisible as a ghost.
You see the masses but you notice the individuals, drawing your attention by a private smile or a fleeting scrap of conversation, and you imagine the dark bedrooms and the alarms that snatched them prematurely from their slumbers, the hot showers that wakened them and the hasty walks to get them to the station.
For a hundred and forty years and throughout the twentieth century, this surging current of humanity has coursed through Liverpool St Station, growing in force. A phenomenon to compete with any migration the natural world has to offer, whether eels, or geese, or even ants, the spectacle of this daily wonder is a fleeting spectre that ebbs and flows, but is entirely incidental to the participants in transit who protect their personal equanimity by resisting the presence of their fellow travellers.
Yet I spot a group of school children in high spirits who are immediately awestruck by the sight of it – as I am – and to them it evokes the magic of the fairground or the carnival, momentarily liberating them to misbehave and play. They recognise the truth of it. With elaborate decorative arches towering overhead, the station is a theatre staging a great epic, performed twice daily, with an infinite cast of characters filling the stage in a chorus of which every one is a leading character, and the drama is called ‘Rush Hour At Liverpool St Station.’
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
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Signs Of Life
First Snowdrops in Wapping
Even now, in the depths of Winter, there is plant life stirring. As I travelled around the East End over the past week in the wet and cold, I kept my eyes open for new life and was rewarded for my quest by the precious discoveries that you see here. Fulfilling my need for assurance that we are advancing in our passage through the year, each plant offers undeniable evidence that, although there may be months of Winter yet to come, I can look forward to the Spring that will arrive before too long.
Hellebores in Shoreditch
Catkins in Bethnal Green
Catkins in Weavers’ Fields
Quince flowers in Spitalfields
Cherry blossom in Museum Gardens
Netteswell House is the oldest dwelling in Bethnal Green
Aconites in King Edward VII Memorial Park in Limehouse
Cherry Blossom near Columbia Rd
Hellebores in Spitalfields
Spring greens at Spitalfields City Farm
The gherkin and the artichoke
Cherry blossom in Itchy Park
Soft fruit cuttings at Spitalfields City Farm
Seedlings at Spitalfields City Farm
Cherry blossom at Christ Church
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Sam Syntax’s Cries Of London
Harris, the publisher’s office, at the corner of St Paul’s Churchyard
As I discover more series of Cries of London in my ever-expanding investigation – such as these Sam Syntax Cries from the eighteen-twenties that came to light in the Bishopsgate Institute last week – old friends from earlier series return in new guises, evidencing the degree to which the creators of these popular prints plagiarised each other.
Do you recognise the Hot Cross Bun Seller from the New Cries Of London 1803 or Green Hasteds from Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London or the Watchman from T. L. Busby’s Costume Of The Lower Orders or the Hot Gingerbread Seller from William Marshall Craig’s Itinerant Traders? The recurrence of these figures demonstrates how common images of tradesmen became standardised through repetition over centuries.
Yet equally, when I see a trader here as particular as the toy lamb seller originally portrayed by John Thomas Smith in his Vagabondiana of 1815, it makes me wonder whether, perhaps, this was a portrait of a celebrated individual, a character once recognisable throughout the city.
Eels, Threepence a Pound! Live Eels! & Rabbits! Fresh Rabbits! Buy a Rabbit!
Milk Below, Maids! Milk Below! & One a Penny, Two a Penny, Hot Cross Buns!
Plum Pudding and Pies! Hot! Piping Hot! & Sweep! Sweep Ho! Sweep!
Water Cresses! Buy My Nice Water Cresses! & Dust! Dust Ho! Dust!
Buy a Mat or a Hair Broom! & Cat’s Meat or Dog’s Meat!
Chairs to Mend! Any Old Chairs To Mend! & Green and Young Hastings! Green and Buy!
Swords, Colours and Standards! & Sweet Briar and Nosegays, So Pretty Come and Buy!
Potatoes, Three Pounds A Penny! Potatoes! & Hot Spice Gingerbread! Hot! Hot! Hot!
Lobsters! Live Lobsters! All Alive, Lobsters! & Choice Banbury Cakes! Nice Banbury Cakes!
Lambs To Sell! Young Lambs To Sell! & Currants Red And White, A Penny A Pot!
Flounders! Jumping Alive! Fine Flounders! & Matches, Please To Want Any Matches, Ma’am!
Sixpence A Pottle, Fine Strawberries! & News! Great News In The London Gazette!
Past Twelve O’Clock and A Cloudy Morning! & Patrol! Patrol!
Buy A Live Goose! Buy A Live Goose! & Live Fowls! Live Fowls! Buy A Live Fowl!
Flowers Blowing! All A-Growing! & Winkles! A Penny A Pint, Periwinkles!
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Stuart Freedman’s Pie & Mash & Eels
At Manze’s Tower Bridge Rd, London’s oldest Pie & Mash Shop, which opened in 1897
In days like these, we all need steaming-hot pie & mash & eels to fortify us, as we face the vicissitudes of life and the weather. It gave photographer Stuart Freedman the excuse to visit some favourite culinary destinations and serve up these tasty pictures for us, accompanied by this brief historical introduction as an appetiser.
Eels have long been a staple part of London food and were once synonymous with the city and its people. Lear’s Fool in his ramblings to the King, witters – “Cry to it, nuncle, as the Cockney did to the eels when she put ‘em i’ the paste alive, she knapped ‘em o’ the coxcombs with a stick, and cried ‘Down, wantons, down!’”
In a city bisected by the Thames, the eel’s popularity was that it was plentiful, cheap and, when most meat or fish had to be preserved in salt, eels could be kept alive in puddles of water. Reverend David Badham reports in his ‘Prose Halieutics Or Ancient & Modern Fish Tattle’ in 1854 – “London steams and teems with eels alive and stewed. For one halfpenny, a man of the million may fill his stomach with six or seven long pieces and wash them down with a sip of the glutinous liquid they are stewed in.”
Such was the demand that eels were brought over from The Netherlands in great quantities by Dutch eel schuyts, commended for helping feed London during the Great Fire. Although they were seen as inferior to domestic eels, the British government rewarded the Dutch for their charity by Act of Parliament in 1699, granting them exclusive rights to sell eels from their barges on the Thames.
When the Thames became increasingly polluted and could no longer sustain a significant eel population during the nineteenth century, the Dutch ships had to stop further upstream to prevent their cargo being spoiled and the rise of the Pie & Mash Shops was a direct result of the adulteration of eels and pies sold on the streets.
A delivery of live eels at F. Cooke in Hoxton
Joe Cooke kills and guts the eels freshly at the rear of his shop in Hoxton Market
A dish of jellied eels served up in Hoxton
Paddy makes the pie lids at F. Cooke in Broadway Market
Tasty pies awaiting their destiny in Broadway Market
Joe strains the golden potatoes in Hoxton
Joe fills a bucket of creamy mash behind the counter in Hoxton
Kelly dishes up pies & mash with liquor at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Tucking in at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Manze’s, Walthamstow
Manze’s, Tower Bridge Rd
Sawdust at Manze’s in Walthamstow
Victorian tiling at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Original 1897 interior at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Lisa at Manze’s in Walthamstow
Miss Emily McKay enjoying pie & mash as an eighty-eighth birthday treat in Broadway Market
Clock of 1911 at F. Cooke in Broadway Market
Interior of F. Cooke in Broadway Market
F.Cooke – “trading from this premises since 1900”
Enjoying eels in Hoxton Market
Interior of Manze’s in Walthamstow
Art Nouveau tiles in Walthamstow
Vinegar, salt & pepper on marble tables at F.Cooke in Hoxton Market
Wolfing it down at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Glass teacups at Manze’s in Walthamstow
Wooden benches and tables of marble and wrought iron at Manze’s in Tower Bridge Rd
Bob Cooke, fourth generation piemaker, at F.Cooke in Broadway Market
Photographs copyright © Stuart Freedman
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Boiling the Eels at Barney’s Seafood
Some Favourite Pie & Mash Shops
T L Busby’s Costume Of The Lower Orders
In spite of the title, there is an encouraging lack of subservience among T L Busby’s lively portraits of the Lower Orders from 1820, which suggests the description may be taken as economic rather than pejorative. Only the beggar woman looks defeated, while the rest are rapt with their intent upon turning a shilling and return our gaze with an eager expectation of doing business, irrespective of their ragged attire. Drawing upon Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London of one hundred and fifty years earlier, this series certainly make a vivid contrast with Richard Dighton’s City Characters of 1824, who sport a superior quality of tailoring, yet many of whom are almost comatose by comparison with the quick life possessed of these street-wise Lower Orders.
The Waterman displays his the badge of the company he served.
Images courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
