Stephen Armstrong, Postman
Occasionally, people write correspondence addressed simply to “The Gentle Author, Spitalfields” and it is to the credit of the East End postal service that these letters arrive on my doormat. So today I return the favour with this interview of Whitechapel Postman, Stephen Armstrong – and Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien accompanied him on his round yesterday to take these pictures.
Stephen Armstrong
Stephen Armstrong and I met in the early afternoon in Whitechapel, once the day’s round was done, and he ate mince pies with hot chocolate to revive his flagging spirits, after being awake since before dawn.
We were just across the road from sorting office which is only five minutes walk away from where he lives to the south and ten minutes walk from his round, which is to the north.
Steve spends a lot of time pounding the pavements of Whitechapel and it is unlikely that anyone knows the minutiae of these streets better than he. Reserved in manners yet resilient in spirit, Stephen has found his metier in delivering letters and becoming the spiritual guardian of his particular corner of the East End.
“I’ve been up since five this morning, that’s late for me! It gives me a little time to myself, to get ready and pootle around – because six o’ clock is when I start.
I always remember when I joined the Post Office, because it was the the day after the Poll Tax Riot, 1st April 1990. I got myself sacked from an oil refinery for edible oils for not working hard enough, then I did thirteen months training to be be a Dispensing Optician. That was all because I had mucked up my A Levels and was a general under-acheiver all round. Then I failed my Optician exams, so I needed a way out and the Post Office seemed like the ideal place to get my head together. It started as a temporary job but I’ve been here ever since.
I grew up in Dartford and worked in Dartford, until they more or less shut down the sorting office there. By then, I had met my wife Karen and moved to Whitechapel and I’d been trying to get a job in the Whitechapel Sorting Office for years. It was very difficult for me to get from Whitechapel to Dartford to start work at five in the morning, so they offered me the possibility of a transfer to Rochester. Eventually they said, ‘We might be able to transfer you to Whitechapel but you’ve said you don’t like going out doing deliveries.’ I said, ‘I don’t know because I’ve never tried it,’ and when I did it was a baptism of fire, but I absolutely loved it. That was just last year, 2012.
I like being outdoors and walking across the same piece of ground everyday, you see the changes that people in the city are normally cut off from, the flowers opening and leaves falling. You are in touch with time passing.
I walk five minutes from my home in Adelina Grove and kick off at Whitechapel Sorting Office at six each morning. The machine will have sorted everything from yesterday in order, there is a slot for every letterbox in the frame. Then it’s ‘walk sorted’ and you sort whatever mail has come in during the night – that’s about an hour’s work. At nine o’clock, it is breakfast time. You go off and have breakfast, by which time anything from the other East End districts will come in and we sort that.
Once you have got all your work, you make it into bundles with those elastic bands – the notorious ones that we drop all over the place. You pack your bag with the first bundle of work, it cannot be more than sixteen kilos. Some postmen have a trolley but I don’t, instead I have dropboxes where the rest of the mail is dropped off to me at each end of my area. Generally, it takes about two and a half to three hours walking to make my deliveries. There are lots of streets where no-one notices you, you become part of the street furniture. A few old ladies ask you to do this and that and I don’t mind. I’m not a friend, I’m an acquaintance – but I like to think I can be trusted.
I don’t mind the weather, though I can’t really handle the heat because you can’t take off any more than the minimum. I’ve got a collection of silly hats – a sou’wester for rain and a sunhat for summer. I love dogs though there are a couple who jump up to take the letters out of your hands but, if you are careful, you can save your fingers. I desperately try to make friends with all the dogs on my route. I had a dog of my own, Laika, for seven years and I miss her a lot, so I’m borrowing other people’s dogs briefly.
I think there’s going to be more post in future but it’ll be more parcels not letters. A lot more comes through mail order these days, but all business is done by emails so there’s fewer letters. It would be a sad thing if the regular post goes, yet nobody writes anymore they just send texts and emails. Even I don’t receive any mail anymore.”
Steve delivers to Henrietta Keeper, Ballad Singer of Bethnal Green
Back to the drop box to pick up another load of letters
Off on the rounds again …
Bye!
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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London Salt-Glazed Stoneware
As one who thought nobody else shared my passion for old salt-glazed stoneware, I was overjoyed to meet Philip Mernick and be granted the opportunity to photograph these fine examples from his vast and historically-comprehensive collection which is greatly superior to my modest assembly.
In London, John Dwight of Fulham ascertained the method of the salt glaze process for rendering earthenware impermeable in 1671, thus breaking the German monopoly on Bellarmine jugs. Yet it was Henry Doulton in the nineteenth century who exploited the process on an industrial scale in Lambeth, especially in the profitable fields of bottle-making and drainpipes, before starting the manufacture of art pottery in 1870.
It is the utilitarian quality of this distinctive London pottery that appeals to me, lending itself to a popular style of decoration which approaches urban folk art. “I like it for its look,” Philip Mernick admitted , “but because nothing is marked until the late nineteenth century, it’s the mystery that appeals to me – trying to piece together who made what and when.”
Jug by Vauxhall Pottery 1810
Blacking bottles – Everett 1910 & Warren 1830
Gin Flagon, Fulham Pottery c. 1840
Spirit Flask in the shape of a boot by Deptford Stone Pottery c. 1840
Spirit flask in the shape of a pistol by Stephen Green and in the shape of a powder flask by Thomas Smith of Lambeth Pottery c. 1840
Reform flasks – Wiliam IV Reform flask by Doulton & Watts, eighteen- thirties, and Mrs Caudle flask by Brayne of Lambeth, eighteen-forties
Spirit flask of John Burns, Docks Union Leader, Doulton Pottery 1910
Nelson jug by Doulton & Watts 1830
Duke of Wellington jug by Stephen Green of Lambeth Pottery 1830
Mortlake Pottery Tankard, seventeen-nineties
Old Tom figure upon a Fulham Pottery Tankard c. 1830
Silenus jug by Stephen Green of Lambeth Pottery c. 1840
Victoria & Albert jug by Stephen Green of Lambeth Pottery 1840
Stag hunt jug by Doulton & Watts c. 1840
Mortlake Pottery jug, seventeen-nineties
Doulton jug hallmarked 1882
Jug by Thomas Smith of Lambeth Pottery 1840
Fulham Pottery jug c. 1830
Stiff Pottery jug c. 1850
Mortlake Pottery jug 1812
Figure of Toby Philpot on Mortlake jug
Deptford Pottery jug 1860
Stiff Pottery jug, with seller’s name in Limehouse 1860
Vauxhall Pottery jug with image of the pavilion at Vauxhall Gardens and believed to have been used there in the eighteen-thirties
Tobacco jug by Doulton & Watts, eighteen-forties
You may also like to read my earlier article
More About Gadsdons
From time to time, the descendants of those whose ancestors were occupied in the small trades that once clustered here at the boundary of the City of London return to visit the old neighbourhood. These are families that have not forgotten how their forebears were displaced from their homes by the building of Liverpool St Station in the eighteen-seventies.
I am thinking in particular of the Coles of Brushfield St, the Inces of Whites Row, the Senecals of Spital Sq, the Stutters of Bishopsgate and – of course – the Gadsdons. In each case, my stories about these families have led to the discovery of more artefacts and old trade catalogues, and even long-lost relatives appearing from the ether.
Peter Gadsdon first came to visit a year ago to tell me about his great, great, great grandfather, Henry Gadsdson, who was apprenticed as a silk dyer in Spitalfields in 1790. Last week, Peter returned to show me the handsome catalogues for coach-building parts sold by Gadsdons which he had acquired as a result of the original story. And, as a result of further research, Peter was able to tell me the story of another Gadsdon, whose name is still commemorated in Crispin St upon the building between Donovan’s Bags and the former night shelter – thus adding another strand to the densely-woven web that comprises the epic tale of the Gadsdons.
Once we had perused the handsome coach-building catalogues, Peter became animated to speak of his Gadsdon ancestor who emigrated to America, changed her name to Gadsden and became a star in Hollywood during the era of silent films only to be displaced once the talkies came along.
You can read Peter’s story of his coach-building ancestors below, but this other glamorous anecdote led me to wonder if we may expect a new and unexpected installment in the ongoing saga of the Gadsons of Spitafields next year.
“One person you meet leads you to another and you learn more and more,” Peter Gadsdon assured me, “There’s so much to it than this, it’s not over yet!”
If you have any more information about the Gadsdons and their endeavours, please contact Peter Gadsdon pgadsdon@yahoo.co.uk A copy of his first book about The Gadsdons of Spitalfields is available to be consulted in the Bishopsgate Library.
Peter Gadsdon in Crispin St – spot the lettering on the building above, spelling out ‘Gadsdon’
“Here I am standing outside a building in Crispin St and in the relief you can make out H.Gadsdon & Sons. I always knew these people must be connected with my branch of the Gadsdons but I was not sure how. I knew that my great, great, great grandfather Henry had a silk-dying business in Paternoster Row (later renamed Brushfield St) in the early eighteen-hundreds, but I could not ascertain how he was connected to this H. Gadsdon. Previously, I had researched my family along the paternal side, so now I decided to investigate it sideways too, so I could find out how they were connected.
Having served a seven year apprenticeship with John Wright, silk dyer of Bethnal Green, Henry’s business success in Spitalfields allowed him to retire across the River Thames to the village of Deptford and live the life of a gentleman.
He had a younger brother, Richard Gadsdon who had learnt a trade as a coachplater – an ironmonger who made the metal parts for horsedrawn carriages. Having finished his own apprenticeship, Richard started making carriage ironmongery in his brother’s premises, until 1813 when he started up independently in Gun St, Artillery Ground.
Later, as the business expanded, he moved to 22 Union St. This business lasted over one hundred and fifty years until the Spitalfield Market expanded in the nineteen twenties and took over the premises in Brushfield St. The last years of the business were in Christopher St, Finsbury Sq, from 1930 until the business shut down around 1936/7. Even then, they were still selling horse-drawn carriage goods such as wooden wheels alongside the new motor trade goods.
I discovered Richard had nine children and it is one of these, Henry – who was born in Gun St in 1814 – whose family owned the Crispin St building in the photo. Henry started an apprenticeship as a silk manufacturer, but his employer disappeared before he finished it. The next we hear is Henry started working at Thomas Brushfield’s house in Union St, engaged in the oil and colour business. Thomas Brushfield was the man after whom Brushfield St was named when Paternoster Row and Union St were combined later in the nineteenth century.
Henry married Thomas’s niece, Elizabeth Nadauld Brushfield and, after their marriage, they moved to Featherstone St, St Lukes, to start up their own oil and colour business. Unfortunately, they had a disastrous fire on the premises in 1840 and moved again, this time to Great Prescot St near the Tower of London, where once again a destructive fire broke out in 1854. This shows the volatile nature of the oil and colour business, which involved the bulk storage of oils necessary for the manufacture of paint.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the business moved back to Spitalfields and they built new warehouses in Crispin St, including the one in the picture above. They traded in Crispin St until just before the Second World War, when they decide to construct bigger premises in Edmonton. They started trading there and it was a going concern but, two years after they had moved, a bomb razed the warehouse. Their fleet of lorries and their garage premises were spared and they needed to continue the business, so they moved back to the Crispin St buildings which were still vacant and the business returned to Spitalfields again.
Once the war was finished they rebuilt the Edmonton premises. They supplied the hardware trade for household goods and tools, the oil and colour side of the trade had now disappeared. The business continued until 1977. It had lasted one hundred and twenty years.”
Mr Gadson contributed two pounds to the rebuilding of Christ Church after the fire in 1836
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In Praise Of Older Women
Contributing Photographer Chris Kelly sent me this glorious collection of her pictures of older women, some from the East End and many from elsewhere – entitled In Praise Of Older Women after the book by the Hungarian writer Stephen Vizinczey.
“Iʼve taken many pictures of inspirational women over the years but these are among the ones that make me smile the most,” Chris told me, “I know nothing about the private lives of the people in these photographs, I only know that the characters were strong, determined and fun to be with.”
Peggy Metaxas & Rosie, Whitechapel, 2013
Members of All Saints Dance Club, Poplar, 2003
Members of All Saints Dance Club, Poplar, 2003
Older people from France on an exchange visit to Kent, 1993
Older people from France on an exchange visit to Kent, 1993
Kazia Cander, farmer, Northern Poland, 1984
Kazia Cander, farmer, Northern Poland, 1984
Community Centre, Southwick, East Sussex, 1985
Members of Maidstone CND at Greenham Common, 1983
Irene Livermore & Mary Christmas, Wapping Pensionersʼ Group, St Peterʼs Centre, 2003
Spectator at National Carriage Driving Championships, Windsor, 1983
Queenie Baxter, Connors House, Canterbury, 1993
Sheffield Pensioners Action Group at a rally in Manchester, 1988
Sheffield Pensioners Action Group at a rally in Manchester, 1988
Sheffield Pensioners Action Group member sells copies of Senior Citizen
Sheffield Pensioners Action Group members dress up to commemorate eighty years of Old Age Pensions
Spectators at Ascot Races, 1983
Fernande Bressy, wine producer, Rhône Valley, 1991
Irish Emma leading the bingo at St. Patrickʼs, Wapping
Methodist Centre, Bethnal Green, 2003
Bridie Murphy and Warden Anne Baine, Twinbrook Estate, Belfast, 1989
Anwara Begum, Cable St Community Gardens, 2012
Balkis Karim, Cable St Community Gardens, 2012
Administrator at North London Community Centre, 1998
Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly
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Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits 1996
Chris Kelly’s Cable St Gardeners
Christmas Ravioli At E. Pellicci
Elide Pellicci looks down upon Maria & Nevio Pellicci
If you should spot a light, gleaming after hours in the back kitchen at E. Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd at this time of year, that will be Maria Pellicci making the Christmas ravioli for her family as she has done each year since 1962.
Maria originates from the same tiny village of Casciana near Lucca in Tuscany as her late husband Nevio Pellicci (senior). And, to her surprise, when Maria first arrived in London she discovered his mother Elide Pellicci, who came over in 1899, was already making ravioli to the same recipe that she knew from home in Italy.
Elide is the E. Pellicci celebrated in chrome letters upon the primrose yellow art deco facade of London’s best-loved family-run cafe, the woman who took over the running of the cafe in the thirties after the death of her husband Priamo who worked there from 1900 – which means we may be assured that the Christmas ravioli have been made here by the Pelliccis in this same spot for over a century.
Thus it was a great honour that Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I were the very first outsiders to be invited to witness and record this time-hallowed ritual in Bethnal Green. But I regret to inform you that this particular ravioli is only ever made for the family, which means the only way you can get to taste it is if you marry into the Pelliccis.
“It’s a Tuscan Christmas tradition – Ravioli in Brodo – we only do it once a year and every family has their own recipe,” Maria admitted to me as she turned the handle of the machine and her son Nevio Pellici (junior) reached out to manage the rapidly emerging yellow ribbon of pasta. “My mother and my grandmother used to make it, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”
In recent years, Maria has been quietly tutoring Nevio in this distinctive culinary art that is integral to the Pellicci family. “I was going with the boys to see Naples play against Arsenal tonight, but that’s down the drain,” he declared with good grace – revealing he had only discovered earlier in the day that his mother had decided the time was right for making the special ravioli, ready for the whole family to eat in chicken broth on Christmas Day.
“He’s a good boy,” Maria declared with a tender smile, acknowledging his sacrifice, “years ago I used to stay here on my own making the ravioli until eleven o’clock at night.”
“She’s trying to hand it over to me,” Nevio confirmed proudly.
“Nevio’s good and he’s got the patience,” Maria added encouragingly, as Nevio lowered the pasta carefully onto the ravioli mould.
“I’ve got the rubbish job, I have to fill the ravioli,” he complained in mock self-pity, grinning with pleasure as the two of them set to work with nimble fingers to fill the ravioli. Although the precise ingredients are a fiercely guarded secret, Maria confided to me that the filling comprises beef and pork with Parmigiano and Percorino, along with other undisclosed seasonings. “Everyone does it differently,” she confessed modestly, making light of the lifetime of refining that lies behind her personal recipe.
Already Maria had cooked the mixture slowly for a hour and added a couple of eggs to bind it, and – now it had cooled – she and Nevio were transferring it into the ravioli mould. “We used to do this by hand,” she informed me, turning contemplative as she watched Nevio expertly produce another ribbon of yellow pasta to sit on top of the mould. “We rolled the pasta out on the table before we had the machine. Sometimes, large families used to fill the whole table rolling out enough pasta to feed everyone on Christmas Day. When my mother was small, they were poor and lived in a hut but they had their own flour and eggs, so they could always make pasta.”
It was Nevio’s task to turn the mould over and press it down hard onto the table, binding the layers of pasta together. Then, with intense concentration as Maria waited expectantly, he peeled the ravioli away from the mould, revealing a sheet that looked like a page of neatly upholstered postage stamps. Making swift work of it, Maria wielded her little metal wheel by its wooden handle, separating the individual ravioli and transferring them to a metal tray.
In the kitchen of the empty restaurant, mother and son surveyed their fine handiwork with satisfaction. Each mould produced forty ravioli and, in the course of the evening, they made eight batches of ravioli, thus producing three hundred and sixty ravioli to delight the gathered Pelliccis on Christmas Day – and thereby continuing a family tradition that extends over a century. Yet for Maria, Ravioli in Brodo is more than a memento of her origin in Tuscany, making it here in the East End over all this time incarnates this place as her home.
“I am happy here and I know everyone in Bethnal Green,” she admitted to me, “It’s my village and it’s my family.”
Maria & Nevio rolling out the pasta
Maria sprinkles semolina in the mould to stop the pasta sticking
Maria & Nevio placing the meat filling in the ravioli
Nevio presses down on the ravioli mould
The ravioli are turned out from the mould
Maria cuts out the individual ravioli
Over three hundred ravioli ready for Christmas Day
Elide & Priamo, the Pellicci ancestors look down in approval upon the observance of making Christmas ravioli for more than a century in Bethnal Green
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
E.Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG
You may like to read my other Pellicci stories
Maria Pellicci, The Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits ( Part One)
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits (Part Two)
In Old Stepney
Albert Gardens
In spite of the bombing, the slum clearances and redevelopments, the East End is still with us. My recent visit to Fred Wright, who has lived his entire life in the vicinity of Arbour Sq, inspired me to take a stroll with my camera around the surrounding streets that comprise his home territory. In Stepney, there is an entire quarter of early nineteenth century terraces and squares that have survived the changes of the twentieth century. They are magnificent examples of the human quality of streetscape that is cherished by East Enders, and also plangent reminders of what has been lost.
The Peacock, Aylward St
Corner of Antil Terrace and Senrab St
Corner of Antil Terrace and Dunelm St
Corner of Dunelm St
Corner of Head St
Senrab St
Who will rescue The Royal Duke, 474 Commercial Rd, designed by W.E. Williams, 1879?
Shepherd Boy in Albert Gardens, dated 1903, “Fonderies d’art du Val D’Orne, Paris”
In Albert Gardens
South East corner of Albert Gardens
North West corner of Albert Gardens
South East corner of Arbour Sq
In Arbour Sq Gardens
South West corner of Arbour Sq
North West corner of Arbour Sq
Terrace in East Arbour St
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Fred Wright, Head Messenger
Fred Wright in his workshop
Around Arbour Sq in Stepney, there is a web of streets leading down to Albert Sq that have retained their nineteenth century terraces. It is among the best-preserved corners of the old East End and Fred Wright is one of the few of the generation born before the war who have stayed, passing his entire life among these familiar streets.
Today, Fred carries the history of the place through his life’s experience and has come to embody the generous ethos of the long-standing community that persists in this forgotten corner. Last week, Fred welcomed me to his immaculately-organised terrace house and showed me the lean-to workshop at the rear where he delights to restore broken furniture and give it away to anyone that wants it.
Yet, although he stayed in Stepney all his life, I discovered Fred is far from parochial in outlook, and the pain and suffering that he witnessed as an ambulance driver in his youth instilled a desire to serve his community through the Scouts and St John’s Ambulance. In a place where there has been so much movement of people, it was my privilege to meet a man who is proud to call himself one of the original residents.
“I’ve lived in this house for thirty years and before that I lived in Dunelm St which is the next street, so I have lived my whole life within four hundred yards here in Stepney. At first, I lived in Rule St on the other side of Arbour Sq, until it got bombed. My wife lived there before we got married, she was bombed out of her home and went to stay on Rule St. So I met her over the garden wall and the rest was history and we were married for sixty years.
It was a Jewish neighbourhood then, everyone was making shoes or doing tailoring in their front room. Savile Row made the jackets but the trousers and waistcoats were made here. You’d go round to a neighbour’s house and they’d be sewing buttonholes for waistcoats by hand. My mother, Maud, used to do ‘filling,’ stitching the lining of the sleeves to the jacket, that all used to be done by hand as well.
My father, Fred, died at an early age – thirty-eight years old – he worked for his father who was a furniture remover in Brixton. I was his only child and my mother worked hard to keep me. She was employed by Calmasses, a tailor opposite St Dunstan’s church, and she worked from eight in the morning until midnight. When she came home, she’d thread and wax a thousand needles ready for the next day. Her fingers would get septic cuts from the needles and, instead of sleeping, she’d be up soaking her swollen fingers in salt water all night so she could get the thimble on next day and go to work.
In my street, there was a taxi driver who had a taxi, no-one else had a car. We had only gaslight and there was no electricity or telephone. The dustman used to come right in through the house to empty the bin and put pink disinfectant in it afterwards. People used to work so hard yet they were all poor. I remember seeing improvised furniture made out of orange boxes with a curtain across the front. It was all rented property here in those days and if someone was ill, everybody else rallied round.
I was five when my father died but I had a happy childhood. We used to get wheels and make scooters from a plank of wood. My first job was at a foundry in Osborn St at the end of Brick Lane, round the back of Elfe’s the funerary masons. It was all right there – you learned quite a lot about how things are made. At eighteen, in 1944, I was conscripted and called up to serve in the war. I drove an ambulance based in Canterbury, and my job was to pick up casualties from the docks at Dover and take them to a hospital at in Kent. It was a trauma at first but you got used to it.
I had only just got married at eighteen at St Dunstan’s. Kathleen worked as a sample pattern-cutter at Laura Lee in Alie St. My father-in-law was a policeman based at the station in Arbour Sq and we lived with him in Rule St before we moved into our own place in Dunelm St. Thirty years ago, that was condemned and we bought this house for fifteen thousand pounds.
After the war, I went to work for Anthony Gibbs, Merchant Bankers, in Gracechurch St in the City of London. I worked my way up to the top job and became Head Messenger with thirty people under me. I’d walk around the City and all the other Messengers knew me. The Partners wore high hats and we got extra for brushing them. We all had privileges, such as putting out the fresh blotting paper in the boardroom or filling the inkwells, so everyone got a little extra. I worked there for thirty-five years until I retired at sixty-three. Two days later, I got a phone call, saying they’d opened up a place on the Isle of Dogs and ‘Could I supervise it for two weeks?’ and I was there for another two years. All the people I worked for treated me very nicely and I loved that work, and I still have a pension from them.
I was in the Scouts and the St John’s Ambulance for donkeys’ years. I was a Scout as a youngster and I wanted to give a little bit back. I went to the Buckingham Palace Garden Party three times with the St John’s Ambulance and, before it started, the Queen popped round in a head scarf and coat to ask us how we were, just like an ordinary person.
My wife Kathleen died eight years ago and now I go to the lunch club in Club Row three times a week. My son, Brian, lives in the Isle of Dogs and he comes every day to visit me. I’m eighty-seven and I know all the neighbours round here. I wouldn’t want to leave Stepney for anything, I’ve got all of my memories here. This is my sanctuary.”
Fred Wright (far left) Head Messenger at Anthony Gibbs, Merchant Bank, in the seventies
Fred’s father in law worked at Arbour Sq Police Station
Fred & Kathleen with their son Brian in the garden of their house in Dunelm St in the fifties.
Fred & Kathleen with Brian on holiday in the sixties.
High jinks on a scout camp
Fred’s cat Molly
Fred Wright
“This is my sanctuary”
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