Rob Ryan, papercut artist
In a quiet street off the Old Bethnal Green Rd, there is a large wooden door. If you go through a smaller door within this large one, you enter a passage, under an arch, that leads to a courtyard where there is another door. Go through this door, climb up a staircase and you will find the secret den of Rob Ryan, the internationally famous papercut artist. With his luxuriant curls and thick beard, working here in this old loft, intent upon his creations, Rob Ryan might appear as a Romantic nineteenth century figure – like “The Tailor of Gloucester” – if it were not for the hoodie and Raybans that bring him bang up to date.
“I am not a connoisseur of papercutting” Rob declares in characteristic, self-deprecating style, when I ask him of the origins of his work, as we cosy up on a couch upholstered in denim jeans. Years ago, before the seismic shift in cultural hierarchies that happened at the end of the last century, Rob was a painter who included words in his paintings and got a lot of flak for it. “Cheating” was the particular crime levelled at him at the Royal College of Art, where Rob was studying printmaking. Rob produces a scruffy old Thames & Hudson paperback of Tyrolean papercuts – if there was a eureka moment, it was the discovery of this book. Making papercuts, he explains was a natural extension of the screenprint stencils that he was already cutting and the symmetrical nature of these papercuts did not allow for the inclusion of words. So papercutting was the “cure” for the “malaise” of sticking words in his pictures.
Rob’s story is a startling reminder of how the hegemony of the art world has changed now, but it does not begin to account for the extraordinary flair that he brings to everything he touches. This is work of immense appeal that celebrates life and the complex emotions that colour our daily experience. Obviously, the “cure” was completely ineffectual because his work is full of words that provide an important dynamic to the images. “I love the work of William Blake, and those very English twentieth century artists like Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Eric Fraser,” Rob explains, and his work is an honourable inheritor of this lively graphic tradition. There is an emotional fullness and attractive energy to all of Rob’s work that speaks of an artist who has found his perfect medium. Quickly, he saw the limitations of entirely symmetrical papercuts and that is when the words came back in again. Getting passionate, he gestures rhetorically and, in delight, declares of papercutting “There is no cheating! There is no right! There is no wrong!”
Things start to get exciting now, as he offers me an apple, and moves over to his work table to commence a papercut. His energy changes and a serene Rob Ryan emerges as he opens a notebook and begins purposefully to copy a sketch in pencil onto a sheet of paper on a light box. Then he transfers the paper to a green cutting board and begins to cut it out with a scalpel in swift confident strokes. There is a different, more intense, atmosphere in the room now, everything focussed to the quick movement of the blade between Rob’s nimble fingers, and I reach over to capture the moment with my camera. Then it has passed, Rob inscribes the papercut and kindly presents it to me with as a souvenir. It is an image of a mother and child playing together. As I examine the treasured scrap, when I get back to my desk, I am conscious of the sinuous subtle lines of this delicate cut that give these figures life and movement, and capture an ephemeral moment of intimate affection between parent and child.
In a papercut, all the elements have to be connected, human figures have to hold hands or touch, and as result of this technical requirement, this sense of connection has become a defining element in Rob Ryan’s work, both as technique and as subject matter too. The breathtaking skill on display brings an audience to these works, but it is the language that gives depth in the exposure of ambivalent or raw emotion, and this emotionalism, whether light or dark, creates an exciting counterpoint to the control required to make them.
Years ago, Rob had a studio in the Bishopsgate end of the Spitalfields Market, until it was demolished. He regularly used to eat a huge roast lunch at the Market Cafe in Fournier St before it shut at eleven in the morning, to set him up for a day’s work. Now he has become one of the most popular artists, both in our neighbourhood and far beyond, and I like to think that in his use of familiar domestic images, he captures something of the essence of the life of this place as it is lived now.
You may also like to read about Rob Ryan at Somerset House
Discover Rob Ryan’s papercuts at Ryantown in Columbia Rd and in two forthcoming exhibitions at The Air Gallery, Dover St, London W1, 1st-20th November and at The Shire Hall Gallery, Market Square, Stafford, 13th November-9th January 2011.
One Hundred Penguin Books
I found these first hundred Penguin books in my attic over the weekend, as I was unpacking a box that has been sealed since I moved in. With their faded orange, indigo, green, violet and pink spines they make a fine display and I am fond of this collection that took me so many years to amass.
When I left college, I wrote to companies all over the country seeking work and asking if they would give me an interview if I came to see them. Then I travelled around on the cheap, through a combination of buses, trains and hitchhiking, to visit all these places – the industrial towns of the North and the Cathedral cities of the South – staying in bus stations, youth hostels and seedy B&Bs, and going along filled with hope to interviews that were almost all fruitless. It was the first time I encountered the distinctive regional qualities of Britain and in each city, to ameliorate the day of my interview, I took the opportunity to visit the museums, civic art galleries, cathedrals and castles that distinguish these places. Arriving at each destination, I would consult the directory and make a list of the second-hand booksellers, then mark them on a tourist map and, after the job interview, I would visit every one. There were hundreds of these scruffy dusty old shops with proprietors who were commonly more interested in the book they were reading behind the counter than in any customer. Many were simply junk shops with a few books piled in disorder on some shelves in the back or stacked in cardboard boxes on the pavement outside.
In these shabby old shops, I sometimes came upon Penguin books with a podgy penguin on the cover, quite in contrast to the streamlined bird familiar from modern editions. These early titles, dating from 1935 had a clean bold typography using Eric Gill’s classic sans typeface and could be bought for just twenty or thirty pence. So, in the manner of those cards you get in bubblegum packets, I began to collect any with numbers up to one hundred. In doing so, I discovered a whole library of novelists from the nineteen thirties and reading these copies passed the time pleasantly on my endless journeys. In particular, I liked the work of Eric Linklater whose playful novel “Poet’s Pub” was number two, Compton Mackenzie whose novel of the Edwardian vaudeville “Carnival” was ten, Vita Sackville-West whose novel “The Edwardians” was sixteen, T.F.Powys whose “Mr Weston’s Good Wine” was seventy-three and Sylvia Townsend Warner whose novel “Lolly Willowes” was eighty-four. After these, I read all the other works of these skillful and unjustly neglected novelists.
Eventually I found a job in Perthshire and then subsequently in Inverness, and from here I made frequent trips to Glasgow, which has the best second-hand bookshops in Scotland, to continue my collection. And whenever I made the long rail journey down South, I commonly stopped off to spend a day wandering round Liverpool or Durham or any of the places I had never been, all for the purpose of seeking old Penguins.
The collection was finally completed when I moved back to London and discovered that my next door neighbour Christine was the daughter of Allen Lane who founded Penguin books. She was astonished to see my collection and I was amazed to see the same editions scattered around her house. From Christine, I learnt how her father Allen was bored one day on Exeter St David’s Station (a place familiar to me), changing trains on the way to visit his godmother Agatha Christie. When he searched the bookstall, he could not find anything to read and decided to start his own company publishing cheap editions of good quality books. I presume he did not know that, if he had been there half a century earlier, he could have bought a copy of Thomas Hardy’s first published novel “Desperate Remedies”, because Exeter St David’s was where Hardy experienced that moment no writer can ever forget, of first seeing their book on sale.
I do not think my collection of Penguins is of any great value because they are of highly variable condition and not all are first editions, though every one predates World War II and they are of the uniform early design before the bird slimmed down. While I was collecting these, I thought that I was on a quest to build my career – a fancy that I walked away from, years later. Now these hundred Penguin books are the only evidence of my innocent tenacity to create a life for myself at that time.
Allen Lane’s idealistic conception, to use the mass market to promulgate good writing to the widest readership in cheap editions that anyone could afford, is one that I admire. And these first hundred are a fascinating range of titles, a snapshot of the British public’s reading tastes in the late thirties. Looking back, the search for all these books led me on a wonderful journey through Britain. If you bear in mind that I only found a couple in each city, then you will realise that my complete collection represents a ridiculously large number of failed job interviews in every corner of these islands. It was a job search than became a cultural tour and resulted in a stack of lovely old paperbacks. Now they sit on my shelf here in Spitalfields as souvenirs of all the curious places I never would have visited if it were not my wayward notion to scour the entire country to collect all the first hundred Penguins.
How Raymond’s Shop became Leila’s Shop
The top photograph of 15 Calvert Avenue is believed to have been taken one Sunday in 1902 around the time Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra came to open the Boundary Estate, and I snapped the lower photograph last December, more than a century later. One day, Joan Rose visited Leila’s Cafe next door at 17 Calvert Avenue and brought out the old photograph (which she always carries in her purse) to show Leila McAlister, explaining that the little boy standing in the doorway was her father. A copy now hangs proudly in Leila’s Shop, and served as the inspiration for our escapade last year when a class from Virginia Rd School in Arnold Circus turned out to assist and we stopped the traffic to take the new picture.
Joan (unmarried name Raymond) told me that her father Alfred was born in 1896 and is approximately six years old in the picture. The woman beside him in the doorway is Phoebe Raymond his mother, Joan’s grandmother, and the man on the left is his father, Joan’s grandfather Albert Alfred Raymond (known as Alf), the first proprietor of the newly built shop. They all lived in the flat up above and you can see their songbird in the cage, a cock linnet.
Phoebe has her smart apron with frills and everyone is wearing their Sunday best – remarkably for the time, everyone has good quality boots. I like the sacks with “Spitalfields” printed on them, indicating produce from the fruit and vegetable market half a mile away, and the porters’ baskets which Leila still uses today. You can see the awning has been taken up to permit enough light for the photograph and then it has rained. We had the same problem with the weather, but were blessed with a few hours between a sleet shower and a blizzard to snatch our picture.
Joan Rose told me she believes her family are of French Huguenot origin and the original surname was Raymond de Foir, which means the people you see in the old photograph are probably descended from the Huguenot immigrants that came here in the eighteenth century. What touched me most was to learn from Joan that Alfred her father (pictured here eternally six years old in his Sunday best on the threshold of his father’s shop), went off to fight in the First World War and, aged twenty-two, was there at the battle of the Somme when so many died, but returned to run the shop in Calvert Avenue carrying on his father’s business in the same premises until his death in 1966. Joan grew up here and attended both Virginia Rd School and Rochelle School on either side of Arnold Circus. Although she now lives in West London, she remains involved with her old neighbourhood today as Honorary Patron of the Friends of Arnold Circus and cut the cake on the day of the celebration of the centenary of the bandstand.
I am very grateful to Leila McAlister and to Robert Bradshaw, manager of Leila’s Shop (pictured on the left of the new photograph in the same spot as his predecessor a century ago), for kindly organising the picture last Winter and also to the school pupils for participating with such enthusiasm (their teacher stands in the shop doorway). Leila and Robert handed out chocolate brownies and tangerines on the pavement after the photograph was taken and a spontaneous Christmas party ensued, demonstrating that the exuberant energy of children remains a constant across the span of history defined by these two pictures.
You may like to read these other stories about Joan Rose:
Joan Rose at Gardner’s Market Sundriesmen
Alf & Phoebe Raymond, Joan’s grandparents outside their shop in 1900.
Joan Rose presides over the cutting of the cake at the celebration of the centenary of the Arnold Circus bandstand last Summer.
Paul Gardner, paper bag seller
Recently, I have taken to dropping in to the premises of my new friend Paul Gardner, the paper bag seller at 149 Commercial St, to observe the constant parade of long-standing customers that pass through, creating the life of this distinctive business. One morning, I called round at six thirty, opening time, to enjoy a quiet chat before the rush and Paul explained that his great-grandfather James Gardner began trading here in this same building as a Scalemaker when it was built in 1870 – which means Paul is a fourth generation Market Sundriesman and makes Gardners the longest established family business in Spitalfields.
Paul still has his great-grandfather’s accounts from the end of the nineteenth century, when as Scalemakers they serviced the scales for all the traders in the fruit and vegetable market on a regular basis. Turning the pages and scanning the lines of James’ fine copperplate handwriting your eye alights upon the names, Isaac, Isaiah and Ezekiel, indicative of the Jewish population that once defined the identity of Spitalfields. There is an ancient block of wood with three scoops carved out that are smoothed with wear, it has been in use since the days of Paul’s great-grandfather. Then his son Bertie (Paul’s grandfather) used it, then Bertie’s son Roy (Paul’s father) used it and Paul still keeps his cash in it today. As the twentieth century wore on, each of the successive Mr Gardners found that customers began to expect to buy their produce in a paper bag (a trend which is now reversed) and so the trade of dealing in bags supplanted the supply of scales entirely over four generations.
Turn your back on the traffic rattling down Commercial St and stand for a moment to contemplate the dignified Brunswick green frontage of Gardners Market Sundriesman. An old glass signs reads “Paper & Polythene Bag Merchant” and, sure enough, a variety of different coloured bags are festooned on strings like bunting, below them are some scales hinting at the origins of the business and then your attention is distracted by a mysterious wooden sieve, a memento of Paul’s grandfather. Enter the shop to be confronted by piles of bags of every variety in packets stacked up on either side and leaving barely any room to stand. Only two routes are possible, straight ahead leading into the dark recesses where the stacks grow taller and closer together in the gloom or turn right to the makeshift counter, improvised from an old counter-top supported upon yet more packets of bags. Beneath the fluorescent glow, the dust of ages is settling upon everything. You think you have entered a storeroom, but you are wrong because you neglected to notice Paul sitting at the counter in a cosy corner, partly concealed by a stack of bags. You turn to greet him and a vista appears with a colourful display of bags and tags and tapes and those old green-grocers’ signs that say “Today’s price 2/8” and “Morning Gathered” – which creates a pleasant backdrop to the figure of Paul Gardner as he stands to greet you with a genial “Hello!”
With his wavy grey locks, gentle face, sociable manner and innate decency, Paul could have stepped from another age and it is a joy to meet someone who has successfully resisted the relentless imperative to haste and efficiency at any cost, that tyrannises our age and threatens to enslave us all. When you enter the shop, you enter Paul’s world and you discover it is a better place than the one outside.
Paul was thirteen when his father Roy died unexpectedly in 1968, creating a brief inter-regnum when his mother took over for four years until he came of age. “I came here the first day after I left school at seventeen,” said Paul, “It was what I wanted to do. After the first year, my mother stopped coming, though my nan used to live above the shop then. I haven’t had a day off since 1972. I don’t make much money, I will never become a millionaire. To be honest, I try to sell things as cheap as I can while others try to sell them as expensive as they can. I do it because I have done it all my life. I do it because it is like a family heirloom.”
Paul Gardner’s customers are the stallholders and small businessmen and women of East London, many of whom have been coming for more than twenty years, especially loyal are the Ghanaian and Nigerian people who prefer to trade with a family business. Paul will sell small numbers of bags while other suppliers only deal in bulk, and he offers the same price per bag for ten as for a hundred. Even then, most of his customers expect to negotiate the price down, unable to resist their innate natures as traders. Paul explained to me that some have such small turnovers they can only afford to buy ten carrier bags at a time.
In his endeavours, Paul supports and nurtures an enormous network of tiny businesses that are a key part of the economy of our city. Many have grown and come back with bigger and bigger orders, selling their products to supermarkets, while others simply sustain themselves, like the Nigerian woman who has a stall in Brixton market and has been coming regularly on the bus for twenty-three years to buy her paper bags here. “I try to do favours for people,” says Paul and, in spontaneous confirmation of this, a customer rings with the joyous news that they have finally scraped enough money together to pay their account for the last seven years. Sharing in the moment of triumph, Paul laughs down the phone, “What happened, did you win the lottery or something?”
Paul has the greatest respect for his customers and they hold him in affection too. In fact, Paul’s approach could serve as a model if we wish to move forward from the ugliness of the current business ethos. Paul only wants to make enough to live and builds mutually supportive relationships with his customers over the longterm based upon trust. His is a more equitable version of capitalism tempered by mutual respect, anchored in a belief in the essential goodness rather than the essential greediness of people. As a fourth generation trader, Paul has no business plan, he is guided by his beliefs about people and how he wants to live in the world. His integrity and self-respect are his most precious possessions.“I have never advertised,” says Paul, “All my customers come because they have been recommended by friends who are already my customers.”
However, after Gardners survived two World Wars and the closure of the market, there is now a new threat as the landlord’s agents’ Tarn & Tarn seek to increase the annual rent from £15,000 to £25,000. “I earn two hundred and fifty pounds a week,” reveals Paul with frank humility, “If I earned five hundred pounds a week, I could give an extra two hundred and fifty towards the rent but at two hundred and fifty pounds a week, the cupboard is bare.”
Ruminating upon the problem,“They’ve dollied-up the place round here!” says Paul quietly, in an eloquently caustic verdict upon this current situation in which his venerable family business finds itself now, after a hundred and forty years, in a fashionable shopping district with a landlord seeking to maximize profits. Paul needs to renegotiate his rent increase and we must support Paul by sending more business his way (at the very least, everyone go round and buy your bin bags from him), because Paul is a Spitalfields legend we cannot lose. But more important than the history itself, is the political philosophy that has evolved over four generations of experience. It is the sum of what has been learnt. In all his many transactions, Paul unselfconsciously espouses a practical step-by-step approach towards a more sustainable mode of society. Who would have expected that the oldest traders in Spitalfields might also turn out to be the model of an ethical business pointing the way to the future?
You may also like to read about Paul Gardner’s Collection and When Paul Gardner met Joan Rose
Paul’s grandfather Bertie Gardner, standing with Paul’s father Roy Gardner as child outside the shop around 1930.
Roy Gardner, now a grown man, standing outside the shop after World War II, around 1947.
First Annual Report
One year has passed since I wrote the first post here at Spitalfields Life and now, reaching three hundred and sixty-five, I hope you will permit me a moment of reflection. Let me confess to you that writing Spitalfields Life daily has become a compulsion, an ecstatic project driven by the desire to communicate my sense of wonder at the people I meet in the East End.
How quickly this first year has gone! Yet I feel I have hardly begun, because three hundred and sixty-five stories merely scratches the surface of the subject. And I fear I shall barely have time to blink before I will be writing the twenty-seventh annual report, with less than four months left to run before the ten thousandth post that is my ultimate target.
People ask me all the time,“What are you going to do when you run out?” but it is evident to me at the end of this first year that there will be no problem in finding enough subjects for the pen portraits which are the core of Spitalfields Life. My frequent experience is that each interviewee tells me of others I should write about. Readers write in with suggestions too, and the endlessly expanding possibilities give me a sense of vertigo sometimes.
Yet, extrapolating twenty-six times from what I have already written, I already recognise that space is going to be limited. Looking back over the Bakers, Nuns, Poulterers, Paper Bag Sellers, Bell Founders, Jewel Thieves, Artists, Publicans, Novelists, Gangsters, Paper Cutters, Songwriters, Aesthetes, Cloth Merchants, Machinists, Bellringers, Steeplekeepers, Designers, Furriers, Dairymen, Nursery Rhyme Collectors, Antique Dealers, Chefs, Strippers, Sheep-shearers, Farmers, Weavers, Photographers, Shoe-shiners, Barbers, Ostrich Feather Sellers, Grocers, Playwrights, Letterpress Printers, Street Dancers, Architects, Pearlies, Steeplejacks, Rag Dealers, Trendsetters, Model Boat Enthusiasts, Priests, Sculptors, Head-dress Makers, Beekeepers, Milkmen, Ostlers, Swagmen, Mudlarks, Tailors, Laundrette Attendants, Mechanics, Beigel Sellers, Bunny Girls, Pigeon Fliers, Bankers, Dockers, Junk Dealers, Gardeners, Restauranteurs, Ceramicists and Mapmakers, I can imagine how Noah must have felt, thinking, ”How am I going to fit everyone in?” But, also like Noah, I am equally eager not to miss anyone out that should be included and so I rely upon you, my gentle readers, to direct my footsteps by informing me of other individuals that I must write about.
Walking through Spitalfields, in streets and lanes that were once familiar to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, and more recently to Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Beatrix Potter and J.K.Rowling – among other literary luminaries – I am constantly reminded of my predecessors. As a writer of modest ambition, I am commonly filled with awe at the nature of what I have taken on, but the truth is that it comes down to writing one story each day. This is how I keep a sense of proportion, by concentrating on the task in front of me.
I often worry about what would happen if I became sick, yet the for the first time in my life I have lived through a whole year without being ill at all. This has been the year of writing constantly – an unforgettable year, unforgettable not simply because of everything that has happened and all the people I have met, but unforgettable because – writing every single day – all the posts now exist as a reminder of what I did. They are the substance of my activity over this past twelve months.
Once I was concerned that writing was an overly solitary activity to pursue as a lifetime’s occupation, yet this year writing has led me out into the world and drawn me closer to life. I have never met more people than I have recently. When I get home from an interview and open my notebook to look at my notes, I always think “How can I do justice to this person?” Without all these generous individuals who have opened their hearts to me, these stories could not exist and the success of Spitalfields Life must be attributed to their qualities alone.
Some kind of miracle has happened. The internet gave the means of printing and distribution for free, enabling me to begin. Then, out of nowhere, from London and across the globe, more and more readers appeared to read Spitalfields Life each day, giving me the confidence to continue and encouraging me to write better stories to delight and intrigue. “You are obviously a big-hearted woman.” one esteemed reader commented, which is perhaps the best compliment anyone every paid my writing.
So many have joined along the way, that I am taking this opportunity of the first anniversary to look back over some of the prime posts which you may not have seen. During the next week, I shall be publishing a selection of my favourites from the first three hundred and sixty-five, while I take this brief opportunity to enjoy a few drinks with Sandra Esqulant at The Golden Heart, tidy my desk and make preparations for next year.
One day, I shall throw a big party for all the subjects of my pen portraits in one of Spitalfields’ finest old houses and invite you, my readers, to come and meet them. But in the meantime, as I gather my thoughts, steel myself and sharpen my pencil to commence the second year, I hope, through the practice of my work to become better at this endeavour, in order to be more worthy of my subjects – since there are so many marvellous things I must show you and more people I want to introduce.
And now I must run, because I am off to spend all night at the New Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market in Stratford and in one week’s time you will discover why…
Thus, with all these thoughts in mind, I come to the end of this first year of Spitalfields Life.
I am your loyal servant
The Gentle Author
Take a close look at this character because you are going to see a lot more of him. In a previous life in Devon, he used to catch rabbits and even moorhens but now he is learning the ways of the alley in Spitalfields. A small creature with a large personality. (It started with a black cat named Mr Pussy – the first post, 26th August 20o9)
Spitalfields Antiques Market 20
This is Debbie Price with her two fine daughters Tilly & Scarlett. “They don’t get pocket money, they have to sell things to earn their own money,” explained Debbie – a seasoned trader who began going to jumble sales at the age of ten and reselling her finds, just as she is now teaching her daughters to do. It means that while Tilly is awaiting her exam results this week, her ever-loving mother can be reassured that even if she does not get the grades, her daughter has something to fall back on. Like mother, like daughters.
This is Susan Hustwayte holding a Truman’s ashtray, a trophy of the brewery where she once worked as secretary to Mr Perkins, earning a wage of seven pounds and sixpence that she spent on fashions in Petticoat Lane each week. Susan comes from a venerable family whose ancestors include Henry VIII’s gardener and inherits her addiction to markets and collectibles from her father. “He was a demolition contractor who took me scavenging on sites when I was five years old,” she recalled with a smirk, “You should have seen his bedroom – it looked like Steptoe’s backyard!” Like father, like daughter.
This is Catherine with her daughter Sarah, and noble boyfriend Gary who carries the boxes. “All my family are in markets, one way or another,” declared Catherine plainly, a veteran of fifteen years of car boot sales,“My parents started off with a stall and I worked for them as a little girl.” Now Sarah has started trading too, showing her mother some moral support, “I’ve been helping my mum for years and I decided to give up my office job and go independent selling clothes,” she admitted shyly. Like mother and boyfriend, like daughter.
This is glass dealer Sarah Ovans‘ son John Ovans, who with knitwear designer Morgan Allen-Oliver also deals in glass. “Sarah’s house is like a showroom with all this glass everywhere, priced for sale,” revealed Morgan with a coy grin. “Her taste is sophisticated and grown up, whereas our stall is like a sweetshop!” he added, exchanging a knowing smile with John as they happily gestured in unison at their multi-coloured glittering display. Like mother, like son and boyfriend.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Blackberry season in the East End
It is blackberry season. In Spitalfields, I always feel a pang to be reminded of the seasonal delights that I am missing here in the midst of the city. When I was a child, I thought the chief virtue of growing up was the opportunity to reach blackberries that grew higher in the hedgerow. I spent so many seasons trailing behind my parents on blackberry picking expeditions down deep lanes and along the banks of the river Exe, carrying baskets and plastic bags – and armed with umbrellas or walking sticks to pull down elusive branches from above. It was an exciting yet risky endeavour, if you were to avoid getting scratched by thorns or stung by nettles, but we were prepared to endure these petty hazards for the sake of blackberry jam to enjoy in the Winter months ahead.
As a consequence, even today I feel that a Summer without picking blackberries is incomplete and so, in order to exercise my ability to reach those higher branches, I set out to find some blackberries in the East End. I took a bus to Bow and got off at the church, walking through the streets until I came to Three Mills Island. Just fifty yards along the towpath of the river Lee, I found blackberries growing in profusion, cascading from the old walls of abandoned factories and set to work picking them, pulling down those top branches that are especially heavy with fruit. Within minutes, a mother and her two children who had been similarly occupied came past clutching their bags of blackberries and, without a second thought, we exchanged greetings. It was the natural camaraderie of purple-fingered blackberry pickers.
At the end of August, the variety of Autumn berries was already diverse, scarlet rosehips, shiny black elderberries, delicately segmented pink spindleberries, red hawthorn berries, purple sloes and even golden greengages. I lost sense of time absorbed in picking blackberries, making my slow deliberate progress along the hedge. The quiet river was covered in green pondweed where moorhens made aimless trails, and I stood to watch the lonely heron in contemplation, until it gave flight when a District Line train rattled over the bridge towards central London. I followed the towpath North, aware that I was walking a narrow passage of green between the new housing developments of Hackney Wick on one bank of the river and the Olympic site on the other. High winds sent clouds racing across the sky and the sunshine I had been granted for my blackberrying expedition was shortlived, turning to rain before I reached Bethnal Green.
In Spitalfields, I tipped my modest haul of blackberries into an old bowl. Gleaming berries that come for free and incarnate all the poetry of late Summer in England. I was satisfied that the annual ritual had been observed. It was the joyful culmination of Summer. My passion for blackberry picking is sated for another year and there will be blackberry crumble tonight. Within weeks, the flies will get to the bushes and blackberries can no longer be picked. Each year presents this momentary opportunity, once they become ripe and before they are ruined – weather permitting. You are given one chance to pick blackberries before Summer is over. It is a chance which, for someone like myself, ever eager to seize the ephemeral pleasures of existence, cannot be missed.
The House Mill at Three Mills Island, a tidal mill built on the River Lee in 1776.
