Category Archives: London

A little Bit racist?

June 14, 2020 northlondonhousewife

Is it possible to be a little bit racist? A group of racist white men ran riot in London leading to a number of comments suggesting the UK was racist.

This was immediately followed by a whole series of replies saying that actually the UK was not racist, they were British and not personally racist. The people rioting in London were nothing to do with them, did not represent them so it as, apparently unfair, to describe the UK as racist. Because they do not see themselves as racist, the country they live in cannot be described as racist even when clearly racist white men are running around the capital city looking for black people to lynch.

& it’s taking me some time to process all of this.

Clearly I don’t feel myself to be personally racist. Who does? Even the white men running around London looking for people to lynch probably don’t describe themselves as racist. They probably call themselves “patriots” or some other co-opted word.

As a white person, immensely privileged when living in a predominantly white country, I don’t think that I get to decide for myself whether I’m racist or not. I can decide to try not to be racist, todo my best to be positively fair, open and accepting of other people whatever their ethnicity but I don’t believe that I get to decide whether or not I’m succeeding in not being racist. I don’t get to mark my own scorecard.

Passively doing nothing cannot equate to not being racist.

Not charging around the streets of London looking for people to kick, people to spit on, people to abuse, is a pretty low bar to set as a minimum standard on not being racist. It’s really not good enough.

& it also doesn’t really seem good enough to say that the rioting racists are nothing to do with me, therefore I don’t need to worry, or worse still, you don’t need to worry. We’re not racist so everything is ok. Even as racist white men run around on the streets looking for someone to beat up.

“Yes, but…” seems a peculiarly inadequate response to a racist mob.

And suggesting racism is someone else’s problem because “I’m not racist” is just another way of trying to make the victims responsible for their own abuse and is in itself, intrinsically racist.

Because it just isn’t possible to be a little bit racist, anymore than a woman can be a little bit pregnant: racism is racism. And we are all responsible, responsible for identifying what we’ve done wrong that has allowed this to happen, as well as working out what we can do better to prevent it in the future.

London

Too Much Stuff

May 3, 2020 northlondonhousewife

Peak lockdown purchase on-line so far has been 100 cans of coke, not because I wanted so much to drink but because it was the only way to realistically meet the wholesaler’s minimum spend and purchase the samba oelek I actually wanted.

I can (sort of) imagine my family making it’s way through the cans over the next few weeks. I couldn’t imagine the same usage of 50 jars of intense Indonesian chilli sauce. We went for four jars of chillies paste. It’s one of the few vegetarian brands around.

Mostly though when it comes to food, I’m buying much the same as usual though 25% extra to cater for the extra adult no living at home.

My real problem is buying for the garden.

The problem is two fold: firstly, there are lots of lovely plants out there that would look wonderful in my garden, the garden that I’m not basically obliged through boredom to spend lots more time sitting in; and, secondly, there’s a time delay on almost all purchases.

The latter is the real problem. Because everything is taking weeks to arrive, after a day or two, I get antsy and start to think of something else that would look just as good or better. When these plants finally arrive, I’m going to have a huge amount of work to get through in very short order. Since my attitude to the garden is one of essential laziness, this is going to be a problem so I’d better plan.

Garden (4) furthest from the house, shady and dry as can be given the yew, holly, privet and hawthorn hedges i’ve sub-contracted out some work with a company coming in to cut the yew hedge back to a manageable size and to raise the canopy on the yews I’ve let run to trees.

I’ve also ordered some beehive composers that will live in the corners and which I’ll probably use to store bought compost as everywhere is far to dry to actually compost garden matter back there. I suppose if I were to wrap it in plastic, I could compost some leaf mould from Autumn leaves.

I’ve also ordered three huge (1m) perspex mirror stars. Just because.

For a few years I’ve been thinking about standing some up against the holly hedge as a decoration and then lockdown boredom hit home and I got tap happy on the website.

So far so simple but then we hit the 48 mixed foxglove plug plants. I’m probably supposed to grow these on before planting, but it seems unlikely that will happen. In an ideal worlds, I’ll thread them through the geraniums currently taking over the space and they’ll hopefully pop up in June/July, re-seeding and putting on a good show for years to come. Hmm. Foxgloves are biennials. Will the plug plants flower this year or next?

The shady garden is livened up with brightly coloured pots, full of begonias which are the easiest most tolerant bedding plants for dry shade. Some of the orange begonias come back year after year, but I’ve started using white to fill the pots in shade as they stand out more. This year I’ll have 30 Begonia ‘Non-Stop Joy Mocca White’ garden ready plants to find a home for, maybe 15 in garden (4) and 15 in garden (2)

For garden (3) the lawn I’m letting grow wild, I’ve the easiest purchase to deal with i.e. 1 scatter pack of wildflower seed which I should probably rake and clear some grass before sowing but will no doubt end up just giving a couple of throws over the grass. If there’s any left, I might try it in any empty bits of the shady garden (4). With a neighbour’s tree about to pop it’s clogs, the canopy is getting thinner and sunny but dry would suit more plants. I’d be ecstatic if we managed to end up with dappled shade as opposed to the stygian depths currently endured.

I’ve also ordered a replacement for the penstemon that kicked the bucket a Winter ago (1 Penstemon ‘Pensham Just Jayne’) that will need to be dug into a gap and rather a lot (12) Geranium ‘Rozanne’ jumbo plug plants which will fill some gaps around the roses in the borders of both garden (3) and (2).

Garden (2) has 6 pots in shade (Begonia ‘Non-Stop Joy Mocca White’) to be planted up to supplement any surviving begonias from last year. It also has some pots and troughs in full sun which need something different. Plus there are the hanging baskets which I plan to plant up again. I live in hope that for once I might remember to water the beggars often enough.

They have some variegated cat mint and last year’s moss (maybe from the year before) so I’ll just top them up with some small plants and try to keep them watered. In the centre, around the plastic water bottle reservoir, I’ll plant up two of the 5 Geranium ‘Appleblossom Rosebud’ jumbo plug plants which are a sort of pinkish white. I should probably add a contrast into the baskets, maybe some of the 20 Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells Blue’ Postiplug plants or lobelia?

It also has a small trough spilling over the wall with a few gaps I usually fill with lobelia. This year I have ordered too many i.e. 36 blueLobelia ‘Monsoon’ plug plants so they’ll be filling up troughs by the gravel path and any split over will find their way to the gravel garden.

My daughter plans on repeating her efforts at growing vegetables in pots and bags so we’re expecting 6 Tomato ‘Tumbling Tom Red’ plug plants, having already kicked off three bags of potatoes.

Garden (1) has pots, lots of pots leading up the stairs and also some already full of ferns near to the water spout. In the blue pots on the stairs, some geraniums have survived from last year and I plan to top them up with some of the 10 bright red Geranium ‘Octavia Hill jumbo plug plants. The clash between bright red plants an blue pots works well, almost better if there’s a mishmash of reds in the pots themselves.

For the other pots, I plan to brighten them up with some (10) white Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells White’ plug plants, 10 white Petunia ‘Trailing Surfing White plug plants and 24 Bacopa ‘Snowtopia’ plug plants. Again any left over will make their way to the gravel garden to supplement the geranium and fleabane daisies that are taking over everywhere.

48 mixed foxglove;
30 Begonia ‘Non-Stop Joy Mocca White’;
wildflower seed;
1 Penstemon ‘Pensham Just Jayne’;
12 Geranium ‘Rozanne’ jumbo plug plants;
5 Geranium ‘Appleblossom Rosebud’ jumbo plug plants;
10 Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells Blue’ Postiplug plants;
36 blueLobelia ‘Monsoon’;
6 Tomato ‘Tumbling Tom Red’ plug plants;
10 bright red Geranium ‘Octavia Hill jumbo plug plants;
(10) white Calibrachoa ‘Million Bells White’ plug plants;
10 white Petunia ‘Trailing Surfing White plug plants; and,
24 Bacopa ‘Snowtopia’ plug plants

Home, London

Bulbs

May 1, 2020 northlondonhousewife

My Spring garden is lovely but it is the nature of every gardener to see the gaps, to want more rather than less and so when I sit and enjoy the flowers, I’m also thinking about what I want to buy for next year.

Anemone blanda blue lie low at the edge of the pink rose border but there are gaps that could be filled there, and maybe a row repeated down at the front of the white rose border would be lovely too.

The crocus planted in the front lawn were mowed by the gardener by mistake so made only a late and lacklustre showing. They could be supplemented with some whites and purples now that everyone knows where to find them.

One plant we don’t need more of is muscari or fritalaria which seem to be incredibly happy

They crocus have enjoyed the gravel garden this year but could maybe be joined with some early dwarf iris, planted in nice large clumps.

Whilst I love the darker blues and purples, these are quite hard to see down the garden from the house, but very easy from the windows onto the gravel roof.

I quite enjoy the contrast but wonder how dark I could go.

I am toying with the idea of making the shady garden a spring garden, since obviously the deciduous trees at least allow some light through and the overwhelming presence of geranium is muted.

Some white narcissus pre-date me in the garden and seem shade tolerant. They’re later than the bright yellows that I’ve planted but seem tough enough to cope with my neglect.

And that’s all before we even start to think about tulips.

Working on the basis that these recur somewhat, but never perfectly, then I’ll always be looking to top up each Autumn. Some types are definitely more resilient than others, notably the bog-standard reds and parrot purples.

For underneath the hedge, I’d like to plant more species tulips though given it’s origins (sunny greek islands) it would probably do better up in the gravel.

Though maybe what I should do is move one of the thugs from the shade garden down to the lower garden and plant out under the hedge.

And despite having far too many in the main garden, I’m still considering whether or not to add some fritalaria to the muscari in gravel. If one works so well surely the other should as well?

In amongst the main rose beds, I’m generally happy with the white-pink-purple theme but this year there seems to be a lack of pink. The white tulips have started life quite yellow which is a bit disconcerting but they do seem to be settling into a brighter white.

It’s possibly all to do with the timing of the flowers. Maybe the darker Queen of the Night were just late to arrive, along with the Shirley

The front bed with it’s indestructible red tulips, has benefitted from some yellow and orange companions, but could be made even better with darker shades of red.

Maybe I could bulk out the red even further to make the clash even more obvious.

Or even a few more orange bulbs dotted towards the lawn.

Though it seems to be outside of my preferred palette of colours, if we must have those red shades, then let’s make them bold bruise shaded clashes rather than apologetic whimpers.

And since they seem to have arrived a bit later but looked beautiful, how about a few more Tulip clusiana “Peppermintstick”

Got to love bold, if you can’t pull off elegant.

Home, London

Meadows

April 24, 2020 northlondonhousewife

One problem with lockdown is too much time which leads to too many ideas, none of which a very lazy person such as myself wants to make work especially in the garden.

The third “step” in my east-west plot is a little bit dull, comprising one bed of beautiful pink roses, a lawn with a swing seat and bordered by a yew hedge. It’s not a big space and in an ideal world, I might put in another flower bed but that takes much more effort than I’m willing to put in and more than my partner can be coerced to attempt. Digging out the bed for the second rose bed was his last ever garden project, he says. Hmm.

But we both watched a programme that suggested letting the grass grow. It sounds like the easiest, laziest of projects but I’ve a funny feeling that it might be quite a lot of hard work. The kind of hard work that takes one a look at a lawn left to seed, decided it’s an horrendous mess and then has to scythe the lot back to a height that can be mowed.

Worth a go.

But I don’t want the whole lot just randomly left to grow. I actually have some practical requirements to be met that mean a couple of grass “paths” have to be kept mown as a minimum: one through to the very back garden step in the driest shade, one to the garden swing seat which is actually the best place in the garden for a morning coffee and one infant of the roses so that I can pick the flowers through the Summer.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Home, London

Sunshine

April 20, 2020 northlondonhousewife

The deciding factor for whether or not the house has a good or bad day, is the weather. Thankfully there’s a lot of sunshine around in this lockdown.

And the bedding bought just before Christmas, basically violas (pansies) has survived more or less to cheer us up.

I’ve lost some to slugs, and negligence, and even more to my cats scripting where they shouldn’t. But for once the Winter baskets have come good, and I have enough pots and troughs to brighten the corners as the pear blossom dies down from the tree and the wisteria has yet to arrive

Mostly my garden is based around purple-pink-white shades.

Though to be honest , I could do with more vulgar pinks.

Down near the house where the bright red tulips just refuse to die, the house opinion is divided on the orange tulips. Maybe I should just have gone dark purple but now, inevitably, the brightest of reds and oranges are there forever.

Since the closest I can come to tasteful, is the violets everywhere in amongst the paving, I should probably just embrace vulgar and be done with it.

Though if there were to be one show-stopper at the moment, it wouldn’t be flowers or even blossom, but the foliage of the little maple tree planted far too close to the house, long before we arrived.

It may be more beautifully red in the Autumn, but the mix of red and green leaves with dappled sunshine is still beautiful.

Home, London

Space

April 12, 2020 northlondonhousewife

Lockdown is a lot easier for the suburbs. People surviving lockdown with small children in cramped urban flats with no outdoor space deserve medals.

Meanwhile those of us lucky enough to have gardens have enjoyed some of the best Spring weather ever and with nothing but time to sit and enjoy the changing flowers.

From the hellebores going over, through the narcissus and crocus.

As one flower goes over, another arrives and though the garden seems to be dominated by certain showstoppers, the magnolia or the camellias

There is also pleasure in the smaller plants, the ones that find their own way into the garden, into the pavements, unplanned.

And when the first bright stars in the garden pass, the blossom of the pear tree suddenly arrives like a waterfall draping over the hedge.

As an early example of urban planning, houses here were each planted with a fruit tree alternating pear and apple along the streets.

So my pear tree is likely to be as old as the house, maybe older if planted on root stock.

Which would make this tree more than 112 years old and still so very beautiful. Not that the cats care in the sunshine.

Even the thuggish of plants, the spurge, is fizzing with lime green flowers and cheerful in the shade.

A number of late plantings from Autumn seem to have worked, from the leftover dwarf narcissus in barrels with forget-me-nots,

through to the bucket with a hole planted up with cyclamen, and the leftover narcissus

Having given up (finally) at trying to get rid of the ever repeating bright red tulips planted too quickly twenty years ago, the yellow and orange tulip companions planted in November seem to make them more comfortable, more deliberately planted.

Though like everything in my garden, it’s a basic scramble mess. I would love to be able to plant elegantly but have never been able to resist an overabundance of plants and colour.

In place of elegance and quiet contemplation, my garden is full of places to set and watch the business of bees, the mad scramble and competition as my thuggy plants fight it out of their borders.

Never mind the impending zombie apocalypse: for the first time ever, my Spring baskets have worked and are looking positively cheerful.

Thank goodness for a place to sit and a cat for company.

London, Rants&Rambles

Counting days

April 10, 2020 northlondonhousewife

Life in lockdown is one of quiet tedium, for those of us lucky enough to have older kids, a big enough house for everyone to find some space and a garden to disappear into. The weather has been wonderful, warm and dry. The minute this is over, expect it to start raining and drop back 10C.

We’ve been isolated now for two weeks, and by isolation, I mean no contact with anyone outside of a single visit to a very quiet supermarket. By now, surely we’re disease free, yet paranoia about every cough, sneeze or sniffle is profound.

I’ve read that infection to death takes an average of 17 days. With more than that spent locked into our own home, we should feel relatively safe. For now.

Because covid-19 is pandemic, expected to become endemic. We will all be exposed to it, all of us catch it, sooner or later. Later is better not because it can be avoided, but because later means more health service resources available to keep us alive, more nurses, doctors, ventilators etc. It also means more chance of a vaccine though that’s 18 months away as a minimum and no one can stay in their own home, surrounded by their family for 18 months without going mad.

The UK coronavirus death toll is expected to continue to rise for at least two weeks, the government’s chief scientific adviser has said, despite encouraging signs about the rate of infections and hospital admissions. The official death toll understates the numbers because it only counts hospital deaths. Excluding deaths in care homes means the numbers can be misleading.

Sir Patrick Vallance told Thursday’s daily Downing Street briefing that the number of people to have died from coronavirus in UK hospitals had reached 7,978, after the deaths of a further 881 people. It is the second-highest daily total after Wednesday’s record 938 deaths.

Despite the slightly lower figure, Vallance said the peak of the outbreak could still be weeks away. “I would expect the deaths to continue to keep going up for about two weeks after the intensive care picture improves. We’re not there yet, but that’s the sort of timeframe I would expect.”

Presumably the people being hospitalised now, are likely to take a week or two to recover or die.

The chief medical officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, pointed out that two weeks ago admissions to intensive care were doubling every three days. He said: “It’s now becoming not quite flat, but doubling time is now six or more days in almost every area in the country. That has only happened because of what everybody has done in terms of staying at home.”

Last week the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the NHS was preparing for at least 1,000 deaths a day, at a time when scientific advisers were forecasting the outbreak to peak at Easter.

The peak was now expected to come in four weeks, after signs that the transmission rate was beginning to fall. New infections continue to fluctuate. On Thursday, 4,344 new cases were recorded, compared with 5,492 on Wednesday, but the day-on-day rise was still higher than three of the previous four days.

Again, the official numbers of new cases recorded in the UK is nothing like the total number, just the number hitting the hospital admissions and they tend to be the people with worst symptoms. It’s estimated that there are roughly 1000 cases undiagnosed for every one that hits the official lists.

James Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, said: “It is a mercy that the number of deaths reported today is lower than yesterday but on its own, a single day’s number is of no value in judging the pandemic. The continuing volatility in daily figure of announced deaths [due to different reporting periods and delays] makes it almost impossible to identify any trend with certainty yet.”

He added: “If deaths are still following a rapid exponential growth, today’s new deaths would have been expected to be markedly higher than yesterday’s, and the total number of deaths to date would have doubled from that four days ago.

Most, if not all, the deaths reported today will have come from infections before the so-called ‘hard lockdown’. It does seem that the hard lockdown is, as expected, reducing the rate of increase in the number of new hospital admissions.”

But even with the hard lockdown, obviously infections within family groupings, locked down in close contact with each other, are likely to occur. Assuming an average family of four locked down together, infected in the first two weeks of lockdown will take another two weeks to recover or die – maybe four to five weeks total.

And then we have to expect a second wave of infections when we all come out of lockdown.

Though the UK government seems entirely unwilling to discuss how and when such an exit might occur.

With our PM in hospital, and the foreign secretary somehow promoted to take his place (how, why him?) with parliament not sitting over the Easter recess so very little by way of accountability, it’s becoming increasingly unclear who is making life and death decisions for the country in the event of likely conflicting medical advice on when to end the shutdown.

We have the world’s biggest crisis and no one apparently in charge.

London

But…

December 29, 2019 northlondonhousewife

Turns out no matter how long you have known them, one of the questions people always ask at this time of year is but what are YOU going to eat for Christmas, as if being a vegetarian somehow excludes you from the Winter feast, or from building up a tradition.

The answer is always the same: juts what you will have except for the dead animal.

We have a porcini, chestnut pie with a cranberry glaze as the centre piece, but all the trimmings are much the same as any other family i.e. roast potatoes (using a combination of olive oil and sunflower) brussels sprouts with chestnuts. carrots, parsnips, sage and onion stuffing. We have bread sauce, cranberry sauce and, this year, an onion gravy.

Even so, each year the tradition changes ever so slightly. Turns out there is always something I didn’t know , that out of politeness (seems unlikely given my family) or changing tastes they all have waited until this year to share.

Turns out no one actually likes chestnuts.

Turns out that 2.5kilos of roast potatoes is about the limit for a family of four.

Turns out 300g brussel sprouts is much too few for our family of four.

Turns out onion gravy really is a treat with the porcini pie, much better than the mushroom gravy.

Turns out that pureed parsnip with a very large parmesan crumb is just what the grown ups want but not the kids, though since they don’t actually eat the parsnips anyway, they probably shouldn’t have a vote.

And pancakes really are the best Christmas breakfast. They just needed a bucks fizz or two to make sense.

The only unanswered question is whether church at 8am actually works better than the 10:30am matins. It should be straightforward but my favourite ex-church warden was so speedy with her responses that the whole service felt like a race through to the end which did for an kind of religious serenity.

London

Tate Modern: Picasso

March 15, 2018 northlondonhousewife

Mostly 10am on a Monday morning is a great time to see an exhibition, positively relaxed and often empty, but this Monday it was buzzing. There are two major exhibitions on and one of them, Picasso 1932, has just opened.

1932 was an intensely creative period in the life of the 20th century’s most influential artist. Always prolific, he was just 51 years old, established and seeing younger artists nipping at his heels whilst his contemporary Matisse seemed a creative powerhouse.

There are some pictures from outside of the year, mainly to put his work into context, but there really are an amazing number works for just one year.

This is the first ever solo Pablo Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern. It brings people face-to-face with more than 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings, mixed with family photographs and rare glimpses into his personal life. It is a huge exhibition, entirely unexpected in the context of just one year’s work.

By 1932 Picasso was married to the dancer Olga Khokhlova but had begun a relationship with the much younger Marie-Therese Walter.

His artwork Woman with dagger is a fairly straightforward reference to the rivalry and conflict in his love life

Thought the January of 1932 Picasso painted a series of pictures of a woman, almost certainly Marie-Therese Walter, sitting in an armchair, reading, sleeping or apparently listening to music. despite the common subject they all have a surprisingly different feel to them.

& in the middle of these seated figures are some still lives.

In early March 1932 Girl before a Mirror was completed, echoing a famous work by Manet.

A series of large horizontal nudes was completed in April.

Possibly influenced by the appearance in Europe of Japanese erotica or “shunga” art.

Picasso painted a number of reclining nudes in June/July of 1932.

Within the show there are also a number of his charcoal drawings, not studies but completed works in their own right.

In September Picasso engaged with more classical themes including religious such as the crucifiction.

Towards the end of the year the theme of his painting turned darker, towards drowning and the possibility of rescue, maybe because of an incident involving his young lover (Picasso could not swim).

The Bathers

Ball Players on the Beach

Woman on the BeachThe Rescue
By the end of the year, his young lover was pregnant and his had wife left him with their son. The political and economic situation in Europe was deteriorating rapidly. Hitler had been appointed Chancellor in Germany and Mussolini had consolidated his hold on Italy. Spain became engulfed in a civil war in 1933 and within six months the world was once more at war

London

Royal Academy Summer Show 2017

July 7, 2017 northlondonhousewife

The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London has been running for nearly 250 years and includes art in all sorts of media from painting, print, film and photography through to sculpture, architectural works and performance art.

Royal Academician Eileen Cooper, explores themes of discovery and new talent from her unique position as Keeper of the Royal Academy – the Academician who is responsible for supporting and guiding the students.

Cooper takes on the mantle of coordinating the largest open submission exhibition in the world, hanging over 1,200 works by artists established and lesser-known in the space of just eight days.

It includes work by internationally renowned artists Rosemarie Trockel, Julian Schnabel, Hassan Hajjaj, Secundino Hernández, Isaac Julien, Tomoaki Suzuki, Mark Wallinger and Sean Scully RA, as well as submissions by new Royal Academicians including Gilbert & George and David Adjaye.

You can watch BBC Two’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2017 with Kirsty Wark and Brenda Emmanus until 16 July on BBC iPlayer.

The archtitectual drawings are often surprisingly beautiful as well as functional.

In general, the walls are crammed full of works of art, so full that it often takes a couple of visits to feel that you’ve seen the whole show.

Some of the work is just good fun.

Where as some is rather disturbing.

Even comically so…

But no matter who you are and what your taste might be, there will be something for you to enjoy, maybe even something to love.

And of course much of the art is for sale, both originals and prints, marked out with small red dots.

Like all art shows, one of the big problems is lighting and reflections, to allow the audience to actually see the works well.

With so much going on, any glare makes viewing quite tricky.

Above all, it is a show of current live artists and gives a feel for the huge diversity in the art world today.

It meant that the more restrained palettes actually stood out from the rest quite well.

There are always the pieces where you look and think “But is that art?” not least the postcards with a potted history of the female historical characters pictured on their backs. Interesting, but is that enough?