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A tiny stream feeding the River Thames
NORTH LONDON IS riddled with rivers, rivulets, and streams. Some of them have been covered over and built upon, and others are still visible. One of these is Mutton Brook, which rises near East Finchley, flows through Hampstead Garden Suburb, and then merges with another watercourse – Dollis Brook – to become the River Brent. The Brent flows from near Golders Green through northwest and then west London to its mouth at Brentford, where its waters flow into the Thames.Although I did not know it when I played beside the stream as a child, the tiny Mutton Brook helps feed the mighty Thames with water.Minute as it is, as far as watercourses are concerned, it made a large impression on me in my childhood.
For much of its course, Mutton Brook flows through open spaces, such as Lyttleton Playing Fields, Fletcher’s Gardens, Northway Gardens, and a long stretch of parkland flanking the south side of the North Circular Road. Despite being fringed by suburbia and busy roads, the Brook is well separated from them by nicely planted green spaces along which walkers can enjoy the feeling of being in the country despite being in the heart of northwest London.
Until 1907, Mutton Brook would have flowed through what was then rural Middlesex countryside – fields, meadows, and woods. From then onwards, Hampstead Garden Suburb was established, and its neighbour Golders Green grew from being a small hamlet to become a large, mainly residential urban area. My recent book (see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GOLDERS-GREEN-HAMPSTEAD-GARDEN-SUBURB/dp/B0BHG873FB/) describes Mutton Brook in detail. It also as provides an informative description of life in Golders Green and Hampstead Garden Suburb past and present. These are places I know well because I was brought up in them, and lived there until I was thirty. My book also contains reminiscences of my life there as a child and a young man. I still visit the area frequently because some of my friends and family live there.
By car from Kuwait to London
ON THE FIRST OF August (2023), we went to one of our favourite kebab shops – Raavi in London’s short Drummond Street (near Euston station). There was a large Datsun saloon car parked outside Raavi, and another across the road. Neither of them was in pristine condition. Both were covered with stickers, and each had Kuwaiti registration plates. On the front bonnet of each of them were the words:
“Kuwait to Paris to London 2023”
Beneath these were words in Arabic. Above the word ‘Kuwait’, there was an image of London’s Big Ben. Above ‘Paris’, there was an image of the Eiffel Tower, and above ‘London’, there was a picture depicting some Kuwaiti landmarks. In Arabic, one reads from right to left. Therefore, reading the Arabic way, the images depict: Kuwait to Paris to London’.
On each of the car’s bonnets, there were flags of different countries and either a boat or an arrow between neighbouring flags. Reading the bonnets from right to left, the route taken by the intrepid drivers of these cars was as follows:
By sea from Kuwait to Turkey; by road from Turkey to Bulgaria to Romania to Hungary to Slovakia to Poland to Holland to Czech Republic to Austria to Belgium to Germany to Italy to France to England to Spain. Then, by ship to Morocco.
The order of the countries seems a little odd. Maybe, a few have been omitted. Because there is an arrow rather than a ship between France and England, and between England and Spain, I guess that the cars travelled through the Channel Tunnel.
I do not know why these cars were parked in Drummond Street, but whoever drove them had made a journey that I am sure I would have enjoyed.
An interesting exhibition about Japanese ways of recycling waste
A FEW WEEKS AGO, we viewed a wonderful exhibition of contemporary quilt making at Swiss Cottage Library (see: https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2023/07/15/quilts-in-a-wonderfully-designed-library/ ). These quilts were made with both recycled bits of material and/or textiles specially bought for use in their manufacture. Although some of the works on display could be used as rugs or coverings, many of them were designed as non-functional artworks for display. Today (1st of August 2023), we visited the Brunei Gallery in London’s Bloomsbury. Our intention was to see an exhibition of paintings and drawings from the south of India. However, when we entered the place, we discovered that in addition to what we had come to see, there was another exhibition, which we did not know about. This is the rather intriguingly named “Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling”, which is on until the 23rd of September 2023. With a name like that, we could not resist taking a look at what was on show.
The exhibition has a fine collection of exhibits demonstrating the Japanese tradition of recycling old materials to create new objects. In a country where raw materials were highly valued, it made a lot of sense not to waste them, but to re-use them. We saw many examples of ‘Boro’ textiles. These are items made by fashioning worn clothing and waste fabrics to create another usable textile. Often, a large piece of used material with damage (e.g., holes) was made usable by patching it with scraps of waste material. Both quilting and Boro involve sewing pieces of material together. Unlike quilting, which uses scraps of material to create a brand-new entity, Boro uses scraps to restore worn textiles to make them usable again. There were also examples of ‘Washi’ on display. This is handmade paper concocted from already used sheets of paper (for example from discarded account books). The Washi was made waterproof by painting it with persimmon paste. Washi paper was used for many purposes including wrapping valuable clothing, floor coverings, room dividers, making bags, and more. For example, there was a conical hat made in leather and lined with waxed recycled Washi paper. In addition to these recycling techniques, there were several others. One which caught my attention was ‘Sakiori’, which in many ways resembles the North American and European rag weaving technique.
The exhibition was not only fascinating because of the range of recycling techniques exemplified, but also because many of the items made from the recycled materials were aesthetically pleasing. The exhibits are beautifully displayed, and the accompanying labels are interesting and informative. Whether you are interested in Japan or recycling or both, it is well worth visiting the Brunei Gallery to see this show.
Is nothing sacred?
A LONG WALL on the south bank of the River Thames faces the Houses of Parliament. It is literally covered with hearts painted in red. Each heart is supposed to commemorate one of the more than 220,000 people who died of covid19 in Britain. Families and friends of the victims can write the names of their lost ones on the hearts on this wall – the National Covid Memorial Wall. For those who work in the Houses of Parliament and those who walk past it, this heart covered wall is a chilling and moving reminder of a terrible period during the recent history of Britain as well as the rest of the world.
A group of volunteers:
“… repaint faded hearts, re-write dedications that are being absorbed into the Wall, remove graffiti, and look after the Wall to ensure that those lost to Covid19 in the UK are remembered as people, not as a statistics.” (www.nationalcovidmemorialwall.org/)
Recently, we watched some of these generous people, some of them mounted on ladders, working with their paint brushes. As we walked alongside the wall, reading some of the names of people who were killed by the covid virus, we noted that not all of the inscriptions were dedicated to remembering the dead. Some of them, it is sad to relate, were tasteless graffiti and statements such as “X loves Y”. It is these thoughtless additions to a wall of sorrow that the dedicated volunteers work to eradicate. Seeing these irreverent and irrelevant ‘blots’ on the wall made me think “is nothing sacred?”
Salvation in Sandwich
THE HIGH STREET runs through Sandwich (Kent) from south to north. At its northern end, it runs beneath an archway next to a former toll bridge across the River Stour. After 1977, the toll was abolished. Under the archway, which is part of the mediaeval barbican (built c 1470) that used to be a gateway through the town wall, there are several notices of interest.
One of the notices records the fact that tolls were collected from users of the bridge from 1759 to 1977, and the last toll was collected from the Mayor Councillor on the 30th of September 1977. Near this memorial, there is a table of tolls dated June 1905. Interesting as these two signs are, it is the third one that was a complete surprise to me. It read:
“This plaque is to commemorate Richborough Transit Camp 1939-1940 where 5000 men found refuge from Nazi persecution on the Continent. During the Second World War most of them volunteered to fight for the Allied cause.
Erected in gratitude to the citizens of Sandwich and East Kent who, as in the past, welcomed the refugees.”
I noted that this brief notice made no mention of the identities of the refugees. However, another plaque, attached to the nearby Bell Hotel, clarified the situation. The hostelry was:
“… A meeting place for Jewish refugees from the Kitchener Camp, Richborough, Sandwich 1939-40”
The Kitchener Camp was a former army barracks located north of the Stour, not far from the toll bridge, on the west side of Ramsgate Road. There is now no trace of it because it was demolished after the end of WW2. During 1939, 4000 mainly German and Austrian Jewish men were accepted for accommodation in the camp on condition that they would not be granted UK citizenship or work, and must emigrate to the USA. The camp received no government funding. It was paid for by Jewish organisations including The Central British Fund for German Jewry (founded 1933). At the start of WW2, 887 of these men volunteered to join the Pioneer Corps, which carried out light engineering projects at the battle fronts. After the Dunkirk episode in May 1940, the British public became suspicious of German speaking refugees because they were worried about the possibility that some of them might be involved in spying and sabotage. So, those, who were not enrolled in the war effort, were shipped out to internment camps in Australia and Canada, and then Kitchener was closed.
During its brief existence, the Kitchener Camp, which began accepting refugees on the 20th of January 1939, became a hive of cultural activity as can be discovered by looking at the highly informative website – https://kitchenercamp.co.uk/ There were concerts and a cinema provided by the Odeon Cinemas, run by it’s the Jewish founder Oscar Deutsch. I had never heard of the Kitchener Camp (aka ‘Richborough Tansit Camp’) until I spent a few days in Sandwich recently. Regarding the plaque commemorating it beneath the arch of the barbican, it mentions 5000 men, but reliable sources always refer to 4000 Jewish men. This puzzles me, as it was placed by the Jewish Community of Great Britain ( according to https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/263444/).
The way the wind blows
On a weathervane
Two birds perch perilously
Before the wind blows
White and nutritious – milk and racism
UNTIL I WAS ABOUT 18, I drank a pint of chilled milk in the morning and another when I came home from school. I did not drink all the varieties of milk that were supplied by the milkmen who worked for the Express Dairy Company, but chose the ‘homogenised’ variety, which did not have cream at the top of the bottle. Never once whilst drinking this refreshing slightly watery liquid did I ever imagine that I would one day visit an exhibition about milk. Today, the 29th of July 2023, I viewed an exhibition called “Milk”, which is being shown at the Wellcome Collection in London’s Euston Road until the 10th of September 2023. Amongst the numerous exhibits displayed in this beautifully curated show, the following particularly interest me.
- There was a collection of decorated porcelain cream jugs. Each one was shaped like a cow. Cream used to be poured into the hollow cow via a hole in its back. Then, a lid was placed to cover that orifice. To use the cream jugs, the cows were tilted so that the cream could flow out of another hole through creatures’ mouths.
- There was a terracotta model of a mule carrying two trays laden with cheeses. This Ancient Roman artefact dating back to the 3rd or 2nd century BC was found by archaeologists in Southern Italy. In times long before refrigeration, making cheese was one way of preserving milk for future use.
- I saw a metal lactometer, which was used to determine the amount of water in milk. My wife said that when she was a child in India, milk used to be delivered to the door. To check whether the milkman had watered it down, her mother used a lactometer just like the one on display at the exhibition.
- Our daughter spotted an 18th century etching depicting St Bernard of Clairvaux kneeling before the Virgin holding the Christ Child. As the saint knelt before the Virgin, he received a squirt of her milk from her breast. This was supposed to grant him wisdom and eloquence. When she was studying History of Art, our daughter wrote a thesis about this curious episode – The Lactation of St Bernard’.
- A rather uninteresting looking exhibit proved to be most fascinating. It consisted of two milk testing forms, which had to be completed after a farmer’s batch of milk had been tested for diseases, bacteria, fat content, and protein content. The forms on display related to milk produced by cattle on the Dartington Hall Estate in Devon. The Estate was founded to research the merits of various scientific farming methods. One of the founders of the Estate was the agronomist Leonard Elmhirst (1893-1974). What made him special in my mind was that after meeting the great Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) in the USA in 1913, he later (in 1922) set up for Tagore an Institute of Rural Reconstruction near Tagore’s university at Shantiniketan (now in West Bengal). After marrying Dorothy Straight, Elmhirst and his wife established the Estate at Dartington in 1925. It was modelled on what he had founded near Shantiniketan.
There were plenty of other exhibits that were both visually interesting and thought provoking. A theme that I felt pervaded the exhibition is related to the colour of milk – white. Because milk is often perceived as being healthy, pure, and virtuous, it may also nourish the malevolent ideas of white racists. One of the exhibits showed a video of Trump supporters cavorting around, each one of them waving large bottles of white milk whilst shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans. Yet, the ancestors of racists like these were perfectly happy to snatch the newborn babies of black slaves away from their mothers, so that these unfortunate women could be forced to breast-feed the babies of the white women of the families who owned them. Their milk was white, but not their skin colour. To compensate for these and other harsh reminders that all is still not well in the racial tolerance scene, the exhibition includes a satirical film from You Tube ( https://youtu.be/cevXg_SlT-Q ), which makes fun of people with racist tendencies.
Well, it never occurred to me that milk and racism might be considered in the same brackets until I visited the splendid show at the Wellcome Collection. It is well worth seeing not only because of its historical and scientific aspects, but also for its artistic and sociological content.
It was much earlier than Greenwich Mean Time
DESIGNED BY BENJAMIN Wyatt (1775-1852) and George Louch, then later modified by John Rennie (1761-1821), The Clock House (built 1817) overlooks the harbour in Ramsgate, Kent. As its name suggests, this building is surmounted by a square tower with clocks on each of its four sides. Today, the time on the clocks is Greenwich Mean Time (‘GMT’) or, when appropriate, British Summer Time (GMT+1). But this has not always been the case.
The Clock House was home to chronometers that were used to synchronise shipborne chronometers employed for determining longitude. The edifice stood on what was known as the Ramsgate Meridian Line, which was established in 1819. This was before 1851 when Sir George Airy (1801-1892) defined the position of the prime meridian that runs through the observatory at Greenwich. It was not until 1884 that the prime meridian at Greenwich was recognised internationally, much to the disgust of the French, who hoped it would run through Paris.
The now disused Ramsgate Meridian Line is east of the Greenwich prime meridian. So, when the clocks on the Clock House were set to Ramsgate Mean time, they were 5 minutes and 41 seconds ahead of GMT. A notice beneath the clock tower informs the viewer that the clocks are now set to show the same time as it is in Greenwich. And if there are any ancient mariners still using Ramsgate Mean Time, they are informed by another notice that:
“Ramsgate Mean Time is 5 min 41 sec faster than this clock.”
Whichever time you choose to use, it is well worth spending some hours, if not longer, in Ramsgate, which is full of interesting things to see as well as the Clock House.
Artists as artworks in London’s East End
BRICK LANE IN east London has been home to immigrants from various parts of the world. Currently, many of the people who live and work in the area are of Bangladeshi heritage. In the last few years, the area has attracted the ‘trendy’ set, whose interests are mainly in the attractions north of the former Truman Brewery. Some years ago, my friend David, visiting from Atlanta (Georgia), and I paid a visit to Brick Lane and were surprised to find a bit of ‘Ye Olde England’ almost hidden amongst the predominantly Asian businesses. It was the The Pride of Spitalfields London – a real old-fashioned ‘boozer’. Stepping into it, it was difficult to imagine you were not in a country pub, but in the heart of east London. It is on Heneage Street next door to what had once been part of a brewery.
In 2015, the Trustees of the Gilbert & George Centre, a charity, acquired the building next door to the pub. On the 1st of April this year (2023), the converted buildings were opened to the public. They have been beautifully transformed by the SIRS Architects practice and they house artworks by the duo Gilbert and George (‘G&G’), who both trained at London’s St Martins School of Art. According to the G&G website (gilbertandgeorgecentre.org):
“The property was purchased with the idea to create a permanent home for works of the artist and to enrich London’s cultural offering thus further.”
G&G produce often very colourful works, all of which include the pair of creators within their images. As artists, they are also the subjects of their creations – they are almost always depicted in all their works. Their works deal imaginatively with a wide variety of things that we all face in our daily lives – some of them often considered too distasteful to be discussed or displayed. But G&G boldly bring them to our notice in a dramatic way. As Michael Bracewell, a Trustee, wrote on the website:
“Gilbert & George maintain an ideological opposition to formalistic art theory and the reference of art to the history or theory of art. Asserting instead the power of emotion and actuality, their art addresses subjects that are culturally excluded, neglected or disowned. Their art questions social taboos and morality. By looking at difficult subjects the art and vision of Gilbert & George is intended to ‘de-shock’ rather than seeking to shock. Its aim is not the simple task of ‘shocking’ a viewer, but the difficult task of interrogating a subject and themselves … Unchanging, they have the appearance and countenance of modern sober-minded, anonymous citizens, who have embarked on the astral journey of their own Divine Comedy: purgatory, Heaven and Hell as they find it and perceive it in our world, in nature and in themselves.”
Whether or not you like the creations of G&G, the new Centre is well worth visiting, even if only to see the fine design of the buildings containing it. If the art is all too much for you, you can pop into the pub next door and seek liquid relief. And if you loved the place, which we did, you can visit the boozer to celebrate the arrival of this superb new addition to the London art scene.
yamey 