Abney Park Gives Me Life

Friday morning was set aside for work. I’m helping a friend with a project at the moment. It’s something that requires me to think hard in ways I am not used to. It appears that the rust of misuse has slowed me down since I last had to do anything like this. I did think at one time that it was a symptom of too much Instagram and not enough pure intellectual pursuit. It might be partly that, but I am fairly sure that it’s just another exciting symptom of age. After all, I hardly used to sit down for eight hours at a time reading Proust in the original.

Now I operate well in short blasts, but if I don’t have a lie down or a biscuit from time to time, I am use to neither man nor beast. My attention starts to wander after about twenty minutes and even if I don’t pick up my phone to see what the world’s doing, I find myself abstractedly staring at the fruit bowl or just powering down mid sentence. Getting to grips with pacing myself is a new and exciting endeavour. I have always been instinctively indolent with sprints. Now I’m actively having to manage myself. I’d say I’m mildly resentful but curious about the process.

By lunch time I’d had about as much managing as I could deal with, so I bunked off for the afternoon. Having had my fill of town the day before I decided to head out to West Ham and see what was happening. I chose it because it’s two stops on the DLR from the marina. I had previously collected Newham and East Ham so it seemed churlish not to complete the set.

I arrived at West Ham station in a great flurry of people. It seemed like hundreds of us all had the same idea. The station is huge, a sprawling brick bunker of a building with platforms shooting off in all directions. People scurried purposefully about as I headed for the exit, expecting to see suburban marvels outside. As I stepped out onto the pavement, everyone seemed to magically drain away into the ether and it was just me, some workmen digging a hole and a lot of blocks of flats. Where did everyone go? I wondered if I had accidentally stepped into a zombie apocalypse and eyed the workmen suspiciously as I passed them.

I tried walking in different directions. I looked for brown signs. There were only two, one for a local park and one to do with football. There was nobody about to ask so I turned to Google. In response to ‘What is there to do in West Ham?’ once I’d waded through the football stuff I was told I could try the Changing of the Guard or Windsor Great Park, neither of which are remotely nearby. At this stage even I, the urban Dora The Explorer, was a bit fed up. I was walking down a seemingly endless road with council houses on one side and train tracks on the other. I could see a bus depot in the distance, and as we know, I love a bus depot, but from where I was standing it looked modern and in the middle of an industrial estate, which is not the romance of the road I’m looking for.

Passing a bus stop I decided to cut my losses and get on the first bus that appeared. It may be that West Ham is a shining jewel in the urban sprawl of East London, but it wasn’t ponying up any of its secrets to me. I decided to do more research and go back with a plan. In the meantime, a bus rolled up that was going to Stoke Newington, which is somewhere I did want to go to, so I got on it.

The bus journey took about an hour, the first fifteen minutes of which took us through parts of West Ham I hadn’t quartered on foot. I paid close attention just in case I had given up too early and been moments away from marvel. I was not.

As soon as we hit Stoke Newington High Street I knew I had come to the right place. I know I am a cliche of middle class passions, but I have learned to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves without judgement. If it loves independent bookshops, cookware shops, good greengrocers and interesting delis, who am I to argue? To sweeten the pot, Stoke Newington also has the best charity shops I’ve seen since I arrived here. I spent a blissful couple of hours pottering around and sticking my nose into everything. I bought a mug from a charity shop, a bunch of chard and some greengages from one of several excellent greengrocers and a new set of tarot cards, not from a greengrocer. If that’s not a middle class haul I don’t know what is. Although I didn’t buy Farrow and Ball paint or extravagantly priced hand knits. I did pass a gorgeous looking wool shop though.

I ate pecan pie and drank green tea in a delightful cafe that I can’t remember the name of and when I went to look it up I was overwhelmed by the variety of delightful cafes and just got confused. Needless to say, there is no shortage of delicious things to eat.

Full and happy I wandered on and came to Abney Park cemetery. I dived in with gusto. It is one of London’s ‘magnificent seven,’ cemeteries, which were built by the Victorians when they had a passion for dying and not enough space to put everyone. Highgate is my favourite and I have been countless times. I’m collecting the others as I go. I had no idea that Abney Park was in Stoke Newington so it was a delightful surprise.

I went in the side entrance. On the gates there is a notice that explains the cemetery is undergoing extensive renovation. As a result, the main entrance and chapel are closed. I was fine with that. I set off into the undergrowth, surrounded by sombre pillars and toppling statues vying with saplings for space. Gravity and nature are taking their course and the whole place is beautiful, verdant mayhem. Ivy winds round marble funeral vases, pushing its fingers to the sky. Angels tilt drunkenly into each other. One statue, of an angel lifting the drooping figure of a woman to heaven, appears instead to be careening into a neighbouring tree.

The names of the dead are everywhere, running like ticker tape through the gaps in the foliage. Lives in snatches, glimpsed and concealed in stone and monuments of living green. Here are the dying breaths of John Edward Widgery, Arthur Bacchus and Albert Barzillai Thomas, Erasmus, Lydia, Maud - ‘dearly beloved,’ ‘much missed’ - mothers, daughters, sons and husbands ribboning off into dappled paths that could lead you to the world of the dead if you knew the way. Huge monuments to important men with solid names like William tag as an afterthought ‘also, Jane.’ In amongst the sombre greys and deep bloody reds of marble, flash echoes of war in the neat, white stones chiselled with insignia and the memory of far off battlefields. Large stones for tiny lives are the saddest - two weeks, three weeks, a year. A huge stone for a huge hole.

Despite this, it is not a sad place. Unlike churches where people go to take, this is a place where people go to give. They offer up their thoughts, their grief, their love, the stories of their days and nights. Here, where the liminal spaces are thinnest of all, the dead who love us, listen and we are comforted and replanted in the life of earth and plenty until it is our turn.

Even though the day was sunny, the undergrowth held the damp of the previous day’s rain. Water dripped and rustled its way to the ground and small children in tutus and bike helmets stamped through puddles the size of lakes. Teenagers curled round each other on benches, intent on the politics of their increasingly complex love lives. Tanned, creased women of a certain age strode along paths, strong in purpose. Dogs puttered about, sniffing and loping, living lives of olfactory excitement way beyond the slender realities my own senses offered.

As I got to the main gates, a man in a pin striped shirt and expensive suit ran up behind me. I turned to take a different path as he got to the barriers the building contractors have put up. I turned as he shook them and shouted ‘FUCK!’ very loudly. Looking at me he shouted: ‘I can’t believe the gates are closed. I’m going to miss my fucking train!’ He rattled and swore some more and then said: ‘Did you know this was closed?’ to which I replied: ‘Yes. Yes I did.’ He did a bit more fucking and rattling and then said: ‘You think they’d have put a notice on the entrance gate.’ I looked at him. He looked at me. I said: ‘They did. That’s how I knew it was closed.’ He shouted: ‘Fucking hell’ once more for good measure and set off at a run back down the path.

A few minutes later I met a lovely dog that looked a bit like a bit of unravelled string. Her name was Betty and she was delighted to show me her very best tennis ball. Her owner wandered up and as we were marvelling over Betty’s skills with a spit covered ball she said: ‘I don’t mean to be funny, but aren’t men weird?’ I could do nothing here except say: ‘Yes’ and wait for her to elaborate. She said: ‘Back on the path over there, I met this man who was running and shouting ‘fuck’ a lot and he was really angry that the gates were closed.’ I said: ‘Yes. I met him too.’ She said: ‘But there’s a sign on the gate.’ I said: Yes. There is.’ We looked wearily at each other for a moment and she said: ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t stop to read it before he came in.’ I said: ‘I expect he was too busy striding about in expensive trousers to think that notices apply to him, too.’ She laughed and we companionably ambled on before we went our separate ways, cheered by the thought of an impotent businessman raging up and down an empty train platform. It’s the little things.