It’s as hot as Hades here and I’m not sure I like it. The weather is close and sticky. Moving is something of an effort and all I’m really interested in is napping and demolishing the Chunky Mint Choco Leibniz they had on offer in Waitrose when I went to buy tiny tins of outrageously expensive cat food for Derek’s convalescence. She has to go back to the vet on Friday for a final check up to see if her mouth has healed and until then she is dining like the true queen she is. She has IBS and her usual diet is very good for you cat kibble that stops her gut exploding. However, we are horse trading right now. An exploding gut that can be treated with medicine is infinitely less expensive and horrific than exploding stitches that require another surgery, which will then also require expensive cat food anyway.
As I was perusing the aisles of tinned luxury cat food, with the word ‘gourmet’ being used to excess, I was bemused to see a tin of beef ‘stew’ advertising a ‘delicious’ garnish of carrot and parsley. Like any cat on earth is going to give a shit about a garnish. I don’t know many people who care about garnishes either. I always think a garnish is a bit like a fascinator on a tall person, nobody needs that blocking their view. I certainly don’t need it if the carrot and parsley in question adds fifty pence to the rank stew of offal inside the ‘gourmet’ tin. It boggles the mind. I refused to buy her any cat food that used the word garnish on principle after that. I had half a mind to veto gourmet as well, but then I would have come home empty handed.
Saturday’s walk was slow and effortful. I staggered up to Canary Wharf, poured myself on the Elizabeth Line and went to Manor Park, which I had passed a few weeks ago en route to Wanstead and decided to visit. Google told me that it was the home of Steve Marriott of The Small Faces. Apparently the song Itchycoo Park is about a nearby park where he used to get stung by wasps as a child. It’s exactly this sort of information that leads me to get on a train and go to such places.
I was disappointed on arrival to find out that Manor Park consists largely of housing estates, shops that will unlock your phone in a jiffy and dusty corner shops with the word ‘International’ in their name that sell 12 out of date bottles of Lucozade, knock off fags and the dust of disappointment. Also, most certainly drugs if you go round the back. Nobody makes rent on a London shop selling Lucozade.
I wandered about for some time in the hope of finding something that as the song says was ‘all too beautiful’, but to no avail. The park was probably nearby somewhere, but I had lost all interest in it after half an hour fannying around waiting to be beguiled. Imagine if I’d have made the extra effort to go there only to find it was full of dying saplings festooned with sweating bags of dog crap. I’d have been livid. I was already quite cross.
I also question the fairness of writing a song that makes Itchycoo Park sound frankly terrific, where you can feed the ducks a bun and they ‘all come out and groove about,’ without mentioning the wasps. There is a perfect moment in the song where they say: ‘What did you do there?’ and they all sing: ‘I got high,’ when it would have been much improved by the line: ‘I got stung by a bastard wasp and ran about shouting.’ If that had been in the song, I would have made the extra effort to go to the bloody park, no matter how far away it was.
I realise that I am putting a lot of pressure on Manor Park to deliver my quite unreasonable expectations here, but come on guys, play the game.
I walked on to Forest Gate where I saw zero forests and no gates. A Google search threw up a hymn to its loveliness by a local estate agent who said it was a vibrant community of artists and creators. I saw one burned out church and one abandoned church that was for hire and decided that the artists must have gone on holiday and the godless sinners had clearly moved in and given the place a good drubbing while they were out. Sadly there was no sign of any exciting sinning going on either, just hot, cross people with bags of shopping, sweating in the unrelenting afternoon heat.
In the end I got on a bus that said it was going to Clapton Pond in the hope that it hadn’t been turned into a pound shop or burned to the ground before I got there. A mum got on the bus with her two kids, who proceeded to keep me entertained for a large part of the journey. Their chatter meandered here, there and everywhere. My favourite bit was a discourse by one of the children on old people. ‘There are two important things about old people, mummy. One is that they don’t drink enough water and the other is that they are very poor.’ The mum said something about them forgetting her when she was old and the child said very passionately: ‘I won’t forget you mummy. I won’t forget you ever, not even when I’m a new person.’
Clapton Pond turned out to be very nice. It actually had a pond, and a pretty little park, which even though it was small, had people sitting on every bench. Two women made the mistake of feeding one pigeon. By the time I left the park all the pigeons of London had been alerted and the sky was darkening overhead with the great massing of feathered bodies. It was intense.
I bought a book from a charity shop for £2 grabbed myself an ice lolly and wandered off to find a cool spot. I walked so far in search of shade I’d finished my lolly and decided to give up on the outdoors completely. I hopped on another bus, where I had a lovely chat with a lady who had a baby called Tilly, who very like her namesake 24 years previously, saw London transport as the perfect place to divest herself of cumbersome socks. When they departed I made friends with another baby called Rae, also keen on being barefoot. She and her dad had been to the Young V&A and while Rae threw socks about with gay abandon, we had a great chat about Rachel Whiteread until I headed off to catch my train at Whitechapel.
what a wonderful jaunt! I love that although you were so blummin' hot you still had a lovely time - honestly, reading your posts is the only way I know there's a world outside my window.