Mrs. Wheatley Goes to Hackney Wick

Friday morning was a further smorgasbord of medical shenanigans, rounded off by another trip to the pharmacist. I feel like I should get a chair with my name on, I’m there so often. I’d be worried that the chemist thinks I’m stalking them, except that every time I go in, I speak to someone different.

Friday’s young lady said: ‘Can I take your surname?’ I said, ‘Yes. It’s Mrs. Wheatley.’ She said: ‘Great, Mrs. Wheatley. Thank you.’ Much tapping at the computer screen. Then, without looking up: ‘Can I take your surname Mrs. Wheatley?’ I said: ‘Yes. It’s Mrs. Wheatley.’ She nodded. ‘OK. Thanks.’ Still not looking at me, she wandered over to another computer and started tapping. ‘Can I take your surname Mrs. Wheatley?’ and so we went on for some time. After several minutes she said. ‘Yes. We have your item Mrs. Wheatley, but the pharmacist is on lunch break and won’t be back for fifteen minutes. Would you like to come back later?’ I couldn’t face going through another round of Mrs. Wheatleying so I declined and read my book on the world’s most uncomfortable plastic chair until he appeared. ‘Mrs. Wheatley? Your prescription is ready.’ At this point my name had been used so often I was beginning to wonder if I was actually Mrs. Wheatley at all? It would have been no surprise to me if someone else had leaped out from behind the Ricola cough drops and announced that they were the real Mrs. Wheatley and they claimed my ten pounds.

By this point, I was extremely weary of myself and much of the world, so I set out on a brisk walk. I had no destination in mind. Some days it’s good to know where you’re going. Other days its better to get lost.

I wandered through the back streets of Poplar up into Bow. When there is no end point, I base my choices of where to go next on whatever catches my eye. On this journey I was beguiled by a house with a lickable orange front door stylishly paired with black woodwork, a garden full of fat, heady roses like overwrought Victorian matrons and a man mid conversation with his small, indignant daughter: ‘I AM NOT A STROPPER.’

Later there was a fat, pumpkin vine winding through black, wrought iron railings, a harvest moon of a gourd hanging languidly in space while the vine curled frantically, cleaving to the metal. Dusty, purple sloes escaped from privet, bursting to freedom by a drunken road sign. A house end, gloriously painted in a mash up style of Van Gogh meets Hockney, showing a stylised view of the neighbourhood I walked through. A hairdresser’s sign made of mosaic so wobbly and handmade it took me five minutes to work out that it actually said hairdresser. Minute moments of wonder gifted themselves to me, calming my busy mind.

Rounding a corner I found myself facing an enormous warehouse which turned out to be the Chisenhale Art Gallery. It’s an exhibition space founded by a collective that has housed exhibitions by Sonia Boyce, Rachel Whiteread and Cornelia Parker to name but a few. The exhibition currently on show is by French artist, Benoit Pieron. It’s called Slumber Party . I found it strangely affecting. Pieron has had a life dogged by illness and hospital stays. The installation, made of a giant tent of hospital bedsheets, stitched together, canopied above a giant, table leg is about the strange comfort of institutionalised spaces and the childlike lack of control created by a life of illness. On the floor are cones and domes of suffused light, flashing sleepily like Toyland emergency lights. I had the whole place to myself so I sat on the floor under the tent and reflected that a week of facing illness and handing over control of my body to others had brought me here.

Despite not having planned where I was going, it turned out that I ended up in the exact right space for me anyway. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Leaving the gallery I felt strangely calm for the first time in days. Shortly after this I stumbled on some of the 86 hectares of Victoria Park that I hadn’t walked through before. I usually find walking through green spaces unrewarding. The lack of pavements make me jittery as hell, but as I was in an entirely altered state I took advantage of the situation and parked like crazy.

I passed enormous band stands, lakes and fountains, numerous children’s play areas and a skate park where a teenage girl was tearing up the concrete while some boys looked on appreciatively. I curved off over the canal and into Fish Island and Hackney Wick where I wandered through graffiti clad streets watching young men with spray cans and saggy trousers doing complicated handshakes and felt a million years old. Suddenly weary I grabbed the nearest home pointing bus and headed for the safety of my boat, mind and body tucked up nicely together for once.