Old and Novo

Saturday had a stressful start. I had to go back to Moorfield’s for some more checks on my ghostly eye blobs. Clinic starts at 8.00 am so we were up early to jump on the DLR only to find that it was closed for engineering works. We hadn’t left enough time to deal with replacement bus services or walk to Canary Wharf, so we hopped in the car fully expecting to pay the congestion charge and for Jason to have to circle the block because parking would be impossible.

As it turned out, the congestion charge only kicks in from midday and he found a space on the street just round the corner from the hospital. We were only ten minutes late for clinic and I was out with a clean bill of health in under two hours, which for an NHS hospital is pretty amazing.

When we got back we decided to celebrate and go out for brunch. There’s a place across the road from the Marina called Dock Coffee. I had been itching to try it since we moved in because it’s run by a Vietnamese family and they serve Banh Mi, which I love. Banh Mi are warm, crusty baguettes stuffed with crunchy salad that usually has beansprouts, shredded carrot, fresh herbs, cucumber and chilli and drizzled with some delicious dressing. You then pick the meat, fish or tofu of your choice and hoof it down your face as messily as possible. The coffee was great and the Banh Mi were as good as I imagined. It made up for a morning navigating traffic and hospitals.

The heavens opened in the afternoon but I was restless and feeling rather grumpy so I dug out my most waterproof coat and splashed out in defiance of the weather. I decided to take the advice of a Facebook friend who used to work at Queen Mary University in Mile End and go and visit the Jewish graveyard in the middle of the campus there. I am very keen on graveyards of all kinds and I had never been to Mile End so it was very appealing.

The weather was not kind to the flaneur. The wind was fierce and kept blowing water into my face, which made it hard to do anything but put my head down and power through. I took the most direct route because of the rain and ended up walking along some hefty and busy roads that didn’t offer a lot to the casual observer. Everyone else who was walking had adopted my approach, so there wasn’t much eavesdropping and general nosiness to be had either, although I did see a man emerge from a block of flats with a large blue carrier bag on his head to protect his locs from the rain. He had a lot of hair so the bag was full and vertical with the handles by his ears. That vision alone was worth the gallons of water sluicing down my neck.

I cut through Mile End Park and followed the canal through to the campus. There were some intriguing signs to follow but I decided to save them for another, drier day. The graveyard, when I finally got there, suited the rain and my mood completely. It was bleak, unforgiving and overgrown with weeds. Broken gravestones sit low in a sea of gravel and sprawling plants, overlooked on all sides by university buildings. It looks unloved and uncared for (although this may not be true) and most people I passed, scurried by as if it weren’t there at all.

It’s called the Novo or new graveyard. It was originally built in 1733 when the first Jewish graveyard, called the Velho filled up. It is an exclusively Sephardi graveyard, containing Jews originating largely in Spain and Portugal. It is only one of two Sephardi graveyards in the UK. Originally it covered a site of approximately three acres with a further 1.7 acres being added later. It is the 1.7 acre site which is still here, although it has been trimmed down to an acre and the mortuary chapel (Ohel) has also gone. What’s left contains graves from 1855 onwards until it was declared full in 1918, although there are a few later burials on the site. The earlier graves from the original site were moved and relocated to Brentwood as part of the condition of sale of the land to the university.

You could walk down into the graveyard, which is set lower than the buildings around it, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do, so I didn’t. I had really mixed feelings about it if I’m honest. I’m glad that some of the graveyard is still there. It would have been awful if it had just been destroyed completely, but I felt, possibly wrongly, that what remains was grudgingly given and I felt a bit like an intruder, which is not something I’ve ever really felt before and I’m a habitual visitor to graveyards. I usually find the dead to be peaceful and far better company than the living, but not today.

Maybe I’ll try again when I’m in a better mood and not soaked to the skin. It might make all the difference.