Clissold Park/Narnia Crossover

Clissoldsnow1   Last week, as I tramped happily around in the snow, it occurred to me that in The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis created Narnia as a methaphor for Clissold Park in Stoke Newington. The gap in the fence on Church Street is the magical entrance to this world, certainly after pub closing time at any rate. Aslan the Lion represents the old bowling green.  It's got old lamp posts, deer, an old house.  Did CS Lewis spend a lot of time in Stoke Newington and are any of his other books about the area? A Horse and His Boy could be about the Lea Valley Riding School. Prince Caspian surely refers to that gastropub on Kynaston Road. The Last Battle might be a sly comment about the anti-bendy bus movement on Church Street.

Maybe this theory needs a bit more work.

Golden skies over Holloway

The daffodils are out in Clissold Park. Squat dogs round and through them.
"Kaiser! Butch! Over here!" shouts an angry looking man with little hair. The sky over Lower Holloway is golden but greyness is descending as the wind picks up. A blue plastic bag joins us on our walk and keeps pace for a while before blowing up into the branches of a tree.

Searching for chips in the Highbury Vale Fog (Arsenal v Steaua Bucharest)

It was a midweek night and I was waiting at a Green Lanes bus stop for a 341 or 141 to take me up to the Salisbury for a few beers. The fog around Clissold Park had been collecting all afternoon and now lay in a  thick band over the little river valley that was the former course of the Hackney Brook. All of a sudden there was no traffic. No cars, buses or cyclists. Had everyone decided to watch Arsenal v Steaua Bucharest on the telly? After what seemed about half an hour but was probably 20 seconds, a white van steamed past seemingly anxious to get into more normal territory.

I'd seen some of the Steaua players earlier in the day, sauntering around Oxford Street in their smart tracksuits and pointing out their favourite Christmas window displays. "Good luck tonight," I said.

     "Ah, you must be a Tottenham fan!" smiled one (he looked like the midfield general).

     "No, I'm not. I said 'good luck' from the perspective of a neutral who wishes you to enjoy the atmosphere of the Greater Blackstock Road area. I hope you have a good experience and possibly go for chips afterwards. I don't care about the result."

But they'd already stopped listening. I have that effect on professional footballers. Like the time I got Bob Wilson's autograph when he came to my home town in the mid 70s and I wanted to know why he didn't play against Leeds in the 1972 Cup Final but he was looking away, off into the mid-distance at Arthur's Tuck Shop at the edge of the market place (though it was actually owned at that stage by Derek Marwood who possibly had kept the 'Arthur' sign up for a bit in the hope of getting some 'goodwill passing trade').

It was about 20 minutes later that a 341 appeared. The driver looked nervous. Clissold Park had almost disappeared. Green Lanes no longer seemed part of a city. The bus sped up the slope towards Manor House - then after the crossroads we slowed down as if the driver knew he was in familiar territory. At the Salisbury the London Pride was off and the gents toilets weren't open. The silent TV on the wall played a tape loop of Vladimir Putin sitting down at a table before at last the football results came in. In the end I hoped that the Steaua players had gone back to their hotel for Bells whisky miniatures, rather than searching for chips in the Highbury Vale fog.

A cold wind blows from Woodberry Down

It's the same every morning. At the end of the tree-lined bank that used to carry the New River, as you turn vaguely northwards towards the fenced off no-dogs area, the temperature all of a sudden drops. A cold dry wind hits your face, whirling in from the direction of Woodberry Down. Narrow your eyes and try  you can see that you're on the slopes of a very gentle hill.

A can of Kestrel Super  lies at the side of the path. A possible sign that a shamanic specialbrew energy diviner has been in the area, mapping the lines between Stoke Newington and Highbury. That or a lazy drunk.