New motherhood is like a trip to a foreign country: Flatlands

Here's a recent visual experiment that I made in the stolen moments of Beano's naps. The setting is the 3-room rental flat we used to stay in, a very mundane 3-room "New Generation" (slab block) default template HDB flat built back in the 70s and 80s. And I think I've finally found a way to explain this thing that I've tried to explain many times before (but struggle to explain, similar to how its hard to explain my experience of taste-shape and mirror-touch synthesthesia).



For me, at any one time I always feel other superimpositions or juxtapositions of other places that feel a bit like memory palaces where I can store facts, thoughts, and memories of another time. Its hard to explain, but it is like when you have a work phone call, you might start doodling nonsense on a piece of paper. But in my case, when I start to daydream or let the mind wander (also: this happens when I am extremely focused on an urgent task and everything else zones out), I always end up recalling a visual memory of a place I've visited in the past. I am imagining tracing out its contours, I am imagining what the details must be like, what the lighting must be like. Honestly, I can't really explain why certain views for me just keep popping up as the 'memory palace', as some of the locations are pretty inconsequential and emotionally insignificant to me. Yet! My mind returns to them for further rumination. To what end? I do not know.

I began writing the following some time back when Beano was a much smaller baby. But now that we are all locked down at home for the corona, and I haven't left the house and its vicinity in days, fleeting memories of parks I've walked in come to mind. I found myself scrubbing through these albums trying to find the name of a particular memory that may as well be a dream. There was something oddly compelling about these images I had taken of my walks and frustratingly I COULD NOT FIND THAT ONE IMAGE OF THAT ONE WALK IN MY MIND. And turns out some of these images are pretty weird. Why are there no people in them?

It was always in the back of my mind to do something with this huge lot of photographs, so.... now they have ended up in this visual experiment. I actually think it looks better than I expected it; so I think I might even make more of them soon...

---

New motherhood is like a trip to a foreign country. Firstly, the middle of the night feedings are conducted in near-darkness, with the endless droning of the white noise machine in the background, and some random show on Netflix playing to sustain your consciousness beyond all normal hours lest you fall asleep on the sofa and baby accidentally rolls off; not unlike when one takes a plane and night-time is arbitrarily enforced upon you, the sound of the engines whirring is ubiquitous, and all you've got to watch are some random blockbusters or episodes of Big Bang Theory on the inflight.

When Beano was very very small, I found myself trying to claw back a sense of mobility through a series of ever increasingly longer walks with Beano strapped to me. In some ways, this strategy reminds of me of the Capital Ring walk I did in 2017. Living in Greater London makes one feel crushed by one's own insignificance in a big city that is too vast to know by foot, so I thought I'd try to complete a ring around the city.

Once upon a time I was going to do a detailed expository blog post for each leg but AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT so here are quite simply the photo albums for each leg of the walk...

Debbie's 2017 Capital Ring Walk!

The source material for "Flatlands"

"I decided to walk the supposedly 78 mile Capital Ring over 6 consecutive days. I say "supposedly", for Debbie does not go "as the crow flies" but rather haphazardly in a squiggly line all over the map, and according to other mapping devices it seems I may have walked more than 150 miles in total. Rather than starting with the traditional route as listed in TFL's maps and David Sharp's guide book to the Capital Ring, I decided to start and end my journey at Stoke Newington's Rochester Castle."



Day 1: Stoke Newington to Hackney Wick
Day 1: Hackney Wick to Beckton District Park
Day 1: Beckton District Park to Woolwich Foot Tunnel



Day 2: Woolwich Foot Tunnel to Falconwood
Day 2: Falconwood to Grove Park



Day 3: Grove Park to Crystal Palace
Day 3: Crystal Palace to Streatham Common



Day 4: Streatham Common to Wimbledon Park
Day 4: Wimbledon Park to Richmond



Day 5: Richmond to Osterley Lock
Day 5: Osterley Lock to Greenford
Day 5: Greenford to South Kenton



Day 6: South Kenton to Hendon Park
Day 6: Hendon Park to Highgate
Day 6: Highgate to Stoke Newington

A Tour of London's Historical Wetherspoons

Wetherspoons! The smell of spilled ale, steak pie, salt and pepper, and red wine stains on the carpets! I've always liked the historical buildings in which Wetherspoon pubs are located, so for Boxing Day LAST YEAR I decided to design a tour of London's historical Wetherspoons! (Unfortunately I have only come around to writing out my guide NOW, and I'm in a different country, but still..)

In theory, a spoons day sounds like it would be an excellent boxing day out, but all of central London seems to shut down on Boxing Day so the pubs in the most central part of town are closed. So we had to make a visit to some of the pubs on the list on another occasion.


Empty Central London.
Secondly, London is a pretty big town so any "cross-London" journey is going to involve a significant amount of time and energy spent walking or taking public transport.


Hours and hours of Buses. Forever.
Finally, what follows is obviously going to be a day entirely centred around the endless consumption of ales and pub food, which starts off well and fine until you get to the fourth Wetherspoons of the day and will suddenly find yourself (and anyone else unfortunate enough to have done the route) having voluntarily sworn off going to any more pubs for possible for the next month.... (Or at least until the next weekend, when the wild pubbing can start all over again!)

Debbie's Historical Wetherspoons Tour

(Central and North London)

My selections were based upon the following simple three criteria:

IS IT HUGE?
IS IT HISTORIC?
IS IT EPIC?

You'll have noticed that several Wetherspoon pubs have got 'moon' in their names. These all relate back to "The Moon Under Water" - the name of a fictional pub in an article by George Orwell, published in the London Evening Standard. This fictional pub was described as the perfect pub, serving a wide range of beers, extremely decent food, and yet curiously without any music or loud entertainment. So indeed the Wetherspoon pubs have been modelled after that idea of the ideal pub - a pub without loud music you have to shout over! Indeed, Tim Martin also felt that 'moon' was a good link for some of the pubs to have to the fictional one. Some required reading is the Orwell's "Moon Under Water".

1. The Crosse Keys

9 Gracechurch St, London EC3V 0DR, UK





IS IT HUGE? - Tall ceilings. Said to have the MOST NUMBER of handpulls in any Spoons pub. 24 in total apparently.
IS IT HISTORIC? - It was first built as the Woolpack Hotel & buffet in 1899 and later
IS IT EPIC? - “Marbled columns, coffered ceilings a Victorian baroque facade and a drinking space large enough to house a whole fleet of Routemasters..."

2. Knights Templar

95 Chancery Ln, London WC2A 1DT, UK



IS IT HUGE? - A very high ceilinged bar.
IS IT HISTORIC? - The Knights Templar owned land on which Chancery Lane was built, along with this former Union Bank of London. Grade II Listed building. Its front railings are also listed! And it was in that Da Vinci Movie or something...
IS IT EPIC? - It has retained many decorative features such as the original scroll of the "union bank of London".

3. Lord Moon of the Mall

16-18 Whitehall, Westminster, London SW1A 2DY, UK





IS IT HUGE? - Huge and tall ceilinged
IS IT HISTORIC? - Former Cocks Biddulph Bank. Latterly Martins Bank. Then Barclays, closed 1992.
IS IT EPIC? - This is Spoons home turf – perhaps could be seen as its the Central London home. There’s a massive painting of Tim Martin in here. Also the pub sign has his face on it. Apparently this is often lauded in tour books for being “too grand”. People comment that its like “withdrawing a beer” instead of investing in a pint.

This place has rather more the vibe of a tourist trap than the earlier two (Knights Templar and Crosse Keys). Teeming with gaudy signs in multiple languages warning of pickpockets and thefts, its hard to

4. Montagu Pyke

IS IT HUGE? - Huge old cinema
IS IT HISTORIC? - 1911 cinema and former Marquee Club venue
IS IT EPIC? - It feels squeezed in the middle of high street shops. From its description it was very promising, as most pubs do not have the benefit of a large interior area like this, however its current modern interior update doesn't seem to do the historic venue justice.

5. The Coronet

"WHAT? ITS THE SAME MENU AGAIN?"
IS IT HUGE? - Huge old cinema
IS IT HISTORIC? - Former Savoy Cinema. Was renamed ABC in 1962, then Coronet in 1979; last screened a film in 1983.
IS IT EPIC? - Appears on many highlights lists of spoon pubs in London for its grandeur and interiors

6. Spouter's Corner

IS IT HUGE? - No
IS IT HISTORIC? - Part of the Hollywood Green leisure complex, that corner of the High Road was called Spouter's Corner in the past for its popularity for free speech, or "spouting" in a similar style to Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park. Open air meetings were held until the 1950s and it was also an assembly point for hiring workers.
IS IT EPIC? - Honestly, I only added this one as a palette cleanser and because it was pretty close to home.

---

#LATERGRAM
I hope it doesn't confuse people that I've decided to backdate my posts even though I'm writing this in Dec 2017 - but it does make more sense since I've had such a huge number of posts to push out and I like to think of this as a #latergram

The Impossiblity of grave-hunting in Abney Park Cemetery

Recently I attempted to go headstone hunting or grave hunting in Abney Park Cemetery after noticing there were many requests for people to find the grave sites - from descendants who no longer lived in the UK. There were so many plaintive requests for photos of lost memorials. I wondered why no one had helped these people with their requests for photos, and I thought I'd try to do this over the weekend, for just an hour or two. You know, just head on to Abney one afternoon and FIND ALL THE GRAVES. Fulfill a photo request. Or two. Or three.... Or a hundred and eighty five?




At first when I scrolled down the list I thought it would be a piece of cake to help search for the graves. There didn't seem so many when you're just speed scrolling through the names. But when I tried to copy out the data, I realised there were actually a whopping total of 185 requests. This was more than I had expected in terms of a number. 185 individuals had clicked on this site wanting to find a specific grave for a specific person in this cemetery. And these were just the people who knew where the memorials were located in the cemetery. I mean, from a brief glance, I had thought there were just a few dozen requests online, but not 185 requests. Perhaps I was out of my depth trying to attempt to fulfill all 185 requests. It sounded like a tall order to photograph, let alone locate 185 graves in an afternoon. But every name was a person, and how could I miss a single name on the list?

As I copied out the names, I began to develop the illusion that this was not a world so far away. I knew the area and the roads of Stoke Newington like the back of my hand, I had already read a lot about the local history, I could imagine the roads and places and houses and the work and lives that went on inside them; certain surnames resurfaced many times like Wood, Woods, Watts, Loomes, Levesque,... as I copied the names out I began to imagine I could understand how this cemetery worked, but that was definitely just some weird kind of survivorship bias...



For some reason I erroneously had the number "40,000" in my head - I thought there were 40,000 people buried in Abney Park's 12.53 hectares (31.0 acres). I realise now that I thought this because I must have seen this signboard stating that there were 40,000 headstones still remaining. But the real number of burials in Abney Park is actually well over 200,000 at this point! I was surprised by this density. For my own reference I went to google the size of one of Singapore's oldest cemeteries, Bukit Brown, which occupies about 85 hectares (211 acres) and is said to house "over 100,000 graves". The British Isle Genealogy website keeps an online index of the 194,815 burials that took place in Abney Park from 1840 to 1978. 185 out of the 194,815 graves tabulated in 1978 in a time before I was even born - that makes a mere 0.09496188691 % of the graves there at Abney. Alas, 'twere nothing but an illusion of understanding the sheer volume of graves at Abney....



After tediously copying out and cross referencing the lost graves and memorials onto a section map I made my way down to Abney. By the way, if anyone wants a copy of my list, here is the google doc: Abney Park Cemetery Photo Requests





I was instantly overwhelmed and completely thwarted by thick overgrowth. It was not even possible to go beyond the second or third row of graves in a section unless I wanted to step on countless gravestones which had fallen over. Now I always knew it was thick in there, but until you attempt to match a name to a grave in a specific section, you may not fully appreciate how many graves there are!



There were Commonwealth war graves at this cemetery - instantly recognisable from afar - now that I've visited many Commonwealth war memorials...







Because the war graves were standardised through the war graves commission, I always knew what I was looking at when I saw a war grave.



But graves come in all shapes...



in all formats...



in all sizes....



Some are very wordy...



Some get straight to the point...



Many are standing (or falling over) in all sorts of different angles...

I have a newfound respect for gravehunting as it is extremely difficult. In fact, I think it is entirely impossible. George also said I shouldn't just go around the cemetery "randomly" shrieking out names as I was looking for them.



"SECTION D06!!! HENRY VALE! WHERE ARE YOU?"



"Could Henry Vale be in there?"



"Or is Henry Vale in there?"



"Ada Wincup? Is that your headstone?"



"Mary Wood? Is your stone somewhere in there?"

CONCLUSION:
When people post a request for a photo of a grave, it is probably because:

- the grave stone no longer exists
- the grave stone cannot be found within the cemetery due to overgrowth
- the grave stone is broken or in pieces (sad but common sight)
- the text on the grave stone was too worn to read
- the location provided was wrong
- the surname provided was wrong because the female had her surname changed from her maiden name to married name
- the person requesting for the photo was simply hoping for a complete miracle

Alas I cannot work miracles, and I have much respect for the countless findagrave contributors and your tireless searching for lost memorials! I could not even find a single headstone out of my list of 185! AH! I HAVE FAILED!!! But at least I tried...

And speaking of the impossibility of finding graves in Abney, its worth noting that Abney Park Cemetery is no longer a 'working' cemetery accepting new burials, so you can't find a grave plot there anymore even if you were wanting to have yourself buried there. In case you were wondering what is the cost of being buried at one of London's 'finest' such as Highgate Cemetery, it was mentioned in a Guardian article that the cost of being buried at Highgate is currently £18,325. £16,475 for the plot and £1,850 for digging. So... yep, unless you are rolling in the money, it would truly be pretty impossible to find your grave here...