Home is where the heart is, and mine is in Stamford Hill

A bit more of a serious tone this week folks, and I do hope you won’t object as sometimes life can take serious turns.... and this year has started off on a very serious note. As I’m sure has escaped nobody’s notice, on the streets of Paris some rather horrendous events took place recently, and while the streets of Paris aint exactly round the corner from Sophington Towers, the streets of N16 certainly are. How is this relevant? Well, such matters of international terrorism affect everyone in different ways, and one of the results of these events is coming right to my doorstep as the UK counter terrorist police have just announced that there is an increased threat to Jewish areas, and subsequently they are considering stepping up patrols.

Now, I may not be Jewish (as previous blogs have mentioned I am a rather rubbish & now lapsed Catholic) but Sophington Towers is slap bang in the middle of one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, Stamford Hill. And following the recent Paris attacks, the police have announced there is "heightened concern" about the risk to the UK's Jewish communities and they will subsequently be increasing patrols in those areas. Worrying times I think you’ll agree, and not just for Stamford Hill, but the entire country. The actions of those terrible few threaten us, they seek to divide us, but we should not let them.

You see, I know about threats. Growing up a proud & faithful Londoner I am well versed in them. First of all there were the IRA ravaged years up to 1997, I still remember very clearly in my dad’s car hearing the news on the radio about the Bishopsgate bomb in 1993. I remember even then as a 13 year old far removed from the politics of Northern Ireland, how it saddened me so, shattering the shakey road to peace that was just beginning to be trod. I remember as a young child taking the disappearance of bins from tube stations as just another normal occurrence. Bins were no longer a receptacle for my easily discarded twix wrapper, they were somewhere to stash something that could kill me and my family. I can recall bomb scares in school, unnerving at the time but no doubt called in by some beavers eager to avoid their GCSE exams that were going on at the time. Threats became normal in my beautiful city, and that was just the way it was.

And of course I remember the 7^th July 2005. I remember how my city rallied that day. I remember walking home from central London where I worked, past pubs handing out free drinks to cheer the spirit and the aid the stumbling path of us shell shocked Londoners. Not for us was the (quite understandable) weeping and wailing of New York on September 11^th, after all we were Londonders and, unfortunately, already well used to being attacked. The stiff upper lip was de rigueur that day, for we were stoic Londoners, and no jumped up terrorist was gonna beat us down. I remember gathering with my friends at our home from home, the local pub beer garden, gathering pints in the sunshine as we were running headcounts of our circle. I also remember the grip of fear when we found ourselves two heads down. Fortunately, those two heads reappeared in subsequent hours and my tight knit group of chums emerged not entirely, but relatively unscathed and thankfully in mostly working order.

You see, I love where I live, I am damn proud of it. It’s diverse, vibrant and interesting. And well bloody done for diverse! It’s what makes my fair city one of the most wondrous places in the world. Just as we have architecture from the 10^th century rubbing up against that of the 21^st, we have people from the whole other side of the world, nestling up against people from Africa, Europe, the Americas and everywhere else, and they do a damn fine job of getting along on the whole. I remember reading stories at the time of the London riots, of Muslims and Jews in Hackney standing together to protect each other’s mosques and synagogues. Well done them I thought, THAT’S the big society in action Cameron! Take that, put it in your pipe and take a damn good suck of it.

I can only hope in coming days, weeks and months we take the same attitude. That these events bring us closer together instead of setting us further apart. So whether it is on the streets of Stamford Hill or on the streets of Paris, we stand up together. And neighbours of mine? I may not be a regular visitor to the kosher aisle of Sainsburys, and I may get somewhat confused by the plastic rabbi on the flatbed truck blasting out music outside my bedroom window every Purim, but I also care about our little part of town, and I care about my neighbours, no matter what their religion. So if that increased police presence appears, please remember, that its not just the police that has the best interests of you, the threatened minority, at heart but it’s your neighbours too and especially the one at Sophington Towers. And together we won’t be beaten down.

 

My home

P.S Please forgive this errant departure from my usual flippant wittering on about nonsense topics. I just had to get this off my chest. Normal blathering to resume shortly.

The joys of flatsharing

Damp courses. Mmmmm, everyone loves a new year damp course story don’t they? All full of the joys of spring and the potential for …. ok, maybe not. However this rather underwhelming yet essential procedure (is that even the right word? DIY aint my strong point) has brought to the fore something about which I have been ruminating over recent days… that of flatmates. Quite the jump I know, but bear with me.

Sorry, but the cleaning rota says
it's YOUR turn to do the bathroom 

You may have gathered from previous posts that I am now a Grown Up. With capital letters and everything. I say this as one of the traditional signs of maturity that I always supposed as a debt heavy, worry free, flat sharing twenty something, was possessing a mortgage. And a mortgage I do have, for my teeny weeny one bedroom flat where I live happily alone, ensconced with a chunk of solitude and a cleaning rota for one. That living alone was presumed to be a permanent state until earlier this week when the matter of damp courses arose. You see, one of my very good friends has a damp problem, poor chap. No, I don’t mean in the undercarriage department fortunately for both he and his wife… with a newborn son recently arrived I think they have enough nappies to be changed thank you very much. No, instead their home is riddled with damp, and with the arrival of both said newborn and the new year, now is the time to fix it. The builders are booked  and while the wife has the freedom of maternity leave to deposit herself elsewhere far away from dust, noise builders and all the other tell tale signs of getting your damp dealt with, poor Adam has to remain somewhere close by in order to commute to his daily grind, and Sophington Towers has come to the rescue. I shall have a flatmate again!

Please note, not my actual phone number 

Now flatmates has been a subject on my mind of late. On New Year’s Eve, the subject came up, (spurred on by a quick round of cards Against Humanity where ‘flatmates’ should definitely be an answer if they aren’t already) and some of my worst flat share stories came to the fore, including, but definitely not limited to:

    1. The flatmate who was overheard bellowing “milk me, MILK ME!” in the throes of passion one evening.

    2. The flatmate who was rumoured to enjoy a ‘danger wank’ on the stairs while we, his unfortunate fellow house sharers, were sitting mere yards away on the other side of a closed door, watching TV in the living room.

    3. The flatmate who had taken it upon himself to misappropriate some of my underwear because he “liked the smooth silky feel of them against his shaven balls” (QUOTE!) 

The 'danger wank' face, I can only presume....

    4. The flatmate who, upon my discovering him in our kitchen jar of my peanut butter in hand, (peanut butter scooped onto his fingers – he didn’t even have the decency to use a spoon!), responded not with the expected “I’m sorry”, but instead the brutally honest “Oh. I thought you’d gone out”

    5. The flatmate who refused point blank to buy loo roll, while using plenty himself leaving myself and my fellow female flatmate with the permanent fear that we might at some point have to resort to our bathroom housed cotton wool pads if we weren’t careful with our forward planning.

A pretty unfortunate run of stories I’m sure you’ll agree (once you’ve picked your jaw back up off the floor), and please don’t be surprised when I tell you this was all the, ahem, dirty work of just one flatmate. Ahhh university communal living, those halcyon days eh? No. Quite. Pity me people, I’ve been very, VERY unlucky.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m a perfect flatmate myself. That would be a claim that could be VERY easily refuted by the flatmate who discovered that in a fit of pique & PMT rage (never a good combo), I had locked all of my crockery and kitchen implements in my bedroom as revenge against constant food thievery. But I am pleased to say, I have now Grown Up (and moved out) and while I may not have anyone to share the cleaning rota with, I also don’t have to live with the constant fear of peanut butter thievery or wet patches on the stairs. So Adam, I say when the builders are in, COME ON OVER! We shall eat peanut butter together (spread with a knife, not our fingers), and revel in the constant presence of loo roll. But if I ever hear you declaring that you need to be milked, buddy it’s over. Us grown ups do have standards you know…

Twas the night before Christmas...

So, it will have escaped no ones notice that the Christmas season has arrived. And what a season it always is, especially at my age and stage in life. Christmases always seem fraught with difficulties, what with being at that age permanently stuck betwixt child and adulthood (no kids see, that still technically makes ME the baby). Visit Mums house? Dads house? Extended family or even friends? I mean, Christmas aint THAT bad, after all presents, excess eatings and spending time with loved ones is always a good thing. However Christmas always seems to bring with it difficulties like no other, and now that the fantasy of Father Christmas is long gone, there is only booze and optimism to sustain us through such challenging times. Whether it’s long distances to be travelled, weighed down with both presents and the frustrations the British transport system always seems to lay at our tired feet at this time of year, or delving head first into the intricacies of complex family politics whilst imbued with all the disregard that 2 large ports and an after dinner brandy seems to bring, Christmas can be well, well troublesome.

This year, rather than face a family politics situation far away that I would rather not deal with for the sake of playing nice (& running the risk stoking a port & brandy fuelled fire), I decided to hunker down with the elder stateswomen of my family, and already, glass of port in hand, this seems to have been a fine idea. You see the women in my family have a reputation: part eccentric, part matriarch, all balls. It is a family reputation I am thrilled to notice with the passing years, that I am already osmosissing with aplomb, and this pleases me and scares me in equal measures. Especially after these last 2 days….

And what a festive false
window it is too!

You see, within the first hour of my arrival I had to rebuild one blown out window using no more than an ill fitting cardboard box, several plastic bags and some rather unsticky, but festive red electric tape (we couldn’t find the gaffer tape, though it reappeared the next day in the spice rack…. Naturally). All this Blue Peter style reparation was required because my cousin in all her wisdom and 
pre-Christmas panic hadn’t seen fit to get a professional in to see to the job properly, leaving a rather draughty addition to the celebrations. I was blessed in my room, having the full complement of glass required to keep a room toasty, if not the full complement of curtains, with half the curtain hooks seemingly abandoned in an attempt to rid the world of unnecessary modesty. 

Mind your chipolatas people!

One bulldog clip later and the problem was mostly resolved, the neighbours need not fear for any unnecessary flashings putting them right off their Christmas day chipolatas. Though to be honest, they wouldn’t have seen much at night at least, because none of the 3 bulbs in the room actually worked, meaning each night I light my way across the office to my inflatable airbed by the underwhelming glow of an ikea desk lamp. A lamp, which of course, is plugged in well out of reach from the rapidly deflating airbed meaning I have to grope that last but treacherous, 8 feet in the dark. The desk lamp behind which, by the way, we discovered the pork pie that had been missing for 2 days, which was previously assumed to have disappeared into the cavernous bellies of my cousins twin misbehaving Jack Russells, known to all and sundry as The Terrierists. 

Modesty thus saved by a bulldog clip

Oh you gotta laugh aintcha?

And I guess that’s the thing. You do gots to laugh, and laugh we did, so much so  we wheezed until we couldn’t stop.  Cos that’s what spending time with those close to you is really about innit? That kind of stuff really doesn’t matter. Whether it’s your actual family or your chosen for the day family, those people you spend Christmas with are special. They might annoy the living crap outta you sometimes, you might promise each year is your last with them, but if you keep going back, thems your Christmas gang. And no matter blown out windows, pork pie stealing terriers, accidentally waving your puddings at surprised neighbours or an airbed that deflates by the hour, this is my Christmas gang and I’m bloody glad for them, eccentricities and all.

So I am wishing you all a fabulous one, and to those of you not so fortunate to have such a Christmas gang as I, well, there’s always next year…..

Merry Christmas

xx

The rather shady looking Terrierists, 
without pork pie... fortunately

The Case of the Blue Bag Bomber of N16

My mind has been mulling over the subject of neighbours of late, which seems especially appropriate in this festive season of goodwill to all mankind and suchlike.  First of all, my attention was brought to the Instagram account Neighbours From Hell which has amused me if not for many hours, then at least several minutes. Secondly, we had our first apartment block neighbours meeting last week which I attended and met many of my neighbours for the first time. But perhaps most pertinently to this subject matter, it appears my neighbourly nemesis has returned….

To explain this a little, I must backtrack back in time to pre Sophington Towers blogging era, back to a time of my hedonistic youth, of wild parties, fun times and flat sharing. Those were good days with far more ups (see afore mentioned wild parties) than downs. Downs included the usual flat sharing gripes, never enough loo roll when you need it, cheese thievery, and waking up in the middle of the night to find your flatmate has invited half the pub back to yours for an informal party, for which the toilet queue is beginning right outside your bedroom door. But the biggest downer of all had to be that of the secret bag slinger. My nemesis.

Guilty as charged
Classic knotted blue baggery

For about 12 months, each day would dawn with the optimism of what a new day could bring, and unfortunately about three times a week this optimism would be accompanied by a plastic bag of disgustingess, oft found on our garden lawn. It was a deposit that varied with every drop off, sometimes a dirty nappy, sometimes a viscous meaty substance which one could only liken to the contents of a beef & ale pie (but more stinky) and occasionally, just to keep us on our toes I think, vomit, which charmingly splattered all over the inside of our garden fence. It was like a murder scene blood splatter, except with vomit. However one thing these deposits all had in common was that they were invariably sealed in a knotted blue plastic bag, lobbed from the hands of one of our neighbours. Nice eh? These bag bombs intrigued both myself & my fellow 4 flatmates.... and not in a good way. Putting to one side that a particularly well aimed shot had taken out the seedlings we were trying to grow to spruce up the garden, these bags were also frankly disgusting. Who would do that we thought to ourselves? And this was where the real game began.

My flatmates and I plotted, we schemed, we investigated contents, and we planned trajectories all in an attempt to figure out just which disgusting fellow neighbor was the culprit. Well, I say we, it was mostly I to be fair. We discussed with our neighbours that we actually knew, and discovered that we were not the only victims of such bin lobbery. Based upon trajectories and contents, we eliminated suspects, deducing it was unlikely to be anyone to the right (which ruled out both the caterwauling karaoke-ists on a diagonal right to the garden as well as the woman who hated us next door). It was someone with a baby (hence the nappies, unless the guilty party was prone not only to a spot of bag throwing but also bin raiding) and it wasn’t the squatters to the left as they had also fallen foul of the catapulting criminals in question.

Could these guys be the culprits?
Not as innocent as they seem perhaps...

But all our investigations proved fruitless, we had no idea who it was who could be committing these acts of devious bin flinging. It was time to call in the big guns… The police community officers. OK, not quite the big guns, more the small water pistols of the investigatory world, but we were living in a flat share for gods sake. We couldn’t afford the services of the otter himself, Benedict Bandersnatch, so the local PCSOs would have to do. They prodded contents with a stick and studied our trajectory map, but alas were as equally at a loss as we were. Then suddenly, joy of joys, one day it stopped, never to be seen again…. until last week when my former flatmate texted me to let me know ole blue bags was back.

So, in a festive spirit of helping out all of mankind, I am calling upon you reader, to help identify the perpetrators. All amateur sleuths out there unite! This could be the next big mystery, up there with Sherlock’s Reichenbach Falls cliffhanger. Unlikely, but y’know, aim high & that. Even though now six years on, I've moved out, it’s time to catch the Stoke Newington slinger, the bag bomber of N16 and put their dastardly exploits at an end.  All answers on a postcard please, and failing that in the comments section below.

A handy map to aid your investigations

 

Key

1 -  Our House

2 -  Vomit explosion on right hand fence

3 - Squatters

    4 - Karaoke caterwaulers

X marks the spot where the bags usually landed