Monthly Archives: September 2020

Sure-Fire Ways to Prolong Your Summer

Posted in Modern life by

Bet you’d like to hang onto the feelgood vibes of a summer holiday, especially if you didn’t have one this year.

Now this isn’t going to be a dumb piece about keeping your fresh-from-the-beach locks by spritzing on some expensive concoction. Oh, no.  Not when you can get the same effect far more cheaply.

First off, wear sunglasses as long as you can. Or maybe, to avoid stumbling about, just wear your ordinary glasses while tilting your head and admiring your surroundings as if seeing it all for the first time.

There’s nothing like holiday togs to bring back memories. Don’t you have an I ♥ SANTORINI T-shirt hiding somewhere? 

A straw hat will complete the look, though admittedly the rain won’t do it much good.

Keep shaving your legs and painting your toenails. Guys, stop shaving. It doesn’t matter what you do with your toenails because you’re probably wearing socks with your sandals.

Now for a more palatable suggestion: listen to music with a seasonal vibe, like The Boys of Summer, Summertime Blues, and Gershwin’s classic Summertime. My all-time favourite is still Under the Boardwalk. 

You may not be lounging by the pool, but you could still make time to read novels rather than newspapers and the daily misery of reality.

Ditto, watching the TV news can only worsen the feeling of impending doom. Isn’t Hawaii 5-0 on repeat somewhere?

Go for a walk to boost your endorphins and savour the last rays of sunshine. If you’ve already been on a walk, go for another one.  It’s even more like a holiday if one of your flip-flops breaks while you’re out. 

There’s nothing like a day out to give you a holiday buzz. You’ll need to plan well ahead to visit somewhere special like Kentish Town City Farm, but it’s well worth the effort.

If refreshments are on offer, why not get a cream tea or an ice cream? Where you can, drink sangria, Pimms, or anything with a paper parasol in it. You can always pop it into a hot chocolate later.

Dig out old photos and immerse yourself in happy memories. I’ve recently been writing about growing up in Egypt, and studying ancient albums full of grainy pictures from the beach have given me a lot of fun.

Finally, here’s the crucial thing for keeping autumn at bay: don’t mention Christmas. Sorry. Just did.

I’m off to put some overpriced brine on my hair. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. Do you see off summer happily, or try to hang on as long as possible?  And what tunes would you put on your summer playlist?

 

10 Things You Didn’t Know about Hampstead

Posted in London, Pills, Places by

I didn’t know half of them myself till recently – and I live in Hampstead. This part of London is full of surprises.

1 Hampstead is chock full of delightful architecture, much of it Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian. Then there’s 2 Willow Road. Designed by architect Ernő Goldfinger in the 1930s, this modernist home was only made possible thanks to his wife’s great wealth.

2 Willow Road NW3

Goldfinger was a champagne socialist, which is why he concealed the servants’ bell. You could say that he wasn’t popular with everyone. Ian Fleming, you may recall, named the ultimate villain after him.

2 Nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in the UK. Her crime? Shooting dead her cheating lover David Blakely in 1955 outside the Magdala Tavern. If you wander up South Hill Park in Hampstead, you’ll still be able to see the bullet holes on the wall of the pub, mainly because they’ve been enlarged with a drill.

Magdala Tavern, NW3

For a thought-provoking novel set around the Ruth Ellis story, I can highly recommend Jane Davis’s brand-new book At the Stroke of Nine O’Clock. 

3 The Whitestone Pond at the top of Heath Street is the highest point in London. It’s a man-made pond with ramps to let horses wash in it. A bit later, it was used for floating model boats and for paddling, earning it the name Hampstead-on-Sea. Now fringed with rushes, nobody much goes into the pond at all, but they do wander up here, and probably tell each other it’s the highest point in London.

4 Hampstead Heath covers 790 hilly acres and has something for everyone, with magnificent views over London as well as woodlands and a string of ponds, three of them for swimming (if you don’t mind cold water). The Heath enchanted author C.S. Lewis, inspiring him to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Hampstead Heath

5 Fancy a bite to eat? Hampstead has not one Streatery, but two. The Belsize Village Streatery opened for summer 2020 on the paved area of the village to help keep a wide range of local restaurants and cafés running. It brings a continental vibe to this corner of London and is an excellent place to meet friends or celebrate a special occasion. The floor is clean enough to eat off, as the saying goes, but the socially distanced tables and chairs in the square are a better bet.

Belsize Village Streatery

Following on from the success in Belsize Village, there’s also a second Streatery at South End Green.

6 Hampstead is awash with celebs. Do you know Mrs Newbie? She and her cob lived together in bliss on the Heath, until Mr Newbie died in 2016. At some point, the grieving Mrs Newbie flew off and hurt herself on a nearby roof. While at the swan sanctuary for treatment, she met fellow patient Wallace who had come from Waltham Forest. Their relationship blossomed.

pair of swans

Once both of them were well enough, they were released to Hampstead Heath’s Number One Pond and have since raised seven cygnets. Mrs Newbie had to return to the swan sanctuary earlier this year after she was attacked by a dog, but is now back with Wallace and their cygnets. Vive l’amour! 

swan with one cygnet

7 Originally from Suffolk, painter John Constable relocated when his wife developed TB. At the time, the air in Hampstead was considered a lot healthier than elsewhere. Unfortunately there were no anti-TB drugs at the time and Mary didn’t improve. Most of the family is now buried in the family tomb at St John-at-Hampstead.

Constable family tomb

8 The Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street was founded in 1828 to give free treatment to those unable to afford it. To begin with, the Royal Free was in central London, and then moved near the site of the previous Hampstead Fever Hospital, a name which inspired the title of my novel Hampstead Fever.

For years, the Royal Free was the only London teaching hospital in London to train women doctors. The Royal Free’s pioneering heritage continues. It was the first UK hospital to have a high level isolation unit (HLIU) for infectious diseases like Ebola.

Royal Free Hospital

9 Hampstead has cats. Many, many cats. This busy fluffball knows exactly where she is going. You’re lucky the others moved too fast for me to photograph them all.

long-haired Siamese cat

10 You don’t have to go into the Freud Museum to see a fine statue of Sigmund Freud. Here he is outside the Tavistock Clinic in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, leaning forward in a pose suggesting period pain. I call it womb envy.

If you know Hampstead, please leave a comment with your favourite fact about the area. Meanwhile, until September 9, you can download a copy of Hampstead Fever for just 99p/99c.