Divest of clothes

St Mary Magdalene Gardens

For 27 years I lived in Islington, London, in a flat overlooking St Mary Magdalene Gardens. From my 4th floor nest I had a great view of the tops of huge Victorian London planes, and from here I looked down into the park, where I observed life in all it’s seasonable, fabulous glory.

Living there I was sandwiched between the very busy Holloway Road, the famed first designated major road, the A1 which runs from London to Edinburgh, and Liverpool Road, which runs from the Angel, Islington (north of Old Street, just outside the City of London) to halfway between Highbury Corner and Holloway Road Tube station.

Despite the busy traffic, and inhabiting the most densely populated urban district in the UK, aside from the occasional sirens of an emergency vehicle this was a truly peaceful oasis, full of life, human and otherwise. Early each morning the crowing of cocks in nearby Freightliners Farm would bring you into consciousness regardless of your plans for a later breakfast.

As well as the regular crew of city pigeons, blackbirds thrived. From high perches in the trees and from rooftops they bounced their glorious songs from the flat stone, glass and brick sides of buildings, particularly around the majestic church, thus amplifying them very effectively. Over the decades I heard new generations of these marvellous flying musicians following complex, repeated musical patterns, adding to the songs of their forefeathers each year. The blackbirds were so distinctive and memorable that I recorded them to be able to compare them year by year. I noticed urban sounds, the copying of a deliberately out-of-tune young lad’s whistle, car alarms, industrial squeaks and squeals crop up in their songs, and as the young lad in the flats grew up, got a job and stopped whistling, the blackbirds’ children and grandchildren still included his riff as they painted the inner-city air with avian panache.

Over the years, inevitably I developed a personal engagement with the space. St Mary Magdalene’s church was once a chapel of ease, situated next to a mortuary to which place the dead and the dying were brought, and a Coroner’s Court. The church yard became a beautiful park, eventually a listed space, protected and improved. A month or so prior to this work, looking out of my window one sunny summer’s day I became interested in the sight of graves being analysed and measured by a group of men and women. Down I went, and there I met archaeologists from the Museum of London as they inspected and later adjudged one particular grave as being of sufficient significance to merit the award of that precious listed status. They were accompanied by two landscape architects who, commissioned by the London Borough of Islington, were planning improvements to the area.

As a result of this impromptu meeting the Borough afforded my business colleague and I funds to create a festival there. The event took place over one week in July 2005, coincidentally immediately after the July 7th London terorist attacks, or 7 7 as it became known. The proximity to this national shock lent us empathy as we celebrated both life and death with art, live music, sound installations, interviews with refugees, period costumes, and grand scale projections. It was astonishingly vivid, cathartic, poignant and appropriate.

Being the quiet place it is, positioned near far busier spaces such as Highbury Fields, the peaceful churchyard and perhaps St Mary Magdalene herself attracted love. Anyone looking in that direction might freqently observe humans in quiet repose on the benches, feeling the bliss of the presence of one another, holding hands, kissing, and this being an inner city Borough, occasionally abandoned in sexual activity, sometimes subtle, sometimes entirely uncaring of conventional social protocols.

One day I found a poem on paper on a path. It was folded, and something inspired me to pick it up. When I realised what it was, I looked around to see if anyone had dropped it - it could easily have fallen out of a pocket, or bag. I looked but there was nobody around, and it seemed it had been there a while. I didn’t read it immediately, it seemed rather intimate; but after a few minutes, I accepted it as a gift. I include it here, never having discovered and still not knowing the author, but still impressed with his decscription of his state of mind, and his passion. I think the author is male. It’s rather formal, old fashioned, which suits the Victorian churchyard.

I still wonder what happened to these lovers.