Diary: Old Street bus stop

At the bus stop on Old Street, a begging woman approached, having already been spurned by another waiting passenger. The begging woman looked at me pleadingly and told me she was hungry. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a £1 coin and handed it to her. She thanked me then added: “A sandwich costs £2.50.”

Golden Lane Gazette: July 2017

A breath of fresh air

The Corporation’s determination to combat bad air quality and help us breathe more easily has been hard to avoid, with electric cars here and pop-up gardens there. One weekend we were given lessons in bike repair and free maps showing the cleanest route from A to B. At Barbican station, they stuck plastic arrows on the pavement, indicating “cleaner air this way”. Then I read a Corporation factoid stating that the air inside a car in busy traffic is dirtier than it is outside on the street for pedestrians and cyclists. I nearly choked.

Golden Lane residents don’t need this kind of horror story to tell them the air we breathe in the City is poor. Sit in Sourced Market on Goswell Road and look across to the iconic sweep of Crescent House and it is pretty obvious that it really could do with a good wash.

Thankfully, the architects of both the Golden Lane Estate and the Barbican - Chamberlin, Powell & Bon - imagined a future where car was king and carbon dioxide the enemy, and took steps to separate people from pollution. The core of the Golden Lane estate is a green haven of lawns and trees, while the Barbican highwalks, as irritating to navigate as they can be, raise pedestrians above and away from CO2 black-spots.

The success of the architects’ vision, and the chance to breathe cleaner air on the south side of the estate especially, is seen in the in the four healthy London Plane trees - originals from the 1970s, I’m told - standing across Fann Street in the Barbican Wildlife Garden.

The London Plane is a miracle of botany. It is an accidental hybrid of Oriental and American planes. They are relatives of the Sycamore and most of the world’s great cities have their own variant, and for two good reasons.

First, it readily consumes nasty particulate pollution into its dappled camouflage-like bark, which then flakes, and renews itself with ease, trashing the toxins.

Second, those big, lobed leaves and short root system work together to suck up and pump out vast amounts of valuable oxygen and water into the atmosphere. No surprise, then, that the Plane is known as ‘London’s Lungs’. I stare at those Fann Street beauties often and give thanks.

Fiddler on the hoof
Open Garden Squares Weekend is always good fun at the Golden Baggers allotments. Baggers bake good cakes and this year more than 400 green-fingered types arrived to ask questions about our varied crops. They like the Baggers because our growing space is a secret idyll, because we have a community café staffed by volunteer residents and, importantly, a toilet. To add spice this year, we invited poet-gardener St John Stephen (@HangingBabylon). He mingled with visitors, offering sizzling stanzas from greatest hits such as Sylvie, Red Pelargoniums and VIII. Sadly, he was not able to perform the poem about the joys of sniffing bushes, because that one is part of his ‘Spring’ cycle, and we were already well into Summer. But there was plenty from his Shrub Fiddler’s Pocket Book to make an already hot weekend even hotter.

It’s a snip

Getting a haircut around here is always a dilemma. Should I stay loyal to Golden Lane and go  to Cliffords, or break for the Islington border and visit Best Gents in Banner Street, off Whitecross Street? Best Gents does the full grooming experience (ear singeing, hot towel, eyebrow trim, nose hair, cranial massage), but Cliffords, with their pot noodles, chipped coffee mugs and bulk-bought tea bags ‘hidden’ in the corner shelf in full view all Golden Lane residents, has the kind of no-nonsense feel I find comforting.

All together now

It was a new experience: a joint reckoning for Barbican and Golden Lane residents of our freshly elected Common Council after 100 days in the job. It started well, with Cripplegate Alderman, David Graves, urging residents to get more involved and hinting at his desire for a more inclusive type of regular meeting.

Fire safety was understandably top of the agenda and the whole meeting soon became a single-issue free-for-all. Touching stories and heartfelt concerns mixed uncomfortably with grandstanding bluster, at times it seemed to be spiralling into chaos and mumbo-jumbo. And hearing Corporation placemen talking about 'learning the lessons of Grenfell' left a hollow sound in the ear.

The mood was electric and fragile, but somehow the simple act of sitting together and struggling to find answers made a difference. I went away wanting more.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, edition 41, July 12-18 2017