April 2000
Liam's
Letter from London

It's mid April and the freezing rain is slipping down the glass on my balcony door. Its cold and damp and its that sort of weather that penetrates to inner bones and calls for hot steaming drinks and full central heating.

Not many people are moving about and the little single decker buses that connect to Kilburn and Notting Hill are almost empty apart from the hardier souls on essential business. They brought in these small buses some years back and it took us a long time to get used to them. Even the slightest turn or stop by the driver would send the passenger flying along the aisle grasping for dear life for a support bar. We have all developed "hold on" skills over the years and now we can claim to be mini acrobats with the instant reaction of an alert leopard.

I have only seen one bloodied passenger who was flung down the aisle of a 31 bus and smashed his face on the floor. He accepted the mishap with great nonchalance and mopped the blood away from his face that was seeping down into the collar of his jacket. He had the air of one who was proceeding to some interesting hostelry and perhaps had shortly left one, thus contributing to his lack of preparedness on the vaulting buses.

Kilburn is just up the road from me and its where I do my main grocery shopping. Many Irish people live around the area but now its breaking up and becoming very ethnically mixed. But its still has a real Irish feel with many Irish pensioners standing gossiping in the middle of the pavements and discussing the tittle tattle flow of life, totally oblivious to any obstruction they might be causing to the passing crowd. The pubs have been tarted up and made much more comfortable but there are still the groups of men huddled in corners discussing the Irish games and the latest news from the Emerald Isle.

The Quex Road church is a flash back to quieter times with the aging congregation reciting the rosary after mass with all the fervour and devotion of a past age. You will see the funeral mass at 10 o'clock in the morning and English children of an Irish parent saying goodbye with the organ playing Galway Bay or the Rose of Mooncoin. The emigrant always carried the memories of his home back in Ireland and be they bad times or good times his thoughts often changed into fantasies of gay days and rose covered cottages when the hard facts of his leaving were often too painful to recall.

I call in regularly to see Bobby the Dublin pensioner who lives on my estate on the Elgin Avenue side. He was brought up in orphanages and hostels in Ireland and had a hard preparation for life. He arrived in Liverpool as a teenager with a half crown of Irish currency that was not legal tender in England. He proffered that for a meal at the Joe Lyons tea shop and with his inert charm and good humour was able get a meal on the house and his coin returned for good luck money. He hitched down the main road to Manchester and with his shoes falling to pieces and his feet bleeding was picked up and comforted by a passing Good Samaritan doctor. His life has been more or less like that ever since.

He does not believe in preparing for life but just gets on with it. Everybody is his friend and when I am sitting in his flat I am amazed at what comes in the door. Cold meat roasts appear or iced cakes; suits of clothes and an array of knitted jumpers and delicate shoes; selections of crafted glasses and various art objects; they all find their way to Bobby's abode. Bobby sends out an aura of friendship and interest and always has an interesting remark and humorous angle on the events of the day. Every passing stranger or wandering wino is his responsibility and he will go out of his way to befriend and support. 

He stands out as a beacon of light in a London that can be cold and inhospitable. For someone who was so abandoned when young he makes sure that anyone in his remit will not be similarly treated. Get to know Bobby and you get to know Maida Vale.

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When I was buying my flat I was attracted by the name Maida Vale. It had connotations of a sleepy forgotten valley with the maid of the mansion house moving through long meadow grasses to milk her waiting cow. I later learnt that it was named after some battle in Italy around the 1860s where the British were successful. Not quite your romantic hide away really. I liked the area and then I fell out of love with it. But I am gradually coming to accept it with all its warts and problems for when you grasp the stinging nettle you sometimes find the violet lurking just behind in glorious bloom.

Lens garden is blooming away with the blue Iris a sparkling feature at the moment. But he has got into the habit of planting multi coloured plastic flowers and its difficult to tell the real ones from the pretenders. Bobby reckons that the plastic ones are taking root and spreading and we now have a garden that is as much an art exhibition as a small earthen oasis. Len's dinner is never complete until he has flung the remaining scraps to his bird friends and they wait with expectant beaks for the boiled potato and the last of the steak and kidney pie.

Liam Purcell