Tottenham Cake

The Quaker and the Mulberry Tree

Dear friend,

Chiara is in the Netherlands working on a project. I dropped her at City Airport this morning and drove back as the traffic began to intensify. I enjoy the sensations of driving, especially when the roads are empty and your mind settles and becomes still.

The sky was dramatic and cloudy with shafts of light, the backdrop to the grandest opera of them all.

A crow flies over the A406.

Heart and wings and lungs and muscles. Bones as light as feathers and strong, powering up and away through the slipstream of half filthy metal boxes as they slice through the air.

Then a sparrow.

Hearts on wings.

I popped to the supermarket and saw my neighbour Conner. The first time we met was when Santy was still alive, and we fell into a conversation about angels while he walked his Ruby. Ruby is still happily alive and well, but Conner, I can see, has hurt his leg and is walking at speed towards me. I bend down to fasten a loose boot lace and hear my name called out, in Conner's loud and hearty greeting voice.

He’s with Samuel from El Salvador. Conner wants to show me the Quaker garden next to Aldi on the high street. It’s the old Quaker burial ground that is also a beautiful oasis of garden backing onto the Quaker meeting house. It’s the longest-running Quaker meeting in London—not the oldest building.

The building itself has a lovely mid-century Charles Eames type feel.

The meeting itself is the longest continual group.

The mulberry tree in the garden is said to be the tree that supplied a local baker the mulberries he used to make the first pink icing on a Tottenham cake—a kind of pink iced bun.

Conner had roped me in to lending a quick hand with a wooden structure he and Samuel were building, but as things progressed, it was looking like a lot more than the original two minutes of ‘holding something’ I’d originally been invited to take part in.

It was nice watching the blue and grey bruised sky above us, feeling the warmth of the garden’s welcome as Conner worked through the construction challenge in front of him.

I wanted to come home and read and drink tea and play guitar and write and work on some projects.

I’m just about to set off for Scott’s place to give him his present, so tomorrow I can share it here too.

It just struck me this morning as the clouds lightly showered the outdoor cushions and I rushed outside to drag them in from the rain. How wonderful it is to care for things. This stuff about appreciation goes way beyond making a list; I’m learning there’s no end to it when you get that pump primed.

And the challenges keep coming up.

Reactivity is showing itself so it can be noticed and healed.

The wood pigeons have started up their cooing.

Someone is playing the best of ABBA.

It’s a bank holiday.

Mam used to play ABBA’s “Arrival” on holidays.

The voices of kids playing.

The sun dapples the garden.

The tick of the clock.

It’s time to get on.

The neighbours have moved on to some odd Euro trash club anthem.

That’s enough contrast for me.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey