Everyone has a story. Many of what might now be called Cyprus’ forgotten refugees of the 1960s settled in north Islington. This interview with Antonagis Andreou reveals many of the hardships the community faced arriving in London. GUEST POST and interview by Engage London’s Meagan Walker, which was originally published on her blog (3 April 2018).

Antonagis Andreou: “I fell in love and that was that.” (c) Meagan Walker 2018

Cyprus’ political situation is seldom mentioned in Western media and very few people, unless directly affected, understand the hardships suffered by the Cypriots as a result of a still ongoing conflict between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. According to the UNHCR, today’s world has 68.5 million displaced people, 25.4 million of whom are refugees, but with images of north African refugees dominating TV screens and the paper’s front pages, it’s easy to forgot about the lives of one-time refugees who settled in England many years ago. This interview with Antonagis Andreou charts a life story of early struggle, happily followed by the redemptive power of love.

The dawn appeared, but not fresh and rosy-fingered. After a perilous journey, an odyssey, from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, nine-year-old Antonagis Andreou stepped off the platform at King’s Cross station in the 1960s – devastated and scared. The dark, cold, frosty November morning was a far cry from the golden sands and topaz seas of his homeland. As his eyes glittered with the memories of the past, “I cried and wanted to go home,” he said – and maybe that would have been for the best. Amid the racism and prejudice of 1950s and 1960s London, Antonagis struggled to find his place in society.

Antonagis now looks very different to the young boy at King’s Cross. With soft, kind eyes, his empathy stretches far beyond the words he says. Drawings are scattered around his homely office, and his white hair evokes a loving, caring grandfather. Living in the Worcestershire countryside, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. It’s a world away from his life in the London where an unfortunate fall into crime led Antonagis to running in the same circles as the notorious Kray twins in London’s West End gang scene.

“We didn’t speak a word of English apart from yes or no,” he recalls, “a man on the platform was asking if we were okay and all I said was ‘No!’” he chuckles with fondness. As the memories come flooding back, his love for his family clearly prevails over everything else. His mother arrived on British soil with three young children under the age of ten, after two years alone in poverty-stricken Cyprus. Antonagis’ father worked alone in London for two years to raise the money to bring his family to join him. Political and cultural tensions rose between the Greek and Turkish nationalities in Cyprus, but England was not the idyllic paradise many Greek Cypriots believed it to be.

Growing up in Holloway, Antonagis recalled his parents paid four shillings for a room with a shared bathroom at 47 Arthur Road, N7. “We were so poor we were restricted on how much toilet paper we could use!” he says.

When recounting his school days at Acland Burlegh in Tufnell Park, Antonagis claims: “I was a bit of a naughty schoolboy.” There’s a hint of a glint in his eye when he says this, making it fully believable that he hasn’t changed all that much.

“There were not many treats as a child. We used to go strawberry picking near Essex with the whole family, went to the Forum Cinema in Kentish Town where I got in for free as a teenager as my girlfriend at the time worked there. I can remember watching the Pathe News newsreels and documentaries. I played football in the streets and played with a football team at Finsbury Park. I never wanted to chance going to an Arsenal game as I’m a Tottenham supporter!” he says recalling his childhood in Islington.

However, after leaving school, the struggle to escape the societal barriers in place became much harder. “We were called the ‘bubble and squeak Greeks,” he remembers.

Antonagis’ fatal crime was stealing a car radio. At sixteen, he spent two weeks at Wormwood Scrubs before being sent to Borstal, in Kent. His sentence was two years long. Losing most of his later teenage years to prison, Antonagis had to grow up very quickly. And because Antonagis’ parents were still living in poverty, they were unable to visit their son regularly throughout his time in prison. “You had to fight your way through everything,” he remembers. “There was blood all over the place, and we had to learn another way of surviving through the night.”

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Places Antonagis Andreou remembers during his Islington days

• I went on the boats and watched the horse racing (closed 1970) at Alexandra Palace
• Watched the dog racing at Haringey and White City racetracks.
• I used to train at Stowe Boxing Club
• We went to the Greek Orthodox church called St Andrews on Kentish Town Road

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Gang life
After leaving prison, Antonagis fell into gang life in London’s West End. He spent his time in the Greek cafes near Archway accompanied by his friend, the son of the Kray brothers’ chauffeur. “I had to do it,” he recalls, “It was the only way to survive.” It was a dangerous career and Antonagis found himself wanting to leave. “I learnt my trade of mechanics in Borstal,” he said, “so I wanted to find a job.”

After much trying, Antonagis was eventually given a job at St Georges’ Service Station in Mornington Crescent.

All change
It was here he met his wife, Diana, daughter of the owner of the garage. “I loved my job,” Antonagis says, and takes a breath and continues, “but I loved my wife more.”

After falling in love, both sets of parents were against the mixed-race marriage. “My parents wanted me to marry a Greek girl but I was in love,” Antonagis explained. “Her father took me aside and offered me my job or his daughter – but the choice wasn’t hard,” he said.

With no photographs of the wedding, Antonagis only has the images in his mind to remind him of the day he married the love of his life.

“Her parents said they would throw us a reception party, but we arrived at their house, alone, to 12 bottles of champagne,” he said, “we drank a lot that night.” Still living close to the breadline, his wife had left the home comforts of her comfortable upbringing. They lived in a small bedsit with an outside bathroom  in Fortis Road on the Tufnell Park/Kentish Town border, whilst Antonagis continued his work as a mechanic, trying to make ends meet.

More than 40 years later, Antonagis now sits surrounded by portraits of his loving family. The couple had four children, numerous grandchildren, and even have great-grandchildren.

His life is quiet, simple, and easy in comparison to his past in London. The birds outside tweet as the sun rises high in the sky, illuminating the beauty of the countryside surroundings. However, as the golden rays infiltrate his office, they light up his face, and behind his dark, aged eyes, it is impossible to miss the youthfulness of the young boy stood at King’s Cross Station ready to start a new life. For Antonagis, it seemed his life took a turn on to the right side of the tracks when he met his wife. As I leave he reminds me one last time of his adoration for his wife and children, he whispers: “I fell in love, and that was that.”

• Read more of Meagan Walker’s interviews and writing on her blog meaganhonour.wordpress.com 
• Or follow her on twitter @meagan_honour
• More about Engage London – young people from City university and the Pilion Trust collaborating on media projects with partners in Belgium, Germany, Spain and Romania – on http://engagelondon.blog

Everyone has a story. Magazines are thriving at magCulture – the shop, website, design studio and mag masterclass hub – on the Clerkenwell/Angel border run by graphic designer and mega mag fan Jeremy Leslie. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photo by Kimi Gill 

Jeremy Leslie runs magCulture on St John’s Street, close to City Uni and just opposite Islington Museum. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Back in the ‘80s, magazines were an essential part of making full use of London. Whatever you were into, from music to anti-racism, high fashion to wine bars, there was a mag to meet your needs. After graduating from London College of Printing as a graphic designer Jeremy Leslie started working on some of the capital’s coolest mags including City Limits, Time Out, Blitz, and subsequently at his design studio in Mount Pleasant a host of mags for companies like Waitrose, Sky TV, Virgin Atlantic….

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But it’s all due to an experiment with the magCulture Journal, a wordpress blog (which Islington Faces also uses), with a sizeable following which focuses on magazines (in particular the vision of the editor and art director) that led Jeremy to open a shop in December 2015 which sells just magazines. The sharp eyes will also notice a handful of books selling on the magCulture shelves, including The Modern Magazine, which Jeremy wrote back in 2013.

“I’m from west London, but now live in south London. When I decided to open the mag shop I’d already been based locally with my design studio. I liked the area. I’d drive round London on my scooter at the weekend looking at sites everywhere and I realised that I really liked it here. We are on the southern edge of Islington – Finsbury/Clerkenwell. It feels like you are in the middle of the city of London but it’s still very calm and homely. Feels like everything is rushing around but it’s a little oasis,” says Jeremy.

“There’s the huge City, University of London, journalism school with both BA and MA students right on the doorstep and 800 yards away there’s the building in which the first publication that used the title magazine was published from, that was The Gentleman’s Magazine, published first in 1798. This side of Clerkenwell Road and along Farringdon Road there were a lot of printers around and all the allied trades – typographers and designers. It isn’t far from Fleet Street. Even that big red and white house on the corner by the lights was a print factory,” explains Jeremy.

The magazine world has changed radically over the past few decades. But at Magculture you can find more than 450 titles, from Wonderful Man to Anorak, the happy mag for kids. Many of the titles are indie, oozing cool or design genius, such as Aesthetica and Uppercase. Hung above the cash card machine is a more pop buy, a black T-shirt with the logo “I love magazines”. What’s not on sale are the types of mag stocked in W H Smiths and corner newsagents. You come to MagCulture for bespoke, design-led and hard-to-find pubications as well as Jeremy’s perennial favourite, The New Yorker.

Even with another of London’s famous magazine shops, Wardour News in Soho, closing on 25 May 2018 (due to rent and rate rises) Jeremy is adamant that magazines offer something unique and are a long, long way from dead.

“In our world, there’s been a flash of publicity around the fact that this very established magazine shop is closing because of rent rises. It’s a very sad event. Rents are so high there. Soho used to be so ecletic. I used to work above a shop that just sold board games, Just Games, but it’s now a Starbucks.  It’s a destination so brands want to get in. But magazines are never going to disappear. In the history of all media there’s never been a single form that has actually disappeared. Even 30 years ago people were writing the death nell for radio, but that’s not disappeared. And it’s all thanks to the internet,” says Jeremy. “Magazines, and the early days of print, were taken forward by technology. Mags have always risen to that challenge whether an improvement in colour technology or whether everything’s on the internet now.”

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So many mags to pick from at magCulture, St John Street. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

5 places Jeremy Leslie likes in Islington

• Exmouth Market still has its own unique shops, with proper shops. For daily food I’d recommend Brill Café on 27 Exmouth Market. It’s nice and has been there since way back. If I’d had time today then I’d have got a bagel with avocado and dukkah (Moroccan spices).  For a more special occasion I go to Moro, 34-36 Exmouth Market.
• I also like lunch at J&A café on 1-4 Great Sutton Lane (in the alleyway running from Clerkenwell to Old Street, parallel to St John Street). A favourite is a healthy chicken dish with salad and a glass of wine.
• I go weekly to yoga at Clerkenwellbeing on 178 Goswell Road.
• Neal Whittington has a really good stationery shop, Present & Correct, at 23 Arlington Way, EC1. It’s a beautiful, old-fashioned proper stationer, international market on line, he’s a character and has a proper Instagram feed. Last thing I bought? A 1950s stapler, because they don’t fall apart. Read the interview on MagCulture with Neal, see here.
• The Peasant at 240 St John Street is a proper old Victorian landmark corner pub.  Mine’s an IPA. And they do decent lunches, plus there’s a posh restaurant upstairs and they show the football during the world cup. I’m a Chelsea fan. Have been to Arsenal but not the new stadium.

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Jeremy Leslie: “People used to argue that you need three to four issues to judge, but I think you need about 10. If your magazine is still going after 10 issues, then you’ve grown into your skin.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

View point
There are many reasons to say, “I love magazines”, but Jeremy explains that, “What drew me to magazines is the way content and writing come together. It fascinates me the way two different mags can deal with a story – such as a celebrity interview or an in-depth news report – in totally different ways according to their point of view, their visual intent and the character of the magazine.”

He admits there’s always a favourite. “Longstanding it’s the New Yorker, but my favourite of newer magazines is probably The Plant. Carol Monpart, its editor, spoke at a magCulture event recently and you can’t beat hearing about a magazine from the people behind it. Plus, it’s a very good quarterly magazine. It’s interesting because it came from left field. It’s taken a while before it has become very good – this is the 12^thissue. People used to argue that you need three to four issues to judge, but I think you need about 10. If your magazine is still going after 10 issues, then you’ve grown into your skin.”

So who visits MagCulture? Jeremy is used to this sort of probing. “There is no typical customer. Two things people always ask is ‘Who is your customer?’ and ‘What’s the best selling magazine?’. Both very hard to answer. Mags are so varied in frequency and type – with people it’s the same. They are all ages. We get a lot of people from abroad – using MagCulture as more of a destination. We also get quite a lot of people wondering in.” It’s the steady flow of people and the joy of discovering new magazines that keeps Jeremy and his team busy. “There are part-timers including event producer Stephanie Hartman and a team of writers for the online journal,” he explains, plus magCulture shop manager Jamie Atherton,

Jeremy may be a mag super fan but he’s also a pragmatic example of a portfolio operator. As well as running magCulture and his design studio, Jeremy is also the creative director for a Luxemburg publisher. “I’m out there once a month and deal with them on a daily basis. We also do a lot of web design, and recently redesigned a logo for Noble Rot, a magazine with a wine bar on Lamb’s Conduit Street,” he says.

If you’re curious about magazines, or want to see this much-talked about Islington-based shop, then you need to make a visit to Jeremy Leslie’s magCulture by heading to St John’s Street to select at title. Or if you want a better insider view then join one of the monthly magCulture meets, attracting 40-50 people, where an editor or art director talks about their latest issue.

MagCulture also runs magazine masterclasses, known as the Flatplan (a magazine insider joke) which focus on how to launch your own magazine whatever your role – art director, distributor, printer, social media expert.

• MagCulture, 270 St John Street, EC1V 4PE @magCulture #magcultureshop #magcultureevents https://magculture.com
• Visit the website and magCulture journal/blog Magculture.com for reviews of six to eight new magazines each week.
• Go to the monthly magCulture meets. Buy a ticket to get a beer, a talk and a discount on the mag.
• Look out for the modern magazine conference (known as ModMag) at Conway Hall on 1 November 2018. 

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thanks to Anne Coddington who suggested Islington Faces interviewed magCulture.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Former corporate lawyer Isatu Funna explains how childhood memories of her grandmother and Sierra Leone beaches led her to open Dar Leone, in Angel, selling a globally inspired range of interior and lifestyle products. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Isatu Funna at her shop, Dar Leone on Chadwell Street near Angel. “Dar – means house in Arabic. Tonnes of houses in Morocco have this word Dar as their address, and I have a good friend from Dar es Salasm, Tanzania. Leone is for myself as I grew up in Sierra Leone and went to school there until I was 15.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“Dar Leone is inspired by memories of a tremendously happy childhood. For me the highlight was Lumley beach and the Atlantic ocean,” says Isatu Funna leaning on the shop counter. That seaside memory is why her shop has the carefree feel of holidays with its starfish logo and brightly-coloured fishing rope window display. For fun Isatu has hung up signs measuring the distance to Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, and the Banana Islands (3,124 miles) – again offering clues about her colour-infused West African design influences.

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Isatu was born in the States, grew up in Sierra Leone where she went to high school until she was 15 years old. “Then my family moved to the US so I did college in Maine, at Bowdoin.” This was followed by law school in Louisiana.” Although she longs to go and visit Sierra Leone, most big family gatherings are held in the southern part of the US.

“My Freetown sign gets a lot of attention,” says Isatu looking around this unique Islington design emporium. By the entrance there’s a wooden marquetry cabinet filled with sparkling Vive l’Afrique slogan cosmetic bags and African-inspired jewellery. On top of the cabinet stand glistening glass vases from Mexico, while on the velvet covered chairs (her design, known as Cirque Musa after the 14^thcentury Sultan of Mali, Mansa Musi, famed for being the richest person in history) are a pile of bright Tunisian foots (sarongs). The walls are papered in custom-made wallpaper inspired by traditional Sierra Leone country cloth patterns and then hung with raffia decorated mirrors. The whole is a riot of colour – wash bags named after tropical fruit (think coconut brown, soursop lime or jackfruit green), a beaded stool from the Cameroon that took three months to make and a shelf of giant, brightly-coloured cushions.

It’s truly a taste of traditional West African pattern with unexpected dashes of colour, but with a look and feel which Isatu explains just didn’t exist anywhere else. “I looked around when shopping for décor for my own home [she’d just moved from Berlin with her husband, who is German, and had just got a job in London]. We’d moved to Hampstead and I wanted something that reflected a more heritage view of west African textiles with a contemporary twist in terms of colour and methods of production.”

“You see a lot of Dutch wax prints everywhere, it’s what’s thought of as African fabric, but it’s never been my favourite. I wanted to harken back to my grandmother’s time who lived in one of the furthest villages, close to the Liberian border, and would have known and worn geometric textiles, often quite simple stripes, woven and hand-dyed, which we call country cloth.”

Isatu’s grandmother, Manua, was born in the 1900s but died in the 1980s. Talking about her, Isatu’s face clouds as she adds, “the sad thing is that we don’t know how she died as the war had just started in that area. After the civil war a lot of the artisan crafts people and skills were lost. At first my goal was to represent new African designs. When I first started I ordered quite a few current types of country cloth but what is currently made is not the same quality as you can see if you compare to the traditional textiles from Sierra Leone in the British Museum,” says Isatu adding that, “there are charities which are trying to revive the skills, but we’re not quite there yet. So, my aim has evolved and now my stock is a contemporary reimagining of west African textiles.”

Despite her confident design flair, opening this shop in November 2015 was a huge career change for Isatu, who’d spent her career in the US working as a lawyer in corporate securities, a profession her parents approved of.

“I thought my skills lay in analysing and business or law, I never thought I had any creative spark. Perhaps it’s because I came from a very traditional African family? The idea was I’d go on to do something in business or law and the idea of this would not have been considered so worthy by my father. I’m a late starter to this wonderful job! But I’ve no regrets about leaving law, and no regrets about going to law school as it develops your critical thinking skills which you can use is so many other avenues,” says Isatu.

Isatu Funna: “I am creative director of Dar Leone. For textile design I do work with illustrators who render my ideas for graphics which then go to a design agency, to be worked up on Photoshop and then a digital print is test printed. We may or not tweak it further.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

At this point she lifts on to the counter a 30cm high wooden carving of a man-at-work from the Ivory Coast which from the end of the colonial era were passed from father to child as a very clear sign about what career they expect their offspring to follow – soldier, judge, doctor, cook. Symbolically Isatu has stocked these figures since day one and this one is extra quirky, it looks as if he is a photographer.

“Angel is the right location in terms of where I thought our products would be of interest. We wouldn’t work everywhere but I really like the mix of people based in Islington.  It seems to attract a really diverse, and quite young population. I like the proximity to Angel Central and this Angel building on St John Street which has a lot of companies and young creatives working there. We also get people from the neighbourhood and long-time residents of the squares around here too and we are close to Amwell Street which has always been a favourite spot for independent shops.”

Isatu Funna: “We opened Dar Leone three years ago (November 2015). It’s gone stunningly fast: it feels like we opened yesterday. We have this beaded stool from Cameroon that take three months to make. And there are Tunisian foutar towels which featured in the Independent as some of the 12 best hammam towels. They sell really well in the shop and on line. You can go to the beach with them, they are lightweight and dry easily in the sun so you don’t have to wait for ages. Also, they can be used for tablecloths and as a throw on the bed and picnic with the kids and as a papoose to carry your baby. It’s suitable for everything in life, really, really useful.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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Places Isatu Funna likes in Islington

• Exmouth market – I like the mix of restaurants. cuisine and the street food market. Pizza Pilgrims has good eats.
• I go to Upper Street quite a bit.
• The butcher next door, Turner and George, at 399 St John Street is fantastic. I really lucked out with them as my retail neighbours. The last thing I bought there was Pluma-Iberico rare breed pork. It was delicious.
• For lunch I tend to pop next door to Abokado on 398 St John Street – I can’t really leave the shop for too long. But if I’m feeling adventurous I go to the Lebanese canteen, Hummus Brothers, at 62 Exmouth Market for a humus bowl with chicken.

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As a newby to business only three years ago Isatu now has plenty of tips for anyone wanting to open a shop. She says: “Try and speak to other people in your industry as much as possible. People can be quite cadgy, but I wish I had known many, many things. I started with no idea of retail as I had no experience of working in a shop or even how to decorate a shop and design your windows. I just thought you open it and they will come,” she says with a laugh but, “you really have to learn how to convert passing trade into actual trade. In the beginning we didn’t really focus on the window, but you need to have people be able to see it from where the Prêt on St John Street is, displaying things that are saturated in colour.”

Already Dar Leone has been featured in a host of design mags and “many sales were generated from our Senegal baskets being mentioned in the Guardian. You just never know what’s going to catch the public’s imagination,” says Isatu happily.

• Dar Leone, 1 Chadwell Street, EC1R 1UX
• @darleone info@dar-leone.com 07889 389670
• For products on sale online (and info, eg, July and August opening times: 12 noon – 5pm Tuesday – Saturday), see https://www.dar-leone.com

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Meet Highbury local Robert Marco who runs the shabby-chic T-Bird bar on Blackstock Road, which is famous for its juke box and the times a less-well known Ed Sheeran did acoustic sessions in the downstairs bar. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.

Robert Marco at T-Bird, the family bar that used to be a shop where his mum took him to buy children’s clothes. “My parents are Italian. They met when mum lived on Liverpool Road with her aunt and my dad in Angel.Now everyone likes coffee, but my family always appreciated it. Here at T-Bird we make very good coffee.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Robert Marco, 31, is in a dark Fred Perry top leaning on the long wooden bar at T-Bird, a cosy bar located on the corner of Monsell and Blackstock Road, N4. It’s a curious place – as Tripadvisor points out – long and thin with two huge ceiling pipes decorated with fairy lights which Robert explains are an extractor and a fan installed to circulate the air back in the days when smoking was allowed indoors. Scattered around are an assortment of comfy chairs and sofas some facing towards a large screen, which shows all the Sky football games, but with a distinct preference for Arsenal. Opposite the staircase to the ground floor bar is the infamous juke box.

>FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week.

“We’re quite known for the music on our juke box. There are more than 1,000 tracks and a lot of stuff is from my Dad’s era, ’70s and ’80s – The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin. I haven’t really updated the jute box, so the most modern music is early 2000s Indie. I’m quite particular about what we put on there,” says Robert who began managing the bar when he was 21 and has now been at T-Bird for 10 years.

“Shops used to have the owners’ name so when it was converted into a bar about 1998 it just sort of stuck. My dad used to be best friends with the previous owner, John, (who passed in 2001). The former owner’s wife, who was also local, kept it going for a few years. Then in 2005 my family got it, and I’ve run it since 2008, more or less.

In fact, Robert’s connection with T-Bird goes way back. He even remembers his Mum taking him to T-Bird when it was a clothes shop selling children’s items, ladies underwear and hosiery.

Robert, the youngest of three boys, was born at Whittington Hospital, then raised on Gillespie Road.  “My parents are Italian. They met when mum lived on Liverpool Road with her aunt and my dad in Angel. Mum was a dressmaker and dad a mechanical engineer/electrician who worked in Trocadero arcade. We used to go to the Italian church where my parents were married. I can get by in Italian and still go there all the time to see her family who live just outside Naples.  Now everyone likes coffee, but my family always appreciated it. Even here at T-Bird we make very good coffee.”

Robert went to Gillespie Primary (Head: Jake Herbst) and then Highbury Grove (Head: Truda White). He’s an Arsenal supporter, explaining that, “My old bedroom window overlooked the North Bank stand so you’d see the fans walking up the staircase to the upper tier. Arsenal was the only team you could support!”

My close group of friends are locals – one I met at primary school and the rest are all from Highbury Grove which he left in 2003 to study an English Literature degree at the University of Hertfordshire. “I didn’t know what to do, but I was good at English – reading four books a week for my degree I think university took the joy of reading out of me,” he says. He’s still a reader though and currently enjoying The Witcher (fantasy book), originally Polish but translated, “almost like the Game of Thrones.”

Robert Marco at T-Bird: “Islington has a definite feel of a village and community. You know people especially if you live and work in the same area.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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5 places Robert Marco likes in Islington

• I’ve always liked Highbury Fields. I used to play football there as it’s one of closest bits of parkland round here, and I still do a kick about. On Tuesdays do a five a side tournament at Edmonton.
• Locally I like Yildiz, 163 Blackstock Road and go there quite a lot. I always get kofta, you can’t go wrong with any Turkish food. I go quite often to Cinnamon Village – I’ve been having jacket potato with chicken, avocado and bacon. It’s a nice loaded meal.
• Recently I’ve been going to the Brewhouse & Kitchen at 2a Corsica Street, Highbury Corner. It’s a good location and they have a lot of craft beers. At T-Bird a lot of people say they walk past on the way to work everyday and finally come in.
• The greengrocer on Blackstock Road is always handy – I get my veg there. Now they do a bit more than fruit and veg it’s always good for a snack. I do love a mango.
• My brothers own a garage around the corner, Mountgrove Garage next to Sage (café), on Mountgrove Road.

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T-Bird on Blackstock Road for music, dance, juke box, comedy, rentals and football. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“Growing up in Islington I didn’t think I’d run a bar here, but I sort of fell into it and have never looked back,” says Robert who lives just off Monsell Road. “It’s not a pub and never going to be one. The nature of it being a former shop means it has a unique charm,” he says listing the events run in T-Bird’s basement bar on Thursdays swing dance classes, Friday it’s free comedy, and occasional other events, often music. Recently 30 people packed in to join an Arts Council-funded experimental making music with anything that would not be considered an instrument but somehow turned it into an instrument, like tin cans.

“And Ed Sheeran used to perform here for an acoustic night on Thursdays. They were all quite good musicians, but he was stand out,” says Robert. “He used to perform You need me, I don’t need you(which has the bitter sweet lament of a singer-songwriter trying to make a living, ‘I’ve done around about 1,000 shows but I haven’t got a house, I live on the couch’).

“Being a barman is about being a bit sociable and trying to make people feel comfortable. The business part is just common sense. We do basic snacks – crisps and nuts – so people can bring food in from local business Yard sale pizza, the Turkish restaurant opposite, and Zing Zing up the road. Takes the burden off us from having to have a kitchen,” explains Robert. And on match days there are a lot of Arsenal fans.

Robert is keen to help bring more people into T-Bird. He’s in the process of getting new taps so there will be 14 craft beers and some cask ale. Before the World Cup he installed new TV screens and got Sky Sports for new football season. He’s also busy on Instagram calling it, “my favourite social media. I like the way I quickly snap something up on their story feature, that’s handy.”

Robert Marco at T-Bird which shows all the Sky football games but is also a cosy bar. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“We did a film here with Transition Highbury, back in December 2017, a documentary called Cowspiracy (about beef and dairy farming). They brought own projector and put up a screen. So I am aware of impact you have and what you can do to improve – we’ve got a load of plastic straws still, I’ve just got to run them down but I don’t bother putting them in the glass anymore,” he says pragmatically.

If you haven’t yet been to T-Bird and are now tempted either to try out the often free events, for a quiet pint / cheeky Aperol or to hire a party space, be sure to have a go on the juke box. It’s £1 for five songs, the only snag is that it takes old pound coins, so you’ll need to swap your good quid with a bad one from behind the bar.

• Find T-Bird at 132 Blackstock Road, N4, opens 5pm http://www.tbirdbar.co.uk Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tbirdbar/
• INSTAGRAM: @tbirdbar
• Mon – closed
• Tues – Sky football on the screens
• Wed – music event (check times)
• Thursday – swing dance classes.
• Fridays – comedy (starts 8pm)
• Sat – quite often private hires
• Sunday – sometimes afternoon music events (collective of female DJs).
• T-Bird is often looking for casual bar staff.

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Mary Stevens (c) islington faces

Q: Why did you pick Islington to live in?
A: Our main criterion was somewhere along what was then the North London Line as we had family in Finsbury Park and Finchley Road (although neither my partner nor I grew up in central London) and most of our friends were in Hackney. I was working at UCL when we moved here, so it was really convenient. But we were planning to move to Newington Green, it was only by chance that we found somewhere in Highbury. My great-great aunt lived on Baalbec Road in the 1920s, I later found out, so it felt like we’d picked a good spot.

Community apple trees on a green space off Hamilton Park West, N5, pruned thanks to the skills of Mary Stevens. Mary’s also used the Nextdoor online group to encourage people to water their nearest street trees during the long hot and dry summer (c) islington faces

Q: Share a few things you’ve done during your 10 years in Highbury Barn that have been fulfilling

• I’ve been a Governor at Ambler Primary School, on Blackstock Road, for 8 years (and seen my daughter go all the way through the Children’s Centre there). It’s been amazing to see the journey the school has been on, from coming out of special measures to last year’s Outstanding rating. I’m really proud to have been part of that journey.
• In both the Islington places I’ve lived, I’ve helped organise summer parties for all the neighbours. It’s not complicated and everyone wants to help, someone just needs to get things going. Last year on our estate we planned a 2-hour shared lunch in the car park at the front and 4 hours later it was still going. It was so rewarding seeing all the children playing together outside.
• There is so much we can do to make our neighbourhood greener. Even though I’m not much of a gardener I’ve planted lavender on an empty communal bed and it’s gone from a cat toilet to a haven for bees (and an opportunity to explain all about the Great British Bee Count to our neighbours…). This winter I learned to prune fruit trees with the London Orchard Project and have pruned all the apple trees in the common parts of the estate, and planted a couple more. Seeing them thrive and bear fruit makes me very happy. They’re not yet on the fruit tree map I made for Transition Highbury a few years ago but I’d love to see someone take that on.

• 5 Boys in Highbury Barn (address: 17 Highbury Park, N5). It’s the most extraordinary shop and I’m in there almost every day. See the interview with the shop’s owners, Subhash and Urvashi Patel, here.
• Vagabond Coffee Shop on 105 Holloway Road. Both Oliver and I use it as a second office.
• Gillespie Park. It’s a haven for wildlife – and an inspiration for campaigners.
• The Central Library. I was unemployed for about seven months, studying with the OU (open university) and writing job applications. The library was an amazing refuge then, and it’s wonderful that it’s open until 8pm so many days and at the weekends. We borrow novels, political books, OS maps, guide books. It’s brilliant.
• The Union Chapel. World class music venue, with a social purpose, on our doorstep.

In conclusion
Volunteering and Scottish dancing (the latter perhaps in jest) have long been touted as the two things that give you contentment and a way to meet people. Islington is the home of NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) and also the wonderful Islington Giving. But doing things in the neighbourhood doesn’t have to be formalised – even just saying hello to your neighbours, picking up stray bits of litter or pouring some washing up water on to your nearest street tree is a fabulous start. When life is busy and/or complicated it can be hard to see how you can find anymore time to do anything for anyone else. But it’s still worth giving it a go. So here’s an appeal for more of us to  join in locally more, just like Mary. And here’s a goodbye from Islington Faces, Bristol is lucky to have you and family.

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Chairman of the trustees of Finsbury Park mosque, Mohammed Kozbar, discusses the many ways the mosque interacts with the local community and the Muslims who worship there. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.

Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of Finsbury Park mosque: “Hate crime and Islamophobia should never have a place in our society.” Photo Kimi Gill for Islington Faces.

Come out of Finsbury Park tube and the first significant landmark is Arsenal’s replica sportswear shop. Cross the Seven Sisters Road and you’ll soon see another famous Islington building, Finsbury Park mosque. Opened in 1994, this five storey red-brick building with its golden dome isn’t an architectural gem, indeed part of the building is covered by a huge poster with the very positive message, “And we have made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other. Quran 49:13.” But it plays a huge part in thousands of people’s lives.

>FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week.

Islington locals know the mosque as a quiet place which hums with prayer-goers on Friday lunchtimes (women and men pray separately but every other activity is mixed) and there are crowds of Muslim families at Ramadan. But it hasn’t always been this way. The mosque had a very bleak period when it was run by radical cleric Abu Hamza openly preaching extremism.

Then in 2003 the mosque was raided. At the same time Abu Hamza was arrested. He was subsequently extradited and is now serving a life sentence in a US prison.

By 2005 Finsbury Park Mosque, on St Thomas’s Road, had entered a very different era. It was taken over by a new team, headed by Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of the trustees of Finsbury Park Mosque.

“It was a difficult challenge. No doubt about that. Because of this particular situation here during the Abu Hamza period and the problems facing not only the Muslim community but wider as well, including our neighbours. Everybody was affected by what’s happened here, therefore it was important to sort out the problem. I was member of The Muslim Association of Britain and as a mainstream grassroots organisation we decided to go ahead and get involved.  At that time the organisation had been approached by different people including the police, charity commission and local MP Jeremy Corbyn to try and help sort out the problem here,” says Mohammed (also known as Mr Kozbar) from his office in the mosque. It’s a shoes off environment but Mohammad is in stripey shirt and jeans. He’s originally from Lebanon, but has been based in the UK since 1990.

Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of Finsbury Park mosque.  Photo Kimi Gill for Islington Faces.

Mohammed’s main job is running a property company, but at least two days a week he comes to Finsbury Park, “voluntarily to help run the mosque. It’s a lot of time. I’m glad that I have the flexibility to do that, it’s important to make sure the organisation is running in the best possible way.”

It’s a busy place. There are five prayers held each day, and every day about 250 men and women join the prayers – that’s more than 1,000 people every day. During Ramadan and Friday prayers there can be around 2,000 people.

Mohammed is not the mosque’s imam. But as chairman he’s in charge of the mosque’s activities and the main employer. What’s impressive is that under his watch the mosque has become a force for good.

“It’s not just a mosque any more with prayers, it’s a community centre now too, servicing the whole community Muslims and wider society,” he explains. “It opens its doors to everybody for their different activities – homeless help, youth, women, counselling and inter-faith activities. We are proud that this is the case and that eryone is welcome and can come and visit the mosque any time.”

Since the van attack on Finsbury Park Mosque worshippers in 2017, many local N4 households (around Finsbury Park and Stroud Green) still have posters pinned up saying “united against all terror” as a reminder of the local solidarity for their Muslim neighbours.

“We have an excellent relationship with our local Muslim community and our local residents. They stand with us when we have a difficult time,” he says. It is heartening to know that the mosque is confident that it has local support and Mohammed is aware that this support is given even during difficult times.

“The relationship with our neighbours is really positive. We listen to them when they have issues or concerns. But we never have had problems. They stood with us even when somebody Islamophobic attacked the mosque and at other times – we’ve had the pig’s head dumped in the mosque, white powder, an arson attack and so on. Then when we had this terrorist attack last year (2017) hundreds of people gathered outside the mosque, many non Muslims. Some of them even gave us donations and flowers. This gives us a good impression about how our neighbours feel about the mosque.”

For the first time, just after that terrorist van attack, an iftar (breaking the fast evening meal during Ramadan) was held outside the Mosque in St Thomas’ Road. It was such a success – with a long white cloth laden with curries – that a second was held this year (2018).

“There were 2,000 at the iftar gathering in the street,” says Mohammed, impressed.  “People not only came from Islington, many came from outside the borough. We are proud that we have such a beautiful community who supported us. We shared food. We had speeches and people enjoyed the day. These sort of projects bring us together.” It’s also the type of event that he hopes other mosques will start to do during Ramadan.

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Finsbury Park mosque is a place of worship and a neighbourhood hub offering community space for youth clubs, homeless people and inter-faith gatherings. (c) islington faces

Places Mohammad Kozbar likes in Islington 

• My lunch is usually from Blackstock Road opposite the mosque. It’s a very busy street. I eat kebab, fried chicken, different things – Turkish, Algerian, Somali and African food. Unfortunately, Finsbury Park doesn’t have a Lebanese restaurant! My wife loves cooking and is very good. I sometimes cook when my wife is away but not complicated food, simple things.
• Sometimes if there are small things the mosque need, we buy from local shops around the Mosque. When we want to buy furniture, we go online and check for the best prices. But we try out best to keep business circulating in Islington. This is why we quite a few of our 10 employees are from Islington and our volunteers too (around 30).
• We go to Finsbury Park to enjoy the sun. Our youth play football there too.
• We used to hire the swimming pool at Highbury Corner for our youth, but stopped for lack of funding.
• We do some projects with Arsenal FC. We have a very good relationship. Most of our community here support Arsenal. A few of our youth groups have visited Arsenal and many are inspired by the players. We would love one day for some of these players to visit the Mosque and meet with these young people. I also support Arsenal and so do my children. I’ve been to both stadiums. Last game I saw was an FA cup match – Arsenal won.

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Mohammed Kozbar at Finsbury Park mosque. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces.

Standing together
“The good thing about Islington is we have a very diverse community,” points out Mohammed. “During the holy month of Ramadan we have a lot of people coming to the area and we try to keep people quiet and not to disturb our neighbours. I don’t mind concerts held in the area (eg, in Finsbury Park during the summer such as Community, Wireless etc), as long as people behave well and are not causing any problem to the local community. People like to enjoy themselves in their own way. We celebrate Eid after Ramadan and we have 1000s of people to celebrate that day and that’s fine as long as people behave well. Same thing for others.”

Finsbury Park hugs a main road and has a reputation as rather a dirty and littered place. But in an effort to ensure the area is kept tidy Mohammed says that, “during Ramadan we arrange with council to have a daily collection – as we are feeding 300 people for food every day.  It’s important to make sure we keep the area clean and tidy and not disturb our local community to make our relationship a strength and become more strong. At the end of the day this will effect whatever happens in the future as we still expect people to behave towards our mosque in a racist or islamphoboic way. It’s happened before, but we know that the people of Islington are not that kind of people and they will stand with us. As they did before.”

Everyone who uses public transport is familiar with the “see it, say it, sorted,” announcements to combat surprise bomb attacks. But at the mosque there is the added concern that attacks have already “happened many times at the mosque and for individuals. This is a fact and we have to deal with that. We have to take extra measures to protect our community and our mosque and make sure nobody gets hurt. But you can’t be always successful in protecting people from harm. If someone intends to harm you then they will do whatever they can. What we need to do is take every step possible to protect our community and mosque through security measures and liaising with police. But anything might happen. We have to be prepared for it. We shouldn’t panic. We should deal in a professional way.”

“We have an excellent relationship with our local partners (Islington Council, Islington Police, our local MP Jeremy Corbyn and Islington Faiths Forum), we work together for the safety and prosperity of our local communities here in Islington,” says Mohammed. “Women are the most vulnerable because they are visible with head scarf and the perpetrators think they are the easy target. Some women come in tears because of Islamophobic attacks. They say, ‘we can’t come to mosque, take our children out to school or use public transport, we can not live our normal life anymore’. It effects lives and relationships and changes the way people live.  It’s not easy for someone who feels something might happen to them or might suddenly shout at them. But I can say our community is resilient, we don’t get scared easily or give up our way of life. Our message is live your way of life as you want to live it, don’t let these people change your way of life, don’t be scared. Live the same way as you used to live and make sure you take all the extra precautions.  We live in the UK. We are British citizens. We should feel safe and secure. We shouldn’t feel that we are not safe in our country. And of course the police has a role to play. Hate crime and Islamophobia should never have a place in our society.”

Faith is a key focus of course, but Mohammed also wants the mosque to be able “to give more attention to our youth, boys and girls. We want our youth to stay away from four things – drugs, crimes/knives, gangs and extremism. This is why we try our best to encourage our young people to come here and have a healthy atmosphere in the mosque and away from people outside who try to brainwash them.  It’s the responsibility of us as community leaders and at all places of worship. We should all work together to make sure these young people are protected and not vulnerable.”

As a result, there are youth groups meeting twice a week and people are also encouraged to volunteer. “As we have a very diverse communities, we give the opportunity to all, for example, at the weekend the mosque is open for communities gatherings of Bengali, Kurds, Arabs, Albanians, Somalis and Eritreans and many others. They come here as families to enjoy themselves. This is a mosque, it’s open for all. We treat everybody the same. This is the most important thing,” he adds.

Finsbury Park Mosque also opens its doors to the homeless community every Thursday. “It’s not about only feeding them. We give them the opportunity to socialise, play table tennis, snooker, receive counselling and have fun,” says Mohammed.

If you only know Finsbury Park Mosque by its presence on the national news or through Wikipedia it might seem a daunting place. But for those of us based in Islington – and of course worshippers from further afield – the truth couldn’t be more different. The mosque is a friendly, generous neighbour that takes its societal and faith responsibilities seriously. We are lucky to have people like Mohammed Kozbar creating such a strong community feel in Finsbury Park.

• http://finsburyparkmosque.org/about-us/
• 7-11 St Thomas’s Rd, London N4 2QH

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Many people suggested interviewing Mohammad Kozbar, including Dorothy Newton.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Stand up paddleboarding is the fastest growing watersport in the world – and you can learn it in Islington thanks to SUP queen, Rosie Markwick. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Rosie Markwick who runs standup paddleboarding (SUP) at Islington Boat Club. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“I live with my two best friends from school in Canonbury on Essex Road. When I was about 16 trying to go to the Upper Street pubs, to live in the N1 postcode was mine and my friends’ dream. We’re collectively living our dream together,” says Rosie Marwick with a characteristic smile. She’s nursing a latte while meeting Islington Faces at her unofficial office, a corner of Appestat with the best view of Camden Passage.

>FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week.

Despite her London roots – Rosie spent her early years in Stoke Newington, then went to Fortismere Secondary School in Muswell Hill – she is keen to get us all outside more. And the way she’s doing that is by running stand up paddle boarding (SUP) and SUP yoga on Regent’s Canal, just behind Angel.

“I did loads of water sports when I was younger and because my dad is half Canadian we went on these fun wilderness trips for a couple of summer holidays to Algonquin Park which is home to moose and bears, explains Rosie. “Hackney Downs was the most nature we had and then we’d be in a national park that’s 7,653km²– about twice the size of Wales. We loved it. The first time we went I was about 10 (I’m the eldest of three girls) and my little sister was 5. The last trip we made there was when I was 18. I always swam a lot too. I was in Middlesex county team. By 16 I wanted to not smell of chlorine anymore on nights out. So I stopped being a water baby for a little while…”

Rosie Markwick and her band of SUP paddleboarders are very instagrammable. She’s often in the shots – during 2017 Rosie reckons that over 7 months (approx. 28 weeks) she paddled on the Regent’s Canal about 20km per week, clocking up 560km. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Two years ago (2016) Rosie was in Bali when she first had a go at paddleboarding on a lagoon between two islands.

“I’d just done yoga teacher training and thought that SUP looked fun. It was one of those things which from the beginning, for no apparent reason, I could just sort of do. I was able to do it straight away whereas yoga took years. It felt like I was meant to be doing it. I then did a SUP yoga class the next day and was joking to my friend that this is my dharma (yoga word for life’s purpose!) so I thought it would be fun to do a SUP yoga teacher training course. I remember my Mum saying, ‘is this relevant or useful’? Then I came back to London for a few months and met Islington Boat Club. It was really serendipitous. I was one day off the plane and the boat club said we’re running a competition, the prize is a SUP yoga class, can you teach it?”

Rosie Markwick by the Water Gipsy which has a yoga studio. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

When the competition winners didn’t show up for their prize one of the boat club staffers, Chris, asked Rosie if she wanted to set up a paddle boarding club. I thought why not? They’d got all these emails of people who wanted to use the paddleboards. So I did some SUP yoga and realised that I wanted to do the full BSUPA training and started teaching little bit of paddle boarding two summers ago when I was 26. That was the pilot. It was all done via Facebook before our fancy booking system.

That winter Rosie was back in Bali teaching yoga and SUP yoga and building up her SUP skills. “Every single morning I’d go down really early and paddle the kilometre between two islands. Apparently it was really dangerous and the current meant you’d paddle all the way out on your right arm and all the way back on your left. There was a point on this crossing which was a bit scary, but I’d just look at the island and soon the water would change from black to tropical turquoise and you’d paddle with turtles. Then I’d paddle back, set the ropes up and teach SUP yoga and also yoga to travellers, tourists and people on their gap years.

Then in London in February 2017 and because the pilot had been “quite successful,” Rosie knew she “wanted to try and set something more permanent at Islington Boat Club. I did this big proposal. I remember walking down the canal, when it was really cold and having this really odd feeling, real excitement, because I knew we were going to start something really special.”

How to paddleboard
SUP on the canal involves getting the basic balance and steering skills on your knees. You then progress to standing and the canal’s all yours. During the summer Rosie runs intro lessons and 60min and 90 min canal tours on Wednesday evenings, Saturdays and all day Sunday (check out the times on the website here). https://www.islingtonboatclub.com/stand-up-paddleboarding-sup

“It’s really amazing the people who’ve decided to come along. During 2017, there were 256 people who tried SUP, from age 11 to one of our Upper Deckers, who was 65.  This year I’ve got more canal clean ups organised and adventures planned in Netherlands, Croatia and south of France. There’s loads we can do on our canal,” says Rosie who wants to organise another adventure paddle down to Limehouse and up the River Lea up Hackney Wick soon.

Rosie Markwick’s SUP business is set up as a social enterprise so profits go into Islington Boat Club. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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6 places Rosie Markwick loves in Islington

• Candid Café – it’s like a secret place and they serve wine. Address: 3 Torrens Street, EC1
• The most obvious one of all time is the Towpath Cafe by Regent’s Canal (off De Beauvoir Crescent, N1). I should have shares in it: I love it completely and wholely. And the food is genuinely the best in London. If I’m ever to get married, then I want them to make the food.
• I love a relaxed paddle, then yoga, and maybe even a hot tug after at Islington Boat Club. Try yourself at Hot Tug UK, 16-35 Graham Street, N1
• Appestat, 102 Islington High Street. It’s great for working and meetings. I’m here a lot. I’ve got a latte today, but I’d prefer an oatmeal latte. I often teach early in morning so I like a big brunch here or at one of the zillions of Islington brunch places. I eat a lot of avocado on toast and I’m a big fan of tea and cake before paddle. And then I eat dinner after.
• Love going to the Life Centre, 1-7 Britannia Row to do yoga, on a Monday. Really important part of my week. It’s a check in point of quietness. Just next to Planet Organic.
• The pub I love is the King’s Head at 115 Upper Street. My dad used to do shows there. I went as a kid a lot when I was younger and then didn’t go much. Recently I went to see a play Gypsy Kings, part of queer week – me and Tom (my partner) and every single gay couple in Islington.

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Rosie Markwick leads SUP expeditions and SUP yoga classes from her SUP centre at Islington Boat Club, just behind Angel. “You might fall in. I’ve never fallen in but I’ve actively chosen to get in the canal. I’ve had a few near knocks from people on the SUP boards. There’s nothing worse than being in a position of leadership and then someone bumping you from behind. I feel I have to stay on!” Pic by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Wilderness activities
“If you do something that is a little bit on the edge of your physical comfort zone, and is in nature, your mind has this feedback that ‘I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that, what else can I overcome’? It happens in a small way on Islington in the canal. One thing I notice is the depth of conversations and openness that being on the water seems to inspire. By the time we’ve paddled to Wenlock Basin we are really into good stuff. That’s about seven minutes away from the boat club. It’s not just conversations I’m having, I hear other people having these deep chats – and I don’t believe they’d have that having just met someone so quickly,” says Rosie explaining why she’s such a fan of outdoor adventure activities. It’s an aspect of her SUP job she’s keen to tie up with the psychology she studied at Edinburgh and Melbourne university. Indeed her most recent blog takes a hard look at  Wallace J Nichols notion of  ‘blue mind’, how water therapy and how being on and near water makes our brain produce more serotonin and relaxing. I see it all the time.” Read more about Rosie’s thoughts on why we all love being by the water on the Summersalt blog https://summersaltyoga.com/blog/why-we-all-love-being-by-the-water/

Rosie Markwick: “When I go out paddling on a beautiful evening and the water is really clean I feel really proud to show it off.” Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Rosie’s endless good cheer is a huge draw for anyone who joins her yoga class at the Water Gypsy, or tries out SUP yoga and/or SUP along the Regent’s Canal. Spending so much time outside in Islington’s largest outdoor area – City Road Basin and the canal – clearly is a way to be happy. “Doing SUP has changed the way London is as a place to live as I’m able to experience being out on the water in nature – it’s deeply healing – in a city like London. When you start picking up rubbish in the canal, when I go out paddling on a beautiful evening and the water is really clean I feel really proud to show it off. It’s a beautiful resource to be able to float around and watch the sunset go off over east London… you want that to stay being lovely, especially when you see the little baby ducklings and the terrapins.”

Rosie’s childhood dream about the perfect home location is slightly revised now, “For half the year I would love to be on a beach or somewhere close to a big body of water and for the other half in Islington as close to the canal as possible.”

• Islington Boat Club, 16-35 Graham Street, N1 https://www.islingtonboatclub.com/stand-up-paddleboarding-sup
• For private sessions, parties and corporate groups email sup@islingtonboatclub.copm
• SUP @ Islington Boat Club is on Facebook here
• Rosie also teaches yoga on the Water Gypsy barge at Islington Boat Club. Schedule here One class £10, four £35 and eight £65 on Tuesdays, 7-8pm.
• During 2018 Rosie runs SUP & Yoga Retreats in Holland (14-17 June), Croatia (July) and the South of France (21-26 Oct). For info email rosiermarkwick@gmail.com
• More info about Islington Boat Club on their website including trustee and job vacancies.

Here’s Rosie Markwick with Nicola Baird from Islington Faces at Islington Boat Club. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com.

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Here’s hoping you already know that Islington has its very own farm, Freightliners Farm. It’s a place for city people to get up close and personal with animals, and come to terms with anxiety and loneliness. Find out more from farm manager Liz McAllister. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Liz McAllister, Freightliners Farm manager. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Stepping through the heavy gates at Freightliners Farm you enter another Islington. Expect the geese and Indian runner ducks in their pond enclosure to welcome you by raising the alarm. Soon you’ll notice a riot of plants, colours, scents and sounds that make it hard to believe you are still in central London’s N7 in the year 2018. And in this early autumn season you can also walk under the orchard trees, watch hens peck at windfall apples, measure yourself against a sunflower, stroke a cow, admire goats… It’s a magical chance to meet animals and see the ways farmers diversify and one Islingtonians of all ages can benefit from.

Liz McAllister, Freightliners Farm manager. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“Most people have an idyllic idea about what farmers do,” says Liz McAllister who has been the Farm Manager at Freightliners since 2001. “I often have people say it’s ‘so relaxing here’, but it’s work, and comes with stresses and strains just like any job. This is not a hobby, you can’t say today ‘I don’t want to do the watering or look after the animals’. It has got to be done.”

When Liz first joined the farm, any strangers met on nights’ out always heard her job title as fund manager.  In fact, a good portion of the farm manager role is about creative fundraising. So, when you visit the farm you may see Liz in the Strawbale Café serving up delicious coffees/lunches/teas (it’s an amazing place to eat and you should make a date with yourself to go there soon). Or she’ll be supervising the building of a new roof on the hen pens, helping corporate volunteers, healing a cat’s saw paw or in the office  dealing with admin or filling in those fundraising applications thinking of creative ways to source a minimum annual £220,000, “although we really need £250,000,” says Liz who fortunately has a hugely practical streak.

“I’m a hands-on person and I like making things – food or barns,” adds Liz, now 40.

Liz McAllister, farm manager. “Anita came here to do some filming for Country File live backdrops in 2017. She was nice, but on a tight schedule and got down to business fast.” Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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Runners in the annual Easter holiday cow v pig race which raises funds for Freightliners Farm in Islington. (c) freightliners farm

Places Islington farmer Liz McAllister likes locally

• I like the Barn on 60 Holloway Road. I’m typical Islington ordering avocado or poached eggs on toast.
• I love the space at the Union Chapel, Compton Terrace. It’s a spectacular building. We’ve had three fundraisers. All sorts of comedians have supported us including Alan Davies and Tiffany Stevenson.
• We’re always popping to Moonlight supermarket at 135 Holloway Road. It has good bread and food. My last purchase? At the weekend, sugar, hummus and pide (Turkish bread).
• Walking the Cow v Pig race route I discovered the dog agility equipment in Barnard Park, Copenhagen Street, and had to stop and do it with my dog, Ozzy. He liked that!
• They do nice ice cream and smoothies at Outside the Box on 489 Liverpool Road.

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More than 40,000 people visit Freightliners Farm each year and there are around 60 regular volunteers. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

It’s 5.30pm when Islington Faces meets Liz on a hot summer afternoon (July). Liz, in shorts, is locking up the animals for the night so this interview is done by the pens of Dexter cows Matilda and Olivia. With the cows busy munching, cockerels’ crowing and a cockatiel cheerfully calling out, Freightliners Farm, which is so close to traffic-choked Holloway Road, seems like a country paradise with paddocks and an orchard. There’s also a collection of poultry, beehives, small animals, sheep, goats and the cow duo. Two new pigs are due to arrive once the stabling in the big barn has been upgraded this September.

But for such a calming spot it’s also quite busy with around 40,000 visitors annually and around 60 regular volunteers.

Careful analysis by the agency Rocket Science has shown that volunteering or visiting the farm has real health benefits. People feel less worried and anxious. They feel a bigger part of the community and many feel fitter. The farm is a place where you learn things about looking after animals; it’s also where you can develop your career and stop feeling so lonely. See more about the farm’s impacts here. https://create.piktochart.com/output/20761125-freightliners-impact-report

One of the farm’s aims is to teach city people to have respect for animals – a perfect mission for Liz, who grew up in Haringey and now lives in Wood Green with her parents. Liz always loved naughty animals and hankered to be a vet, but remembers struggling to get large animal experience. Eventually she volunteered at Canterbury Oast Trust, an open farm which specialises in therapeutic support of people with learning difficulties. She also volunteered at Freightliners.

Liz McAllister, farm manager: “I don’t have favourites…. but my favourite sheep is Jasmine (because she’s the oldest). On the farm we have several breeds, including the Portlands, white-faced Woodlands and Herdwick.” Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Freightliners was set up in the 1970s – moved up from Kings Cross. “The space here is so important and always has been. I found a flyer from 1978 recently that says things about people and animals that we are still saying today,” she says.

Just occasionally – and when the weather is right – Liz has taken the animals for visits around Islington. “They are quite interested in going out,” she says, but “in an ideal world, I’d rather people came here.” So you may have seen the goats and sheep at Angel Canal Festival; a menagerie at the Angel Centre (when it was the N1 Centre) or hens and rabbits at the New River College summer fair. An absolute favourite event is Capel Manor Farm show. “It’s a chance for people here to meet up with other people doing similar things. It’s a good activity with a chance to show off a little bit for the young people,” says Liz.

Liz McAllister, Freightliners farm manager checking for apples. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Despite the slog, and being out in all weathers – the relentless heat, wet and finger-numbing cold – Liz points out the farm offers magical moments.

“I like opening the gates on those crisp, early spring days when it’s cold but a bit sunny,” says Liz looking across the vegetable garden at the summer butterflies playing chase.

“But the best days at the farm are when you are reminded about what it is that we’re doing – when one of the young people has got a place at university after working through various different routes to get there; or someone brings their kids in or stops me to say how much they appreciate being able to visit. It’s the people stuff that tips this job over, and a reminder of the fact that the farm does serve a purpose. It makes a difference to people’ lives, which is probably why we’re all in it.”

Freightliners Farm: it’s where people and animals thrive.

You can visit the farm for free or join in some of the annual events including Easter Cow v Pig race; harvest festival, Halloween celebration and Christmas Fair (see the website for details). A treat for you – but good for the farm and the volunteers – is to eat at the Strawbale Café. It’s super insulated (made from straw bales), and run by talented gardener and seasonal chef Peter. Liz recommends the feta salad with red rice, beetroot and roasted onions). If you are in a salaried role you could contact the farm to organise corporate team building days at the farm. And if you are lucky enough to have a place to live in Islington (N4, N5 and N7) help boost their fundraising by letting the farm admin team know that you are happy to have an advert for a Freightliners Farm event being put up on an estate agent’s board for approx four weeks outside your home when the next publicity campaign starts for a farm event (eg, Halloween).

• Freightliners Farm, Sheringham Road, N7 https://www.freightlinersfarm.org.uk
• Free to visit. Open Tuesday-Sunday.
• The Strawbale Cafe on the farm is brilliant. Open Thursday-Sunday, 10am-4pm.
• See the farm’s Facebook page and twitter @Freightcityfarm
• Next events the farm will take part in: Saturday 1 September Paradise Park fun day, 1-5pm run by Friends of Paradise Park. London Harvest Festival on Sunday 29 September, 10am-5pm at Woodlands Farm.
• If you enjoyed this interview you might also like to read an earlier interview on Islington Faces (Oct 2012) with staff and volunteers at Freightliners Farm, see here

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Meet dog trainer Robert Stuhldreer whose dogs you’ve probably seen starring at the Almedia theatre, in West End shows, in ads and films. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.

Robert Stuhldreer: “Dogs are easier than children, and I’ve worked in childcare so I know.” Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

You’d think it would be hard for a man and his five dogs to go unnoticed. But dog whisperer, Robert Stuhldreer’s pack are so well trained (and definitely better behaved than most one-dog owning families) that you hardly know they are there. At least that’s how it is when Islington Faces meets Robert sitting on a Highbury Fields bench under the London Plane trees, watching his dogs relax in the sunshine on the grass.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week.

Robert has had dogs all his life. He was born in Oakham, grew up in Rutland and moved to Islington in the 1980s, now living off Holloway Road. His first dog (a springer spaniel called Randy) was born on the same day as Robert. Wickedly, Robert points out that if you combine your first pet’s name and your mother’s maiden name you should get your perfect porn star name. For him it’s Randy Chambers – that said Robert and his dogs are in show business, not porn.

Dog trainer Robert Stuhldreer reckons he walks at least four miles a day with his five dogs. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces.

To start the interview Robert organises his dogs. Curious Grace (a Hungarian Pumi) is popped on a lead to keep her close, as is almost deaf Roxy (Border Collie cross). The others, Rose (Border Collie), Kin (Japanese Akita Inu) and Flora (Akita) settle down to wait for Robert to turn his attention back to the pack.  All the girls (bitches in dog talk) came to him as seven-week-old puppies except Roxiywho is a rescue dog who by the time she was five months had already had five homes. “Even at this age (she’s 14) she doesn’t particularly care for men and she hates postmen’s wheels,” says Robert kindly. It’s clear that animal welfare and considerate, consistent training are a huge part of the reason his dogs adapt to their showbiz life so well.

It’s famous stage advice that you should never work with children or animals, but Robert’s main work put dogs centre stage. Kin has just finished a series of phone ads for One Plus Six. Rose, Kin and Flora all played a part in the West End immersive theatre, You Me Bum Bum Trainand last summer they were all on stage at the Almeida in Boystarring Frankie Fox. He’s also worked with the Dacshund in the Vitality Life insurance ads.

“I tend to be called for primitive breeds, such as the Akita, Japanese Akita Inu, Japanese Shiba Inu, Huskies, Malamute and CEDs (Canadia Eskimo Dogs). These breeds are quite a specialist and niche area. “For the novice or inepereinced owner these breeds can be quite a challenge to train,” says Robert who also loves to showcase these breeds to the general public. In October he’ll be with Flora and Kin at the Kennel Club’s Discover Dogs event. “It’s really good if people are considering certain breeds for them to come and meet a dog so they can ask about their size and temperament, and get some essential hands on experiences. It’s much better than rushing in and buying a puppy then putting it up for rescue several weeks or months later which sadly happens quite often with Akitas.”

Dog trainer Robert Stuhldreer uses a black satchel to store his five dogs’ deposits (in sealed dog poo bags) while he’s out walking. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces.

Places Robert and his dogs like in Islington

• I moved to Islington in the early 1980s. Over the past 20 years Finsbury Park has got a lot better.
• Highbury Fields is my regular walk. Sometimes I go to Clissold Park and Abney Park.
• I sometimes go to the Camden Head pub in Camden Passage which does nice food. Last meal there? Fish and chips.
• Living in London is far easier than living with dogs in Rutland where most fields are for crops or beasts and a lot of roads don’t have paths beside them. It’s far nicer being in London and having parks to go to.

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All dog trainer Robert Stuhldreer’s dogs have worked on stage or film. One, Flora, is also a trained Medical Alert Dog. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Like any wise parent Robert doesn’t have favourites, but Flora has an extra special role to play in his life as she’s trained as a Medical Alert Dog. “I suffer from epilepsy. I’m part of a fabulous organisation Canine Generated Independence (CGI). Rather than looking at what people can do for us the ethos of CGI is all about what can we do for ourselves. CGI assist with the training and qualification of assistance dogs with a UK-wide network of trainers. So, if I go out with one dog it’s Flora as she’s qualified as an assistance dog and wears a red label stating that she’s a ‘Medical Alert Dog’.”

Flora’s so good at this role that she’s one of five finalists up for the Assistance Animal of the Year. “In 2017 I was in hospital being treated for cancer. I was with Flora in the waiting room full of people having chemotherapy. No one was talking, and she picked up on this. Demonstrating theory of mind, Flora sensed a collective need in the waiting room. Then she went and lay down in the middle of the room on her back with her legs waving in the air and singing the happy song of her people. People started to laugh and talk. Later the nurse said to me, everyone’s blood pressure is normal today, you and Flora have to come back.”

She also recently won the Animal Award at the RSCPA Honours Ceremony held at the Royal Society. “Flora is the only Akita in the country registered and working as a Medical Alert Dog. It’s very good for the breed to get positive coverage as usually when you read about Akitas in the news it’s can be negative, usually due to novice or irresponsible owners.

Many people think the only assistance dogs are Guide Dogs for the Blind (and the deaf) but assistance dogs can also use their brilliant sense of smell to detect minute changes in blood sugar levels and hormone related odour changes to provide warnings for people with endocrine or heart conditions, so they can get to a safe place, organise help or be sent to fetch vital medical supplies.

“I’m always being asked if Flora is ‘my blind dog’, and I reply ‘No, she can see perfectly well’,” jokes Robert who wants to make sure that more people understand the many different assistance dogs at work in the UK.

Robert feels there’s a certain logic to his change in career. “When I left college I joined the RAF. After six years I did my nurse training. My first job was in paediatrics – I have no interest in children so it was quite ironic to land a job in paediatric. Then I qualified as a psychologist, so it wasn’t a huge leap going from working with medical people to working with medical dogs,” explains Robert. In general he trains his own dogs but wherever he walks with the furry quintet “people approach and ask for help”.

Dog trainer Robert Stuhldreer shares his home with five dogs and one cat, though a few years ago there were the dogs and EIGHT cats. Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

If you have a dog and have gone to the puppy training in Finsbury Park with Sue (held near Manor House entrance on Thursdays and Sundays) you might have seen Robert looking on at how Islington’s newest canines are getting to grips with recall, stay and ignoring the road sweeper’s brush. “The best training advice I’ve heard is from Sue,” he says. “People don’t realise how difficult it is for dogs to sit and not react. Once they can do that, they can go anywhere. The biggest compliment is when I’m leaving a pub or restaurant and people spot the dog and say, ‘I didn’t know she was there’.

That’s exactly how this interview was, with Islington Faces focusing on Robert’s story, completely forgetting there were five well-trained dogs close by waiting patiently to get back on their walk.

• Robert Stuhldreer is a dog trainer for film, television and stage. Contact him on akitaboy@hotmail.com Tel: 07807 815 787
• Local public dog trainers include Sue who runs Alpha Dog Training in Finsbury Park, check times of sessions on the website or organise private sessions on 020 8809 6762

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thanks for the suggestion of interviewing Robert and his dogs from Clarissa Hulse

If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. You are invited to share ideas about how to make Islington Faces’ upcoming exhibition at Islington Museum in 2019 successful. Meetings are on Thursdays at the Blackstock Kitchen, 136 Blackstock Road (Sep 25, Oct 4, 11, 18 & 25). First meeting is this Thursday, 25 September, 11am-12noon.

Anyone is welcome! Come along and help suggest ideas to make this Islington Faces’ show a success.

Islington Faces is a blog where you’ll find interviews with people who live or work in Islington. There are more than 280 interviews. Interviews are mostly written by journalist Nicola Baird, but the portraits in the exhibition will be taken by Kimi Gill. The exhibition is due to be open to the public for approx two months in summer 2019 at Islington Museum – what an opportunity.

Come and help us plan by dropping into the cafe on Thursdays from 11am-12noon.

It’s a chance to showcase the amazing talent and diversity of people who live and work in Islington but your thoughts are needed, so please come and chat over coffee about what makes an unmissable show.

Well-behaved dogs are welcome, there’s a place to lock bikes on the junction with Monsell Road and if it’s sunny there’s a lovely garden. If you don’t know Nicola, then ask the owner Rohan to point her out.  Blackstock Kitchen is a lovely cafe and close to a bus stop.

• The Blackstock Kitchen, 136 Blackstock Road, N4 Facebook and pix

STOP PRESS NEWS
Updates from three recent Islington Faces… please do share with people you know will find this info interesting.

Flora has her own plaque.

1. Congratulations to Flora who is a stellar guardian for Islington Faces’ Robert Stuhldreer 

Book via Islington Boat Club website/ adult activities/ SUP

2) Rosie Markwick is running an East London adventure on paddle boards – starting from Islington Boat Club and heading to Limehouse. It’s on Sunday 30 September and you can book via here

Winning design in the Bolt Burdon Kemp competition.

3) Raquel Signaporia launched a competition in early 2018 to improve life for people using wheelchairs. The winner produced a fantastic new wheelchair design. Here is some more info about it:

The winner of law firm Bolt Burdon Kemp’s inaugural student design competition, ‘Getting Back on Track’ is Kristen Tapping, 36, second year product design student at London South Bank University produced the winning design – an innovative wheelchair, ‘Moveo’, which is designed to propel the user forwards by them pushing backwards – exerting less force and effort than a normal wheelchair. Kristen wins £3,000 prize money, plus £2,000 for her university.

This wheelchair was designed especially for people with a spinal cord injury and makes moving easy through gear reduction, lightweight yet high strength materials, and carefully designed to give the user more grip. With comfort in mind, intelligent textiles also help to regulate the users’ body temperature.

The purpose of the competition was for UK-based university students to design a product aimed at improving the lives of people with a spinal cord injury. Bolt Burdon Kemp, which acts for people with a spinal cord injury and helps them get their lives back on track, was looking for a design which was both unique and practical, and which really considered the needs of those with a spinal cord injury.

Kristen’s design was judged the winner by a panel of experts including Raquel Siganporia, head of the spinal injury team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, Dr Ross Head, Associate Professor at the University of Wales TSD Swansea and Product Design Manager of Cerebra Innovation Centre and Ian Hosking from Wheelchair Rugby Experience.

Commenting on the winning design, Raquel Siganporia, head of the spinal injury team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, said:

“I was really impressed with a great number of the entries, but Kristen’s showed real understanding of the needs of people with a spinal cord injury. For many people with a spinal cord injury, their wheelchair is the most essential piece of equipment they use every day. To recognise the design’s shortcomings and come up with an innovative and viable alternative is no mean feat. In my role I see lots of people who have suffered life-changing spinal cord injuries – be it from an accident or as a result of clinical negligence.  In these instances, my client needs to adjust to their injury, their new mobility needs and get back to their ‘new normal’ as soon as possible – innovations like Kristen’s Moveo can really help.”

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Everyone has a story. Goodbye to artist, thinker and champion allotment gardener Jack Rickards who is moving with his wife Lucy, also a painter and skilled potter, to Cornwall. Interview by Nicola Baird

Jack and Lucy Rickards at the Quill Street Allotment Association’s harvest supper 2018 where they were made Life Presidents. (c) Annie Monaghan for Islington Faces

“It will be lovely for drawing and painting and Lucy is going to be working with a potter,” says Jack Rickards with that lovely smile of his. After 32 years living off Blackstock Road, plus seasons of gardening know-how picked up and shared as Chair of the Gillespie Park allotments and later the Quill Street’s 20 allotments, Jack still overflows with optimism. The couple know they will miss Islington, but they have just celebrated their 60^thwedding anniversary and are looking forward to another new start close to their Cornish-based son, not far from where Lucy spent her teenage years.

“We’re going to an 1830s fishermen cottage right down by the quay – it’ll be lovely going to the 15^thcentury pub over the road and there are folk concerts and carol concerts right by our house,” says Jack who plans to use the courtyard garden to concentrate on herbs so Lucy can look out of the kitchen window and use what I grow. I normally grow mint and sage, but I’d like to try growing coriander and dill too.”

>FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week.

Islington Faces is celebrating Jack and Lucy in this interview thanks to the suggestion of the Quill Street Allotment Association. At the Allotment Association’s recent Harvest Supper in Gillespie Park, chair Annie Monaghan and members awarded them their highest accolade – Life Presidency of the Allotment Association. It’s well deserved. Jack is a terrific grower. He’s highly intelligent, a gifted painter and has also been an art history teacher. During the interview Jack quotes French and Italian, discusses the work of Jane Jacobs and asks after my family. He is great at surprises, explaining that he went to the country’s first comprehensive school and then trying to convince me that he’s not green-fingered.

Lucy is a fantastic cook putting their produce to good use and cooking and baking for allotment events.

Islington Faces meets this lovely couple, both in their 80s, in their dining room – Jack sitting on a wooden stool, and Lucy in a comfy chair with a view of the Welsh dresser where many of her handmade plates are displayed. The room is full of books and a large bunch of heavenly scented flowers from Miss Pem (at 223 Blackstock Road), bought by Jack to celebrate Lucy’s birthday.

Jack Rickards has been made Life President of Quill Street allotments. Chair Anne Monaghan says: Jack has done so much for the allotment gardens over the years and is such a well-known face to the community surrounding the gardens too and has been such an ambassador for the allotments. (c) islington faces

So how did this couple, who had raised their three children in Newcastle while Jack taught at Newcastle upon Tyne polytechnic (now Northumbria university), end up in this corner of Islington? Jack explains: “I became Type 1 Diabetic, and insulin dependent but with wonderful NHS care in Newcastle and London I soon revived. I was granted a sabbatical year from Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic to study for an MA at Essex University, Colchester, on European illustrated magazines around 1900, which made us both fall back in love with central London.”

Deciding where to move was solved by their daughter who was studying at Middlesex University. “She was on a 19 bus and rang later to say, ‘I think I’ve seen the house you’d love, no one else would like it, but you’ll love it!’ It was next to a very busy flower shop and a stall out on to the pavement. I made an appointment and waited in the rain for an hour for the estate agent – having come 300 miles to meet him. The flower seller (Lil) came out and challenged me. She said ‘What are you loitering for?’ When I explained she gave me a big black umbrella. We moved in. It was lovely to live next to a flower shop but when Lil retired her niece took over the shop but then she discovered she was allergic to chrysanthemums, so couldn’t do the funeral flowers, so it was then sold. It is now a vet with very neighbourly staff,” says Jack.

Lucy Rickards is a skilled potter and painter who has spent much of her free time gardening on the Gillespie allotments and then Quill Street allotments. (c) Islington Faces

They bought the house in 1988 and soon Jack was exploring the area, often drawing in the newly open Gillespie Park, and expertly discovering all sorts of history about this little corner of Islington.

“I’d go to a tube station and I’d do a spiral walk to get to know the area. The spiral from Finsbury Park station took me to brand new, desert like Gillespie Park. The lovely warden, Ray, was there. I remember ash piles, some saplings and a plastic lined pond that looked so natural. I was sitting drawing, thinking we’ll never be able to afford to live in this area. That day a tiny man came up to me and said to me do you know where you are? He explained that this was Stevens Ink factory – then I realised that what I thought was beautiful railway architecture was in fact the remnants of the Victorian ink factory, and the little man said to me ‘It’s where Virginia and Vanessa and all their cronies got their scribbling ink for free’ because he thought their father owned the factory. The Woolfs’ father, of course, was Sir Leslie Stephen, the factory was actually owned by Dr Henry Stephens and then his son Henry Inky Stephens (see this website for more info). Then he disappeared. I never saw him again.”

No wonder Jack was entranced by Gillespie Park.

A plate made by Lucy Richards. (c) islington faces

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Jack & Lucy’s favourite Islington places

• Jack: “Everywhere of course! We love Chapel Market as it’s where we bought the things we didn’t have on the allotment. Also it’s pure Jane Jacobs (a thriving community), with little shops all along the street. If I need a battery watch, then I go to a tiny jewellers that’s been there apparently for three generations.
• Lucy: I went to art classes and taught at what’s now City & Islington college on Blackstock Road. It’s a shame that they’ve closed the pottery and all the crafts. Jack:“It’s so bad they closed it. When I taught ceramic design, our students included some who had special needs but were often highly gifted craftspeople.”
• Lucy:“Pottery is my craft, I trained with Robert Fournier first and then Daphne Carnegy. I can do everything at home except kiln firing but I prefer to work with other people. Because I’m moving to a tiny house I’m giving our pottery books to Claytime Pottery Studios at 168 Blackstock Road.”
• Jack:“One of the things about this area is it’s so rich culturally. There’s such an ethnic mix on Blackstock Road. It’s amazing how the grocery shops have survived and Sainsbury’s has adjusted to the area so it’s like a local village shop. The micro economics of many small businesses enrich boroughs in big cities and provide a variety of services.
• Jack:“Al Baraka has beautiful French bread and wonderful humous and lovely olives and much else to buy.
• Jack: “We don’t eat out a lot, but when we do, we tend to go to that French restaurant, Sacre Coeur at 18 Theberton Street or to Lara in 16 Blackstock Road.

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The old plastics factory, now converted into flats was painted by the artist and keen gardener Giles Winter (gouache, 2010). Jack Rickards: “Giles said he was doing a Jack – sketching the allotments. I felt very honoured.” (c) islington faces

“Lucy and I wanted a plot on the old Gillespie allotments, but we thought it was unlikely we’d get one. I was doing a painting of the gates, I thought of them as the gates of heaven, when allotment chief Jimmy O’Donald’s wife, Lil, saw me sketching. I asked her if there was any chance of getting an allotment. She asked me if I spoke Italian, saying ‘Our gardeners are Italian, from Naples, Sicily and north Italy, but they are land hungry and always quarrelling and fighting over the footpaths. Could you come to the AGM and translate?”

Luckily Jack did know some Italian, poured salve on to the allotment holders at the AGM and was introduced to a Jamaican man who said he was very happy for me to have a quarter of his allotment. Those old allotments had lovely soil so I immediately put plants in.”

Quill Street allotments opened with poor quality soil, but after nearly 20 years of compost, manure double dig (and no dig) they are a great place to garden. Jack read this passage when the local priests blessed the site from Isaiah 37:30 “And this shall be the sign for you: this year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that. Then in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.” (c) islington faces

The Gillespie Park allotments were closed when British Rail, which owned the land, sold the freehold to Islington Council. The area was then dividedup between Gillespie Park, the Parkland Walk extension, Quill Street – the new social housing development – and 15 allotments. But it took a long time, and steady pressure by Jack and others, to get the new, much hillier allotment site opened. When it did the gardeners were bitterly disappointed to see that the imported soil was terrible and that there were electric cables trailing across the area to a house which had been squatted.

To celebrate the opening of the new allotments campaigners and the allotment holders held a blessing of the plots. Jack explains: “I’m not religious at all but Rev Steven Coles from St Thomas’ and Father George Haines blessed the land. I read from the Old Testament the bit about ‘grow your own’ in the book of Isaiah. It was so lovely it was positively pagan. Even though the imported soil was poor, within a few weeks there was manna from heaven in the form of chard which had somehow blown from the nearby Greek, Italian and Caribbean gardens and seeded itself.” And the gardeners worked hard to improve it too.  Jack claims he always remembers another plant gift from one of those early allotment holders, borage plants. “They reseeded and reseeded so we never had to sow them. I’d pick the blue flowers and put in ice cubes or use them in salads and I know the Italians would wilt the young Borage leaves and serve with pasta, but I never saw the seeds!”

Jack and Lucy are super skilled gardeners and found that N4 soil was particularly good for some crops: “We grew potatoes, onions, beans. Chard grows very well. Sorrel grows like a weed and yet it is delicious. Our sorrel is years old. I save seed and plant rows of it, it gets stronger every year.”

As for improving the soil at Quill Street, that has come about through the allotment holders enriching it with many back-breaking loads of manure and compost. Jack and Lucy’s plot is now a perfect growing mix.

During the early 2000s (the noughties) the Quill Street allotment holders generously shared their know-how and bounty at the annual Gillespie Festival (held on the second weekend of September for many years). They also produced a recipe book full of paintings and drawings which he modestly remembers as “a little allotment book to share recipes, Urban Fare.” Two recipes are reprinted here – sorrel soup from Jack and brambly jelly from Lucy.

“In the 1990s I was challenged to produce an exhibition of Rural Islington. I soon found an abundance of motifs to paint in Gillespie grasslands, Barnsbury (with its big squares and secret wood), the canal banks, Olden Gardens and so many green surprises to draw, paint and print,” remembers Jack. The selling show was at North Gallery, 96 Gillespie Road, managed by Ana, and saw many locals buy some of the green Islington scenes Jack captured with such character.

History repeats itself on the allotments: which is how Jack and Lucy have been assisted on their plot by their friend Sallie Aprahamian, who now co-directs Poldark– a lovely link to their new home in Cornwall.

It’s clear that many people will miss Jack and Lucy when they leave Islington. Islington Faces says thank you so much for all you’ve done for the area, and especially the campaign to get those allotments reopened. No wonder Jack is affectionately known as the king of the allotment – and Life President.

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Brambly jelly (Lucy’s recipe)

• 2lb blackberries
• 2lb Bramley cook apples
• Half pint water
• Sugar as required

Method

• Wash and drain blackberries
• Wash apples and slice without peeling or coring them.
• Put fruit and water in a large saucepan and cook gently until tender, stirring to a mushy consistency with a wooden spoon.
• Strain through a muslin bag left to drip overnight into the pan you will be using to make the jelly.
• Measure the juice and add 1lb of sugar to each pint of juice.
• Add the sugar and simmer, stirring gently untl the sugar is all dissolved.
• Boil rapidly without stirring until the juice wrinkles when you pour a spoonful on to a cold plate.
• Skim off any impurities on the surface, then pot and seal.
• Yield about 5lb.

Cook’s tips

• Make sure you use a large saucepan for boiling the jelly as it rises to the top of the pan at a full rolling boil.
• A knob of butter on the jelly before you ski it melts and sends the scum to the edge of the pan where it is easier to remove.
• If you don’t have the odd yard or so of butter muslin to hand, a clean old pillowcase does the job.

Sorrel soup (Jack’s recipe)

The beauty of growing sorrel is that you can use it very fresh in salads and sauces as well as soup. This delicious summer soup, when sorrel is plentiful in our gardens (if difficult to find in shops) has a surprisingly refreshing yet warm flavour. The French call it health soup (potage santé) able to cure everything, even a broken heart. Try it!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 and a half pounds potatoes
• 8oz trimmed sorrel (stalks removed)
• 6oz chopped white onions (or green tops of leeks or shallots)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoons of olive or corn oil
• 1oz butter
• 1 and a half pints chicken or veg stock
• Milk to taste
• Seasoning to taste

Method

• Peel and chop potatoes and keep in water to avoid discolouration
• In a large saucepan melt the butter in the oil
• Gently fry garlic, onions, leeks or shallots (or a combination of all three, why not?) until tender
• Add the sorrel leaves and fry gently. They will turn into khaki coloured sludge but don’t lose heart, it all comes right in the end. Add the stock and potatoes and cook until potatoes are tender. Puree in a blender or rub through a sieve
• Add milk to the consistency if you like, and season to taste.

Cook’s tips

Using the green parts of onions and leeks intensifies the colour of this soup

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Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thank you to Annie Monaghan for suggesting this interview. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Health Improvement Officer Suad Ahmed moved from Somalia to the UK aged four and has spent her adult life in Islington. Here she discusses ways to make healthy eating as fun – and beneficial – as child’s play for Islington families. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Suad Ahmed: “There are loads of things to do in Islington. Bright Start Islington provides lots of stay and play, baby massage and lots of free activities but you need to know where they are and where your nearest children’s centre is.” Photo by Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“I grew up in Liverpool, and lived in Cardiff for a short period of time, so my accent is not as strong as it used to be” says Suad Ahmed over coffee at the new Pret a Manger by Highbury Corner. Suad’s Liverpool accent is there if you listen, but she has been living in north London since she came to Middlesex University to study Health Promotion.

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“I finished my degree in 2006, got married and moved to Islington as my husband lived here,” she explains.  “It took a while to get used to London. People in Liverpool are friendlier, in London everyone seems to be in a rush even when you’re just trying to get from A to B – Liverpool is a bit more laid back and there’s a bit more community feel. In London we are living a fast-paced life, but now Liverpool seems a bit too quiet!”

That sense of community led Suad to work at the Whittington Hospital for five years offering maternity support for mums with low mood and needing encouragement to breast feed. It also helped her decide to become a parent governor at Ambler Primary School. “It’s so important that governors are representative of the community,” she says. “I did it for two years. You’ve got to get involved – it’s important that all children, whatever their background are able to achieve.”

Living near the stadium Suad has become an Arsenal supporter but her four children, aged 11, 9, 3 and 2, like her husband are Liverpool fans. Weekends and evenings she’s busy with the kids and can often be found in Islington’s play parks. “I find that if we’re at home all day the children can get bored. Getting them out breaks up the day. Even if we go to the park for just an hour it’s amazing how much exercise they do.”

Suad Ahmed: “I find that if we’re at home all day the children can get bored. Getting them out breaks up the day. Even if we go to the park for just an hour it’s amazing how much exercise they do.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Given her interest in healthy eating and play it’s perhaps no surprise that by day Suad works as an Early Years Health Improvement officer. Her main focus is rolling out the Mayor’s Healthy Early Years London programme launched in October.

“It’s an award scheme similar to Healthy Schools for the early years (with First steps, Bronze, Silver and Gold awards) which recognises how important those early years decisions, from menu planning to play, are for a child’s long-term health,” explains Suad who has been part of the Islington team that developed a training toolkit to help other boroughs roll out the programme.  The scheme isn’t just for early years centres and childminders, it is also meant to help poorer and disadvantaged parents and those with lower mood or mental health issues.

“We want to introduce the benefits of nutritious food and make parents aware about what they eat and how it affects their body.  Healthy eating is also about offering water and milk to drink rather than juice as well as getting children involved and independent so they are getting ready for school life,” explains Suad who hopes all under five centres and childminders will sign up.

“We also want to show how physical activity is important. We’re finding screen time and game consoles is an issue even for children aged nought to five years old. It’s recommended that every day a child takes part in three hours of physical activity by walking to nursery, and playing games like hopping and skipping. Even babies can do tummy time which will help build muscle strength.”

“A great family run coffee shop, with friendly staff, which serves delicious Eritrean food,” says Suad Ahmed about Asmarino cafe, 138 Seven Sisters Road. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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Places Suad Ahmed likes in Islington

• We attend Finsbury Park mosque and Muslim Welfare House regularly. They deliver a range of activities and events for the community and people from all walks of life.
• My children really like the N4 library. They particularly enjoy taking part in the reading challenges. During the summer holidays my younger children enjoyed the singing sessions.
• I get my meat from Al-Bahia butchers on Blackstock Road – I make a lot of Somali dishes with lamb and chicken. When it’s Ramadan and they have a whole selection of deserts and nice little treats.My children like pasta too. I leave the desserts to my husband, he makes a nice cheesecake.
• Asmarino Cafe is a great family run coffee shop and serves delicious Eritrean food. It has friendly staff.
• The Sobell Centre has a lot of activities for the children. We enjoy the trampoline park and my children also like ice skating.

==============================

Suad Ahmed (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Having had four children Suad has a huge knowledge about how to keep even babies entertained. “There are loads of things to do in Islington,” she says. “Bright Start Islington provides lots of stay and play, baby massage and lots of free activities but you need to know where they are and where your nearest children’s centre is. Some of the poorest and most disadvantaged groups aren’t accessing the services.”

Suad has also been working on the Families for Life programme which is Islington and Camden’s universal healthily lifestyle service. There are a range of different programmes to suit different ages and it has been designed for families with children aged two until 11.  Suad supports and trains primary school staff to teach parents how to cook basic healthy dishes and use quick recipes to create healthy food that everyone will enjoy eating.

“Family Kitchen is a six-week course and a good way to meet other families as they all cook together and then sit down and eat together. If your parents never cooked and got you got a take away meal all the time, you’re more likely to do the same when you have children. If you’ve only got a microwave or you think cooking is complicated this helps. It’s promoting skills and shows how take away food is quite expensive. Parents like it! It’s quite a shock for some parents to see how much sugar is in flavoured water (juice) – it can be six cubes. And it’s helpful for them to know that when introducing your child to a new vegetable you have to keep trying,” adds Suad positively.

With so many children in Islington growing up in poverty it is good to know that caring people like Suad Ahmed are finding fun ways to help mums, babies and toddlers develop healthy eating habits that will last and last.

More info

• Healthy Early Years London
• Film about growing food in schools https://youtu.be/x9MIhvaAL70

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thanks to Helen Cameron for suggesting Suad. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Home means so many different things to us all. It can be a place of safety or a fuzzy childhood memory. The strangest triggers can bring memories of our first homes flooding back.  Here six Islington residents talk about settling down. These interviews by Nicola Baird were originally written in 2016 for Age UK Islington’s Get Together magazine,  gtislington.com

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Angela Neustatter: “Islington is a very fine example of a successful melting pot.” (c) Nicola Baird for Islington Faces

ANGELA NEUSTATTER

Grew up: Surrey
Moved to Islington in the 1970s

“I do value living in such a culturally mixed place as London. I’d hate to feel Britain had become one of those places where we didn’t want that mix because as I see it, it’s essential if the world is to be a happier place,” she says. “When we first came to Islington in the 1970s people said ‘you don’t want to live there’, but Islington is a very fine example of a successful melting pot.”

“We live near Angel in an enclave where we know a lot of people and they look out for each other. It’s a community that feels at ease with itself. It doesn’t always of course and I know terrible things happen. Obviously it helps to have a nice family and a nice home – it’s like being in a village. And I like bumping into people, up to a point.”

Angela Neustatter was fashion editor at the Guardian and has written for all the broadsheets. Her most recent book is The Lifestyle Entrepreneur (Gibson Square, 2015) which she wrote with her son, Cato Hoeben. You can read an interview with Angela on Islington Faces here (March, 2016).

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EUNICE BRAITHWAITE

Born: Barbados
Arrived in London in 1958, aged 29

“I came by boat. My cousin lived with us. When he grew up he went to America and then London. He asked if me, or my sister, would come here to help him. My sister said she had children and was not coming. I had a little boy and I left him with my mum. I tried to send for him when he was at school, but he wouldn’t come. So, he and my grandchildren are in Barbados.”

“My cousin worked for London Transport and was living in Brixton. I found a job quite easily. You just asked. One of my aunts had taught me dressmaking but I learnt to do leather handbags. It’s one of the easiest jobs you can get. I worked in many different places – sometimes the bosses gave you a bag. I’ve still got a lot I need to give away.”

“I moved to Archway and then Finsbury Park. Islington is alright – the thing I hate is the cold weather. But you can buy everything here. I still cook fish the Barbados way, steam it and eat with our special dish, cou cou (cornmeal and okra).”

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FLORINE JAPAUL

Born: Karnatka, India
Arrived in London in 1987, in her early 20s

“I knew some English (Florine speaks seven languages) and soon I met the guy. He married me and we rented a beautiful two bed flat in Islington with a nice garden. My job was in Acton. I worked as a warehouse assistant, paid £500 a month. We saved up and bought a flat.”

“There are good people in London and the shopping is good. I go to the Nag’s Head and Dalston. I find there are too many crowds in Bombay now, but in London there are beautiful new buildings. King’s Cross is my favourite area and Tufnell Park has some beautiful buildings too.”

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ENID MORGAN

Born: St Kitts
Arrived in London in 1961, aged 25.

“We heard they wanted maids in England to work in hospitals and old people’s homes. My family said go and try it. I’d been working in shops and other domestic work since I was about 16.”

“I had a female cousin in Archway. I came on the SS Montserrat. It was fun and frightening. We docked in Southampton and I took my first train ever to Waterloo where my cousin’s friend met me. Not long after I was walking along the street in Islington and saw a big home. I went and knocked on the door and asked for a job cleaning. I got it. It was easy to get jobs then.”

“I don’t think I was homesick, though the weather was very cold. I’m still glad and happy to see people from St Kitts. We’ll get together and eat rice, peas and goat meat which I get from Stroud Green Road.”

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TONY CORBETT

Born: Roscrea, Tipperary
Arrived in London: 1961, aged 12

“Things were dire financially in Tipperary so my family – all four of my uncles and mother’s sister (aunt) were already in the UK, and all but one in London – thought it would be better for all of us to be in London. And it has been much better.”

“My memory isn’t that good generally, but arriving at 6am on 25 October 1961 is imprinted on my mind. We were four miles from a major town so coming to London was a major event. I travelled with my grandmother, my cousin Tess, who was 22, and her baby son. I was very glad to be here. I felt at home right away. My mother was here already and we moved into a big flat rented on the first floor of 247 Camden Road. It’s now demolished and been replaced by an elderly person’s centre.”

“I’ve recently joined an Irish singing group at the Old Fire Station, Nag’s Head. It’ll be a special to do next time I go as it’s St Patrick’s Day.”

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thanks to James West from West Creative, Age UK Islington and Get Together for letting Islington Faces republish these interviews. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Chiropodist Joan Williams began her career looking at teeth but yearning for the bright lights of the stage. But for the past five years this funny, caring woman has switched her attention to full time foot care. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Photo caption: Joan Williams works in Islington 12 days a month. On Mondays over 55s can be treated by her for £20 at Age UK Islington’s Drovers centre on North Road for all sorts of foot conditions from hard skin and nail care to more serious problems. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Joan Williams is in her chiropody room at Age UK Islington’s Drovers centre, sitting at the foot of the big chair used by her patients. Islington Faces is lucky to meet her during a short gap between appointments. Although home is south of the river, she knows Islington – and Islingtonians’ feet – well.  Right now, she works at three different Islington locations – Dermacia Pharmacy on the corner of Upper Street and Canonbury Lane and offers discounted chiropody services at two clinics for more elderly patients at St Luke’s Community Centre, close to Old Street, and at Age UK Islington’s activity centre, Drovers.

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Joan grew up in Jamaica where she started work as a dental nurse, but yearned to be an actor. While she was doing a part-time acting course she landed the lead role in the show Hurricane Baby, written by Hall Anthony Ellis, that was touring London in 1989.  “The show was at St Matthews in Brixton. I was amazed to see a theatre inside a church, and having to change in the crypt,” says Joan laughing at the memory. That trip gave her time to discover that there was plenty of dental nurse work around in London – she was even offered a job while rehearsing.

In 1991 she came back to the UK,to star in another touring Jamaican play, Mamma-Man, by theatre writer Paul Beale. The shows took theatres at Catford Broadway Theatre, Hackney (the Hackney Empire), Birmingham (Alexandra Theatre) and Manchester.

That second taste of British life convinced Joan to move to London. “In 1995 I started working at a private dental practice at Kingsway,” she says explaining that it was a posh practice. “I’d heard about Juanita (Harriett) when I was there, anotherdental nurse who had worked at the practice but I didn’t think anything of it- until she walked in for an appointment. Of all the people in the world it was the girl I first worked with at the Crossroad Dental Centre in Jamaica. The staff at the Crossroad Dental Centre were known by their surnames. In London the staff all called her by her first name which was Juanita – it was such a surreal moment. We were so happy to see each other, but it did teach a life lesson, you have to be honest because if you don’t it will catch up with you,” says Joan with a laugh.

Joan first began working as a dental nurse in 1977, but 17 years ago she decided to retrain as a chiropodist, qualifying at the SMEA Institute in Maidenhead and then eventually in 2013 making the switch to full time chiropody. “It’s been foot and mouth for me all my life,” she says, “I always tell the patients that and it makes them laugh.” Since that career change Joan’s not only run her own clinics but encouraged four other dental nurses to make the switch to foot health because, “you’re always ‘the girl’ as a dental nurse, you’ll never grow up.” https://www.smaeinstitute.co.uk

Once qualified as a Chiropodist (in the US they called Doctor of podiatry), Joan began working in Angel. “I went as a temp to Scholls (the Scholl Centre, 40 Upper Street) and then stayed for some years until the lease was up. A patient told me about a pharmacy, Dermacia on Upper Street that had rooms downstairs – I knew about it for two years and didn’t go. Then I opened a clinic with an ex colleague at Scholls, Ahmed Abudul on Bromley Road. That clinic didn’t work out so I went to the pharmacist at Dermacia, Mr Fung and he said ‘yes, use the room’, and now he’s gone and I’m still there! When Ahmed went to work in Abu Dhabi he asked me to take over his clinics for elderly people at Drovers on North Road and St Luke’s near Old Street which I enjoy.”

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Chiropodist Joan Williams. “I find Islington relaxing.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Places Joan Williams likes in Islington

• “I love getting of the tube at Highbury & Islington and walking through the gardens by Union Chapel parallel to Upper Street. It’s so relaxing and my main walk. But twice I’ve walked the whole way up and found the gate shut, which is stressful as then I’m late for work.”
• “I always take my lunch to work as I like my homecooked food but I’ll have a nice coffee and cake. I like buying rye bread at Euphorium, 202 Upper Street, across the road from Dermacia  pharmacy.
• “The best fish and chips I’ve eaten at a pub were at the Hope and Anchor, 207 Upper Street. They have really beautiful chips.”
• “Islington is quite a relaxing place overall and I like the houses. Many of my clients were strong campaigners who moved to Barnsbury and helped stop the council from demolishing the Georgian and Victorian houses back in the 1970s. One of my patients told me that he’d tried to get his boss to buy a house on sale for £1,200 in the 1940s. When he saw it, the boss thought that was a waste of money, so didn’t buy it. Now its value is £7million.”

======================

Chiropodist Joan Williams working in her Old Street clinic. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Life choice
No foot no horse is a well-known equestrian saying. But for Joan, whose working life has been dominated by teeth and feet, it’s clear that good care of these two vital parts of your body helps wellbeing. Her advice for a good life doesn’t just involve flossing or foot massages though.

“The key to long-living is being friendly and talking to anybody! That’s how I live,” says Joan explaining how often people help her out – the dog walker who minded her bag while she ran back to pick up an item she’d left at home or the cycle shop owner who took in her dressthe day the dry cleaner opened late, andbooked it in for a clean… “I feel wherever you live it should be your community, and you should give back.”

It’s clear this is a life-lesson she learnt from her generous mum who still helps the neighbourhood with small gifts of cash so nearby families can pay to send their children to school by bus, or basic shopping supplies such as vegetable oil, sugar, salt and even combs.

“Even though I don’t live in Jamaica I still give back,” says Joan talking about the Ackee Tree Group (named after Jamaica’s national fruit, most famous when paired with salt fish) are friends who live abroad but still give money to community projects where they grew up.

During December chiropodist Joan Williams likes to spend the xmas holidays giving back, for example by offering chiropody and foot care to homeless people during Crisis at Christmas. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Here in London she is also a big supporter of homeless people. She has volunteered with Islington’s Shelter from the Storm and also for Crisis at Christmas – the period over Christmas and New Year when rough sleepers are invited in for food, a dry place to sleep and pampering.

“Crisis at Christmas is about eight days,” she says. “I was there on the last day to help with foot care when a homeless man, who’d already had his feet washed and was waiting to see me, said, ‘this is my favourite part, someone doing my feet. There are so many unpredictable things about being homeless. You don’t know when you’ll get your next meal, your next shower, find the next toilet or talk to someone, and most of all you don’t know when someone is going to touch you kindly. I actually cried,” remembers Joan who is hoping to volunteer this year too (2018). “I celebrate Christmas as a giving period of time,” which is why her son, now 26 is used to going to his cousins on Christmas Day while mum is out helping people.

“My friends say I should write a book,” says Joan reflecting on the good decision making – and luck. “People tell me things when they visit for their feet. Some people live in London but never visit the different parts of it. For example, I’ve had patients who live in Islington and have never been to Brixton, or Old Street… and to think I came from a small town in Jamaica and my work takes me all over London.”

If you want to get your feet seen by Joan Williams of BlueGreen WellBeing, email info@bluegreenwellbeing.co.ukto make initial contact/book. Clinics are held at:

• Dermacia, 260 Upper Street, N1 on Sundays https://www.dermaciapharmacy.co.uk
• Age UK Islington’s Drovers, North Road, N7 9EY on Mondays (for 55+) 10am-4pm. Book an appointment via 0207 281 6018. 
• St Luke’s Community Centre on Wednesdays (for 55+). Book an appointment at St Luke’s reception on 020 7549 8181 
• Home visits can also be arranged.

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. Tamsen Courtenay spent months listening to the stories of homeless people living on the streets of central London during winter 2016. Interview by Nicola Baird

Tamsen Courtenay, author of Four Feet Under, a collection of interviews about life on the street. (c) Islington Faces

“I’m a chronicler, not a campaigner,” explains Tamsen Courtenay when we meet who has a way of making you feel like you’ve known her forever as a close friend – at one stage in the interview she grabs my arm to emphasise a point which makes it impossible for me to take notes. It’s no act: even in her book’s acknowledgments she thanks each reader as “someone who has soul, humanity and enough interest and compassion to have bought and read this book.”

Tamsen has chiefly worked in TV and current affairs. She is now based in central Italy but has come back to the famous Highbury Barn pub to talk about her most recent investigation – the crowdfunded book, Four Feet Under charting 30 people’s stories about life on the street in central London. The book begins with her staying at a friend’s place in Highbury. “I left in the morning and walked down through Highbury Fields and to the West End,” says Tamsen explaining that whenever she saw someone sleeping rough she’d ask them about their life. However, she had one rule: “I’d never wake anyone up.”

“I had an idea about what I wanted to find out from the people who are hidden in plain sight on the streets of London. I wanted to ask ‘how did you get here,’ and potentially get different answers. I wanted to allow their voice to be made louder. Homeless people have a voice, but nobody bloody listens,” she says with real fury.

By the end of the project, Four Feet Under is a powerful collection of 30 people explaining what it’s like living on London’s streets. Their voice has been captured in conversation by Tamsen “on camera and a cheap recorder”. These edited monologues are interweaved with Tamsen’s feedback, enabling the reader to capture the interviewee’s voice and the author’s “celebration and lamentation” for what’s happening right now, tonight in Islington and across London (and many other cities).

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3 places that Tasmen Courtenay remembers well in Islington

• Tamsen’s first London home was above one of the Highbury Barn dry cleaners back in the 1980s. “The rooms were dreadful.”
• “My memory of Highbury Barn pub is it’s where my hair caught fire…” she says gesturing an imaginary candle in the dining area.
• Highbury Fields is another world. People love it, but it was a strange feeling walking through the relative affluence of Highbury Fields where people have expensive houses with beautiful windows and families snuggled up inside by the central heating. Very soon after that the pavements have got bodies on them.

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The interviews with a builder, a transgender woman, people in and out of work, and even a child show how different homeless people’s stories until they reach the street where they are so often just ignored by the people passing by. In the book many really enjoy talking to Tamsen, even while they are explaining how tough life is as a rough sleeper in central London.

Their stories are so tragic, and Tamsen so empathetic, that the experience was tough for her. She was banned from MacDonald’s off Trafalgar Square and gets into a number of fights with jobsworths.

One of the interviews is with Tim Wright, who many people pass when he is at Highbury Corner. His childhood is the stuff of nightmares, and over at 14 when his mum and “arsehole” stepdad simply “got up and moved to Wisbech… they didn’t leave me with a penny.” Tamsen has made a point of keeping her interviews as long reads so that you understand a person’s back story, so Islington Faces urges you to download the book Four Feet Under and read Tim’s full story.

Although Tamsen finds that she had “grown to like feeling adrift and invisible… (and) no one had any expectations of me at all,” the process took its toll. “It was exhausting,” she explains. “I walked miles and I got a horrific chest infection, and a kidney infection, from sitting on the cold, damp, chilled pavements. I got very tired breathing in the pollution as week after week I was breathing in car fumes. It felt especially filthy as I live in a clean, fresh environment with mountain air.”

“There was also emotional fatigue. The prism I began to see London through was lower, it was about suffering and also courage. My whole experience of London was from a perspective down there, on the street, and it’s a shitty environment,” continues Tamsen. “I’d feel their rage and exhaustion.”

Tamsen is reluctant to speak for anyone homeless pointing out that: “Homeless people are not an homogenous group – they have different senses of humour and different political views.”

But she wanted the book to have a power for the good. Already several of the photo portraits have been on show at Bad Behaviour art collective’s “ideal home” show raising money for the Pavement magazine (a magazine for rough sleepers and the insecurely housed).

Readers have been impressed too. “I’ve had hundreds of contacts from people who’ve read Four Feet Under saying ‘it’s changed me’,” she says. “They say “I read it, I get it. It’s changed the way I relate to homeless people. Anyone whose read it has had some kind of reaction but unless there is a sea-change I can’t see how this will go away. It’s not a society that looks after its vulnerable.”

If you have any curiosity in what life’s like on the streets you should certainly read this book, you can of course also talk to the people you pass by on your morning commute. If there’s one thing you can learn from reading Four Feet Under it is that nothing is more disempowering than being treated as if you are invisible – it’s shaming and cruel.

• Four Feet Under: 30 untold stories of homelessness in London (ebook approx £3 and hardback approx £13), available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tamsen-Courtenay/e/B07G4DX3RL/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
• Four Feet Under was crowdfunded and published by Unbound, a publisher based in Wharf Road, Islington. It has linked 160,000 book lovers from 176 countries and their £5 million to fund books like Tamsen Courtenay’s Four Feet Under. https://unbound.com

Everyone has a story;.What’s it like being Mayor of Islington? Our current Mayor, real name Dave Poyser, explains how the role makes people happy and why he’s raising money for homeless people in the borough and Freightliners Farm. Q&A with Nicola Baird

The Mayor of Islington, Cllr Dave Poyser at Freighliners Farm. (c) from twitter @IslingtonMayor

Q: What’s your connection to Islington?
I came here in 1979 to do a postgraduate journalism diploma at The City University. The journalism department was then tiny as it had only just begun. Now it is one of the largest journalism departments in the country, with an international reputation. In those days you had to start your journalism career working on a local paper, so I first covered Islington Council Meetings in the late 1970s and the early 1980s as a journalism student and when I got my first job as a Reporter on the Hackney Gazette.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week. Please also come and see our free “Inspiring Islington” exhibition at Islington Museum from 5 April – 3 June 2018.

Q: How long have you lived and/or worked in Islington?
I have lived here – certainly at weekends – most of the time since 1979. First of all, I lived as one of a gang of students in Grosvenor Avenue in Mildmay, and I stayed on there when I worked on the New Statesmanand the Hackney Gazette. I had jobs all over the place – in Leeds, Birmingham and even Brussels but I came back to Islington virtually every weekend.

We lived by Finsbury Park in Plimsoll Road (in two different houses at different times) and in a former council-owned property in Highbury Grove.

A few years ago, my family thought we might like to move, so, after 30 years here, we tried renting a place in Marylebone (renting out our house in Islington) but we all missed the Islington area, and we missed our Islington friends even more, so we never sold our Islington house and we came back here.

Work-wise, I worked for a TV company near the Angel, producing science documentaries for Channel Four. I also have worked for many years as a freelance TV producer and writer so I have often worked from home, here in Islington.

Q:  Which bit do you know best?
I feel I know every inch of my Ward, Hillrise, which is right up in the northernmost part of the borough by the Archway. It includes the Elthorne Estate, Elthorne Park, the New Orleans Walk Estate and Whitehall Park. Unlike most of Islington, we have only one pub, hardly any shops, and our only restaurant is only open four days a week. So, it’s not like Upper Street or Holloway Road which are the spine of most council wards here in Islington.

In terms of knowing the whole borough I am lucky to have been a student in the south of the borough, to have lived in the middle of the borough and to represent the north of the borough. We now live just off the Holloway Road.

Q:   What’s special about Islington for you?
I love the creative culture. But I say all the time that Islington is a very unequal borough (in terms of child poverty we are in the 10 worst areas in England and Wales), so the ‘cappuccino and sushi’ image is completely misleading, but it is a very tolerant, diverse, and creative area. I have knocked on doors from Smithfield to the Archway, and it’s amazing the fascinating creative people you meet. I think it is no coincidence that Charles Dickens, Kate Garraway and Mary Wollstonecraft are all associated with our borough, leading right on in a direct line through George Orwell in the 1940s to the hipsters of the Old Street roundabout now developing state-of-the-art software and computer games.

I believe this tradition goes right back many hundreds of years to the days when the people who lived within the walls of The City of London came outside to Clerkenwell and Finsbury for their entertainment.

Q: What’s stood out for you during your Mayoral year?
The highlight of my year was the 1918 centenary Remembrance Sunday. We started in Islington Green, with a wonderful crowd, and I was particularly proud the way we merged the traditional hymns and poems, with singing from a Rabbi, and speeches from an Imam, a Hindu and a Buddhist. As the troops marched past, we could see the plaque to Gracie Fields who used to live there, and the silhouette of the soldier added this year in memory of the people in Islington and Finsbury who died between 1914 and 1918. Lest We Forget!

We moved on to the Spa Green, where the Honourable Artillery Company were among the uniformed groups showing their respect to the dead. They are the second oldest regiment in the world, second only to the Swiss Guard at the Vatican with whom they have close links. We were just opposite Sadler’s Wells, one of Europe’s best ballets. Wow!

From there, to Manor Gardens in the north of Islington where I read poems and the Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP, read poems and addressed us.

Finally, in the evening after dark, we were high up in Dartmouth Park Hill where you get a fantastic view as far as Kent. I was able to light Islington’s beacon, while we all sang First World War songs in remembrance, knowing the beacons were lit at the same time across the country from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

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Our current Mayor of Islington knows the borough really well. He has studied here, worked here, is an Islington councillor for Hillrise ward, volunteered for CARIS night shelters and is a qualified Blue Badge tour guide. Photo from Twitter @IslingtonMayor

Places the Mayor loves in Islington

• Highbury Fieldshas always been a focal point in the middle of our Borough, and it was fun to celebrate the Jewish Summer Fete there in the summer, and there have been a host of other events including the fun run and the Mini-Mermaids, which is a fun run for toddlers.
• In Islington Green, the Menorah lighting in Decemberis very moving, especially as so many people come from all over on a cold evening.
• We may be one of the smallest borough, but to have the Honourable Artillery Company, Sadler’s Wells, the Arsenal, leading universities, St John’s Gate(1504) where St John’s Ambulance was founded, the historic Charterhouse and (part of) the Whittington Hospital all in the same, small borough is a big achievement.

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Q:     How do you get to be The Mayor?
Most London boroughs choose their mayor from the elected councillors, and you serve a sort of apprenticeship year as Deputy Mayor (who has a chain, but no robes). I told fellow councillors I was keen to do it to promote my charities, as I used to be a volunteer in Islington’s homeless shelters.

I also made it clear that wherever possible, I would try to use my experience in the communications business to help Islingtonians know what a wonderful borough they live in. Islington Faces Blog is one of many wonderful things that helps much-needed communication about our wonderful borough. I have started a Mayor of Islington Instagram, and everywhere I go as Mayor I tweet something.

I was also able to tell my fellow councillors when they made me Deputy Mayor that, as a recently qualified Blue Badge London tour guide, I would do all I could to promote Islington’s 1000-year history.

Q: You know those questions, ‘What would you do if you were mayor for the day?’ – what’s a perfect day for you…
 It sounds a cliché, but the perfect day is when you can make people happy as Mayor. Ceremonies are great, and it is important to have a civic dignitary at many events, but Islington has an army of volunteers and it is really wonderful to be able to thank them for what they do. When people suggest the Mayor thanks an unsung hero for volunteering, it often gets back to me that recognising their work has made a huge difference.

Most Islington charities represent our wonderful diversity, which is part of our strength as a borough. One example is the charity Chance UK – where local residents, working in a variety of industries, give up their spare time to mentor Islington’s children who have had a challenging start in life. Handing out the awards at a ceremony like this can make a perfect day.

I was going around the stalls at a summer event in Newington Green (Mildmay Ward) thanking the (mostly) volunteers running them, and two Italians refused to believe I really was the Mayor (not just someone in a dressing-up kit) until a local councillor Googled the photo of the Mayor of Islington to show them!

Being Mayor literally stretches from going around London meeting the Royal Family on important state occasions, to avoiding mud in a public park as you thank volunteers – all on the same day. Some days there are 100s of photos. I am not sure if people necessarily always use the photos, but getting a photo is something to do when you are with a Mayor, like we used to collect autographs when I was young.

At Gillespie Park’s apple day, Islington Faces’ Nicola Baird in red waterproof coat meets a similarly-dressed twin, our Mayor Dave Poyser, and gets to borrow the famous Islington Mayor hat. (c) instagram @Islingtonfaces

Q:  Tell us something about your black and gold Mayoral Hat?
Most male London Mayors have something similar, and women Mayors have a tricorn hat as you can see in this photo of us all at Westminster Abbey.  People say I look like a pirate! Its origins go right back into history.

It’s difficult to remember to take it off in church, as it is so much part of the Mayor’s ceremonial robes, and the Mayor often enters the church as part of a procession. If I forget to take it off, I think it is best to leave it on for the whole ceremony (if I am not blocking someone behind!) and make it look deliberate.

In Islington there are two men’s hats and two women’s hats. The Mayor’s office are fantastic at looking after them and making them fit. In this age of austerity, Sue Goss, who has worked tirelessly with many different mayors for many years, is not above taking it home to repair it herself. Is it comfortable? It is such an honour to wear it that I have never asked myself if it is comfortable! It is certainly not uncomfortable. Kids love wearing it! The last two Mayors were women, Cllr Kat Fletcher and Cllr Una O’Halloran, and wore the tricorn (a three-pointed) hat.

Q: What have your special charities been and how has the fundraising gone?
Islington Faces has written about homelessness crisis. We are the sixth richest country in the world, for heaven’s sake. Before becoming Mayor, I worked with St Mungo’s, the Simon Community (who have hostels around London) and then I was in the congregation at Christ Church in Highbury Fields and at St Andrew’s Church in my Ward and many parishioners were involved in keeping the churches open for the homeless on winter nights through an organisation called CARIS which runs the shelters. We hope the funds raised will help us to help our homeless guests after they leave us, e.g. by providing lunch boxes, or the money to get to job interviews etc.

Readers of Islington Faces will know about the wonderful work done by Freightliners Farm (see interview with farm manager Liz McAllister). It was great when I took our daughter and her friends there, when she was younger. Though they have cute animals, they also have fascinating crops and they need ‘seed capital’ (pardon the pun) as they were threatened with closure because funds wore thin. With the Mayoral charity money, they hope to be able to improve some of their buildings so they can have a new income stream hiring them out for corporate events. Fingers crossed.

Q: there anything I haven’t asked that you think Islington Faces readers would like to know?
The role of Mayor has to keep up with the times. The previous two Mayors were wonderful, pushing the boundaries of the sorts of things Mayors can do. There was a wonderful tweet of one of them joining in a game of touch rugby. They both bought ultra-glitzy red high-heeled shoes to go with the Mayoral red robes, so I followed this new tradition and bought some red shoes myself! I am now looking to hire some ‘mayoral boots’ before I stop being Mayor – watch this slot! Eat your hearts out previous Mayors.

• You can see what the Mayor is doing on twitter @IslingtonMayor (where he has 1.6k followers) and Instagram @mayorofislington
• The Mayor’s charities are CARIS and Freightliners Farm. Donations are very welcome. More than 500 people volunteer at CARIS’ night shelters during the winter. To see how you can volunteer call 07913 020738. Twitter @carisislington
• If you’d like to ask the Mayor to join an Islington event you are running you need to contact the Mayor’s Parlour, via an email TheMayor@islington.gov.uk

Everyone has a story. If you’ve been lucky enough to meet a happy bus driver then you’ll remember it. It could even have been Patrick Lawson, driver of the 26, who was nominated for TfL’s Hello London Award for Outstanding Customer Service 2018 by his passengers. Here’s more about life on the buses and how he turned his life around. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill

Bus driver Patrick Lawson: “To me a full bus is a happy bus! I get people talking to each other.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

The 26 may not go through Islington – it’s a CT Plus service running between Hackney Wick and Waterloo – but Patrick Lawson, who has been dubbed London’s happiest bus driver, starts every day from his Finsbury Park home, where he’s lived since 2012.

“The first hour sets your day up. It puts positive stuff into your brain,” explains Patrick when we meet at Nando’s on Stroud Green Road on a wet Wednesday winter afternoon.  “When I open my eyes I say ‘thank you’ and tell myself that I like myself.  I try not to listen to bad stuff on the TV, radio and the phone – that’s just feeding yourself with negative news.” That’s why Patrick’s morning routine includes a five-minute mindfulness meditation, reading a positive book for half an hour and time to tidy his room. Only then does he leave for work.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES by email: a new interview is published every week. Please also come and see our free “Inspiring Islington” exhibition at Islington Museum from 5 April – 3 June 2019.

“I love my job and dealing with passengers and the public,” he says. But he’s also really thought about how to be a happy bus driver. “I’m a chatty person anyway, so when I was preparing for the interview, I started to look at bus drivers and passengers and see what I could do extra to bring to the job. I hadn’t noticed the interaction between passengers and the bus driver before, but now I was looking I made a promise that I wasn’t going to look negative, I’d brighten up. I believe the passenger is number one, the boss! As a bus driver I’m serving the passenger and the community. I see my job as like running a business. Say my bus was a shop, if you come into my shop, I’m not going to scowl at you, I’m going to welcome you… So on my bus I greet my passengers so they feel welcome.”

This thinking not only secured Patrick a job on the buses, it’s also created a fabulous atmosphere on his bus and in July 2018 saw him win the coveted Tfl award for Outstanding Customer Service though it wasn’t until January 2019 that the press got hold of the story. He was nominated by 68 passengers that CT Plus has privately joked that they will soon need to employ someone just to deal with Patrick’s commendations.

Patrick’s also really lovely away from the driving seat. When a young man comes into Nando’s asking for money for a hostel and something to eat, Patrick pays for his chicken dinner. “I know when I was homeless, I was negative a lot of the time and the days are long, long, long…” he says brushing off his generosity.

Patrick is honest about the many years he was more of a menace to society than an example. “I’ve got a friend now who met me when I was horrible. She said I used to look at her as if I was an ant under her shoe. But that was the life we led. We didn’t smile. I was a roadman, doing roadman stuff, ducking and diving, doing what needs to be done.”

Bus driver Patrick Lawson: “When I was younger my head was the problem.” Now he’s helping make his passengers’ day and is known as London’s happiest bus driver. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

Growing up
Patrick’s early years were spent in Hackney. Then when he was 11 and his younger brother, 10, his mum, a cook at Hackney Council, sent her two boys to school in Nigeria. They stayed with her brother who believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child.  “They call it discipline in Nigeria,” says Patrick with a wry smile. Even though he was so little and terrified of the beatings, he took his chance to drive after weeks of washing his uncle’s Range Rover.

“I loved that car and took the keys when my uncle was abroad. It was parked between two cars and I put it into gear one, took my foot off the clutch and went forward. Then I reversed. I just went back and forth. I loved it,” he says. His uncle never found out… (Patrick eventually got his driver’s licence in 1999 and in 2000 his public service vehicle licence).

Patrick’s mum only came out to Nigeria to see her sons when her brother was robbed and killed. At the funeral the boys “begged her to take us home.” She did.

Returning to London Patrick went to Cardinal Pole secondary school but soon learnt how you could jiggle a lock to open the door of a mini. This was the start of his TDA (taking and driving away) life and soon after that he got into drug dealing. Unfortunately, turning to a life of crime meant Patrick was in Pentonville “loads of times” before he was 20.

And when let out from prison, he was often homeless. Eventually he became an addict and for six years sold the Big Issue around Russell Square, Covent Garden and Mayfair. He is of course now clean.

Patrick Lawson takes pride in welcoming passengers on to his bus, which may be why he’s famous for being London’s happiest bus driver. To date 68 people have sent messages to CT Plus about how much they like being welcomed on to the 26. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

“People tell me that my mess has inspired them,” he says with some surprise. “I’ve learnt that my spirit is tender, but it’s wrong to say that I’m stressed. I’m happy because I’ve been given a chance. I took the wrong road that led down a path of evil, degradation and near-death experiences. So today I’m grateful that I’m alive and that I’m working. People are amazed at the change of where I’m coming from. I learnt how to be a better person by reading books and listening to videos – they all talk about attitude and personal integrity. For many years I didn’t know I was poisoning people’s lives.”

And that’s why life is very different for Patrick, 50. Now he has a job he can be proud of on the buses, and a place to live (found with a little help from his local MP, Jeremy Corbyn). He’s also got dreams to run his own property business – so very good luck to him.

Meanwhile if you ever find yourself in Hackney Wick or Waterloo, keep a look out for the 26 so you can give Patrick a wave. Although you may find that it’s Patrick giving you the first wave.

• Buying the Big Issue– new mags are published each Monday – helps vendors learn business skills, earn cash and retrain. So, if you haven’t yet made a 2019 resolution, maybe consider buying it regularly.

Everyone has a story. Edgar Rogers works as a security officer at Islington Town Hall. You might have seen him on the front desk, or know him as one of Islington’s marriage registrars who officiate at Town Hall weddings. But Edgar’s also been a national basketball player for Zimbabwe and for many years in Africa took key roles on Zimbabwe’s Olympic Committee and Commonwealth Games Federation.  Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.  

Edgar Rogers: “A wedding is always a happy occasion.” (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

It’s almost as if Edgar Rogers, who is 71, has lived two totally different lives – one in Zimbabwe as an international athlete (he played centre for their basketball team). The other as a security officer on the front desk of Islington Town Hall with additional responsibilities at the weekend working as a Marriage Registrar which has led to him officiating at more than 400 marriages and civil partnerships.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES a new interview is published every week. Please also come and see our free “Inspiring Islington” photography exhibition at Islington Museum from 5 April – 3 June 2019. More info on www.islingtonfacesblog.com/events

“A wedding is always a happy occasion,” says Edgar on his lunch break explaining that it is the Deputy Superintendent Registrar who conducts the ceremony while the Deputy Registrar registers the marriage in their hand writing in the Register Book – a perfect task for Edgar given his years working as a senior draughtsman in Telecoms in Harare. “My role is to explain the procedures and legal obligations and what to expect, it is also an opportunity to calm their nerves. When the married couple go out of the Town Hall there are smiles all around with passing cars hooting and people walking past stopping to admire the event.

He’s even married his own friends’ children, a real surprise for some parents who didn’t know that Edgar was in London and carrying out a new profession.

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Places Edgar Rogers likes in Islington

• I like having a quick breakfast of bacon and egg at the Worker’s Café, Upper Street.
• If I go out for lunch with council colleagues we like Nando’s on Upper Street or a little café on Cross Street.
• Once I was running for the bus on Upper Street and the bus driver waited. When I got there he said, “you married me!”
• My third son is an Arsenal fan. When he visited London I picked him up from the airport and the first thing he said was “Dad, I want to go to Highbury.”
• I’ve no time to play now, but I still watch a lot of sport.

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Apartheid years
Edgar was born in South Africa where his Zimbabwean-born father was a migrant worker. The family moved back to Zimbabwe in 1958 at the peak of the apartheid (racist) period during the forced removals. “In Port Elizabeth our area, Korsten, like District 6 in Cape Town was being demolished. It was where we all lived together. There were a few whites, Indians, people of Chinese origin and mixed but they decided to separate the races. My father was required to move to KwaZakele which was a new black area next to an established township/dumping ground called New Brighton. My mother expected to move to Schauderville for coloureds as she was mixed race. My father and mother were ballroom dancers, they were Eastern Cape champions, and were very principled and politically aware and he took the case to court. It was at that time that the ANC (African National Congress) became prominent and Mandela and all very active. I clearly remember the ANC in khaki uniforms with black berets marching through the townships talking about the struggle for freedom and a non-racial society. I was between 10- and 11-years-old at the time, remembers Edgar, so my parents decided to leave South Africa for what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

“Leaving South Africa was traumatic for me. We travelled by train through South Africa and Botswana into Zimbabwe. I spoke Afrikaans, which was my mother tongue but in Harare where we settled now it was only English and Shona that the people spoke.

Edgar’s family were in a sense forcibly removed, and for the next two decades South Africans suffered dreadfully. The Treason Trials in South Africa dragged on for four years, until 1961, when all the ANC members acquitted. But in July 1963 a raid on a farm in Rivonia led to 11 ANC leaders being charged. Nelson Mandela was found guilty of sabotage against South Africa’s apartheid government and onJune 12, 1964 he received a life sentence that led to his incarceration on Robben Island. He wasn’t released until 11 February 1990.

Violent political change was causing upset in Edgar’s new home too. At the time the country was called Southern Rhodesia, and the capital was Salisbury. From 1970 there was a civil war, until the country – under the premiership of Robert Mugabe – gained peace and official independence from Britain in April 1980. Its name was immediately changed to Zimbabwe and the capital became Harare.

African life
Edgar is tall and has always played a lot of sport. “I loved football, basketball, rugby and athletics but then I concentrated on basketball and made the national team. In 1976 the team was selected to go to South Africa and that cause a bit of a problem as there were two blacks in our team, myself and a colleague, and under apartheid South Africa that couldn’t happen!  Boycotts were beginning to have an effect and already South Africa was isolated from international competition for its main sport, rugby. That year two Maori men on the All Blacks rugby touring side, known as the Going brothers (Sid and Ken) were only able to play after South Africa passed an Act in Parliament that where people were not white on a team they were considered to be honorary whites for a period. So, when our basketball team was chosen, I fell into the same category.”

“I was playing in centre and had two minds about going. But two prominent Zanu members (now Zanu PF), Edison Sithole and Nelson Mawema told me to go. They said it will open doors for others and bring about change in South Africa. And so my team mate Kimon and I went to play in South Africa as honorary whites. When we played (and beat) Northern Transvaal I had some friends in Soweto and I asked if they wanted to watch me play. They did and the authorities turned a blind eye, so I think my two dozen friends became the first multi-racial sports crowd in Pretoria! Shortly after I was interviewed on South African TV by an Afrikaans-speaking journalist. He spoke in English to me and when I answered in Afrikaans he almost dropped the microphone: he thought I was African-American,” says Edgar with a chuckle.

When he retired from playing Edgar went into sport administration. “I was involved in the Zimbabwe Olympic committee,” he says. This was no easy task as “like South Africa we were banned from international sport. I wrote to the International Basketball Federation to have ourselves reinstated.” After lobbying – which included a trip to the Moscow 1980 Olympics “we were re-admitted,” says Edgar. It was a proud moment for this sports-mad athlete representing a sports-mad country. Even when he retired from work in Zimbabwe at the turn of the century, for two years he was Chief Executive of the Zimbabwe Football Association.

Islington
So how come Edgar moved to London (he’s based in Kensal town) and works in Islington?

“My sons were at Rhodes University in South Africa, studying journalism, but the Zimbabwean dollar became worthless and university would only accept fees in foreign currency. There was no way of paying the fees. So, I had two option: my sons could leave university and come back to Zimbabwe where there were no jobs, or I could leave the country and get work elsewhere. My wife’s grandfather is from Scotland, so we obtained ancestral visa to reside in the UK. My first job was at the Town Hall in Islington.

Hopefully if you go into the council buildings often, you’ll already know Edgar well. If not, you’ve been seriously missing out. Thank you Edgar for sharing your fascinating life story with Islington Faces.

Everyone has a story. Apprentice hair stylist Natalie Appiah reflects on her life in care. Interview by Nicola Baird. 

Natalie Appiah: “I’ve had my ups and down but I’m very passionate about Islington.” (c) Islington Faces

“I’m a care leaver,” says Natalie Appiah as we start this interview. This confident young woman had already impressed Islington Faces at the hair salon where she works. Now 24, she’s happy to talk about her secondary school years during which she was moved between foster families, schools and even boroughs. Natalie’s colleagues at Chaps & Dames, who have been working with her for a year, and suggested Islington Faces do this interview, overheard the interview and seem quite stunned. Clearly Natalie’s not mentioned this important part of her life to them while busy learning the hair stylist’s trade.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES a new interview is published every week. Please also come and see our free “Inspiring Islington” photography exhibition at Islington Museum from 5 April – 3 June 2019. More info on www.islingtonfacesblog.com/events

Natalie, 24, is proud to be, “born and raised in Islington. I feel quite fortunate that I was placed in Islington when I see people from other boroughs. Islington kids get a lot more support. Even now, because I’m a care leaver, my social worker supports me in finding the funds for books and scissors for my course.”

Natalie enjoyed Laycock Primary School and then went to Islington Arts and Media. But aged just 12 life changed dramatically. “I went into care in Year 8 and then had 10-11 different foster parents living everywhere, from Edmonton to Essex.”

The night before she moved to Year 8 and started at Highbury Fields School, Natalie was taken into foster care. “At school I was angry and not listening to teachers. In retrospect I see I had a lot going on and built up anger and resentment. One teacher, Ms Chambers, was very supportive. She’d see past my emotion. If I was angry, or having a bad day, she’d let me sit in her office.”

Unfortunately, Natalie was excluded from school in Year 10.  “I went to Westminster Kingsway but ended up leaving because I was moving foster places so often. They put me with foster parents who were really mean, or wanted me to smoke with them or were really religious and I’m not. It was pretty unsettled. Then, when I was living in Lewisham with a foster carer that I really liked, social services moved me because I was 16. They wanted to put me in a hostel in Enfield. These hostels are not nice places. They forcibly removed me; me and my foster mum were crying… But then I went to a centre for semi-independent living in Palmers Green from 16-18.”

The good news is that Natalie is now in her own flat.“It took me a few years to get the knack of being an adult and paying bills! I knew how to cook and have a cheffing diploma. I knew how to clean too, my mum taught me,” says Natalie who was planning to make a dinner of pasta, pesto, garlic bread and a salad on the side after work that Wednesday evening, although she also enjoys making dishes like beef lasagne and jollof rice.

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Places Natalie loves in Islington

• Highbury Fields (the park) – I’ve got lots of naughty teenage memories. It’s a lovely place.
• I like the Angel Central Vue. It was one of the first cinemas I ever went to.
• The Angel shopping centre is good.
• I volunteered at Freightliners Farm and did all sorts: working in the café baking cakes and looking after the pigs and sheep. I remember reading Vogueand seeing a pig modelling diamonds and I said “I recognise that pig!”
• I like going to the organic fruit and vegetable shop on Stroud Green Road. They’re friendly and it’s reasonably priced. There’s a huge range of foods including fruit I’ve seen in Ghana.

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Apprenticeship
“I’ve always liked hair salons and want to do a profession I enjoy,” explains Natalie on a short break from sweeping, sorting and organising the salon. Natalie is a force of friendly energy who actually began volunteering at Chaps and Dames before moving on to an apprenticeship. As a result she works at the salon at the same time as studying for the NVQ Level 2 in Hairdressing & Barbering with the London Hair Academy in Camden.

It’s clear that Natalie has been exposed to life experiences that aren’t always comfortable. To protect herself she’s made herself homeless while in care and believes that children-in-care need much more support as they make the move to independent living. It’s tough for anyone facing bills, budgeting and dealing with the loneliness of living solo in your own place but especially hard if you’ve never been given the skills to cope.

That’s why Natalie relishes giving talks to young care leavers. “I learnt my lessons, but I think it’s nice to learn from hearing other people’s mistakes. I tell 18-year-olds things that they can take forward to make their independence process easier. I talk about paying bills and being prepared – like finding the right energy tariff and living within your means. Also, don’t let locals come into your home and turn it into a trap house – before you know they’re selling drugs out of your house and telling you to ‘shut it’, in your own house!”

Asked if she had anything else to say, Natalie was clear that she’s worried about the effect Universal Credit is having on people. “I know single mums who are really struggling and I’m worried that friends who have mental health problems will end up killing themselves from the financial strain,” she says. And like many Londoners she says “knife crime really bothers me. I’ve witnessed two phone muggings and a relative was almost killed.”

Despite all that has happened to her it is clear that Natalie is a huge fan of Islington. She’s also a Jeremy Corbyn fan, meeting him recently at her friend’s dad’s funeral. “He’s a fantastic MP for this borough.”

The teenage years are often tough, but they are invariably much harder if you are a looked after child. Islington Faces loved meeting Natalie: it’s clear that she’s overcome all sorts. Here’s hoping that she is now well on the way to qualifying in a career that she will love.

• Choices at Caxton House Community Centre, 129 St John’s Way, N19 3RQ, email info@choiceslondoncic.com or tel: 0207 281 6428 can help people who are affected by Universal Credit or need help with their online application or some 1-2-1 support.
• For a fabulous hair cut go to Chaps & Dames, 154 Tollington Park, N4.

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola

Everyone has a story. You can read more about the people photographed by Kimi Gill in the Inspiring Islington free photo exhibition from 5 April – 3 June 2019 using these links to the original interviews by Nicola Baird. A special welcome to anyone who reached this page via a QR code!

L-R (top row) Merium, Stanley, Hanisha.
L-R (bottom) Jane, Mrs Li, Raquel. (c) Kimi Gill for Islington Faces

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There are lots of FREE events during the photo show – click on www.islingtonfacesblog.com/events to book tickets for walks, talks and more.
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Find out more about Inspiring Islington (arranged alphabetically by first name):

Andrew Greer https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2017/09/06/robert-shrubsall-andrew-greer-st-thomas-church-organ/

Clarissa Hulse https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2017/01/11/clarissa-hulse-textile-designer/

Edgar Rogers https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2019/03/06/edgar-rogers-council-security-officer/

Hanisha Solomon https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2014/07/22/hanisha-solomon-singer/

Jane Parker https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2014/07/16/jane-amelia-parker-designermaker/

Joan Williams https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2018/11/28/joan-williams-chiropodist/

Liz McAllister https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2018/09/12/liz-mcallister-farm-manager/

Lorraine Fox https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2018/01/17/lorraine-fox-skipper/

Merium Bhuiyan https://www.islingtonfacesblog.com/2018/05/23/merium-bhuiyan-cakeface-make-up/

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