Snow

Added to the usual Monday stress was added snow. Snow stopped us getting to work, and snow shut the nursery. To the pressures of two of us sharing one computer, trying to deal with impending deadlines, we now had T to deal with.

After some sharp words we worked out a rota. I would take T out while my wife worked. So, with him in the backpack, we stepped outside into the heaviest snow I had seen for many years.

As we tramped up Ladywell Road I took several work calls, which did little to improve my mood, but all the time T shrieked excitedly and enthusiastically slapped the top of my head.

We stepped into the cemetery. I knew I could stand under the chapel and deal with the work calls sheltered from the thickly falling snow. A phone call or two later and it was clear that the truncated working day was going to bring irritation and frustration. I put the phone back into my pocket and looked out the snow falling across the graves.

Everything was quiet. Everything, apart from T screaming with excitement. No buses, no planes. It felt as if the snow had come down on the city as a blanket, covering the dirt, covering the litter. Above this, the snow allowed only the trees and the graves to stand, rendered somehow beautiful by the whiteness.

T and I left the cemetery and made our way up Ivy Road. It was like a country lane. On the left a high wall over which the wintry trees poked, and to our right the houses seemed somehow timeless. It was lonely, but the place felt calm and peaceful. We turned into St Cyprian's Passage and headed up to Hilly Fields.

Suddenly, the silence disappeared. Hilly Fields was crowded. Families, groups of kids, couples. Snow had kept them all from work or school, and now it was bringing them together.

The city looked different, and it was acting differently. People smiled at each other. T garnered grins and comments from passers by who would surely have put their heads down and walked by on any other day.

Sledgers clattered into each other but laughed in a way they wouldn't have done had they collided on a pavement. People stood next to the eight-foot snowman and asked strangers to take their photographs.

From the top of Hilly Fields you could see that all London was the same. You couldn't see where the city stopped and the Kent hills began. And all around you people were having fun and enjoying being with each other.

I forgot the problems at work, and walked T round the park. He laughed and shrieked all the way and cried so piteously when we get home that I took him out again after lunch, and once more before it got dark.

Sadly, he's too young to be able to remember this in years to come, but I hope it's not his last chance to be part of a day like this. I also hope that it happen for reasons other than snow.

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery and Spring

A small baby is a wonderful thing, but it does mean that you can't get out and about as much as you did, so long walks or cycle rides in the countryside are on hold at present.

Time spent in Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery, though, is bringing me close to nature and ensuring that I am not totally overwhelmed by concrete, litter and the outpourings of the internal combustion engine.

Dodging showers, T and I wandered through today at the end of a walk that took in Hilly Fields and most of Brockley. In the short time that we were there I saw a green woodpecker, a jay (I think) and watched some rather confident robins watching me. The sound of birds singing dominated all. There were bluebells and primoses. One grave was covered in primroses of different colour, and I wonder if some mourning relative planted them years ago, and even now they are blooming though whoever planted them is long gone, and whoever they were planted for long forgotten.

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery

Despite having lived here for five years, I had never visited the cemetery that is five minutes walk from our front door. Just before Christmas, I took our baby, T, out for his morning walk on a very foggy day. Instead of heading up Hilly Fields as per usual, I went to Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery.

It was incredible. The mist hid all of the surrounding houses and it felt as if T and I were in some wood far from anywhere with gravestones providing the undergrowth.

As a resource for local wildlife, the value of the cemetery is obvious. But are the community appreciative of what is on their doorstep? There were few people there when we visited, nor on subsequent trips but local interest there obviously is. The question is, I suppose, what is the benefit that it brings and how to best secure that?

The renewal of Ladywell Fields shows that the Council is investing in our open spaces, but the purpose of a park is a lot more obvious than a largely disused cemetery. Of course, it is important to the local environment, but its value goes beyond that. It tells the story of this area for a period of its history, and that is an essential underpinning to any sense of identity for a place.

However, given the changing population of this place, and the declining numbers visiting the graves of their loved ones, Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery is increasingly cut off from the life of the community around it as much as it was from sight by the fog on the day of my visit.

I hope that the various community activists focusing their attention upon it are successful in their ambition, and I hope they, and the council, sensitively manage the tension between the cultural and the environmental value of the cemetery.