Tangent thought

So how did this mental journey start then aye? Well I was looking up a random~ish place in London on Goggle Earth: New River Path, off of Wightman Road, Harringay. It’s an interesting way of taking a virtual walk (Still Walks is another). This journey was via some photographer’s 360 camera (ADDENDUM: you can also do this by placing the little yellow person on Google Earth upon each individual blue dot along the path). Thing is I’m not so sure I would feel comfortable doing the walk, and definitely not feel safe there in real life (not being a proper townie with the knowhow of how to handle a stand off if approached by someone). This then started me thinking of when as a child, I had to go from the village setting I was used to, to sing in a Northampton town venue. OMG the disgusting, stomach wrenching smell!!! Let me explain: The venue was within the diffusion of the stench of the animal rendering, glue factory. We had to walk through a narrow double row of what looked like tall Glasgow tenements just up from Chalk Lane, it could have been Doddridge Street. I recall it looked like a tunnel of tall grey scary buildings that sort of towered over us menacingly. They’ve been pulled down. So we’ve got nothing to show of them and their history’s tangible feel has now gone for ever. Anyways, using Google Earth I see there seems to still be original cobbles here and there. So theoretically you could look down and imagine, but only if you have the knowledge of what was originally there. Oh and then, my mind going off on another tangent, I was thinking about the poor woman who survived her beautiful thatch cottage in Duston (seen behind the telegraph pole here) getting blown up (not then visible here). She was “rehoused” and placed in a block of flats not far from the venue I sang in. Ugly flats. High rise, smelly lift and stairs. This is what happened to her, she lit the gas and ended up in the centre of a nothingness hole. The blown up cottage just left nothing, but there she was sat there in the crater. One sweet little old lady from a village, rehoused in a block of flats near a stench of death from a glue factory and other people using the building like a toilet! So no wonder she didn’t last long after that. She was such a lovely person who helped my mother when she had ran into her garden covered in bees! [Another tangent] You see, Mother was on her pushbike and she saw one swam of bees coming in one direction and another coming to converged with that one right over her head, then they just both together dropped on her! One thing we think came from all those bees, was Mother never suffered from rheumatism or arthritis (that we assume was the results of the stings). So, there’s one short mental journey I took. Thing is, I wonder of what sort of journeys the people I care for take, for some have no communication abilities. I am assuming they are like the rest of us and need to keep their minds working, so bless ’em they might have to rely on memories a lot more. I guess photos might help or perhaps random stuff e.g. a style of hat, a vintage toy, old money, leg warmers, an ornate silver loose tea spoon, a fresh quince (they smell so different to anything else), a fountain pen, a length of antique pillow lace, a stem with a yellow tomato on it, the sheet for the game of Twister…

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BTW this post is so full of links (check out the underlined blue bits and click on them) and the image above is a shared image from Pexels Free Photos.