The Times Magazine 5rief, as we know, affects us
in odd ways.
There’s been a death in
the family – my father-in-
law, he was 84, it was
sudden, but not unlikely- and the 1am phone call
meant we entered The
World That Arrives When
Someone Has Gone. Work cancelled, bags
packed. Returned, raw, to the home town.
Doorbell always ringing; crying visitors on
the sofa; so many cups of tea the kitchen
resembles backstage in a cafe. Picking a coffin,
visiting a burial plot (“Ooooh, it’s got good
parking. Nice. He would have wanted that”).
The ordering of flowers and sandwiches - fretting over egg and cress, and ham, in
the same half-hour you pick out the clothes
someone will be buried in.
It’s a proper emotional rollercoaster in
which you forget what day it is, and become
so quietly sad and mad that you find yourself,
two weeks in, suddenly bursting into tears and
saying – in a sentence that surprises even you,
as you say it – “This is all too much. I wish
I could go for a walk – just for half an hour! - around Finsbury Park.”
Finsbury Park? No one cries about or longs
for Finsbury Park. Of all London’s parks, it’s
the least glamorous. One hundred and ten
acres in north London, wedged between
Finsbury Park and Manor House Tube
stations. Some corners of it are quite dodgy - there was a murder a few years ago – and
its rat population epitomises “cheerfully
thriving urban wildlife”.
And yet, this week, I learnt, when reaching
for my mental “happy place”, this... appears
to be it. Over, say, Antigua – or even my
own house. Why? Half of it must just be the
sweetness of familiarity – it’s our nearest park,
and since getting the dog, I’ve walked around
it pretty much every day for five years. I like
to time it for 5pm, so I can listen to Evan
Davis on PM and catch up with world events
while the dog attends its similarly serious
admin of monitoring rival dogs’ urine output.
I think I love it because it’s so... useful?
It belongs to everyone, and everyone sees
something different in it. On the north side,
in summer, extended families and friends set
up £20 Argos marquees and spend the day
barbecueing: alphabet balloons tied to trees
telling you if the occasion is a “21st Birthday”,
“Ruby Anniversary” or, on one pleasingly
G
CAITLIN MORAN
This is what grief has taught me
A middle of the night phone call that turned my life upside down
ROBERT WILSON
specific occasion, “Piss Up”. The northwest
corner, meanwhile, seems to have been claimed
by Finsbury’s South American community- they bring accordions and panpipes and play
songs from the home country that make the
older men, after a few beers, cry. One hundred
yards from Little Buenos Aires is the baseball
pitch: expat North Americans shouting, “Nice
one, buddy!” and sounding – like all Americans
do in Britain – like they’re in a movie.
The trees near the boating lake host the
Naughty Corner – there’s always a strong
smell of marijuana, which floats all the way
across to where the new mums are doing
their workout, complete with buggies, under
the eye of the BMF instructor. Often, the
BMF instructor has to bow to necessity and
hold a fat, pooey baby while its mum finishes
her squats; sometimes having to whisper,
“DROP AND GIVE ME 20,” if the baby
has fallen asleep.
The bleak, open field is fringed with benches
and this is where the alcoholics and junkies
sit. I fondly think that Finsbury Park’s junkies - my junkies – are a cut above the rest, as they
very neatly lay out all their “works” on the
bench, as if Delia Smith were giving a cookery
demonstration, before getting high. Beyond is
a community centre, with a kitchen garden
and seemingly perpetual bongo workshop.
At night, the homeless eastern Europeans
who’ve pitched tents by the park gates climb
over the fence and just sit, quietly – maybe
remembering their own gardens, far away.
Finsbury Park’s always got something going
on: giggling girls practising a Rollerblade dance
routine; a man leaning against a tree, playing
the saxophone; another man walking around
exposing himself. Orthodox Jews, in huge
fur hats, rowing across the boating lake;
competitors on the Tough Mudder obstacle
course, trying to get up the impossibly steep,
20ft-high Hero Wall, while the youths from
the Naughty Corner shout out unexpectedly
useful advice (“Run at it! Engage your lats!”).
Teenagers kissing in the long grass;
exhausted parents watching toddlers in the
paddling pool – and me, in the middle of it,
rejoicing at how this square of green provides
a million different, all perfect, answers to
the perpetual, fundamental human question
of, “What shall I do with this hour? This
morning? This me?”
I know now why I long for it. It’s life, isn’t
it? Millions of lives, buzzing on.
Even though one has gone. n
It’s too much, fretting
over ham sandwiches
in the same half-hour
you pick out the
clothes someone
will be buried in