Upstairs, downstairs
Apr. 10th, 2013 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceNewcastle has a vernacular architecture that I think may be unique: two-storey Victorian terraces that were built as apartments rather than houses, divided on the horizontal as well as the vertical plane. Upstairs and downstairs are entirely separate, with their own front doors and their own back yards. [Google "tyneside flats" if you need to know more; there's a Wiki entry and everything.]
Anyway: back in the eighties, m'friends Ian and Mary rented an upstairs flat for a number of years, and when they moved out I took it over. And by definition inherited their downstairs neighbour as my own. Rita was an elderly widow living alone, her family spread far and wide; we did neighbourly things, as you do, and visited some, and kept an eye on each other until I moved to my own house in the mid-nineties. For a while I still went back to see her now and then, but time passed and my habits changed and I wasn't over that end of town very much, and - well, you know. I don't suppose I've seen her for a dozen years or so. And the last time I walked down Hampstead Road there was clearly another family in residence, and I've been quietly assuming-without-evidence that she was dead by now. I figured she must've been in her eighties when I saw her last, so...
Not she. She's been lying to her family all these years; they thought she was 95, and they only found out that she wasn't when the Palace phoned to ask where the Queen should send her congratulatory message on the occasion of her hundredth birthday.
And now she's news on the BBC, and I just love that. And m'friend Mary is coming to California tomorrow, so I get to tell her all about it, if she hasn't heard already...
And in other news, I spatchcocked my first chicken today. Barry found this relevant to his interests, at least until I smothered it with cilantro and lemon juice and garlic and ginger and chilli and cumin and pepper and such. The big question, though, is oven or barbecue? It ought to grill just lovely, and the temperature's heading for the 80s, so there are arguments that way; but in the oven all that marinade will make a splendid sauce, and it'd be a shame to lose that. Tho' we do still have Monday's curry-chicken-gravy leftovers. Though in the oven I could do the rest of the cauliflower too, and some other veggies...
So I dunno, really. I'm all a-dither.
Anyway: back in the eighties, m'friends Ian and Mary rented an upstairs flat for a number of years, and when they moved out I took it over. And by definition inherited their downstairs neighbour as my own. Rita was an elderly widow living alone, her family spread far and wide; we did neighbourly things, as you do, and visited some, and kept an eye on each other until I moved to my own house in the mid-nineties. For a while I still went back to see her now and then, but time passed and my habits changed and I wasn't over that end of town very much, and - well, you know. I don't suppose I've seen her for a dozen years or so. And the last time I walked down Hampstead Road there was clearly another family in residence, and I've been quietly assuming-without-evidence that she was dead by now. I figured she must've been in her eighties when I saw her last, so...
Not she. She's been lying to her family all these years; they thought she was 95, and they only found out that she wasn't when the Palace phoned to ask where the Queen should send her congratulatory message on the occasion of her hundredth birthday.
And now she's news on the BBC, and I just love that. And m'friend Mary is coming to California tomorrow, so I get to tell her all about it, if she hasn't heard already...
And in other news, I spatchcocked my first chicken today. Barry found this relevant to his interests, at least until I smothered it with cilantro and lemon juice and garlic and ginger and chilli and cumin and pepper and such. The big question, though, is oven or barbecue? It ought to grill just lovely, and the temperature's heading for the 80s, so there are arguments that way; but in the oven all that marinade will make a splendid sauce, and it'd be a shame to lose that. Tho' we do still have Monday's curry-chicken-gravy leftovers. Though in the oven I could do the rest of the cauliflower too, and some other veggies...
So I dunno, really. I'm all a-dither.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-11 08:27 pm (UTC)Not entirely unique, maybe - I am living in one right now, and it is situated in North London...
(But interesting link, thank you.)