Highgate & Hamstead Heath

As I said, I was only one tube stop from Highgate and one gloriously sunny morning I decided to venture out and see what everyone was talking about – I was very much inspired from the outing.

It was winter, so it was cold, however the sun was shining brilliantly and I must say, there is something magnificent about a sunny winters day in comparison to a sunny summers day… the light is different, the feel, the atmosphere, everything seems more glowing and surreal.

Highgate is a well to do area, to say the least, you can almost smell the money in the air… more old money than new. It’s been a good area since it began, sitting there upon a hill watching over the derelict city of London since time began, it seems. It’s marvellous. The huge white Romanesque houses chased by the fake-tudor architecture, the expances of green and post-coffee houses. Even by watching the streets and taking in the expensive cars, there is a sense that you either belong here, or you don’t.

I bobbed into a charity shop along my wanderings and picked up nice pair of shoes, ‘bargain’ I thought… thinking that as it was a charity store it would be going for chips – alas, I was wrong, it appears that even the poverty striken are well to do, the shoes were 40pound and well beyond my financial inclination.

I bought a fanta in Highgate Village, which, regardless of the price of everything, is a lovely place to simply be, to look to enjoy and exist. The man behind the counter directed me to where I wanted to go, which was Highgate Cemetry… I wanted to visit Marx and just wander through the tombstones – some of which date back to 1400 / 1500. Some may find my interest in cemetries quirky (to put it politely), but I remember wandering through Mourambine Cemetry, chatting to my Great Grandmother, thinking about the lives of youths that had been buried there. What these people’s stories had been, who did they leave behind, where are their descendants? My interest became more prevalent when, while at boarding school, we went to a cemetery in Fremantle. I remember crying over the grave of a woman and her child, she had died during childbirth and the child as well. I felt for the husband who had put a poem on the headstone about angels carrying new angels upon their wings. I liked to think that they could almost here my thoughts and smile because they were being remembered. I think that’s what we all want in a way, a moment of immortality, even hundreds of years after we have gone.

Is it wrong to say that a cemetery is beautiful? Well, I think they are, and this one especially. I made my way through Balthomenue Park, watching children running around the grass and playing on the swing, couples laying on the ground, all rugged up with cups of red wine. Some lone people reading and taking advantage of one of the few sunny winters days. I stood for a while under a cherry tree, the wind blew and petals flew around me, I felt like the only person on earth for those moments. The whispering wind and the dancing particles of the trees. The old city was silent in the distance, you almost felt that you were on Mount Olympus looking down, so was the atmosphere here.

Next to the park is Highgate Cemetery, I liked that, to think that these people were laid to rest so close to the sounds of life and happiness and childish fun. I paid the lady the entry fare (I didn’t mind this as it went to the upkeep of the grounds and the headstones) and wandered through the huge wrought iron gates.

Inside the cemetery the grass was slightly overgrown, if felt as if I was wandering through the secret garden, something undiscovered about it, as if no one had laid foot here for years before. I liked this, the grass was enigmatic light next to the off white of the headstones. Angels overlooked the dead below, crosses stood high below sweeping leaves of the trees, ivy grew on thick angled headstones, and silently words crept up from the ground, a hidden and lost memory of the person who lay there now. Karl Marx, in all his grandeur, a bust of his head twenty times the size of a human skull. He looked on, was it thoughtfully? Judgingly? Aggressively? I’m not sure, but he certainly was a presence. His ideas (although not always used for good) were honoured here. A tree trunk had wound itself around the headstone of a sailor lost at sea. There were soldiers, sailors, Lords and Ladies, lost children and people of political importance. All here, laid to rest, peaceful amongst the trees, the birds and the silent visitors who remembered them for a moment.

I spent what must have been two hours there, reading, wandering, remembering, breathing, thinking, being at peace. Funny that a place like this would be the scene of so many scary stories, and yet, I think a lively street more inclined to hold danger and fear than a cemetery.

After spending some time in the past, dreaming the lives that these people may have led, imagining the world that they had seen and who was still here to see it for them, I moved on in search of Hamstead Heath. I wanted a good walk and wanted more space and landscape. I used to feel it in Perth as well, sometimes longing for open space, feeling claustrophobic in the general day to day existence of a city, more so that sense comes across you in London. The hustle bustle that keeps your heart pacing like an excitable puppy. Open space is our essential reprieve.

I wandered down through the quiet tree lined streets, peeking through gates and observing the rich estates and mansions that must have been built hundreds of years before – the rich seem to retain their position high up. I came through Hamstead Village, smelling the cheese and omlettes and fresh coffee along the way. Looking at the modern day Mum’s in the latest fashion wheeling their little Michelin man babies around as if an accessory… either that or a dog in a bag – I don’t think I’ll ever understand the dog in the bag concept, those dogs eyes are often larger than their skulls and appear constantly frightened of everything, possibly because they are smaller that everything else… not to mention, they live in a bag under the armpit of their owner – can’t be the best life, can it?

I passed through the little street having no idea how to get into Hamstead but hoping that I was heading in the right direction. Feeling relatively conspicuous in my tattered stone wash jeans, well worn sneakers and thigh length purple jumper that was thinning more every time I even glanced at it! But turning the corner from the village I saw before me a great explance of open land, a hill rising up and thought – well, that wasn’t too hard was it? Excellent, lets find somewhere that I can sit and read!

Luckily it was mid-week so I was relatively quiet. Up on Parliament Hill there were families and children flying kites, the colours whisking like birds scanning their pray below, winding around and around again, its funny the delight we get of making things fly or float. Hamstead Heath is enormous. It stretches on and on and encompasses different landscapes of the English country-side and I’m so clad its been retained. Apparently famous people are constantly seen here – though, I think I was too busy enjoying the space and trees and lakes to take notice of the people.

I parked myself under a weeping willow (one of my favourite trees, when I was little I decided I would have a huge drive way to my house that would be lined by weeping willows and daffodils underneath). I opened my book and lazed while looking out over the few small boats that paraded silently on the rippling lake behind me. Before me Parliament Hill swept up to create a horizon of its very own and along the path Mum’s with prams and children on scooters merrily moved along. I took a sip of water and my stomach insisted that food was more a necessity than liquid and what on earth did I think I was doing not bringing a sandwhich? Stomachs are demanding things at times, I think we are at the whim of than more than our mind. So, after a small moment of relaxation I continued my investigation of Hamstead Heath and hoped to discover a café along the walk.

I moved along a huge lake, watched the picnicking families, breathed in the clean air while the sun warmed my back. I headed up, assuming up was the direction in which I’d come and along a dirt road. I came to a ‘Man’s Only’ swimming hole, which I thought incredulous and sexist… until I came to the ‘Woman’s Only’ which was just in time because I had had far too much water to compensate for my lack of food. I wandered in to the Woman’s Only Swimming Hole and saw a natural lake before me. To the side of it was a rock pool and a place to park bikes, and on the other side a steeped green where ladies lay, breasts out, reading or eating or chatting to friends. I had a vivid image of the first ‘Planet of the Apes’ film, when the main character first saw the Land of the Apes and women and men wandered around the water hole practically naked but completely at peace. It was something out of a Romantic painting… I quite liked it, very bohemian, I thought. The natural pool had two sections, one with lanes for laps, and the other for free swimming. There was one brave woman stroking away, though I can imagine how freezing it must have been. I used to lavatories there, chatted to the attendant for a bit. She said that this had been here since the mid 1800’s and she agreed with my summation, very bohemian, a place for female freedom (and Lesbians… she said, though, they didn’t encourage public displays of affection). ‘Well’, I thought to myself, ‘I’m certainly not in Australia any more’.

Eventually the road disappeared and there was another expanse of hilled landscape, as I walked up I looked behind me and saw ‘community’, apparently, I found out later, an illegal hippy community where they were growing their own vegetables and so long as they didn’t bother anyone no one bothered them. It was overlooked by the police, so long as they weren’t doing any harm. I saw tents and make-shift huts, colourful clothing flying carelessly on clotheslines like so many Chinese Prayers. There was a part of me that yearned to join them, but it takes a brave person to completely remove themselves from society… and then again, I still didn’t know how well I was going to live with a group of people – after boarding school I promised I’d never live in a group situation again and my current house share had been a conscious personal test to conquer past demons. So I moved away from the hippies with my silent best wishes and underlying dream to wake up one day in the 1960’s or 70’s – I did have the beads for it!

Rather than going straight ahead toward the building in the far distance, I thought, going through the bush to my right would be a short cut… So said Hanzel and Grettle. I walked past what I assume were Carnival entertainers, a man with dreadlocks down to the ground playing a guitar, while a hemp-attired woman whirled batons in the air and another man played with a cylindrical implement on a piece of string, throwing it high up in the air and catching again… may have been a good time to turn around. But I headed up into the bush, there was a gate closing itself off from a Victorian House, I saw the remnants of an attempt to garden the unkempt bush, a veranda not unlike one you’d see in Australia, and the chimney puffing out bilious smoke. ‘Oh, I could live there’, I thought to myself. There was a path… or what you could call a path… I tried to listen out for traffic, but the noises had disappeared amongst the trees and all of a sudden I was bush walking, the path seemed to have disappeared. It reminded me of our childhood wanderings around the farm and other peoples farms. Pretending we were witches (good ones ofcourse, laying spells on the unknown, or forcing the coming of spring or summer with our spells and offerings of limbless insects) or explorers, or people of the forest. Memories flow so strongly when you are away from the surroundings in which they were originally created.

However… what I discovered was not something I really should have as a child, and resulted in some stumbling and rather fast paced walking in the opposite direction to the building on the hill that I’d originally avoided. There, within the bush, I came across a pair of legs, naked hairy legs, four of them… leading up to red jocks in one case… and to… well nothing in the other. Two men smiled at me, splayed on the ground looking rather jovial and extremely amused. I smiled as politely as I could in the circumstances and dashed forward, only to find another two men kissing on a bench and some others in the corner of my eye. I could feel that laughter behind me, and although I’ve no qualms about chosen sexuality, I didn’t feel as if I belonged in any sense in the place that I was.

Shaking my head and giggling to myself I walked up the hill to the large building that ended up being an old mansion with a walled vegetable garden and sitting on the street I’d been looking for, I decided to opt for an ice cream. I was rather warm after my speedy walk, not to mention my encounter and my stomach was becoming quite frustrated at me. So licking my ice cream and my general shame I walked along the street, moving past the park and back to the tube. I’d certainly made a day of it, to say the least, and what a wealth of experiences to take with me to my dreams that night.