In the evening I go to the launch of a book on the history of Noel Park. You know, just sometimes you get a really unexpected evening of delight – this was one such. The author, Caroline Welch, had written this history commissioned by the Neighbourhood Management. Caroline read aloud a couple of passages from the book. The book rightly places Noel Park at the centre of Haringey’s historical landscape, highlighting the pioneering design of the social housing on the Noel Park Estate built in the late Victorian period – an artisans’ colony. A huge number of local residents from Noel Park have turned out for the evening – very impressive. The social history of our lives is wrapped up in these bricks and mortar. Architecture is social history (and one of my pet subjects actually) and it affects us and we affect it. This particular estate, named after a (very) previous MP, surname of Noel, was the outcome of philanthropic effort.

After the readings (and me), a local historian told us some Noel Park stories – and they too were fascinating. He told of a Chinese Magician who appeared at the Wood Green Empire. His speciality was to get his wife to ‘shoot’ him and then show the audience the bullet caught in his hand or sometimes spit out from where he caught it in his mouth. One day did not go so well – and he was shot dead. There were many rumours about his wife having had an affair … Lots of local stories – fascinating. And then a woman from Bruce Castle museum read out the history given to her from a local resident of ‘my first married home’. And as she talked of the furnishings, the outside loo and the net curtains – she sparked a memory for me too.

My mother had to work on Saturdays as well as during the week and she was always ‘placing’ me with one or other relative to look after me. On many Saturdays she would leave me to be looked after at a net curtaining shop on Wood Green High Road – Taylors of Wood Green – at the Turnpike Lane end. I hadn’t thought of that in years. Other members of the audience gave their memories too. The woman from Bruce Castle said that she was in charge of oral reminisces – I liked that!