I can’t remember the last time it snowed properly here. It’s not something I’ve ever welcomed. Living in a city my experience of snow has been largely negative. It messes with our transport system and makes getting anywhere a nightmare; it looks pretty only for a matter of hours and then turns to brown slush; and if the weather stays cold the slush then turns to slick ice patches which (as a person with zero sense of balance) I dread!
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The year that has just past will remain long in all our memories, no doubt, and not for the best of reasons. A year ago the new coronavirus was just seeping into our consciousnesses and we had no idea how it would turn our lives upside down. We certainly know that now!
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I have lived in Ealing for 39 years, and in our present home in South Ealing for 34 years, but I never knew until very recently that Margot Fonteyn lived near here, or that Agatha Christie’s parents are buried in our local cemetery. I didn’t know that Spencer Walpole, who was Home Secretary under three different Tory governments in the mid-19th century, is also buried there.
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When the architect Sir John Soane built his weekend retreat, Pitzhanger Manor, in what was then rural Ealing, his aim was to design a showcase for his own idiosyncratic architectural style with its stripped classical detail, radical colour schemes and inventive use of space and light. Here he would entertain some of the most influential people of the day.
