Doors 263 – Doors from Highgate, London, November 2023 (Part II)
The trip to my old stomping ground of Highgate Village in November last year, where I spent my teenage years, was both surprising and nostalgic. Naturally in my youth one door seemed to be much the same as another, and I never looked beyond their functionality, so ‘discovering’ these Highgate doors as an older and wiser person was more than a passing pleasure.
This second selection of doors hints at the time of day, early afternoon, as the low autumn sun was casting shadows, and the light was fading. There is no theme to the doors this week, just another eclectic display captured during an hour-long walk. I sound the whole thing a slightly ‘out of body’ experience, struggling to get to grips with the fact that I walked these streets most days of my life to and from school.
I hope you enjoy this week’s doors as much as I did.
There is a bonus story about the Highgate Pantry, which used to be Wylies Bakers Shop, when I lived there. A school friend and I used to run the school Zoological Society, which was a very grand name for a brick out building where we used to house small pets, such as rabbits, mice, gerbils, rats and an Axolotl called Wobert. We looked after school pupil’s pets during the holidays too sometimes.
Feeding the animals was always a bit difficult and supplies would run low, so we hatched the idea of asking Wylies bakery if they had any leftover food which we could use to feed the pets. To our utter surprise, they were more than happy to give us ‘stale’ bread, buns, pastries and the like at the end of the day in a large brown paper sack. So roughly twice a week we’d collect our sack to feed the animals. Naturally, being teenage boys with a creative streak, we’d select out the best buns for ourselves, which we’d eat and share with school friends, the rest went to the small mammals. For a couple of years, the Zoological Society became very popular indeed.
Another week draws to an end. More to come from Highgate next time.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.
by Scooj
