Another quiet, typical-for-me day yesterday. This year, I’ve not been getting up in the middle of the night so much and starting work at three or four, but later. No idea why. I’m usually a very early morning person but this summer, five or six has been the norm. I’m pleased to report I still get as much done, only now, I do it later. It’s strange, looking at the clock and thinking, It’s nearly eleven, I should be playing Sherlock on the tablet, or, It’s one, I should get back to the desk. Strange, because it doesn’t actually matter. I don’t run to a timetable, but I think it’s ingrained. Up at this time, into the car at that time, arrive at the office, work until this time, then a break, then the afternoon, leave dead on five, home by six… I’ve not done anything like that for 24 years or so. Even when I worked for Hastings BC writing their five-year housing strategy I was my own boss and could keep my own hours, and that was the last desk job I did until I started this one which is also at my own pace, when and if I want to do it.
No idea why I’m blathering about that. Just emptying my head of mundanities before I set about filling it with creative thoughts. Actually, today might be a research day. I need to find out how the Congregationalist movement operated in the late 19th century, how their chapels were organised, who oversaw what, and so on. This is for the next mystery book, of course, and this time one of the main venues is Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington. That’s a place I used to know well, as it was, and still is, a nice place to walk, take a book, sit and find some peace, or simply watch men try to pick up other men and take them into the bushes, but that’s another story, never mind, anyway… I’ve been looking into its background as a non-denominational cemetery, one of the famous ‘London Seven’ graveyard parks, I suppose you could call them, and my book of 1888 London maps shows a chapel opposite one of the entrances. So, that, I decided, would be my starting point for a mystery that will have something to do with the camera and early(ish) photography.
This I how my cluttered mind works, you see, but behind it all is the need to do some simple, but informative research, so this morning, I think I will be mainly trawling newspapers of the time to see if I can find articles about the Congregationalist movement – is it a movement? There, that can be my first piece of research.
In the absence of anything else to tell you or show you, have this image to keep you going.
