Mother Red Cap

Here's one of the interesting sights I saw from the car window when Dave, Olga and I were on the way to Whitstable. It's a closed Irish pub in Holloway Road, with the intriguing name of "Mother Red Cap." I wanted to photograph it not only to preserve its memory in case some other business takes over the space, but to remind myself to research the name.

It turns out there was a woman known as Mother Red Cap who lived in Camden back in the 1600s. (Not on this spot -- she lived farther south, in Camden Town, on the site of what is now another pub that used to be called the Mother Red Cap but is now known as the World's End.) Her real name was Jenny (or Jinney) Bingham, but she was also known variously as the Crone of Camden, the Shrew of Kentish Town, or Mother Damnable. There are multiple stories about her involving witchcraft, strange herbs that she collected at night, spouses who die in mysterious circumstances (one apparently died in an oven!), and a visit from the devil on the night of her own death. You can read more here and here if you're interested.

Presumably this is the Mother Red Cap for whom the pub is named. Or maybe it's named for the previous pub that once bore her name. There are apparently also other pubs around the country called Mother Red Cap -- are they named for our Camden legend, or is Mother Red Cap an archetypal witch character who appears in other locales?

In any case, it was supposedly a good pub and I hope it reopens. Apparently it closed early last year when the landlord retired.

Dave and I spent part of yesterday on plant protection duty. We're supposed to get freezing temperatures tonight and into next week, at times dipping down into the high 20's (F). At one point there was talk of snow, but that appears to have turned into rain in the updated forecasts. It's still too cold for our poor avocado and Chinese banana, so we covered them. I used a different cover on the avocado this time -- one designed for trees that zips up the side -- before putting on the same outer wrapping and securing it with a whole lot more clothespins than last time. The more times I do this the better at it I'll get. Practice makes perfect!

The smaller tender plants all came inside. I was annoyed because a morning gust of wind blew one of our geraniums pelargoniums off a table on the patio, breaking both the plant and the pot. I've got the poor thing in a plastic bag until I can buy a new pot for it.

I also put the canna lily in the shed.

We're as ready for winter as we'll ever be!