You can’t miss Nicola Baird in the crowd. Wrapped in an oversized camouflage coat under a safety vest and wearing an Aztec-patterned beanie, she looks slightly hippie. Oh, and there’s the giant inflatable paddleboard beside her feet. She had been teaching a multicultural group at a community centre and brought the equipment with her to our interview.
Being a paddleboard instructor isn’t Nicola’s only job. She’s also an avid environmental journalist who once wrote regularly for a horse magazine, a lecturer at London College of Communication, the author of seven books, a former school governor and most importantly, the founder of the Islington Faces blog – a unique ethnography of the borough where you can find the life story of the unassuming hairdresser living next door.
I help Nicola carry her backpack as we walk to a cafe. She insists on sitting down facing the window. “So I can see the lovely green of the garden,” she says while sipping English Breakfast tea from a well-used rubber cup.
Nicola grew up riding horses in the countryside of Hertfordshire, but it wasn’t as fun as it sounds. The place was a wildlife desert in the 1970s as farmers would get rid of animals for the crops to grow. There was a bus to major cities once a week, and the vehicles roaring through the night made her scared of walking alone in the pitch darkness.
“It’s a trapping place”, she says. “Countryside is overrated.”
Dismayed by Thatcher’s gloomy reign, Nicola went to study politics at the University of York. But after graduation, she found herself in another trap working as a magazine journalist on the 21st floor of a London tower block.
“I began to hate it, so I went to the Solomon Islands for two years as a journalist trainer, and while I was there, I saw the damages logging and overfishing do to a country. So when I came back to the UK, I knew I only wanted to work as an environmental journalist”, she says.
With her husband, two daughters, a few hens and a dog, Nicola is now living near Finsbury Park in Islington – the London borough with the least green spaces. But she has found solace in the people of the neighbourhood.
She says: “Islington is such a nice village. You will bump into each other while going to the shops, and I love these moments.”
‘Islington is a such nice village. You will bump into each other while going to the shops, and I love these moments’
Nicola Baird
She tried to sell Islington stories to news outlets, but it didn’t go well: “On my daughter’s way to school, we used to meet a man who amazingly had a horse – you know I like horses – and his story was interesting. He grew up near Angel and his father used to rent out horses to people.
“I wrote up an interview about him and pitched it to the Evening Standard, but they said it didn’t have a news hook. They are completely idiots – it was such a good story!”
Encouraged by her friends, Nicola started the Islington Faces blog in 2010 and vowed she would never interview famous people.
“I find that the most interesting people are just ordinary people. All of them have got extraordinary stories,” she explains, “and if I interview somebody, I’ll ask them who they recommend – this is how I usually find my interviewees.
“It can be very difficult… People have to trust me a little, and it can be quite time-consuming to get that trust. And if you’re interviewing someone who is not media-trained, they will tell you either nothing or absolutely everything, and that could be unsafe for them. So I have to protect people as well.”
Nicola says she has done “373 plus interviews” so far – “plus” because “there are many unfortunately that can’t be published”. She always sends her interviewee the full draft and won’t put anything on the blog without their consent. I have to look away as she tells me this because I know what I am writing will never enter her email inbox.
“Solutions journalism” is what Nicola wants to do. Most interviews on Islington Faces are positive stories of community campaigners and business owners, but it doesn’t mean Nicola is unaware of the rising knife crime.
“I know all that stuff, but I’m trying to find the stories that are actually making the world a better place – they may seem so small and insignificant, but if you replicate them, then changes could happen on a bigger scale,” she says.
Though it’s probably not what she hoped for, Islington Faces has made Nicola a local celebrity. She often runs into people she’s met before and feels embarrassed that she can’t remember their names.
Nicola is also organising regular meet-ups with Faces’ fans, including paddleboarding lessons at Islington Boat Club – she got into the water sport shortly after starting the blog and found it surprisingly similar to horse riding, except much cheaper. She’s planning for a party this April to celebrate the 400th interview.
The sky is turning dark blue. Nicola says it’s time for her to leave. We walk back to Northampton Square where she parks her bike. As I help to fix the one-metre-long paddleboard on her back seat, Nicola tells me it’s her first time riding home with the equipment. I say to her to be careful, but she shakes off with a smile:
“Don’t worry my love, I will be fine. Take care of yourself!”
Then she takes off and disappears into the night.
