LETTER FROM LONDON MARCH 2020


As the trees blossom like flowers and the days become longer it feels like a strange spring, nature unaware of the clammy disaster that has invaded the city. We seem to be paused momentarily at the point just before the contagion is about to devour significant numbers of the unwary and foolish, who flock to the London parks, many who will soon be ill, while others fill their shopping trolleys with kitchen towel, toilet roll, pasta  and anything else they can find on the shelves  in a daze of angry panic. The citizens will not submit without a fight, albeit for the last pack of Andrex toilet tissue.
There are no potatoes, or indeed any fresh veg in Tesco. Where once there were carrots, onions and purple sprouting broccoli in abundance there are only empty pallets. I find some sea bass which fills me with joy as I place it in my basket. In the freezer there is little to buy, bar ice cream, potato waffles and chocolate cake. However, I do find some breaded mushrooms which I can have with my sea bass.
I approach the self-checkout feeling slightly nauseous as I breath in TCP fumes from my homemade mask, feeling like Jesse James fresh from the dentist. But check out is a humourless process as I key in my pin, - soon I will have to wash my hands again.
Portobello is denuded of many of its stalls and the tourists look bemused, like they have been conned. But the streets are neither crowded nor empty, just full of lost souls and the indifferent. I am one such lost soul, robbed of the familiar and predictable. Only the blossom consoles.
Indoors I put away my spoils and go to scrub my hands.  


Popular posts from this blog

NESRINE MALIK AND THE UNSUNG VIRTUES OF HYPOCRISY

Image
As I write this a 27 year old woman, Mariam Ibrahim, has just had a baby in a Sudanese prison, ‘the condition of the mother and baby is not known as Ibrahim's lawyer and her husband, a US citizen, had been denied access to her. Omdurman women's prison has a basic clinic, where the child is thought to have been born. Ibrahim has been shackled since being imprisoned.’ [1]   Mariam also has an 18 month old child who is also being held in prison with her. The ‘crime’ for which she is imprisoned is apostasy, for which she has received the death sentence. She has also been sentenced to 100 lashes, for the additional crime of having sex with her Christian husband. Although she has been a lifelong Christian her father was a Muslim, Sudanese sharia law forbids women to marry outside the Muslim faith, men needless to say can do as they please in these matters. Mariam Ibrahim and her husband.  Nineteen countries punish their citizens for apostasy, and in 12 of those countries
Read more

INTERVIEW WITH TOM VAGUE

Image
Tom Vague At the top end of All Saints Road there is a refuge, an enclave in which a local Bohemian culture retains a foothold, this is the Book & kitchen , a café/bookshop with adjoining terrace. Here the bustle of the nearby market gives way to conversation, conversation in the presence of images of the recent, and not so recent, past. The past of an area that has contributed so much to the life and culture of the city. I was there to meet local historian Mr Tom Vague a man intimately familiar with so much of this history. What Tom doesn’t know about the recent history of the area probably is not worth knowing. With Tom’s energy and effort Colville Community Forum, supported by City Living Local Life, recently held a gathering at The Book and Kitchen to celebrate this rich history. February 16 6-9 Pm, with Film Screening and Readings Exhibition February 16-26 2016. Featuring 30 Classic Westway Photographs and Posters. This represents one of a number of initiatives of t
Read more

LONDON BELONGS TO ME PART ONE

Image
. I. I have lived in London now just over thirty years, having moved here on 4 th July 1983 . I don’t know how long you normally have to wait to claim squatter’s rights but thirty years seems a good enough period to me. The glory of London is its parks and open spaces, you are rarely ever far away from a London park, common or heath. I am within fifteen minutes walk of Kensington Gardens or Holland Park , much closer to several smaller areas with grass and flowers and benches on which to sit, all maintained by Kensington and Chelsea council who also still believe in the value of trees. Those who would see what they call ‘the state’ shrink rarely mention such items in their calculations. What does it cost to maintain a tree? Too much by far for the likes of those right wing think tanks whom and I fear the phrase is soon likely to break under the strain under which it is now being placed, know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Holland Park is one of t
Read more