Photograph the “mattress” left on the pavement outside Bayswater tube station. Passed earlier in the morning when the “bed” was still occupied and said then that the coverings didn’t look warm enough. Would not have taken a photo of the young man then, even if he had been asleep and his face obscured, but it doesn’t seem disrespectful now that he’s left. The government is proud of being the fifth, or arguably sixth, largest economy in the world, but its wealth is pretty unevenly divided, and the program of austerity has claimed a lot of victims. A program with very little outside approval, from the World Trade Organisation, which considers it ineffective, to the UN report last week with a scathing condemnation of the resulting poverty in a nation that could do much better if it chose, saying “Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so”. So as NHS hospitals are closing beds some are opening in corners that never had them before. And one child in eleven in the borough of Westminster is homeless.
Need to put in the order for our glasses if we’re to get them before we leave. J jokes re pressure to go beyond the entry level varifocals that he can say we’re old and may not last that long so there’s no point in more expensive lenses. As in exit level? But the witch of yesterday’s visit isn’t there, and we get a lovely young man who is pleased to sell us exactly what we want without suggesting that we’ll be needing white canes with them. He’s from France - and going to Montreal for Christmas. Resist temptation to ask if he’ll have to leave after Brexit. Do ask the young waitress at Roses - whose English is barelylater though. Will you be all right after Brexit? She says she doesn’t know and I tell her I hope she will.
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