Jenny comes over for a visit and we get to show off our Victorian flat. Hard to believe that this street and the others off West End Lane are really only a block away from Kilburn High Road. They’re solid Victorian brick houses, typically three storeys and mostly now divided into flats. One and two bedroom flats that you couldn’t now buy for a half million pounds. The classiest temporary home we’ve had, although that says more about my failure to book a few months earlier than our desire to move up in the world.
We walk over to West Hampstead underground station to meet Jenny and then back to ours for tea and a little lunch. Lovely having unhurried time to chat and catch up. Really one of the primary reasons for wanting to go to Cyprus via London rather than Amsterdam or Frankfurt.
Beginning reading aloud poet Michael Rosen’s 2023 book Getting Better. We followed his wife’s posts on Twitter during the lockdown when he contracted Covid and spent seven weeks in intensive care, six of them on a ventilator. He didn’t emerge unscathed but his humanity, his humour and compassion are deeper and subtler. And any current philosophical and political statements - satirical or otherwise - are always protective of all humanity.
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