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22 – 26 September 2025
Monday
Sunrise: 6:46am
“How do you think it gets here?” he asks, but he pronounces gets like ‘gits’. I shrug. “People”. He gives a weary sigh and says thank you. He always says thank you when he sees me litter picking. Always hover-stops, I’ve realised. Always says something.
I passed him in the street last week when I was on the way to work, but without the picker I wasn’t sure he’d recognise me so I said nothing. He double-double took.
It’s only when I walk away today I wonder if he wanted to talk for longer. No one wants to talk forever, not at this hour, but perhaps he doesn’t see anyone else all day. I make a mental note to see how things pan out next time.
Tonight is the equinox. Autumn starts here. At roughly the correct time I’ll be driving to band. The sky will be a deep orange-blue gradient and all the neon will have that warm glow that makes dusk in a city look so good.
Tuesday
Sunrise: 6:48am
At 8:34am the train waits for shadows to sweep their owners from the platform to their carriages.
Two men sidle past and hamper the flow. Each has an open can of lager in their hand, a backpack on their back and a hoodie zipped as tight as the frowns across their foreheads.
It’s 9 degrees now and chilly, but 2 degrees warmer than when I left the house. A bright blue sky. Earlier, contrails flecked the sky like tiny shooting stars.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 6:49am
Work/no walk. On Monday the grass from my muddy boots fell in a large clump on the hall floor. When I turned from my desk later I thought it was a spider and stifled a scream. That’ll teach me to read old notes from this time of year. I can still feel that crunch.
Thursday
Sunrise: 6:51am
The sky is a perfect glass dome as I cross the park. A ring of clouds on a 360° horizon, a pale blue sky above. On the bus a young teenager finds a space to stand and nervously fiddles with his phone. He can’t be more than 13. The first app he opens is his email. When I make a move to leave a man inserts himself between me and the door, so he can get off first. When he does, he stands on the pavement in front of the doors and blocks the way a second time.
On the train there’s an ad for Adobe Express: “Commercially safe AI. Trusted results”. The ad shows a photo slotting in to a design. Commercially safe for everyone but photographers and designers. I couldn’t get a seat facing forwards, so I head backwards into the future like some half-arsed AI metaphor.
London Bridge is crowded and I struggle to find others walking at the same pace. A man in front swerves at the last possible moment and I crash into the person he was avoiding. If this was a Len Deighton novel I’d be missing a phone or gaining some intel. I check my pockets but all that’s missing is time and the only thing gained is a possible bruise. We both apologise quickly and press on.
On Bishopsgate a new sign says “The city has room for everyone”. I step into the road for some clear space, the only way to progress through the crowd of commuters. Catch a lungful of someone else’s exhaled breath, a sickly, strawberry vape cloud. At Liverpool Street I think about the day ahead and catch a bus. Roadworks mean it blocks the street as we board and the traffic swiftly builds up behind us. The city does have space, but sometimes it’s hard to find it.
Other things
- Three more Morning Glory Flowers, but the tomatoes are staunchly unmoved by the late sun.
- I found a massive leopard slug making its way across the paving, but apparently they’re the slugs you do want. They eat decaying things, rather than your seedlings.
- This is a nice post about making things, as a positive action.
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15 – 19 September 2025
Monday
Sunrise: 6:35am
Looking at the woman’s fingers I think she could be a hand model. They’re so long and slender and… featureless actually. How do you get such smooth fingers? They’re as wrinkle-free as a freshly botoxed forehead. I can’t look.
When you don’t get the tube very often you forget How To Tube. Don’t look. At anything. Or anyone.
I try to let the emotion drain from my face. Set my mind to the next journey. I’ve got an all-day meeting somewhere a whole other train ride away. It was dark when I got up.
The long fingered woman has pale pink plastic fingernails the same colour as her skin. She wears a round-neck boxy jacket with a line of gold buttons at each cuff and holds a small, black leather clutch-bag in her lap. Her hair is slicked back into a severe bun. Pale pink lipstick. But on her feet, trainers which must be as old as mine, a grubby white. Her smart black trousers have too many creases running down one side. Ironed once but folded and kept in a drawer for a long time. Which half is really her, gold buttons and a leather clutch or creases and old trainers?
Stop looking.
For god’s sake read a book.Tuesday
Sunrise: 6:36am
My shadow lopes comfortably beside me as we cross the park. When we reach the street we run for the bus together and miss it. We both wanted that bus, now perhaps we’ll be late.
Our position in relation to the sun has changed. It shines in my face like an interrogation lamp: “You were awake before the alarm, plenty of time to walk the whole journey. So tell me, why are you late?”
Squinting, I prepare my defence while my shadow drags behind me now, like a petulant teenager. “I just…” the sun slides behind a chimney and spares us both. We run the rest of the way. My shadow reaches the train first and boards ahead of me.
Later: Helms Alee in New Cross. All good, but Hozoji Margullis though, what a drummer.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 6:38am
“Morning!” LB sends a message from the coast accompanied by an umbrella emoji catching the rain. I send the same message in return. Drizzle, the app says, stopping in 19 minutes.
There are three men in the car park at the wood, standing in a triangle, fists thrust into pockets. None of them have dogs. They’re silent as I approach, and I hear the voice of a woman on speaker phone. The three men turn in silence to look at me when I pass and I blurt a reflexive “morning” at the same time as one replies suddenly to the disembodied voice, perhaps in Russian. Another nods his head towards me, tries a smile and offers a heavily accented “morning” too.
It’s not even 7am. What is this car park rendezvous? Perhaps they’re secret agents. Perhaps I am. After all, what am I doing here, dogless in the drizzle when the sun’s barely up? Imagine it: a life this mundane, there must be something else going on.
In the woods it sounds like heavy rain as the wind shakes water from the trees. It’s a proper gloomy morning and I forgot to bring a bag for the falling sweet chestnuts.
Thursday
Sunrise: 6:40am
My patience for computers has waned. In the office I find myself swearing at my laptop’s empty grey screen and angrily bashing all the keys. Software update. After three restarts I’ve got ugly icons, ridiculously rounded corners and a perpetual message to accept the T&Cs, plus a fault which means I can’t access the T&Cs until another restart.
“Square corners look bad in VR. Reckon it’s that. It’s prep for that.” Is it? I try not to look at the scroll bar crashing awkwardly into the too-round corner of the Notes App. No one at Apple’s looked at it, so I’ll just have to try and ignore it too. I haven’t disliked a system update this much since… who knows. Keeping track would be madness. Onwards.
Other things:
- Another Morning Glory flower! Three in total and the rest of the buds sit tight in solidarity with the green tomatoes. It’s supposed to be sunny over the next few days though, so we’ll see.
- Spider webs criss-cross the garden. Apparently it’s male spiders that do this, and they’re doing it now to attract a mate.
- I went to the Open House tour of Stanley Arts last weekend and it was lovely. I can’t imagine you live anywhere near it, but if you do, it’s open this weekend too.
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8 – 12 September 2025
Monday & Tuesday
Sunrise 6:24am & 6:25am
JW sends photos of clouds above the house. Light from the rising sun strikes the bottom of each one and leeches into the dark shadows above. The houses beneath are in silhouette, the sky gets bluer the higher up you go. ‘Amazing!’ she says, and I say perfect and the moon is still out. It feels like it’s been a full moon every night since the weekend. Today it was round and chalky as I left the house.
RD says September is the best month. Yesterday and today offer proof. Golden mornings, a low spotlight-sun. Yesterday it filtered through the trees, highlighting patches in the wood. You wonder what makes these areas so blessed: fairy glades, places for pixie mischief, just the luck of the trees and leaves above. Today the sun kisses the corner of Tesco Express on Streatham High Road – same magic, less charm. But same magic is some magic, and that will do.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 6:27am
I’m cheating. I know already I’ll start work early so I can leave early. So I’m writing this on Tuesday night. I’m going to see Torche and there’s a tube strike, so I’ll need all the time I can get.
I’ve only seen Torche play once before and that was in Athens, on 11 March, 2020. Half way through, everyone received an SMS in Greek and English from the government, telling them to stay home. The few members of the audience looked at their phones and each other – but what could we do? The band played on. The next day the city shut down. Just thinking about it feels like a huge cavity is opening in my chest.
Last Sunday everyone in the UK received test alert on their mobile phones from the government. Just a test.
Thursday
Sunrise: 6:29am
We got back late so I lie in ‘til 7:15am. When I get up my head is heavy, ears still ringing (I did wear ear defenders but was slow to put them in). I knit a few rows of a sock while I wait for tea to brew. I’ve missed sock knitting, it turns out. Although I’ve never smoked I assume I’m a natural smoker: ‘something to do with your hands’. It helps me think / stops me thinking. Maybe I should knit at gigs. Cave In was the dual headliner last night and all I could think about was work. I stopped for Torche though. Tube strikes meant two friends were left stranded. A three hour journey and they couldn’t make the last hurdle.
When we got back the moon was bright and pooled in rectangles on the kitchen floor. Maybe the September moon is the best moon?
Other things
- The rain has been torrential. Huge blocks of it, solid with hard edges, raining straight down like you see in the movies. Sometimes it rains at the back of the house and not the front.
- Every water butt is full.
- I am holding out for more sun. So many green tomatoes and so many unopened buds elsewhere. One morning glory flower this week; there should be so many more. At least the cosmos finally made it. One of the cosmos plants is the biggest thing I’ve ever grown – massive, bushy, and finally dancing with pink flowers which I hope can withstand the weather of the next few days.
- I heard someone on the radio talking about why we should ditch renewables and keep using oil and gas. Not a problem he says, not for generations. Hope he doesn’t have kids or grandkids. Perhaps he does and he hates them?
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1 – 6 September 2025
Wednesday
sunrise: 6:17am
From the waiting train I watch the new arrivals on the opposite platform. A girl and her mother disembark holding hands but it doesn’t last, it can’t. Their fingers unlace as the energy inside the little girl bursts out. She skips suddenly along the platform like a baby goat discovering its legs. Graceless, awkward, charming. I love it when kids (human and goat) do this. Unconfined and unselfconscious. Skipping, dancing.
It’s late in the day and I head towards Wilton’s to see Metropolis for the first time. From Tower Bridge every flat glass tower in Canary Wharf shines bright white against the dark grey sky. It’s fantastic, otherworldly. A ghost city behind the grubby buildings, scaffolding and taillights of the real one.
Metropolis is quite the film. I think probably most of the things that have been written about it are true. It’s great, hammy, serious, too much, too little, a lot. Also easy to spot the influence on recent things, like Andor for example. The film was accompanied by a live pianist. He’d written his own music over the last 30 years and played it all from memory. At the end he stood on stage to receive his applause and the audience was as thrilled as he was. The air was thick with the good will of it all.
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Another disrupted week as far as notes are concerned. Work is busy and pre-work appointments mean everything is disjointed. On Tuesday I woke up before the alarm and wrote down notes for work before I got up. They’d been rattling around my dreams like an unwelcome stone in my shoe.
On Thursday I went to the House of Lords. We were treated to a private tour and allowed to sit in as a friend had work to do. It was extraordinary. We saw the heavily decorated Norman chapel which is a Royal Peculiar. And the cupboard where Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid on the night of the census in 1911. And Westminster Hall, of course.
All the members of staff we met were clearly familiar with awestruck proles and patient and generous with their time. Our friend was on TV proper, but if you squinted and looked up to the left, you could see the red of my shirt and the blue of L’s hair. A few pixels only, but present.
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I went to the Tate earlier, to see the Emily Kam Kngwarray exhibition.
It took a while for me to get into the work, but then something clicked and it started to make sense.
I liked this caption, too.
Kngwarray’s art is grounded in her understanding of her Country and of the Dreamings originating there. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the concept of the Dreaming or Creation time is fundamental to their social, cultural and spiritual practices. Ancestral beings, popularly known as Dreamings, manifest themselves in Country and its many diverse life forms. Plants, animals and natural phenomena, such as wind, fire and rain, travel across Country, shaping landscapes as they go. Important places and their Dreamings are celebrated in songs and ceremonies. Of special significance to Kngwarry are ankerr (emus) and anwerlarr (pencil yams). She was named after kam, the seeds and seedpods of the pencil yam.
Dreamings.
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25-29 August 2025
Tuesday
Sunrise: 6:03am
“This is wrong, right?”
“Yes. Wrong platform?”
“Right.”They’ve switched things around. I had three minutes to get to a platform four minutes away and, after somehow getting there on time, there was no train. Together, the stranger and I stand on the right wrong platform and hesitate. There’s a lot of stairs between this platform and the next.
When the train comes I check the destination twice and sit opposite a man with a face designed for drawing: a long smooth chin and a narrow smile that sits tightly under his nose.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 6:05am
The wild cyclamen are out in the garden and in the wood (white and pink). In the fields the cows moo protectively over their calves and the rising sun is blinding.
It’s a lucky morning. Most of the blackberries are over now but I find enough to eat as I walk, and they’re the good kind: ripe, but sharp, with the odd one sharp enough to make your eye twitch. Fat green acorns sit pretty in the oak tree and old man’s beard is starting to fluff up on the lane. This is a morning made for walking.
Thursday
Sunrise: 6:06am
At London Bridge the light bounces off the News building and I’m 36th in the queue, literally basking in reflected glory.
I was reading more of Shirley Jackson’s Dark Tales on the train. It’s like picking a scab: not exactly pleasurable but you just can’t leave it alone. There are darker stories I’m sure, but there’s just something about how acutely she observes people and the level of disdain with which she describes them. I’m early today and decide to go to the Happy Cafe to read a bit more and grab breakfast before work.
A Ronald Blythe entry for August:
Lots of people are ‘away’ – they don’t call it a holiday. ‘We shall be away’, and the dates. An elaborate silence announces that the school is away. The combines are certainly away, having done the barley and not being able to cut the corn for another fortnight at least.
At the Happy Cafe they don’t say they’re away or on holiday. But a piece of A4 paper taped to the closed shutters says:
Back to business on the 8th September.
See you then, keep safe.Damn it. I give up and walk to the office, past the hipster coffee place and their stylish customers who are sitting in the sunshine. I like the Happy Cafe. It is neither hipster nor stylish, which at some point probably means that it’s actually more hipster. I hope not. You can’t win sometimes.
Other things
Typing is easy and writing is hard. I was going to say ‘we all know that’, but actually, I don’t think that’s true. Good writing is a lot harder than people think, and it’s harder still when you’ve got limited space.
I wonder who, specifically is in charge of iterating on the digital displays at stations in and around London? Deciding to make a change there must be quite something. A few years back I noticed that at London Bridge, the scrolling text stopped saying “Formed of [x] coaches” and switched to “which has [x] coaches”. And these days, the thinner displays flip between the time and the number of coaches so you don’t need to wait for the scroll to finish. Who cares? Regular commuters. They know which carriage to get on to make life easier at the other end. And if a train which has 8 carriages turns up when you were expecting 10, well you’ll be in the wrong place and maybe you won’t be able to get on at all.
This week the displays at my station changed. (I think it was this week). Like some of the signs in town, it now gives you the arrival time for every stop on the route. Someone thought of that. I wonder how many meetings it took to get that through?
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18 – 22 August 2025
It feels like autumn is coming. Today (Saturday) the sun rose at 6am precisely. I’ve been watching it get later all week — all summer, really. Been a long work week, so there’s not much to report. Apologies.
Monday
Sunrise: 5:51am
Urban foxes are trouble. Humans are the cause, I know. But still, looking at the trash strewn across the park it’s hard not to blame the creatures that touched it last. I saw JD last Friday. She said her camera caught a fox on the roof of her car. The roof!
A litter pick in the light rain. I pull a Primark bag from the hedgerow, water bottles from the gutter, and fried chicken boxes from everywhere.
Tuesday
Sunrise: 5:52am
I wish I could really write music, a full orchestral score. At Crystal Palace I wait on the platform outside the steep walls of the main station. From the other side of the wall a train leaves and the high whine vibrates like a sustained note from the violins. I see bows pulled slowly across strings in unison, feel the vibrato in the twitch of their fingers—and it’s gone. The station falls silent.
I open the Merlin app and wait. There’s a wood pigeon, too faint to register and… anything? Nothing. I close the app only to hear the caw of a carrion crow. There was a bird singing solo as dawn broke this morning. I couldn’t sleep and it could barely sing.
“The next Station is Cannon Street”. I hear it in my sleep later, get up and exit the train on automatic pilot. This is my stop and I almost missed it. Except… this is not my stop because I am not making that journey.
I walk along the platform to the next carriage with just enough time to hop back on. A baby wriggles in her mother’s lap and yawns like a lion. I take a seat and tell her mother I know the feeling. She smiles and the baby makes a grab for my hair. We pull faces and trade smiles, my tooth-filled smile for the baby’s toothless one.
I tell the mother I got off at the wrong stop. She asks where I’m going and we chat for the rest of the journey about travel, knitting, London lidos. When the baby is strapped back in to the pushchair I expect her to protest, but after kicking her legs and arching her back she relents, turns and offers a broad smile. We squish our palms together on opposite sides of the cool glass as the train rumbles in to the station.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 5:54am
A forced walk to the woods, but today I give up and sit on a bench in the clearing. “I’m writing work emails”, I say to a curious dog and his walker. This is untrue: I’m writing about crematoria. Tomorrow I’ll work from home again and fail to walk to the woods at all.
Friday
Sunrise: 5:57am
See the sun breach the horizon, flat and blinding. Wear a jacket for the first time in a while, as the chill of the early morning hangs in the air. Later: peaches! We’ve lived here for seven years, this is the first time the tree has produced a crop, and some of them are ripe. Tiny, fragrant and delicious.
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11-15 August 2025
Monday
Sunrise: 5:40am
Saw T in a field full of clover and birds foot trefoil. I wasn’t sure it was him for a minute but he shouted and waved so I tracked back to meet him. We talked for so long that I ditched my plans and walked back with him the way I came. I pointed out a decent crop of blackberries which he should come back for, and the poppies, which are back in the field again.
It was good to see T. I wasn’t sure where to walk today, but sometimes you follow your feet and they take you right where you need to be.
Tuesday
Sunrise: 5:41am
Up and out early. A low sun shines through the mist, the moon lingers. There’s no traffic and it’s a perfect morning. Good day for a walk if I didn’t have to navigate south London for an appointment. Maybe I’ll go out early tomorrow. For now, Crystal Palace station is silent but for the birds and the occasional whine of a train preparing to leave. A magpie rattles on a roof somewhere. There is always a magpie.
It’s 19 degrees already and a voice on the radio said temperatures will soar, “we expect more deaths”. They moved swiftly on, “The newspapers are full of photos of people standing under sprinklers.”
On the train a man says, “yeah, I’ll fucking do ‘im for half a day on Thursday.” I listen to his voice get harder or softer with each call he makes; a fake laugh, an effort, a promise that sounds like a threat.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 5:43am
The walk to the wood is an escape from last night’s heat. But still, it’s humid beneath the trees. I walk across the fields under the newly risen sun for a final blackberry hunt. Lots have already gone over but I find enough to fill a tub – two tubs, if I’d brought a ladder. On the walk back I say hello to people and dogs, and hope I don’t look too suspicious with fingers stained purple.
Later there’s a low rumble of thunder and suddenly the heat is stifling. The sky gets dark but there’s no rain, no storm, just a heat so thick you could slice it.
Thursday
Sunrise: 5:44am
At London Bridge they have double sided benches; you could sit back to back. Today there’s a person on either side but instead of back to back, they’re on a diagonal. It’s a classic spy-movie scene: an information exchange between two agents. I could tell you what they looked like too, but… Chatham House rules and all that. They pretend not to talk but I think we all know it’s a lie.
Seagulls screech above Borough Market and I wish I was by the sea. Will I ever grow out of this, I wonder? I still expect the sea to be at the end of the road every time there’s a breeze in the city. I mean I’ve lived in/around London now for longer than I lived by the coast, but still I miss it.
Borough Market is setting up. Stall holders place fruit and veg in expensive looking piles and I spot small punnets of blackberries which probably cost the earth. I’m not sure about all this. It’s already 7:30am – surely real markets are all set up by now?
Friday
Sunrise: 5:46am
“Did you get caught in the rain? Oh my god there was so much of it. I felt so sorry for everyone.” Ah, Wednesday. It rained in Streatham then.
On the train I read more short stories by Shirley Jackson and they make my skin crawl. This is from Shirley Jackson’s wikipedia page:
[Laurence, one of her four children, said] “She was always writing, or thinking about writing, and she did all the shopping and cooking, too. The meals were always on time. But she also loved to laugh and tell jokes. She was very buoyant that way.” For examples of her wit, he refers readers to her many humorous cartoons, one of which depicts a husband cautioning a wife not to carry heavy things during pregnancy, but not offering to help.
Read in conjunction with the short stories, this feels like it explains a lot.
Other things
- Elfshot – I’d forgotten I meant to write about this, which is ironic, seeing as what I was going to write about were things, or knowledge, that gets forgotten over the centuries.
- I Love Generative AI and Hate the Companies Building It – only just got round to reading this. It made me want to burn everything down. YMMV. I have no idea what you do when the cat is out of the bag. Although now all I can think is how much cats seem to like boxes. Get the cat a box. Give it some restrictions, real or imagined, and help it feel safe again.
- Every time I use instagram I think I should stop. I’m not sure why I set up an account for Walknotes, but there its is. I forgot to tell people about it, but honestly, you’ve not missed much.
- I picked 2 cherry tomatoes this week. That’s it, that’s the current harvest. Hopefully the sun will do something with the rest of the (pretty big) green tomatoes.
- I just went outside to look at the moon. It’s spectacular – orange, and at the ‘that’s no moon!’ Death Star phase.
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4 – 8 August 2025
Monday
Sunrise: 5:29am
Car crash moon: waxing gibbous, 10 days old. It’s not even full, but it’s low enough to catch your attention and turn your head. Low enough to bang your head, maybe. This morning, the biggest of the morning glory twirled right off the top of its bamboo cane and continued into the blue sky beyond. A perfect beanstalk – were it a bean plant – the stuff that stories are made of.
Tuesday
Sunrise: 5:30am
Sunshine, plus a chill breeze in the park that clings to your bare arms like a second skin.
The nettles are protecting the windfall apples in green alkanet alley. Tall now, they lean forward, ready for a preemptive strike. But I know their game and I’m running out of time so I push on through.
Later:
I walk down Shoreditch Hight Street in the early evening sun and dodge a butterfly at the Old Street junction. When I reach the tall blocks of the city, every glass entrance twitches with Deliveroo drivers jostling for parking space.
At Salesforce Tower a man and a woman peer down at the pavement. Locked in a tight embrace, the man gently nudges an object on the pavement with his foot. It’s a phone – they’re taking a photo of themselves and the tower looming over their heads. It should be a good shot.
Further down the road, from somewhere in the muddle of suits and after-work drinkers there’s a bright giggle: “No, YOU’RE a froggy!”. A little girl sits high on her father’s shoulders, curly hair a halo in the setting sun. Together they debate who is the froggiest.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 5:32am
“UK garden birds moult in late summer to replace damaged and worn feathers.”
The park is full of trash and feathers, and the garden is full of spiders. I saw the first fallen conker, a shine like polished wood visible through the split in its shell. Is it autumn now? Acorns have been getting bigger for weeks.
Thursday
Sunrise: 5:33am
There’s an empty fish & chip wrapper in the front garden. In the park, fast food containers, bags and cans lie in a a circle around the open-topped bin. I assume the foxes had a party last night and gifted us this hangover. I wouldn’t mind but the heavy black sack of litter I picked up yesterday is sitting right next to the bin: a mockery. The sun breaks through the cloud and lights up the walk to the station. The traffic gods let me cross without reaching for the button. You lose some, you win some. Winsome.
“Where’d you work then?” Walking across London Bridge I try and find people in the throng who match my pace. Behind me two men are talking, and one dutifully describes the area where he works. The first says: “Aldgate. It’s Aldgate, then?” And the second says yes, Aldgate but hardly anyone knows where that is. “Oo you speaking to who doesn’t know where Aldgate is? Aliens?” He’s furious, like man who’s discovered a first-rate con.
At 22 Bishopsgate the water system is on for the trees. After so much dry weather the thin flow of water creates small muddy puddles around the trunks, and discarded cigarette butts float gently to the surface.
Other things all unrelated
• When Elif Shafak, the British-Turkish writer, writes novels in English, she doesn’t translate them into Turkish herself. Instead she works with a Turkish translater and edits them, because she thinks differently in English and Turkish. Via this Mary Beard interview. It’s interesting how the language and culture of a place shapes the stories you tell and the way you tell them – she says she’s funnier in English. She also says that she writes to a soundtrack of “death metal, industrial metal, Viking metal and metalcore”, which is nice.
• Space is awe inspiring. Humans make it so sad. I went to the American Museum last weekend, and it was great. Among other things they had a special exhibition about space, and these two quotes are heartbreaking in completely different ways:
“NASA has ambitious plans not only to return to the Moon but also to mine resources there – including metals, helium and water. In addition to supporting human life, these resources will make it possible to travel deeper into space, including regular crewed trips to Mars.”
If only we had resources to support human life on our own planet…
“Voyager 1 and 2 carry time capsules containing music, sounds and messages from Earth, so that alien life might discover them one day.”
So. Lonely. We are such a lonely planet.
• If you’re wondering, helium isn’t just for balloons or making you sound like a pixie.
• I’m just finishing Horse Under Water by Len Deighton. He had an extraordinary career.
• I’ve been listening to Fool’s Gold on Iplayer. About metal detectorists discovering a Viking Hoard and then doing everything imaginable to screw things up. It’s true and well told; fun, frustrating. Much like the outcome for the men who felled the tree at Sycamore Gap, surprisingly long sentences.
• Loved and lost/eaten:
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28 July – 1 August
Monday
Sunrise: 5:18am
Did you know Lucifer means ‘light bringer’ in Latin? That Jesus apparently self-identified as the morning star? That the morning star is either the planet Venus or the star Sirius or the planet Mercury. That today I looked at the bright silver foil shining in the long grass and thought, “There it is, Monday’s morning star – trash glinting like treasure.” Given the number of morning stars there are, it’s not unlikely I’d find one in the park or that someone would’ve dropped it.
On Saturday I walked back from the supermarket and this road was peppered with empty fast-food wrappers, Haribo packets and water bottles. Today I pick up all that plus a Lidl bag, “This bag’s a keeper” it says. Something-something recycled, recyclable… I stuff it in the black sack with the rest. So much trash. What are we all doing? I rage about it all day. All week.
I’ve said it before, but this is why I shouldn’t litter pick on a Monday.
Thursday
Sunrise: 5:23am
One for sor… two for… ok, three then. And another four. Seven for a secret. Seven magpies.
While I’m checking rooftops someone shouts hello from the other side of the road: FMP at the bus stop. I should’ve stopped at two for joy – we’ve all got secrets, no matter how many birds there are.
FMP says she’s waiting for a bus, and she wears the expression of someone caught red handed. She says she’s stopped walking which is why I haven’t seen her for months. I tell her not to worry, I was thinking of getting the bus the rest of the way to the station. We share this part of our commute, but in opposite directions.
We have enough time to talk about cuts to the bus timetable and check in on family before a bus appears on the horizon. Hasty goodbyes. It’s not the right bus.
It’s raining again. Been a week of it. And this week work has sat heavy on my chest. Some weeks are just weeks, no magic, no poetry.
At London Bridge I watch a bus leave as I arrive, see low clouds slip between the tallest buildings in the city. At Primrose Street the furled umbrella is still stashed in the curve of the sculpture, waiting.
Head for home as the sun starts to set. Pink and rose gold coats ugly glass buildings and makes them shine.
Other things
- I saw the Jenny Saville exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I can’t imagine what it must be like to walk around with so much talent. Also to have the confidence to subvert it in new ways.
- There was also a photo-realistic portrait of Philip Salon in the Portrait awards. Philip Salon went to my university at the same time as me, as a mature student. Good outfits, I recall.
- One of the morning glories flowered today – a beautiful blue. Something good about blue flowers. This was a delight. Thank you, Tim.
- This is an apt prayer – one to be mindful of as we get older. Via Alex.
- Analyzing All of the Words Found on NYC Streets – an amazing project, via Chris.
- Damn it. Sometimes AI’s sycophancy is the best part of my day. (Yes, I know.)
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21 – 25 July 2025
Tuesday
Sunrise: 5:10am
“Make sure you get in the right lane for heaven!” The invisible man turns his head to watch the progress of a commuter who swerved last minute to avoid the barriers on London Bridge.
He chuckles to himself.
“Ahhh that’s a good one!”He turns back to face us all, head covered, mask on, dark glasses. “Don’t let your family go to hell! Get in the right lane for heaven!” Overhead a seagull’s shriek sounds like laughter too.
I walk through the city singing songs I learned last weekend. The ailing trees have water bags at their bases. The next trees up have a drip system hidden in the pavement which I’ve never noticed before. Branches have been removed to raise the canopy and the stumps that remain are slowly healing over.
Later: I’m on the train home when I hear Ozzy Osbourne has died.
Wednesday
Sunrise: 5:11am
The woods are quiet and damp. The weather has broken recently and we’ve had rain. There’s a smell of wet earth and compost, and the birds are fearless. A robin flies to my feet and a blackbird waits on the path ahead. The silk-covered tree is exhausted: much like the ghosts, every leaf has vanished, the caterpillars too.
I leave the woods prepared and optimistic: in my bag there’s one empty ice cream tub and two plastic tubs saved from a Chinese takeaway last Christmas. It’s blackberry season, and although I haven’t been here for a while I’m guessing now is the time.
Over by the fields, every bush is full of berries: dark, plump and gently dimpled or hard red knots. I’d never noticed that the blackberry at the end of the branch seems to ripen first – or that’s what’s happened here. These are easy pickings and when I head towards home, every tub is filled. A triumph, and it’s not even 8am.
Later: finish an online meeting and realise I’m being watched. The cat next door is famously anti-social. For 8 years it’s fixed us with a cold stare as it saunters through our garden, or skulks in our flower beds. Nothing has changed, this is not that cat. But it is *a* cat, sitting in the hall. Hello cat.
Thursday
Sunrise: 5:13am
Green alkanet alley is full of trash and windfall apples.
26th in the queue and the light bouncing off the News building is strong enough to create a second shadow. The three of us get the bus but only one of us feels the blister from these too-tight trainers.
From London Bridge, Canary Wharf is just a pencil sketch on the horizon. But a low dark cloud hangs over Tower Bridge, an indication of more rain to come.
Other things
- The tallest morning glory plant is reaching for the sky – and highly likely to make it. It’s about 3 foot taller than I am so far and still climbing.
- One of the zinnias has flowered a luminous pink. It’s spectacular, nestled among the fluffy fronds of the cosmos (plants) which are also tall, but refusing to flower.
- I’m building up to picking the first round, yellow courgette.
- It’s not really blackberry season is it? This is the new normal. One of the songs I learned last week was called The Snow Hare. “The mountain hare, or snow hare, the only truly Arctic animal of Scotland is under threat due to rapid ecological shifts. A creature that has evolved winter camouflage becomes immensely vulnerable when the snows don’t come as they used to.” Hmm.
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