A stroll through Hampstead heath yesterday, visiting the pergola, Golder’s Hill park and other familiar sites, though taking routes used less often. At the pergola there was the usual photography taking place but instead of a wedding shoot it was, I think, a fashion student’s shoot as the model was dressed in exquisite black feathers, with a tall black crest and exaggerated black leather platforms.
Living in Malaysia one forgets what spring is like in temperate areas: there is an explosion of flowers. Certainly the English are particularly good at garden flowers, but there are also the wild flowers, from gorse to forget-me-nots. Inside the house there is also an explosion of flowers, sent with notes of condolence. Vases have been borrowed from friends and neighbours but there aren’t enough, especially the largers ones required for lilies. Inside athe house and outside it is cold. The heath was cold but bracing, and I was bundled up in a borrowed purple bubble jacket (they have come a long way from the spherical black hiphop style jacket I had perforce at university). The house is mostly just cold: it is a beautiful old Hampstead semi-detached, not modernised in the past fifty odd years, and with no insulation to speak of.
Today a trip to Dinings in Marylebone. I am back in London after two years and it feels familiar as though I had never left, and yet detached.