From Highgate Hill

[poliphilo]

This is central London from a standpoint halfway up Highgate Hill. We were visiting Becky and Karen- who live in a house belonging to the Methodist church on a side road off this magnificent central boulevard. They're probably the only people within a radius of a mile or two who aren't millionaires. If you walk to the left you come to Highgate Cemetery and if you walk to the right you come to Hampstead Heath. Coleridge used to live in Highgate Village- and I like to think of him wandering about this hillside before there were any houses, rhapsodising over the view. In his day the highest building would have been the dome of St Paul's- which you can just see in the photograph poking out from behind a rectangular block to the left of the lamp post. The highest building now is the Shard- that unmistakeable pointy thing- which is like something Coleridge might have seen (and only could have seen) in an opium vision.