Tombland

 We went to London and met Jenny and Ian and had a nice lunch in a quiet little pub in the heart of Belgravia.

And on the walk from Victoria station Ian pointed out the landmarks.

That's where Mrs Thatcher lived

That's where Roman Abramovitch lived

That's where Lord Lucan killed the nanny.

And all these houses look exactly the same. They are units in a succession of Regency terraces- stucco pretending to be marble- with pilasters, with architraves...

Except that Mrs Thatcher has the builders in and the front is boarded up. It's been like that since she died, apparently. "Is it really taking that long to exorcise her?" said Jenny

There's a good story about Abramovitch. When he first moved in the electronic protection he installed was so powerful all the key fobs on the block stopped working. His wife still lives there...

If living is what they do in these places. I'll bet many of them are empty. Others serve as embassies. There's no street life- apart from the odd security guard or workman painting railings. No kids. No corner shops. And the terraces are under the curse of gentility and its rule book. No facade can be painted anything but cream, no window can be anything but sash. In other moods I have found this impressive (no other part of London can be so little changed since its inception)  but yesterday I was reminded of mausoleums- mausoleums  on the Via Appia that have been strrretched

Uniformity and loneliness and deathly quiet- these are the conditions the rich are willing to meet to live all huddled together in their tombland....

Pretty Silly

 A friend asked to see what would happen if we used the first verse of my Heine poem Fourways as a prompt for hotpot AI. The answer is something pretty silly. The algorithm has read Fourways as fairways- so what we get is a tomb on a golf course. 

AI can picture the world but it doesn't understand it...

Wasted Space

 My sister hopes we're having a nice relaxing day after all the action we saw yesterday. "Relaxing?" I wrote back. " I was up on the garage roof this morning clearing out gutters!"

I'd not been on the garage roof before- and I'm shocked, shocked, at all that wasted space. Why, we could turn it into a  roof garden.  The problem is access. At present the only way (if you discount ladders- and I do) is by climbing over the toilet and out the bathroom window. 

It was a balmy morning and the garage roof is a suntrap. It has views East, South and West. Once we've put in stairs and a railing- so drunk guests don't wobble off the edge- we'll be entertaining up there- and I'll be stepping out on cloudless nights to view the stars.