A single candle...

...stands in our window, and for the past hour the house has been dark.

We were, I think, the only house in the street to do this.  I went outside to look, and up and down the road, windows were blazing as usual. Then  I got chatting to a neighbour who hadn't known about the initiative, and she went back inside at once and put out all the lights and lit a candle...

Lunchtime Mass at Precious Blood Church, London Bridge, and  in place of a sermon we stood for minute in silence to remember the dead of World War I, and then the priest led us in a prayer for them...

Across the river at the Tower of London, the moat is filling with blood-red poppies in commemoration.

Its been a day of intense heat and piercing sunlight. In the sticky evening warmth I pushed my way along the rather mucky lane at the back of the houses, to gather blackberries. When these houses were built in the inter-war years, there were small fenced gardens for each, and the lane was designed for the dustmen to come and empty all the kitchen bins of household rubbish. Today, most of the gardens are overgrown and some fences are broken, and a lot of junk and rubbish gets dumped there...in a strange way, the brambles link us right back to the days before all that, when this was open countryside. Picking the plump fruit and scrambling back with a brimming bowl to turn into jam was a link with that vanished England before 1914...

And the sun went down and I lit a candle in the window...