...and it makes the weirdness of things more poignant. On the first day of lockdown we walked in St James Park. Russet and golden leaves, and a Guards band was playing...perhaps a rehearsal for Remembrance Day on Sunday...but the crowds can't be there, on this 100th anniversary of the unveiling of the Cenotaph.
Down to Charing Cross and the river, via a rather bleak Trafalgar Square with policemen hovering about in their horrid new menacing padded gear and weaponry.
On the bridge, as the dusk drew in, it was strange to see no lights glowing in any of the office windows...in the Norman Shaw buildings, where I worked in the late 1970s as a Parliamentary researcher, all seemed blank. The ugliness of the tower blocks beyond, and the odd look of poor old Big Ben all wrapped in sheeting and scaffolding...and yet the loveliness of the evening sky, and the haunting knowledge that this is London, our London, in this strange time in its long history...
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