Earlier this week, we moved into our temporary (post-flood) flat, more than 6 weeks after we were flooded on 12 July (will backdate post later). It’s in Hampstead, really lovely part of town that I had always wanted to live in. So I suppose this is a tiny sliver of silver lining.

Today was a rare sunny day, in an otherwise grey, chilly and wet summer. So we took the opportunity to go for a nice long jaunt – up through West Heath, Golders Hill, Hampstead Heath Extension, across Hampstead Garden Suburbs and East Finchley, into Islington and St Pancras Cemetery.

We had lunch at a really lovely East Finchley neighbourhood restaurant (La Table du Marche). As I sat at our table by the door, with the two boys being a bit of a handful as usual, an old couple pottered in to get a table for lunch – a white-haired old Englishman, with his East Asian (Chinese?) wife with her permed hair a mix of black liberally threaded through with white. The old man was bent, but still solicitous of his wife, as they made their way to their table. For a moment, the world around me seemed to fade out as if in bokeh effect, as I watched the sweet old couple and wondered – “Could this be us in 30 years’ time?”

After lunch, we visited Islington and St Pancras cemetery, which is fairly large, and had many roads within the cemetery, which meant that it had a less intimate feel than other cemeteries we have visited since the COVID era began in February 2020. As always, the names on the gravestones / tombs tell a fascinating story of London’s evolution – the waves of immigration, and shifts in the neighbourhood’s population – as well as very personal stories.

Two gravestones in particular resonated with me today: