Hard to think that a year ago we - and it was just the two of us! - were in London.
Friends there today will be striking, others will be going from their union rallies to Marxism 2011. Doesn’t it look grand?
The morning after we arrived I went to the London Review Bookshop to stock up on Tom Paulin, but ended up staying for the cakes.
Just look at this brownie!
This marvelous piece involved olive oil somewhere, but was sweet. And almost perfect. I’d had this same piece a year before, on an earlier trip, and it was as nice as memory promised.
Serious work later de-programming all those prejudices hardened from a childhood reading Asterix comics. There’s nothing wrong with warm beer. In fact - there’s no denying this in the end - it’s better than the gassy cold lager we Antipodeans call beer.
And this one was drunk in no less a pub than the one Marx went to after knocking off from a hard day’s work in the British Library!
No photographs of the Brick Lane Beigels for some reason, or of the Pimm’s (who knew these things existed?) we drank that afternoon somewhere nearby.
I’ve loved London each time I’ve been. Everything that is good about it stands as a reminder of what is hateful and anti-social about the Tories, the EDL, and all those other forces that hate the diversity and strength of Britain’s contemporary working class.
I hope the weather for the strikes today is nice. It can be fabulous…
