From Bob's archive: South London pastoral
For mid-winter, the last in 2024's monthly series of posts from the archive. Today, a cold day in February 2009 . Photo: Keith Hudson, 2010 Sunday. I am in my front room doing some decorating. I hear horse hooves. I look out the window. The first light flakes of snow are fluttering down. Into view, on my quiet Victorian terraced street in London SE4, come two horses, both dappled grey. On their backs, two white youth in hooded tops. Five minutes afterwards, I wonder if it happened or if I imagined it. On to my music player comes Caetano Veloso singing "London, London", written when he was in chilly exile from the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. The eight words at the heart of the song sum up so perfectly what England is like: "Green grass, blue eyes, gray sky, God bless."* Monday morning. The snow has settled. The schools are closed, the roads are still, many workplaces are shut. Blythe Hill park is clogged with kids on sledges, dads who have taken ...
