online: 10 september 2014
modified: 9, 10 september 2014
8 september 2014 people walking by
under an oak tree with distant view of St Paul's Cathedral and The Shard... visible
between overhanging leaves and the horizon
...people are walking by on a path about 20 metres away from where i am
sitting...
...a middle aged-man with a camera walks slowly... as if thinking...
while looking at the ground...
...a young woman affectionately slaps a man with the black pullover she
is holding... as they walk by...
...a man with a rented streetbike props it against a seat while he looks
at the view for a few minutes...
...(nearly all the people passing pause to look at the distant city
towers... from this viewpoint near Kenwood)...
...now a woman in a wheelchair is parked beside the viewing seat...
...an obedient red retriever walks some metres ahead of the man in a
pink t-shirt who accompanies the dog...
...a silent electric gardening vehicle passes slowly... carefully
avoiding the people on the pathway...
...two shiny black crows are looking in the grass for something to eat... one finds
what looks like a worm and hops away from the other crow to eat it
...the woman in a wheelchair moves away... propelled by a man... and another
woman with a teenager comes to sit in the viewing seat... and now they
too walk away...
...a wasp is exploring the bark of the oak tree...
...a woman with an infant walks slowly behind him as he strides along
with swinging arms...
a man with white beard and baseball cap pauses to look at the
view... now he walks slowly while gazing around... (not only at the
view)...
...a mistiness has cleared from the city towers and The Shard now looks
nearly three times the height of St Paul's... (remembering how big
St. Paul's looked in the war when the dome rose above the bombed
buildings... i can hardly believe that it now looks so small)...
...a man and a woman in running clothes stop at a nearby seat while he
stretches a leg on the backrest and she continues talking...
...a large chestnut tree in front of me is inclined at about 20 degrees
from the vertical... its trunk is about three times as thick as are its
thickest branches... to me it looks in no danger of falling...
...suddenly there is a white and black spaniel with its paws on the seat
and its nose sniffing my clothes... then it runs playfully to a man with
a beard and a cap who holds himself upright when walking... as if he is
in the army... or a leader of some kind...
...arriving at the highest seat (by a randomly chosen route) i am
surprised to meet a friend whom i met a year or two ago at this same
spot...
...ten years ago he used to appear often at Parliament Hill to fly
kites... but not recently...
...formerly he was an aircraft design engineer and now he makes kites,
tents and weatherproof clothing...
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