spring haze on Horniman Hill

Walked up around the back of the Horniman Museum with Emmanuel on Saturday. Little gardens budding timidly as we rose, high over London and feeling up a mountain, hidden and enclosed by the haze, cool in the whiteness. Among the many flowers (bright little red points of light against the white sky) whose names I don't know were the sticky buds of horse chestnut leaves sprouting, cherry blossom everywhere, sumac in fruit and a patch of baby banana plants like the ones I remember planting in Colombia. Houses being built in the gap-tooth spaces of the road (left by bombs in the war?), sprouting solar panels and skylights, things up here more friendly with the sky.

The roads narrow up to the top of the hill. If you look carefully you can see where the tiny spirits of the dead (the old woodsmen and charcoal burners of the 19th century) congregate, sitting together in the holes in fence posts or hiding next to the birds' nests, stroking their white beards and sharing a pipe over complex betting games (based on actuarial predictions of environmental devastation and played out over decades). But you have to be very quiet. And if they offer you the pipe, say no, you have to stay on this side, where you can still enjoy the museum.