London - 3 - Driving home

After the big family dinner we eventually said all our goodbyes and I got into the back of the car. My mother always sits in the front passenger seat and my father in the driving seat on the right. I always used to sit on the left in the back.

As we drove back to Pimlico I could hear my parents discussing some plans for another dinner. They were almost arguing, one being bossy to the other, familiar uncomfortable frictions.

I just sat in the back uninvolved, able to look at the huge white facades of these London houses which we have driven past so very many times. It is like being in an endless rerun of the past with tiny variations.

The huge houses mean nothing to me though. We don't know who lives there, never will. They get cleaner in the boom times and may revert to the sad, dusty state they used to be in for years when they were just too big for anyone to maintain properly.

London morphs each time I go back, but I can barely see it in this area. The street lights are the same, so are the trees in the squares, the nearly empty pavements, the traffic lights and restaurants at the junctions.