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View from Gail’s
Blog Identification, with songs
Stinging Afterthoughts
View
I’m having light food and coffee at a steel-topped long table at Gail’s.
Her cafe is affordable, although it’s within easy walking distance of the Thames river in the middle of town. While much of Central London has buildings of grey stone with high carvings, here, behind an old power turbine hall, the buildings I can see are all red brick.
I glimpse bare branches of trees here and there in the distance.
The side of the building close by to my right is made of tiny little squares, the upper ones project outward—I can see some skylines on the corner—while the lower ones are inset. The only glass in the wall is a slot of windows like a Star Wars visor. A ways off to my front a long building has a perpendicular skyline at various intervals, as though inspired by a chess rook. To my right a “tower outcrop from a building” is windowless except near the top, where there is a stripe of windows runs around it, under a gazebo-shaped roof of red Roman tile. Strange, because here in rainy London, roofs are normally black, or greyish black, with shingles of asphalt or something. (But over on the continent roofs are all red-orange)
Right outside, long dark green spear fronds are constantly blowing, above their friends with dark green queerly-shaped leaves. No doubt imported, and set with care. Looking through the plate glass to my left, across grey paving stones, and then beyond glass— a nice stout glass fence—is a long hill with “random” ferns: long ones and short ones. These are set off by lower bushes with shiny green heart-leaves, amongst long stands of light-hearted yellow-white puffy feather duster bushes. Here and there are small artistic delightfully-bare deciduous trees.
It is January.
Black screens block nearby construction. On the sidewalk a man in dark clothes, high-visibility vest, and very small pack, is swinging his hands together… from cold or rhythm? He bobs his steps… from cold or music? His mouth moves… perhaps he is singing. Most likely he’s a security guard, not a driver, although two lorries squat unmoving. One may have come in by ferry or chunnel as beneath the driver’s oblong door-window is a warning sticker for motorists: a graphic of a truck with wide turns or blind spots or something. “Attention Angles Morts.” Every British schoolboy knows “mort” means “death.” Hence we grownups deal with a mortgage.
The sky is purely grey and omni-directional. The child compass gracing my neck is no mere conversation piece.
The overcast is merely part of my happy tourist ambience, as is the cafe inside. At the far end of the next long steel table sits Peter with some businessmen. He said, “That was kind of you,” when I went over to tell him, after he had missed hearing his name called, that his cappuccino was ready. For my refill, this time of “spiced cafe,” a young staff had put powdered stripes across the top.
I said, “My, how artistic.”
An older staff leaned over and said, “Yes, she’s creative.”
Spear fronds blow constantly in the wind. In here it’s nice and warm.
… …
A Pause for Blog Identification
You are reading seanessay.com by Sean Crawford,
Visiting the United Kingdom,January 2026
Where folk singer Billy Bragg has a protest song called City of Heroes
where the Marsh family (here from America) has a gentle grief song
Stinging Afterthoughts as I tramped away
Maybe you’re reading this in the future.
Back in my father’s time, the democracies had women in factories riveting planes, and flying planes, while the Axis powers kept their ladies at home, at the cost—serves them right—of reducing their war effort. “Everyone,” Dad always said, “is equal.”
Now back home the violence and killing, by the federal guns-and-uniform crowd, has still not levelled off. Maybe this should surprise me, but no: When the ruling Liberal Party, up in Canada, left all those innocent translators behind to be revenge-killed by the Taliban— that’s when I gave up trying to predict my fellow North Americans.
Your time —my future— could be a society where the quest for equality has succumbed to the quest by Trump’s base for hierarchy. Not my cup of tea; I don’t care to feel supreme over women and Blacks if certain white males would also be superior to me. More importantly: I just can’t lie to myself.
You always know, in any time and place, the mark of hierarchy: that’s when women are controlled socially, spiritually, and in their appearance. Always.
If your time believes in hierarchy, then I just have to rub it in—serves you right—that our time may be liberal and decadent, but at least we have the mentally healthiest, prettiest girls.
At a close table, a young lady in monotone grey with braided hair was wearing a brassier quite unlike the bras of my birth decade, the 1950’s; rather, she reminded me of how she naturally looked like. Not what Hitler would like.
At the corner of my table a young lady had a coat with not one but several decorations, not tin badges but art-works of silver and gold. How nice.
I saw no women frowning, and no heads turned save mine, when a young lady strode in wearing slim black sweater and matt black dancer tights. I gathered my things to leave. Maybe her shoes were black too, but I don’t know, I didn’t look.
Your descriptions are so vivid, Sean. I wish I was there.
Thank you, Cindy.
Say, I just added a second song under Blog Identification.
I love the Marsh family’s songs. I cried when they sang this one. I also liked the other song as well. Defiant against fascism. It’s as though no one knows history in America. Canada is just as bad. I was born not long after WWII so I’ve heard many stories and read about many more. We have immigrants who have fled war-torn countries thinking they would find a safe place in North America. So sad.
I cried at a discussion after the London premier of the death camp movie (Zone of Interest?) where the commandant’s wife tells of getting a deal, comparing prices, on curtains from a lady being sent away.
I told folks my mother said the same thing, still remembered the prices to me, after buying bed sheets from someone sent away to a camp inland. She was angry when she told me, so I think she was covering up sadness.