17

We get the bus into the town, or ‘the city’, except that there doesn’t seem to be one. The bus goes through a huge park, alongside another, and seems to end up nowhere. There’s a medieval gate in splendid isolation and some bits of wall behind railings, and a lot of postwar stuff. It’s like the new housing estate in Molesey, expanded to make a universe, with the same long history made invisible, obliterated by the Luftwaffe, or preserved by the council. There’s quite a good record shop tucked away behind some stuff, opposite a carpark. That’ll probably do.