Alley cat

This being Hampstead, both the alley and the cat were very posh: the stone-flagged path runs between two rows of "artisan cottages" once occupied by the teeming families of poor working people but now highly desirable bijou residences; the cat was a pedigree Bengal that goes by the name of Storm (according to the child who was calling it home).

After a morning of some frustration I was relieved to emerge into a sunny afternoon and to walk with eyes open but no particular place to go. I had coffee and cheesecake at a Hampstead institution - the Hungarian patisserie that's been there since 1963; I saw two obedient dogs waiting outside an aptly-named restaurant and a car with pink eyelashes; I passed houses that had belonged to people of note (including Sidney and Beatrice Webb, social scientists and political reformers, of whom it is reported that, according to Beatrice: Sidney makes the major decisions and I make the minor ones - but I decide which is which; then I found myself at Camden Arts Centre where crocuses and witch hazel were flowering in the garden and where I bought myself a book about the wonderful and neglected Leonora Carrington, British born surrealist painter and novelist, muse of Max Ernst, refugee from the Nazis, mental hospital survivor and eventual adoptive Mexican.

I've uploaded some photos of my Hampstead afternoon to Flickr here. Home tomorrow.