liadnan

For the benefit of anyone who has asked for my address, it's Marcus Flavin, Flat 2, 23 Oppidans Road, Primrose Hill, London, NW3 3AG. If you want one and I don't have your address, send it to me at aurelius at the culture dot org.

I love it up there. The other night I was working late at home... There aren't many places in London, particularly not inside Zone 2, where silence reigns, and light pollution is not immediately visible from one's window. I grew up in a village, or rather two villages if you count my first three years in Galway, and, in the various places I've lived in London, silence has been the greatest thing I've missed. I am, in general, a fairly solitary person, not to say an anti-social git, and it's always been a small problem that I can't pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.

But as I sat there, writing dull and worthy words about the law of succession at a quarter to midnight, sitting in my small and undeniably cold flat and looking out in the general direction of Primrose Hill itself, all was silent. Not a light was showing in the houses backing onto our garden, between us and the hill, and they were lost enough in the blackness that I coul pretend they weren't there. Even more extraordinary, the bulk of the hill somehow manages to exclude almost all trace of light pollution. It's not quite as good as when I lived almost on the edge of Port Meadow in Oxford, but it's getting there..