Hampstead

I started the day with a really lovely run in the woods before the busyness of the day commenced. Son 1 was leaving early tomorrow morning for his European adventure so we had decided to give him a barbecue send-off meal in the evening. That meant lots prep in the morning as W and I were due to see Z in London in the afternoon in order to introduce ourselves to her new counsellor. The plan was to have a stroll on Hampstead Heath followed by a relaxed coffee and then go to the meeting. We had not accounted for the fact that Hampstead Fair was on which had necessitated the closure of the main Heath Road. All traffic therefore had to find alternative routes and the preferred ones all seemed to be exceedingly narrow and definitely not suitable for the sort of vehicles generally chosen by Hampstead residents. Chaos ensued as everyone seemed to think they just kept edging forward they would eventually get somewhere. Gridlock inevitably was the result and after sitting going nowhere for a long time I decided to take matters into my own hands and while W drove, I got out and directed cars so that we could all make a bit more progress. It was clearly not a very London thing to do as everyone seemed entirely wrongfooted and meekly obeyed my commands rather than giving me the ear bashing I was expecting. The palaver meant that our stroll didn't happen and the coffee was definitely not very relaxed but we got to the counsellor on time and had a useful meeting. 

We depended on Google to choose the best route back home and being unfamiliar with west London we were entirely unprepared when our journey took us right past the burned out shell of Grenfell Tower. Although we'd seen photos in the press nothing prepares you for the horror of the reality.