Springlike

Not a lot to report. 

The Leafs lost, again. Well, the loss actually came last night, but I recorded and watched it this morning. That's six of the last seven they've lost, after a barn-burning start that at one point had them in first place in the league. Now they're only in second place in their division. 

I should have known it was too good to last.

It was yet another sunny day. Are we going to pay for this somewhere down the line, all the sunshine we've had the last couple of months? 

I walked for exercise in the morning, listening to some gut-wrenching passages in the Douglass biography about his time as a slave and the cruelty and violence he witnessed when a child.

This afternoon, the temperature had climbed up to 11C and I went out again for an amble. Through the Forks park to York, over to Horton on Thames St., and across the Rideout bridge and into Thames Park. Up to Wortley Rd. and back across the footbridge and through the grounds of the old courthouse.

It has occurred to me the last couple of days, gazing upon the downtown from a small distance, that London now has a skyline. Here's a picture I took yesterday from the west side of the north branch. The high-rise and mid-rise buildings, mostly residential, practically fill the horizon. 

Then today, as I walked west on Wortley Rd., I had the same oh-look-at-that moment gazing across a bend in the river to downtown. It was even more filled in with tall buildings. 

I mention all this not out of any sense of civic pride, just out of surprise. When did this happen? And why hadn't I noticed before? London's population is over 400,000 now. (It was under 150,000 when I was a kid.) It's getting to be a fair size city so the upward growth is not so surprising. 

Signs of spring at the top of the pathway out of Thames Park: yellow crocuses and this little white flower, the name of which I've forgotten if I ever knew it.

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And then it was back to 2018, mostly Madrid, mostly the Malasaña district and its street art.

I should have stopped there, but went on to the next few days, when we had moved to Naples. Some of the most interesting parts of the city were directly down the hill from our flat which was on a stepped pedestrian street - including this gorgeous temple to commerce, the famous Galleria Principe di Napoli.