welcome lush rainy back garden at friend's Elephant & Castle flat

…is what our flight from Italy descended into this afternoon, arriving into London City airport from Brindisi, and after ten days of constant summer heat and sun with barely a cloud in my memory I have been looking forward to an autumnal rainy chill here (as I settle in for five days to prepare for the October 13th opening of the London Animal Estates HQ) but still feeling the glow of the Puglia sun on my skin as I walk the city streets hunting for my first meal, struggling to locate some decent produce to make a stew – and it is at this moment that I am snapped back to reality of large northern contemporary metropolis life, where real food is not a basic pleasure and right, freely/simply/cheaply available around you, but a rare luxury – though what really did me in, and made me really miss Italy on my first hours out, was a display of figs – which once eaten off the trees around you, at the very moment they are ripe, during the few weeks they are in season, as a part of your daily life and landscape…you are ruined for good and never look at a shipped-in crate of them the same, did a tear come to my eye there in that supermarket? yes, maybe it did.