Here is the last of my Facebook diary entries, from 8th May 2012. The following day I turned to WordPress:
Having broken not one but two cafetiere glasses last week I walked to Wimbledon and back in search of new ones. Wimbledon, land of Starbucks, Costa and Cafe Nero. Wimbledon, where, in my childhood, you could smell coffee roasted and being ground in a shop along the broadway where I rode the last of the original trams to run in London in the early 50s. Wimbledon, where Centre Court is a modern shopping mall sporting, among other outlets, Whittards (of Chelsea) where I bought the replacement glasses. Centre Court is alongside the grand 30s Town Hall of my youth which is now a Tescos.
Nothing stands still, said Heraclitus.
On the way there, in Mostyn Road, I exchanged ‘good morning’s with a man who looked so like Stan Laurel that I half expected him to scratch his head in the comedian’s idiosyncratic way.
After a fry-up in the Mica Cafe (Wimbledon’s best , if you don’t go up the hill to Wimbledon Village where a fry-up is a full English breakfast) I returned by a circuitous route involving Dorset Road, Circle Gardens, and Mostyn Road.
This evening Jackie and I ate at the Watch Me, our favourite Sri Lankan restaurant on Morden Road.