Flying visit to London (red-eye, always a better idea in theory than in practice); inhaling a flat white in the arrivals lounge as a television silently broadcasts something to do with the monarchy in the background; disorientingly nice weather; attempting to ward off both insufficient sleep and sinusitis with tea and Sudafed (the sinusitis is winning).

Every visit a reminder of what it was like to live here and what it would be like to live here, again.

Will home just be the last country standing that is not actively trying to criminalise your mere existence?

Some bars keep getting lower; all the stakes are high.

Attribution

How can you be banished
from your own home? Congratulations.
You fooled us. Render your work, not your lives.
This seems like the newest answer to an old question.
Cheap muscle and blood to build you an Empire –
that we can’t stay in. Gran’s gone missing from
Saturday morning. Brixton Market? No one is frowning at
the quality of the yams, or asking how the snapper’
eye so cloudy. There’ll be no Saturday soup tonight.
— from Citizen One by Roger Robinson