All text copyright Stephen Coates 2006 - 2015

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

... is a smallish area, packed solid with the tiny graves and loving memorials of countless canine 'dearly beloved'. It goes a long way to prove to foreign visitors that everything they've heard about the English and their dogs is quite true.

Meanwhile, a friend tells me that more than half of the population of the Great Britain's cats are alive here in London.

THE GHOST HOUSE

When I first met Theodore Tyburn and asked his address, he gave it me - 23 to 24 Leinster Square, London W10. When he didn't respond to my letters, I stopped by one day to see if he was in. The house, an elegant period mid-terrace home, was the sort perhaps once lived in by a merchant family and probably now sub-divided into little expensive apartments like its neighbours.



There was no response to my knock - and the windows were screened so it was impossible to peer within. Curious, I went around to the street behind to see if I could see anything more. I was startled, shocked even, to discover that from the back the house was revealed to be nothing more than paper thin - a mere facade disguising a huge ventilation shaft over the Hammersmith and city line.


How many letter have been posted there
Only to fall, like mine,
Into London dead air?