Yesterday did n't go the way I'd originally planned and I had to make some abrupt changes, otherwise my wheels would have stayed spinning in the mud; nevertheless there were compensations, small rewards, really, and there was an insight.

For the sheer need of seeing people, I walked from my flat through Kensington, along to the Edgware Road, and eventually on to the West End.

The closer to the West End, the busier the streets; Holland Park was a near tomb, scarcely a person, nothing open except for the solitary lighthouse that was the Windsor Castle pub, with just a scattered handful of drinkers

Kensington High Street was marginally busier with a small grocers open, then further towards Kensington Church St, Cafe Concerto was a sardine can of tourists, clearly relieved that at least somewhere was open. Not a table free.

After there, I headed through Kensington Palace Gardens and eventually to Queensway, the de facto beginning or end, depending on which way you're approaching, of Arab London. The London that never closes essentially and from there till Marble Arch, London fair hummed with life: cafes, restaurants, arab grocers, supermarkets, pharmacies, even a brace of hair dressers, were open.

Edgware Road, which is the passagiata for London's Arab community, spun with people, they were everywhere, at outdoor tables smoking shisha pipes, shopping, laughung, walking arm in arm eating, queuing for restaurants. It was a marvellous sight, like a latter day modernised 1001 nights. I was entranced.

I mentioned a number of small compensations: a polychromatic Jay, that I saw darting across a Holland park side street, and then later on the trek home, a fox scampering out of a garden near Queensway. I love the sense that the wilderness has n't quite left London. There are still echoes if you listen hard enough.

The insight? A woman. possibly homeless, probably friendless, reading a several days old paper in a fast food restaurant. James Baldwin described his protagonist in Another Country, as one of the "flattened", where the common denominator is quiet desperation, nameless torment and silent misery, not just on one day, but every day. London, like New York, the setting of Another Country, has too many of the "flattened". This woman was one. People should n't be falling through the cracks.