At the chemists, where I am a regular, the news from Gaza broadcasts silently from the screen above the counter; out of sight of the pharmacists who work away oblivious of the horror above their heads, chatting amiably to the customers who are not looking up either.

On the screen, the woman from UNWRA is talking about how they will run out of fuel today and will have to shut down, even though their facilities are hosting 700,000 people, triple their capacity. The trickle of aid getting in is barely a fig leaf to cover the ongoing attack. She is very smartly turned out, but her face betrays a fortnight of sleeplessness and she seems hollowed out, just about holding it together.

Reading an article by Ahdaf Soueif in the FT in the library, after glancing at the usual headlines screaming vengeance in the Mail and such, and her observation that “dehumanising the Palestinians absolves one from trying to understand them” could have been written with them in mind.

This comes after listening to Jeremy Bowen’s interview with some Israeli settlers in the West Bank, who were saying that the weapons they carried, a big machete and gun, were currently to defend themselves; but they hoped to go onto the offensive against their Palestinian neighbours soon and drive them out, as one of them said, “from the river to the sea.” If you’re looking for a genocidal movement…

The young woman in a hijab working in Boots wishes me a “good day”; and I bite back a comment on how difficult that is knowing what’s happening in Gaza, and realise how close to tears I am.

A bright red spatter of paan spit on the pavement looks like blood.