Because of a brief break in the drought, that left the roofs and pavements dark and shiny, and everything green breathing more freshly, I had to borrow my dad’s old raincoat to get up to London without becoming a sodden mess. It was hanging up in the hall, from whenever it was that he wore it last. Some years ago now. Old styling, but high quality polyester and clean and unrumpled. It didn’t go with my peaked sky blue hat and I briefly considered borrowing Dad’s flat cap, which would have matched it very well; but thought better of it because it would have felt as though I were cosplaying my dad.

Wearing an unaccustomed outer garment, in a style that you normally wouldn’t, makes you feel as though you are someone else anyway; because you have shucked off your normal outer appearance to some extent. Dressing differently confers a sort of anonymity, or an opening up of other possibilities. I suppose that the essence of acting is to inhabit these alternative selves. In the case of spies, to inhabit the anonymity, to fade into the background while making mental notes, the acute observer going unobserved – or so he hopes. Or being a plausible enough facsimilie of the role being played, that an equally astute observer will be taken in. One of John Le Carre’s themes is that a personality type that can make an effective spy – especially a double agent – is not so much someone burning with conviction, but a shape shifter, a con man who has enough empathy to at least temporarily be able to become a person with completely different values and convictions and be believable. One or two of his characters find the tension of this unbearable. The coat itself, an ambiguous shade veering between grey, green and a particularly hideous brown seemed to be an embodiment of this idea.

Walking up to the station, I am passed by a fast walking lean man with darty snake like eyes, a killer jaw, sandpapery, grizzled, set, but trembling slightly, a tan suit and shiny black shoes…a hit man in beige. But if he was, you’d notice him. He’d need a raincoat.

Just before Limehouse station (when did that stop being Stepney?) there is an athletics track. The main stand was half full, but in a concentrated sort of way, people all bunched up in a companionable triangular clump. But nothing seemed to be going on. Spectators with no spectacle.

Just after Limehouse, there is a repurposed cinema, the Roxy, with its name painted in huge vertical letters on the end facing the railway tracks. A bit of decoration at the top that looks like the letter “t” gives the impression that it has been transplanted from Yorkshire. “Let’s go to t’Roxy”*. In the middle of the O, they have painted King Kong’s face, as though he is staring out of a huge porthole at you. On the way up to London, in a burst of sunlight, he looked quite benign; a bit like Hugh Jape in Willy the Wimp. On the way back, in the dark, he looked moody and menacing; as well he might.

The ceramic poppies set in a V shape on the White Tower seem to me to have lost some of their poignancy. The horror of all those lives lost, buried twice over in a celebration of winning. Its the V that you notice. An embodiment of the despair that all that sacrifice is being exploited to try to make people prepared to do it again. The real flush of actual poppies, delicate scarlet life bursting through the waste space by railway tracks and in back alleys, is like a burst of hope that we can do better.

*It turns out that it is the Troxy after all.