Saturday was such a bright day, with some real warmth in the sun - just the weather to go and check out some of the City gardens.
With so many commercial buildings squeezed into a mediaeval street pattern, and private interests successfully resisting any grand plans that might have inserted continental-style squares and piazzas into the City, even (or especially?) after the Great Fire, greenery and open space here - unlike in the West End and later expansions of London - depends on the old churchyards, which provide somewhere for office-workers to get a bit of something like air in their lunch-hours. At the weekends, they are practically deserted.
Thanks to a more recent unpleasantness, there are gardens, not just in the churchyards, but in the remains of some of the churches built after the Great Fire.
Turn the corner and walk up towards the former General Post Office, and you would come to one of the better known City gardens, Postmans' Park, which combines the former churchyards of Christchurch Greyfriars and St Botolph Aldersgate.
The remains of the walls, surrounded by the uninspiring glass and steel of modern office blocks, enclose lawns, shrubs, palms, even substantial trees, and last Saturday, hellebores open and plenty of bulbs showing real signs of life. It's a beautifully peaceful place. Don't tell anyone about it, though.
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