Shadows of London: A Whispered Nightshade For After-Years

Jonathan Wood remembers his oft-times weird and wonderful encounters in London in his trademark poetic style.Flowing, emanating out of the fabled glister of an imaginary literary prize, this self-isolating pilgrimage traces the author’s footsteps back into the dimlit past, accompanied by the knocking of the oars of the Double-Styx Charon across the surface of the Thames and in the waters of my mind…He writes: I didn’t want to echo some of the great writers of the past in their impressions of London but I did want to sift through the dust and the after-thoughts of my experience, so that it became a spectrum of light and dark, perhaps the true constituents of a shadow, both in reality and in the mind and on the page. Somehow, I have come to this point now and shared with you as reader, impressions imprinted on my mind as if it were Letterpress. These ‘Shadows’ are figments of tenderest experience, sensitive to the touch and with no sense of ‘going back’. They bring my past to the ordinary present, seen through my eyes and hopefully through yours. In after-years, perhaps this tome will resonate with you as the ‘lived in’ journey of the author putting his house in order and preparing for the next journey and its hidden destination. We listen at the slumbering walls of experience for recognisable echoes of our past; we catch the pain and the pleasure, the laughter and the tears, the knockings on the wall and the deafening silence… (adapted from the Author’s Note)