Blast from the Past

One of the effects of living in London, where there is so so much history, was that Jeff and I had a running conversation about all the people who had lived in where we lived, shopped where we shopped, and saw everything we saw on a daily basis. Sometimes we'd imagine us living in that time period--sidestepping horses in the street, lighting coal in our fireplace, worrying through world wars, getting electricity installed, watching Princess Di's story unfold--it was a fun game.

The conversation had lulled since we'd been Stateside, but it came up again tonight as I was browsing web images of London and happened to come up on some photos from the 1940s. This one struck a peculiar cord.


It was the shop sign that caught me originally: 266 Ashley Trunk Store. Our flat address was 262, and was right next to Ashley Mansions.



The clincher though, is the windows. I know the view of those windows from both sides. The only difference is that the 1940's photo windows are flat 14's (far left middle in the modern photo) and we lived in flat 10 (far right middle in the modern). But the windows are the same. And I suddenly feel like the house next door got bombed.