>>77584
I grew up there during a time when I was not aware of the rot that had been creeping in. To my childhood eyes it was home, a place that was mine. The part I lived in was fairly quiet, the disease that ravaged the center was still spreading out and had not reached a crescendo in my area until some time later. It was bad when I left but it still had some remnants be it the dwindling number of elderly ladies always getting their "perms" at the local hair dressers to socialise as they always did but now with a touch more fear than when I was a child (a perm is a type of hair cut, curled mid length, it was an odd habit) or the gentleman who ran the greengrocers who would always gift a bit of fruit during the summer when me and my friends would pass his shop to go play in the park, his shopfront lined with plastic front panels in place of the open bunches of crates it used to be before for "youths" had taken to either stealing or wrecking his stock regularly. It wasn't all dark when I left but you could see the tendrils of "diversity" were already having an effect. It is all ashes now. The hairdressers where old ladies would congregate to keep their community alive is now a disgusting kebab shop. The greengrocers is now a halal meat butchers. My friends after my departure either dead through drugs or alcohol as they tried to survive in the misery of it all or relocating further afield to the outskirts, hoping against hope the disease will not spread to their new lives. Nought but ruin awaits them yet they will do nothing for their children's future against it all, they have all become weak as they grew to be men.

I have never returned to that part after leaving permanently, the rare times I go back it is a private affair. A few times a year I go to visit the graves of family and friends but that is all. I have no business there and were it not for my duties to those gone I would never return. I know my wife would rather I didn't but I think she also understands the why of it all. It's a depressing city, oppressive in it's facade of "diversity" and "unity" with the remaining English populations commuting in from the outlying areas, all dead eyed and grey in appearence, mingling with the golem swine the parasite replaced the cities population with. Everyone is on edge despite the forced brevity you'll sometimes find with the "average Londoner", those few locals who tried to stay inside the belly of the beast never seeming truly at ease and for good reason.