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Sandananda Patel had ended at Postman’s Park. We seemed to end up at Postman’s Park a lot these days. Nestled between Little Britain and Angel Street, it’s the tiles we love.
    I’ll explain.
    In 1887, George Frederic Watts, the son of a humble piano maker, wrote to
The Times
with a brave new idea. An idea that would commemorate for all time the heroism shown by normal, everyday people. It would mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and stand as testament to ordinary lives given out of extraordinary good. It was a beautiful idea.
    Dev and I would make a point of swinging by whenever we were near – and since the offices of
London Now
were just a few minutes away, that was often – and today, our pub crawl had taken us closer and closer. We didn’t have to say where we were going. We just knew.
    Anyway, Watts’s letter to
The Times
did nothing. No one backed him. No one believed in him. So he did it anyway. And now, along one wall of an old church garden in the middle of the City of London, yards from what used to be the General Post Office, are dozens and dozens of glazed Royal Doulton tiles, each one commemorating another act of selfless, singular bravery.
    We’d stood in front of one, and Dev had rolled a cigarette.
    GEORGE STEPHEN FUNNELL, police constable, December 22 1899
.
    In a fire at the Elephant and Castle, Wick Road, Hackney Wick, after rescuing two lives, went back into the flames, saving a barmaid at the risk of his own life
.
    It was the silences after reading I most enjoyed.
    ‘Maybe,’ said Dev, at one point, ‘it’s because we’re not heroes. Maybe we don’t feel worthwhile because we’ve never done anything heroic.’
    ‘I didn’t say I didn’t feel worthwhile.’
    ‘You do, though, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I do.’
    I turned back, and read another.
    ALICE AYERS, daughter of a bricklayer’s labourer, who by intrepid conduct saved three children from a burning house in
Union Street, Borough, at the cost of her own young life
.
    ‘I mean, we go about our daily lives,’ said Dev. ‘You write your reviews and I sell my games, and sometimes you sell my games and I write your reviews.’
    I smiled, but Dev didn’t.
    ‘We feel like we’re doing things,’ he said. ‘But what are we really doing? What will we be able to say we’ve ever done?’
    I thought about it.
    ‘I had some soup last Wednesday.’
    Dev lit his fag and shook his head.
    ‘I’m serious, Jase. What if life’s about the moments? And what if you don’t take that moment? What if you don’t take that moment and another moment never comes? You could be remembered as a hero, or you could just be another person who quietly lived right up until the day they quietly died.’
    He pointed at another tile.
    ‘George Lee,’ he said. ‘At a fire in Clerkenwell, carried an unconscious girl to the escape, falling six times, and died of his injuries. July 26, 1876.’
    He paused.
    ‘He used the moment,’ he said.
    ‘So what do you recommend?’ I asked the waiter.
    Abrizzi’s was fine. It had nice, functional decor (which I’ll have to call boring), efficient staff (Cold? No, robotic. Robotic is better), and, well, I don’t really know what else. What else do restaurant critics look out for? There was cutlery. Enough cutlery for me, certainly, although I didn’t know how to turn that into a negative. And bread – there was a small basket of bread. I guess it could have been slightly bigger.
    ‘The penne is excellent, we have very good veal,’ said the waiter, who moments before had split his sides laughing whenhe realised the reservation wasn’t for
that
Jason Priestley. I laughed along, too, even though, at thirty-two, the joke was just beginning to wear a little thin.
    ‘We also have pizzas, of course, the very best in town.’
    ‘Cool. What type of pizza?’
    ‘My favourite is a thin crust, with fresh tomato, plus a little basil, and mozzarella.’
    ‘A margherita?’
    ‘Well … an Abrizzi’s.’
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