A despatch from our story-writer-in-residence Penny Walker.
30th April
Golders Green station to Highfield Avenue, and back
1.5 miles
I am by myself among strangers who are friends: women walking together in sisterly solidarity.
We meet just before six, outside Golders Green station, on the small semi circle of grass where the buses turn. At first, there are half a dozen of us. Then more people arrive. I look at women, guessing whether they are here for the walk.
No banners, no slogans – by request of the organisers – but our clothes say something about us. There are headscarves, dog collars, hats. Trousers and skirts and robes. The one man with us has a small dog on a lead, and is wearing a kippah.
The walk from Golders Green station to the place where two men were stabbed yesterday – two ‘visibly Jewish’ men, as we have learnt to say – is not long. But we take our time. We are about 120 people, walking at the pace of the slowest, pausing at junctions and to let people past. We tell our stories.
This walk was created through the same WhatsApp groups and personal contacts that are used to organise pre-wedding brunches and meal rotas for new mothers. The women here are multi-tasking: walking in solidarity while also introducing each other to their friends, handing over things lent and returned, caring for children, making arrangements.
There are prams and pushchairs, bags with suncream and sandwiches, waves and smiles from passers by.
We talk of the power of listening, understanding each other as whole people. I meet a pair of friends from pre-school, now grown women, of different faiths. There are women here who host interfaith women’s circles. Who have been awarded honours for their work in community cohesion. Doctors of philosophy. Women who raise children and care for elderly relatives, and raise each other up.
I have come out without a coat, in canvas shoes, and my optimism is rewarded with sunshine, sunshine all the way.
Join Penny’s online creative writing workshop, Sole Erosion, on Monday 8th June, 2026.
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