You might have heard of Paul Harfleet’s Pansy Project? It sets out to commemorate homophobic incidents and attacks, first in London and the UK, and increasingly around the world. Pansy, is of course, a clever play on words: in English a term of homophobic abuse and in French the word for thoughts and recollections. Pansies are planted on incident sites, to commemorate something ugly with something beautiful.

I’ve noticed a couple of pansies blooming, planted at the base of street trees or outside pubs around here lately, and I thought I might document them on this blog. I first noticed a single purple pansy planted at the bottom of our road on the way to the station. I’m a bit useless and haven’t yet, managed to photograph this but then I noticed the little plant of yellow flowers pictured here on my walk this morning, outside O’Neill’s Irish Pub opposite Beckenham Junction Station. Of course, it might be a coincidence that it’s somehow taken root there, but pansies don’t self-seed, do they? It might be part of the Pansy Project but if it is not, and was planted by someone different who suffered or witnessed an incidence of homophobic abuse, I think it deserves to be documented, don’t you?