Two years ago this week, Matt Fowler’s beloved dad, Ian, was admitted to hospital. He reads a typically deadpan WhatsApp message from Ian, one of the last before he died of Covid. “Don’t come anywhere near here,” his dad wrote. “It’s full of sick people.”
A year later, Ian’s son did something in his name. He went to London and drew a red heart on the pale stone of the wall facing Parliament. Inside it, he wrote Ian’s initials, “IF”, in a guerrilla act of memorial. The very first heart on the Albert Embankment, which winds along London’s South Bank opposite Westminster.
Ian’s heart is one of 180,000 now. The National Covid Memorial Wall takes half an hour to walk. From the Palace of Westminster, it looks like a reproachful smear of blood, but up close, it is a poppy field of hearts – both a memorial and a battlefield.
