Anniversary

A year ago today, I was very tired. My clothes had been drenched in Dettol, I had just purchased my first pashmina and had my first Ribena in six years. After lugging my suitcase across the world to a teeny tiny hotel room in Paddington, I spent the day wandering along Oxford Street in the wind and rain, trying to stay awake until bedtime.

Today, I woke up in my lovely warm flat, The Pickle. I had a leisurely breakfast, with coffee made just the way I like it and a very good book. I ventured out into the sunshiny afternoon and meandered down to the riverbank and across the footbridge to the Tate Modern. It was crowded and noisy, but the art was great and playing on the slides excellent fun. Tonight, I’m going to a house party and then possibly out in my neighbourhood for a lemonade or two.

I like it here.

For some reason, since I’ve been home for my whirlwind visit there have been more people than ever before asking me why I live in London. My brother says it is called the ‘Availability Heuristic’: simply put, when something’s on your mind you see it everywhere. After experiencing the warm, familiar joy of home, my decision to live almost as far away as physically possible seems hard to justify. And yet, the pull of the city remains.

When asked, I usually give a stock answer – babbling incoherently about how there’s so much going on here, and it’s such a good base for travel, blah blah. And while those are good reasons to be here, that’s not quite all of what it is for me.

My life had been characterised by movement over recent years – in each phase, I’ve been looking to the next one and working out how to get there. Here, I feel like I’ve just got started and there’s a lot left to explore. Maybe it’s a sign that I’ve found somewhere I want to stay.

Life has settled into a version of normal – I have a good flat that contains furniture I built myself. I have a great posse of excellent friends with whom I have a standing date to eat roast on Sunday evenings at a wonderful pub. I have favourite restaurants and bars and shops, galleries and markets. I had all that elsewhere too. It’s something less tangible and maybe part of the reason I know I want to be here longer is that I haven’t worked it out yet.

Days like today get me close to figuring it out – I love that gallery and the walk down past St Paul’s takes me past postcard London: beautiful old white buildings, red buses and phone boxes, black cabs and grey cobblestones. As I walked down the streets I had one of those warm, gleeful moments: I live in London! I have such affection for this place that is beyond rational expression. It feels good to be a part of it. It’s dirty, and hard to penetrate, and expensive, and old, but I feel protective when people complain about these things. I like it.

Maybe (visa-willing) in another year I’ll have used up this store of goodwill and the energy it takes to overcome the challenges. I still don’t know what I’m doing with my life, but for now getting the most out of living in this place is as much of a plan as I need.