I spent Sunday morning drinking pink champagne with Leonie and a sophisticated group of kiwi women at a spa for bubbles, nibbles and general pampering. And networking, or something. Some were new to these grey gravely shores, others have been here for years and all shared that familiar sense of living in limbo, of belonging-yet-not. It’s all been swirling in my brain as a year today I came back to London. I remember that first snatch of air with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict; the smell of coal fires and winter and some instinct that I was exactly where I needed to be. Jobless, homeless, possessionless and excited for the next part of this adventure to begin.
~
I am not sure that London has ever been just a city to me. It was always instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. It has always felt like the centre of the universe and I cannot remember a time when I didn’t want to be here. It has made me feel a crucial part of a vast organic, continually evolving phenomenon. As though I belong. I still have a belly-churning, goosebumps-inducing reaction whenever I travel across Blackfriars Bridge and see the dome of St Pauls lit up ahead. Catching a glimpse of the grand brick funnels of Battersea Power Station has the same affect. And again standing on the tube platform as the hot wind filled with the smell of several thousand sweaty expressionless fellow citizens, signals the approach of an oncoming train. I have a deep and abiding love for this city; it’s visceral. It’s the way I have loved Billy Bragg ever since a confused and lonely fifteen-year-old me wept with relief at this poetry that made me feel seen and is still tangled in my heart.
Somehow the harsh anonymity of London gave me permission to be whomever I needed to be. After he left I had no responsibilities, no ties. And it left me feeling untethered, adrift, lost. My little flat overlooking Turnham Green become a sanctuary. Just four rooms, too many books, a second-hand sofa, a little camping fridge stocked full with wine. I experienced real loneliness and aloneness here. I had to learn to be brave, to be ok with who I met in the mirror. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count. I drank too much, worked too hard. I would meet Noshy for brunch and drink bloody Marys until everything felt better. I had no guilt about spending entire Saturdays that way, because I still had all the Saturdays left in the world. It just never occurred to me that I was living real life here. And those first five years disappeared in no more than 12 months. Surely? In my brain I was always there for just another few months, just until… I was on some indefinitely extended working holiday from wherever it was I apparently belonged.
I was a temporary exile; always with the option to go home. Once I worked out where the hell that was.
~
In many ways this has been my best London year. Sharing this adventure has cracked me open and I get to see it all again through his eyes. We have no plans to leave just yet, nor are we set on going home. I like the uncertainty. And I am so grateful to this place, this city of bricks and fire, alleyways and cold cobbled streets, sirens, tourists, double-deckers and markets. And the homeless men who sleep in shop doorways, half heartedly cupping their hands against the cold.
This spectacular heart breaking place that is home. For now.
Image: Sexy Sus
I am absolutely bowled over by the beauty and tangle of this. You’ve held London up to the light, examined it in all its flawed splendour, and poured its essence out onto the page. Exquisite, and achingly true.
I’m glad you’ve found your way home to that city of cities. For now.
How did you steal thoughts from my head without noticing. It’s nice for me having you here, chick, expressing my feelings for me. Maximo.
I’m not sure I agree with being grateful about the homeless men, but the rest of it, well you could have been writing about my own love affair with London.
I never fully trust people who don’t love London.
We tried to re-locate there, but alas! Still, we are traveling to LND from CPH this weekend to extend our illicit affiar. I hope you don’t mind sharing. ;-)
the ‘for now’ at the end just made my heart lurch – DON’T LEAVE! stay forever, okay? xo
happy anniversary babe. it feels like i have known you for much longer than a year! so glad to have you here in london to keep me company and show me all the bits that i hadn’t yet come to love.
Across the pond, a fellow writer reads with amazement the exquisite description of a city I’ve never known. Other than from inside the airport, in movies, in novels… it is your description that bowls me over. Everything looks different when it is shared.
De-lurking to say: oh yes. London. And may I say also: Your writing is wonderful and open and evocative and funny and deep and …
I cannot explain why London has the hold it does. I don’t get there nearly often enough, but when I do, look out. My family will tell you that I walk around with a silly, out-of-proportion shit-eating grin.
I get your love (wacky though it is) of standing in a tube station with the slightly stinky wind blowing; of gazing at Battersea (which is entirely due to a love for David Gilmour and Pink Floyd); for the not-so-equal days of grey and the sun, and how they are both ok; for walking in Hyde Park and exulting in dogs running free; for popping into Harvey Nick for a glass and a curry on the 5th floor; for attending concerts at RAH; for the babble of languages on the street and people watching in cafes under heat lamps; for picking up something at Ottolenghi’s; for spending hours and hours at the V&A or Tate or BM; for all this and more, I concur.
Love this, Sas. Am thinking that this could apply to a lot of people from small town somewheres who have been dreaming of the noise and nonsense of the big city all their lives. Also love the ‘not being sure’ness of where life is taking you and just having to trust it.
Brilliant!
Oh, you make me want to go there, now.
I’ve gathered all the necessary documents and for the first time in my life I’m going to get a passport.
Love how you write.
Pearl
Loving your words which I found after my daily visit to Emma Bradshaw’s blog. I’m a Brit expat in the US and heart aches regularly for London…..what you wrote today captures so perfectly how I feel about ‘my’ city.
Beautiful.
How beautiful! I can only hope to get such warm feelings about my new place.
Gorgeously written, you make me want to hop on a plane and come over and see London through your eyes with you.
thanks all for your lovely comments! this was one of those posts that fell out of my head.
made me teary. now i want to come back (even more).
i love it when words fall out of your head.
Gorgeous. I wish I could write like you. Because you just expressed so much of how I feel about London, too. It was my home, more or less, for fifteen years and I still miss it. You say this post fell out of your head, I’d rather say it fell straight out of your heart. Gorgeous. K.