Highly Strung

Knowing, as I do, that my London experience (of 18 years) will be ending all too soon, I’m making the most of it.

Unfortunately as I’m particularly forward thinking, I can’t help now imbuing each and every experience of London with a bitter sweetness.

Coming up Whitehall on a bus on Saturday, seeing the palace guards, I couldn’t help thinking; you don’t get this kind of pomp and circumstance where I’m going.

Sitting on the 73 travelling along Oxford street on a Monday night looking in the window of topshop, I’m thinking I’ll miss it terribly. Sure it’s taking me what seems like a million years to get home, but there’s a loveliness in that. A taking time to smell the roses and experience what is surely one of the most amazing places on earth.

I worry that I’ve become too much of a Londoner to leave. However the decision is made, the one way ticket’s been purchased. I must savour it now without fast forwarding myself to the missing it stage before I’ve actually left.

It’s going to be a great summer!

Well, I’m settling in, adjusting to living with someone else again and frequently getting lost whilst attempting to cycle to work without killing myself on crazy busy streets.

It’s really nice living somewhere with a garden again and it’s also rather nice having company at home.  Although having said that it will also be nice to have the place to myself this weekend while my housemate is in Stockholm running a marathon – as you do.

This weekend is also the weekend a friend and I are off to J Sheekey to spend a £200 voucher I recently won in a raffle  – it’s going to be one hell of a meal!

Photo by Mark Jason photos
Today a new chapter begins, I’m headed South, forced by a need to amass some sort of savings, to move in with a friend. Thankfully the friend is a lovely chilled out sort of person, which is lucky cos I’m not and could do with some levelling!

I’ve loved living here despite having broken up with most recent ex here, but I am happy there’s now a lot less chance of running into him. I’m also looking forward to exploring a new area, from what I’ve seen Dulwich is very nice, not as many good shops as up here but a few and some posh pubs.

Hopefully I’ll be able to chill out a bit once I’ve moved, well at least as soon as I’ve managed to shoehorn my worldly goods into someone else’s space. Gone are the days when I could move with a few suitcases and some bedding. In fact those days ended long ago, perhaps from the moment me and a long ago ex moved back to London in 2000 and began to build a life together.

So all that remains here is some cleaning, some moving and tomorrow one last visit to do the carpets and the check out inventory. Then it’s bye bye Crouch End never to return I suspect.

Three years we’ve been together, you’ve saved me 100′s of pounds and days of stress getting me to work without need for London transport. It’s not that don’t love you, I do! It’s just time for us to part, it’s not you, it’s me. It isn’t that I’ve been seduced by more than one gear, it’s more that the place I’m destined for is way to hilly for you, or at least for me riding atop you.

I’ve ensured you’re going to someone who’ll love you as much as I have, he’s had his eye on you since the day you met. You’ll be happy with him. Ride safe old friend.

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Here’s my new ride, which the internet told me is noodly, they aint wrong, its like riding a piece of spaghetti – that thing has some serious flex going on..

Part of me is really looking forward to living with someone; chatting in  the evenings, popping to the local pub etc, and the other part of me is already missing my own space.  It’s soooo quiet here and the kitchen is soooo big, I’m going to miss it a lot but I’ll need to remember that when I move to a shared place with a smaller kitchen – I’m playing the long game – working towards an even bigger change.  A bigger change that will require an even bigger adjustment – but I’ll deal with that soon enough.

It’s been some time… so what’s been happening?  Well, work has been mental, winter has slowly come to an end, I just ordered an iPad and the clocks have changed.

Bigger news for me personally is that in a month or so I’m moving into a friend’s house having sensibly come to the conclusion that in order to play the long game and live the way I’d like to, I now need to save some money.  So as much as I love my big kitchen, my own blessed solitude and of course Crouch End, I’m off anyway – mid May you will find me down Dulwich way.

I popped down there in the weekend.  I say popped down, I cycled for 12 miles from North London and on to the city, then through the wilds and badlands of south London until I reached an altogether more leafy, gentle and a good deal posher place…Dulwich; I had arrived.