Big numbers for small people

B was in London earlier on this week.  He bumped into my sister on the tube.   They rang me together at the children's supper time and it made me smile.

"Girls", I said after they'd hung up,  "There are seven million people in London and guess who Daddy bumped into?"

They couldn't.  I told them.  They looked underwhelmed by the coincidence (although that sort of thing happens unstatistically often, don't you think?).  But it obviously got L thinking.

"Mummy?"  she said. "How many people are there in London did you say?"
"Seven million."
"Is that counting Daddy or not?"

Rise of the machines

I got a tube the other day.

Doesn't happen often, but I had to go to work.

I got on at Liverpool Street, and got off at Holborn.  Three stops.  About 3 p.m.  Full but not crowded.

I've just googled how many people you get in a central line train (what the internet is for, clearly).  There are 272 seats, and eight carriages, so there must have been 34 people sitting in my carriage.  Plus another 20 or so standing.

Only one of them was reading an actual book.

The Return

We ran away this weekend.

We piled the children into the car, and drove 650 miles for the pleasure of two and a half days in our old haunts.  Admittedly, if you're American, you probably do that for lunch, but believe me, it's not normal here.

We spent a day and a night in London with L's best friend and her family.  The girls were so delighted to see each other, and so exhausted the next day having bounced off the ceiling for three hours after they were supposed to be in bed.  But that joy, even allowing for the fall out, was worth the journey.  They're at that wonderful stage where time is totally elastic, so the fact that they haven't seen each other for a month means nothing.  A month, a week, ten minutes while one of them goes to the loo, it's all time apart, and immeasurable.  And when they are back together it's as if it has never been.

It wasn't unalloyed joy though.  In fact at times it was downright odd.  I turned off the A40, down the road my brother used to live on, and thought "nearly home".  And then had to gulp down the knowledge that it isn't home any more.   I bumped into six people I know at the swings, including the lovely I'm a Mommy Get me out of Here.  The dentist's receptionist ran out to give me a hug.  The guy who helps in the playgroup we used to go to grabbed the girls out of their pushchair and got ice cream all over himself for his pains.  And each time I had to remind myself again that this wasn't home, and that we had done a good thing in moving away from these people who love me and love my children.

But then I snuck back into our house (they're having building work done, and weren't there, so I blagged my way in (seduced the builders, you know how it is), and was actually really pleasantly surprised - they're doing everything I'd have done if we'd been staying there long term and had the money. It's going to look lovely.  I tried to sneak some photos, but that was a step too far for the builder...) and you know what, that didn't feel like home.  Maybe it was because the carpets were ripped up, and all the paint colours we had thought so long and hard over (yellow for L, because we didn't know what she was; green for S and A, because we did, and there's only so much pink you can take) had been replaced with natural calico, but it didn't feel like my house.

I've just finished reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon.  I was underwhelmed, and I don't think, ordinarily, that it is a book that would have stayed with me.  Except that he says this:

I was filled with a frail and sad exhilaration, which I really ought to have recognised for what it was [...] it was nostalgia, and what inspires nostalgia has been dead a long time.

And, although I rarely remember phrases I have read in books,  indeed, I quite often forget I have read a book entirely, that sentence echoed in me, like a slightly irritating itch, from the moment I turned into our old haunts, until I was safely back outside the M25 on the way to my parents.  So much that the first thing I did, on getting back here at midnight last night, was to go and look it up.  To examine it.  To see if what I had been feeling was a frail and sad exhilaration or just self-pity.  Or exhaustion.

Whatever it was, we are back now.  And I am glad to be back.  If that sometimes felt like home, we are now at the stage where this always does.  But the gloss has come off it somehow.  I am suddenly conscious that if I wander into town here, the only person I am likely to meet who knows my name is the postman, and he's not going to care whether he sees me or not.  And although I hope, and believe, that both L and I will find new friends here, and that I will become part of this community, it is going to take time and work.  And the longer it takes, the worse the nostalgia will get.


Image from Amazon.co.uk.  As usual.

M minus 2 days - A Love Letter

Dear London,

It's not you.  It's me. 

I am going.  But it's the right thing to do.

You have given me so much.  When I arrived here, I was 22, wet behind the ears, never lived in a city worth the name.  Two stone fatter, shorter of hair, less bespectacled of nose. Fresh from four years of what felt like independence but with meals cooked for me, sheets washed, and someone watching out if I wasn't home for a couple of days...

I grew up here.  I became who I am and what I am.  I met B.  I met hundreds of other friends and acquaintances, all of whom have had a part in making me the person I am today.  I made, and then met, L, and then A and S.

I got my first job, the same job I have only just left.  I bought my first flat, and sold it again a mere 15 months later to buy a house for the family we have now become.  I studied, and drank, and played, and sang, and danced badly, and gossiped, and did some unsuitable things to a number of unsuitable men.

I have loved your sights, your smells and your sounds:  the view from Waterloo Bridge, whatever the weather; the cherry trees in Normand Park;  your amazing cleanliness and silence under snow; the way wet tarmac smells after spring rain; the noisy shouts of delight and despair from the stadium not so far away... But I have hated your sights, your smells and your sounds too:  dog poo on the pavements; the 6 am wake up call of the first flight into Heathrow (and every two minutes thereafter); the stillness, and silence, despite the sirens, of the morning of 7 July 2005; the swearing, the shouting, the anger and stress of 7 million people crammed into living cheek by jowl, whether they like it or not.

I am proud to have known you. To have shared this part of my life with you.  That I have your tube map in my head: and that I know which stations have all the vowels, and which none of the letters of the word "mackerel".  I wonder how long it will take before I forget that it is quicker to walk from Covent Garden to Leicester Square, or before I stop being disappointed that the buses in Edinburgh aren't red.

I have known your prisons and your palaces, your concert halls and your cathedrals, and I will miss them all, as being part of you.  I will miss you.  Even though you won't miss me.

Because I know my relationship with you was only ever going to be transient.  I move and change, and am moved and changed by you.  But not you.  You change, but not because of me.  I am a blink to you.  Forgotten before it is even over. Someone else will take my place, and you will change them too, and then forget them too and move on to the next.

But I will never forget you.

Goodbye.  And thank you. x

M(oving) minus 22 days

So here's another little picture of what I'm leaving behind.

My back garden.  It's a sunny day, and this is mostly what it looks like on sunny days.

Please ignore the slightly greasy window.  I'm moving out, cleaning the windows is not a priority...

The Gallery - Outside my front door.

Tara said it didn't have to be literal, but you all know what my immediate area looks like - rows of Victorian (or possibly Georgian looking at the end of the road) terraces, interspersed with bombing in-fill or 60s and 70s estates.  It's nothing special, but it's home.  For the next month at least.   If I go further afield, you know what that looks like too.  It's on any teatowel bought by any tourist to London.

So I've gone literal.  Because this sign, right outside my front door, is pretty much the biggest thing in my life at the moment. I'm also accidentally advertising our estate agent in the process, but I hope they'll forgive me. Sadly Tara's deadline has come before the tree outside is properly in blossom, but it's getting there.

But she's also pre-empted me.  It's four weeks tomorrow until we move out, and I've been thinking that I need to record the stuff I'll forget.  The views and sights I walk past every day, and which make this little corner of London mine.  So consider this the first in an occasional, and necessarily short, series of pictures taken outside (and inside) my front door.

I'm really intrigued to see what everyone else's front doorstep looks like.  The rest of the gallery is here.

The Gallery - Me

This is me.  The one on the right. Very small and behind the camera.

That's not supposed to say anything about my state of mind.  Just that Tara set us Me as the challenge for this week's gallery, and although I could have reposted the one of my tummy, or found one in which I look relatively presentable, or found a more representative one with babysick and unwashed hair, I've decided to go for this.

Because this was taken on a day, in a weekend, that was all about me.  Not L, A and S's mummy. Me.

For Christmas 2008 my Mum and Dad gave us a weekend away.  The intention was that they would have the girls and would contribute to a hotel so that we could have a weekend off.  Of course at Christmas 2008, S and A were 14 days old, so it was some while before a weekend away was a real practicality, but we started thinking about it the following October and I realised that what I really wanted to do was have a weekend at home, no children, to do the stuff that I like doing when I only have myself and B to think about.

So we did.  I took the Friday off work to do the laundry and clean and pack for the girls (so as not to have to do any of these things over the weekend) and my mum came and picked them up (she's an angel in human form, as I may previously have mentioned).

And on Saturday morning we woke up at 6.  And it was bliss.  Because we went "Oh, it's 6 o'clock", rolled over and went back to sleep... We woke up again, in our own bed, a bit later, and got up a bit later still (ahem).   It was a glorious day and we had no plans, no children and no responsibilities.

We had breakfast sitting outside in a cafe, with big cups of milky coffee and fresh croissants, then we went to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy (which is really what the picture is of, of course).  We had lunch in the Japan Centre, followed by a wander around the antique print and bookshops on the Charing Cross Road. Then we came home again, had a little snooze (ahem) and went out for dinner and comedy...

And on Sunday we woke up at 6.  And it was still bliss.  And we went out for breakfast again.  And realised that what we really wanted to do on Sunday was see our babies.  So we got in the car and went and got them.

It was one of the best weekends ever.   It was just about us. Being adults and enjoying each other's company, the sunshine, some culture, some good food and wine.  And it reminded us that underneath the sometimes fraught and always tired parents, we, and I, still exist.

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There are, as ever, amazing pictures in The Gallery.  See them here.

The Gallery - Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner...

...but only for a few more short weeks... that I'm beginning to feel nostalgic for this amazing, sprawly, angry, busy, friendly, noisy, indescribable city that I've been lucky enough to call my home for the last ten and some years.

So when I saw Tara's new meme/theme/gallery, and realised that this week she wants photos of Beauty, I ended up deciding to post this:

It was taken on my phone last Saturday, so it's not the world's best picture (it was taken by me, so it was never going to be the world's best picture anyway!) but it reminds me that even here, in the centre of London, surrounded by more than 7 million people, there is beauty. I love the the sunset and the tree and the crocuses, and L dancing carefully so that she doesn't tread on them, and then the fact that you can see the rows of Victorian houses and the fifteen stories of hideousness that is the hospital and you realise that yes, this is London, and I will miss it.

Oh, and ps, I wanted to post this one too,

 

because L asked me to take its picture so that she could remember that although it looks purple, inside it's "lello". And I realised that I haven't really looked at a crocus in years.  And I should.

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The rest of the amazing photos in the Gallery are here!!

Please may we have some snow now?

I realise that for most of the rest of the country, this is going to look wilfully perverse... but...

I really want some proper snow.  Everyone else has got it.  Why can't we?