I took this photo on a reckie around the Tower of London, before I got married last August. I only took the picture on my iPhone so it's not brilliant. But it evokes for me a sultry, though not hot summer's evening, along London's ancient riverside, when all I could think of was the future, not the past.
Twenty years in London has taught me an incredible amount about it's history, about England's history, and about how to view one's own life as a story. I loved and I lost my first husband here, I met my second husband here, I gained my university degree here and I birthed both my sons here. I feel as though I have lived several lives in this city, each chapter distinct from the other. It has been a home for me, a Greek immigrant, when my original home drifted from my grasp, or rather, I let it drift for reasons witherto unclear. I love this city, I hate it; like a child does a parent. But I cannot deny it's constancy and the wisdom it had handed to me over time.
On this particular evening, I had just visited Pearse at the nearby Hennessy's pub, to finalise the details of my wedding reception, and I felt light as air. I went for a walk and tried to take in some of the sites, knowing I would leave the City shortly after my wedding, and that the opportunities would not offer themselves as often as desired in the months and years to come, to come back. And instead of seeing the same riverside I had walked up and down over the last twenty years, I kept looking and seeing something new and exciting. I fell in love all over again, with life, the City and my husband-to-be, who I've lived with for six years already and have had two children with!
Maybe I was trying to draw a line under my City chapter without questioning my emotions all that deeply, because today I feel desperately homesick for my town, my home. I feel perverse and isolated once more in the provinces, as I did as a teenager, when I first arrived in England.
My fear is that I will unconsciously seek out to return to Old London Town, and scupper my chances of a care-free life in the almost-countryside.
London is full of hope and an unending capacity to regenerate and fascinate. It spells freedom, danger and inspiration, and I can't help but love it with all my might....
