Today was a strange day. The weather started appalling, and then became sunny before erupting into a complete shower on the way home. Rather than a typical summers day it looked more like winter in Gotham. I don’t know who I felt sorry for the most, the men who were trying to cover up their expensive suits with a solitary newspaper or the women who have tried so hard all year to slim for the summer to see their expensive summer purchases drenched like a feather under a waterfall.
But today was strange in more than just one way.
I had absolutely no energy or application for work at all today, in fact I gave up about a quarter of the way through. All I could think of was London. The past few weeks I had bitched and moaned about everything, the transport, the weather the coldness and rudeness of the people and indeed I even bitched about the tourists the other day.
I have lived in London for nine years now and I have had highs and indeed I have had lows but today as I stood on a sweaty train watching every person huddle in the station I just began to watch the world go by. A plethora of nationalities whose vocabulary mingled in the air like a Chinese whisper. Young couples on a first date, old people who probably no longer recognise the city they once knew.
This got me thinking of all the people I have met in those nine years. The people I have loved the people I have lost and indeed the people who breezed in and out of my life like a tube speeding through a baron station. Those people scattered like leaves on an autumn wind, once part of my life now just taken to a land where I know deep down that I will never see them again despite the opportunities that present themselves.
Of the hundreds if not thousands of people that I have met 90% would be from overseas, whether they were on vacation, here on a short term visa or living here London gave me one thing that Bristol never did and that was the knowledge that the world indeed was a big place. Since my move I have travelled to Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, South America and more. All down the willingness and the kindness of those people that I met in London. From the Bulgarians that I shared a house with in the early days to the Australians I lived with this year, all became long term friends.
The world has given me many amazing journeys and I know there are so many more to come, there will be ample opportunities to travel to countries that I have seen before and those that are new, there will be many new friends made and some amazing memories.
But for now, on this grey, wet and cold summers day I realised that the conclusion is that I am living in the most amazing, wonderful, vibrant, cosmopolitan and beautiful city in the world.
I have once again fallen in Love with London.
