London recently

I stepped up onto surface from the underground on the other day and looked around Oxford Circus and the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Is that it?' I remembered the buildings being so much taller. It had such a provincial feel to it. Maybe I just got used to all those skyscrapers in Shibuya and Shinjuku. That said, even in Yamagata they built up, and they had all the perspective of the mountains from the basin to fight with there.

I'm on Queenstown Road, near Battersea Park, after a relatively brief period as itinerant floor space occupant in Stoke Newington (North) and Vauxhall (South). I can see the overland train rattle past from the 2F kitchen window. 10 years ago I stayed on this road a few doors down, in my sister's place. I walked to Harrods and back every day for a month for a summer job. One day it rained hard on the way back so I waited out the wet under a railway bridge. Now I ride the train over that bridge to work.

Streets here have precious few convenience stores, or electric stores, or jidohanbaiki vending machines. Rows of residential even right in the centre of town. I met an old friend in the pub on last Saturday and we took a walk later on across the bridge sandwiched in between the Eye and the houses of Parliament. I don't know the names of the bridges yet.

As we walked along, my friend said to me, 'People spend a lot of money to come here. And here we are'.

Today

I saw a dog running towards Hampstead Heath with his own lead in his mouth.

View from the yard

A hard day's work

'Last year, one trip back home from Japan I found myself hurtling towards the centre of London on the Piccadilly Line.'

I'd love to say that without smirking. Instead,

'Last year, one trip back home from Japan I found myself on the Piccadilly Line, lurching towards the centre of London one pitiful, long-forgotten tube stop at a time.'

That's a little more truthful.

Way out near Heathrow airport, the Piccadilly Line gets grim. Last year when I came back, it was a drizzly, overcast day and I remember being squashed on the train with luggage and weary commuters, watching the rain dribble in diagonals across the windows.

This year I came back for good, for now. I fell into a job virtually instantly and it looks like they might want to keep me on beyond the initial trial period.

However. In a cruel twist of fate, a 'welcome back to england and fuck you!', a miserable deal, the job is way out west on the Piccadilly Line and I have become one of those weary commuters.

'Northfields?'

'Yeah Northfields.'

'OK, North-Fields?'

'That's it. Northfields'

(Almost a whisper:) 'Huh. Northfields.'

Every morning I now find myself backtracking nearly as far as the airport, and every evening I repeat that desolate journey into the centre of London that I swore I'd never again attempt. I wish that once (it would only take once), I could forget Northfields and just judder and grind on, one tube stop at a time beyond Northfields, save myself the commuter sigh, that plosive burst, the steady, lip-flubbering exhalation, save myself that and a day at a desk in front of a computer screen and the walk to the bathroom the most exercise I'd get all day, save all that for my memories of somewhere and someplace I almost ended up for good and shudder on as far as Heathrow, and get on a plane, and hop, skip, shoot out of Blighty again.

Not sure that'll be happening any time soon though.

Oi!

Smallawei you bastard, whoever you are, will you please kindly please stop spamming my old posts with freeking Chinese blurb!

A kind of home

Now all the brouhaha and excitement has died down after Helene and Matt got married and I've been back a week and a half or so, I felt like taking stock.

It feels strange to be back. No, that's not true, that's not exactly it. It feels strange knowing that I won't be going back to Japan.

Some things have changed around here. You can now self-scan and pay for sundry goods at Tesco, eliminating the need for any human contact in your grocery shopping. Around the house, new coffee mugs and serviettes, the odd painting I don't recognize, or a space where one I once did once lived. Boris, deaf as one of those new mugs.

Some things haven't changed. Mum, the horse and that little squit of a pony can't even barely poke his head out above the box he's so short. I'm still no better in Dad's garden than his shadow with a stick, ready to hit anything or poke any dead-tree stump that might well be a wasps' nest for all the wasps flying in and out of it.

Some things have been glorious to rediscover - the smell of greengages mashed into the dirt by hoof or boot off the Cole Green Way; crisp autumn evenings with their own peculiar, clean smell; white-spotted brown apples fermenting in copses. The taste of water that comes out of the tap here. Match of the Day.

Houses fit me ill. I surprised Beverley jumped right out of her skin not expecting me there by the computer in her study as she walked through from the kitchen. I slipped down the stairs, not having walked on carpet in a long time and certainly not having walked on carpet in socks in a long time and nor will I again for a long time.

Some things I've only realised about my life in Japan in retrospect. Almost every one of the friends I made works in a creative capacity, either as writer, photographer, designer, architect... I should stp short there or else the rose-tint will skew my eyes forever.

Hels and Matt get hitched