back to London

This blog is comatose.  The entire last year passed in fewer posts than two average months in 2009, my most loquacious year.  There hasn't been anything new since August.  The problem was one of motivation.  I didn't see a point in writing.  It's not that nothing has happened, but London has worn off a bit.  The excitement of the first few years is gone, and the stories, outside traveling, that I felt like sharing often turned out variations on a theme developed earlier, and I left them unpublished.  Routine and repetition had set in.  Away from London, distractions blurred my mind and shifted my focus, pressing questions of career and life.  These things are now getting sorted – for reasons that will be revealed over the next few posts.  But before I start with a story that developed more than half a year ago when I resigned from my job, let me get back to London.

On the first day of the new year, I'm returning to London for the last time.  Thanks to the limitations of bank holiday travel, I was forced to take Ryanair, fly into Stansted and take an Easybus into town, three names that evoke cheap in the worst way, dearly paid discomfort mitigated by no cheerfulness at all.  The ridiculous clapping upon landing was sustained by only half a dozen hands and died quickly.  Normally, Flucha travels like this when she comes to London, and I pick her up at Baker St.

Tonight our reversal of roles was incomplete.  When I alit at Baker St., she wasn't there to pick me up at the bus stop.  There was no one to ride in the front of the 74 bus with me, past the Chess Store and into town; no one to point out the sights as if I were a first-visiting tourist – Harrods, Hyde Park Corner, the Hilton Hotel – the running joke of so many, and so many too few, visits.

It is clear already that this year will be different.  For one, I had made a conscious and clear new year's resolution.  It was one resolution only, one short phrase, but it was enormous in its circumstances and frighteningly world-shattering, at least regarding my own world.  Before I say more, look, on the right there's Winter Wonderland, its blinking and blaring in brutal contrast to the true winter wonderland where Flucha and I had spent Christmas.  The Black Forest was covered deep in fresh powder, with quiet towns and magical forests.

There's nothing magical about arriving in London, unless it's the first time.  Most outer boroughs of London are truly depressing.  For me, tonight meant one last time through rows of cellulitic houses with splotched and stained façades, businesses with spelling mistakes in their neon signs and sad betting shops.  One last time through the world's most expensive deprivation.

In Central London the glow of Christmas prevailed, with ambitious shoppers on Oxford Street and tasteful lights down Sloan Street.  Then the French flavor of South Kensington gave way to the Chicken Cottage in Earl's Court, and ten minutes later I was back home.  I pulled the contract that had been promised to me by email from my mailbox, and signed it.  Happy New Year all around!