I carried around a water bottle for the whole year, but for no particular reason other than I was thirsty. I resolved that without it, I would perpetually quench my thirst in the pubs, and that prospect didn't seem to mesh with my studies. I took a bottle everywhere - to the canteen, to the library, to the cinema. I sat in Jockey's Field's one afternoon and I drip the last of it onto the pebbles beneath my bench. They droplets slowly seep in between the pebbles and find home in the earth below. The day was wonderful by London Standards: cloudy but no rain, hectic but not a rat race, greasy chips but splendid Haddock.
It felt pleasant to sit in comparative peace, my thoughts singing to me like the sparrows chirping above. I pondered whether I should feed the pigeons or not, but I concluded that they only disturbed enlightenment, so I shewed them away. I admired the daffodils and the Inns of Court, and wondered which one I would choose. But I drew no other conclusions.
For one of the first times, I considered London my home. I had lived there almost seven months, but the winter had carried on bleakly and made it feel like more. A long December, and January and February were worse.
But things turned for the better in March, as they often do. School let out for the second time, this time for a five week Easter hiatus. At some point I decided that this break should be spent familiarizing myself with London, but in a pragmatic and pessimistic sort of way, in order that I never needed to come back. Ironic, I thought - I now consider this place a home, but I still can't wait to leave. But after all, most of term time for me was a struggle. Life was cold and unforging in London, to the point that if you woke up too late, both the sunshine and the chocolate croissants would be memories.
Exmouth Market zestfully bloomed around that time, the driving wind and rain no longer hunching my back and crushing my spirit. When I looked up in March, though the tempature stayed cold, I saw the same things, but with a whole new perspective. The rain had blinded me to London's beauty; the sunshine illuminated it.
They say no great writer ever writes about happiness and joy, but I suppose that to be misleading rather than false. The silver lining in this cloud, as it were, shined out of the madness of winter and into the sheer beauty of spring. It was my first knowledge of what 'spring' really meant.
In London, where sirens moan and smoke suffocates, people march to the beat of a unique and intoxicating drum. They seem unencumbered by the weight of the game, by the lack of bright, by the infrequency of sobriety. Autumn passes the baton to winter, the Burberry scarves wrap up to fight the wind, which often puts the temperature and people below zero. Any sensible person would leave, you would think, but Londoners persist. They do not hibernate, marinate, or lag behind. They do not complain as I do; they do not worry too much about their tan lines or six-packs. Instead, Londoners ponder the duality of closing time,
a time to leave work and go to the pub, and then the time to leave the pub and go to a club. Closing time, perhaps, is the dastardest encumbrence of all.
"Closing time," the park guard tells me ominously, as if he were reading the words as I wrote them. The coincidence sits heavy for a moment, then I let it drift away like the water through the pebbles.
More to come...
