Oh London, my heart. You contain
some of my favourite people and I feel so warm and ready to face everything
when I leave you. You’re huge and sprawling and messy and I love that. I can’t
help but feel though, that I love visiting you precisely because I can leave
again. I can choose your best bits and spend my days leisurely wandering from
lunches to coffee to galleries to kill time. Spend my time writing and thinking
and reading and not much else. I love you potentially because you’re not my
home, you’re my escape and I get to do some much and be so independent when I'm
here precisely because you have so much to offer me. I don’t get the chance to
make a mess here, or be bored here, I get to be filled with love and culture
and time and then I get to skip off home to face my life. I have to worry and
stress in Leeds because it’s my home and my life exists there and the people I
see there I see all the time so I don’t just get to have the nicest times with
them, I have all my times with them. And
so, they are a constant source of warmth, rather than the intense heat you get
from spending a couple of hours with your closest and much-missed friends.
Really though, I'm just wondering, with so many seats around us, why
you would choose to remain immediately next to me? You said ‘hi’ when you sat
down, I hope you weren't imagining conversation to take place. It’s 8.30 pm man,
and I have shit to do.
I would recommend, if you don’t get to do it already, spending some
time with strangers and describing what you do. Strangers or people you haven’t
seen in an incredibly long time. I've found nothing else on this earth that
helps me pat myself on the back quite like explaining the bare bones of my most
recent achievements. Sure, the reality is never quite as glamorous and I would
be honest about that too if I got the time. When I explain everything I want to
do, too, it sounds so realistic and so certain. Who knows if they really
believe I can do it, I hope I say those things confidently enough that they
believe that I believe it. I suppose all that matters is that I carry on saying
it. To strangers, to my friends (who of course think I will be exactly as
successful as I hope to be), to myself. And then I have to do it ten times more
frequently than I talk about it. Keep moving, and back myself by telling
everyone the direction I'm going in.
For the next two weeks I have my
days off next to each other and they include at least one weekend day in both
of them. My boss has fallen in love with me/done something awful to me that she
feels guilty about. Discuss.
Seriously now, what are you still doing here? Should I move? I'm on the
inside I shouldn't move. Fuck this. This is unpleasant and uncomfortable and I've had to move my screen so much I'm basically sat on the arm rest of my seat. Are
you having a nice time? Maybe my train time is more sacred to me than it is to
you. I'm just going to eat these sweets I found in my bag and wait for this to end. WHY. Why are you using the two empty seats opposite us to store your paper
and your bottle of water? Just sit there. For the love of God just move over
there instead and I can stop typing like a T-Rex because my laptop is so close
to my face.
There was enough love in the people I've seen in the last week to
persuade me that I really am doing okay. Enough to be happy with my lot and
teach myself to be less anxious about something I already have and have had for
much longer than I will let myself know.
Is there an inordinate amount of
times to listen to Hall & Oates’ ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’? It’s
probably once and I've already surpassed it.
A-HA. I knew you couldn't be comfortable with this arrangement, you've gone to lay across the two seats in front and we both now have the space to
mobilise all of our limbs.
I think fizzy strawberry laces might be one of my favourite things.
That’s something to add to the list of New Year’s Plans – always have a bag of
fizzy strawberry laces in bag, in case of emergency.
I’d really like to do this on the
journey to Newcastle I’ll probably be making in a couple of weeks, but I'm not
sure how much I fancy carrying my laptop all day. Phone notes or hand written
it might have to be. If I go. Otherwise the next time we do this might be the
big one from Leeds to Sydney over nearly three whole days.
I wonder if an orchestral version of Call Me Maybe exists. There’s room
for a really epic sounding string section there.
You were quiet a lot today and I hope you were happy listening to me
talk and not just wanting it to end. I know I chat to fill silence but I also
try not to say things without meaning. I hope you were just listening and
taking it in and that’s why you didn't interrupt me. I wish we saw each other more, we have so many good memories (don’t we?), and I’d like to add to them,
not just watch them fade.
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