What’s in a Homecoming

If you have left a place you love for a year and you return, how do you want that to be? I have been very excited about coming back to London and maybe a tat scared too. Maybe things have dramatically changed. Maybe people have dramatically moved on.

The journey towards London from my home town in Lowlands Country by train was a very chilled affair. Arriving in the City of Cities felt like putting on my favourite coat, which I hadn’t worn for a while and still feels comfortable and makes me feel good. I was welcomed back with pleasant autumn weather and when topping up my Oyster card, which I hadn’t used in a year, to travel to the leafy outskirts of this great city of ours where my Scandi friend Simone, with whome I had done Egypt, lives as she is keeping her couch available for me, it felt as if I had never been away. Besides her couch Simone has wi-fi and a phone including sim card for me to use and with these means I could immediately inform the world about my arrival back from foreign lands to the capital of the British Isles.

The next day I went back to my old ‘hood’ to go house hunting with Anna with whome I have done Egypt too in the sense that we lived and studied together. The weather seemed to indicate a freak autumn with temperatures of 24 Celsius. With a new Starbucks branch right next to the tube station and an H&M where Woollies used to be the the Hood seems to be on the up. The square in front of the best Cinema of South London and the library next to it has been refurbished and looks fabulous. And the rest pretty much stayed the same. I saw an old house mate on her way to work and another old house mate – they still live in the same house- at work in the gastro pub opposite the Hood’s Beach. And while we were calling and visiting a thousand and one estate agents I was thinking how sweet life can be. Pretty sweet it seems as on that same day we found ourselves a cute ground-floor flat in Clapham Park with a massive garden- I was dead keen on finding a property with outdoor space. London life, it’s all good.

image: leapanywhere.com