Phantom limbs

I can’t really account for the last month. I can’t quite believe it’s been a month. Four weeks sounds less scary. Closer to London, not increasingly, terrifyingly, further away.

On the ferry to Manly

It’s good to be home, where home is a moving feast of emotions attached largely to family members and friends. Sydney is eluding me for the moment. Things familiar and comforting are the people who know me best, who acknowledge the last five years and what they’ve meant/involved/provided and who offer the proverbial gentle hand (and/or kick up the arse) to start getting on with things here.

But I ache for London. Like a crack whore wanting one more dose of the possibilities.

From the shadows of jetlag and the general exhaustion that comes with moving countries, strange shards of acute sensations and memories of London have now begun to flicker constantly like a phantom limb. I feel it there and it’s a part of me, but it’s just not there anymore, however real it feels. However badly I want to scratch it.

Casual tourism

The grey of Peckham Rd in November, the crap entrenched in the mud of lowtide Thames, the irritation of having to wait FOUR MINUTES for a tube (ha! Sydney buses take note), the quick pulsing joy of passing through Trafalgar Square, the insouciance of a meal in Soho, trying to walk in wedges on cobblestones, the soaring joy of a blue sky day, the impossible vision out from a rainy, steamy bus, the shortcuts down narrow lanes, the night buses, the Turbine Hall, the halloumi burgers at Borough, the misery of a cold wind, the struggle of getting into tights and then into jeans, hanging baskets of flowers, dingy pubs with dark, stale air, the houses of parliament, grimy £10 notes, dark at 4pm, light til 10pm, the Eurostar, exhibitions, bars, excursions, concerts, things to be discovered, possifuckingbilities.

Clovelly granny

You’d never know I hated it when I first arrived, how much of a slog it was to just exist there. Loving it was always going to be something else entirely. It seems that quixotic mistress really took my pulse in the end.

And now we’ve left.

I still find myself momentarily breathless when a wave of quiet grief tramples over me with peak hour Piccadilly line rudeness. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still occasionally having a small cry about how suddenly I seem to have found myself here, even though it’s not a surprise to me.

Fuck, I don’t know. It’s just weird.

Cockatoos overhead

Made all the weirder by the sudden company we’re keeping here in the paradise otherwise known as Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Spider webs (replete with spiders), rare slugs, cranky possums, cockroaches (oh how I’d forgotten about those giant bastards) the ants and let’s not forget the kookaburras in the old gum tree.

Spot the giant spider...

Despite things seeming to the contrary, it hasn’t all been whiny self-indulgent navel gazing. There have been some tentative outings – to the Opera House to hear Alan Rusbridger speak about phone hacking and the Guardian – to the MCA to meet Liz Ann McGregor, to Adelaide for a wedding and to Bondi, for breakfast.

Lovely Boy has managed to find himself a job, which has the brilliant advantage of not starting until January and I am meeting with people, lugging The Book around, and hoping to get some writing work before the year is out. And in the meantime, we’ve just been eating cake.