here for a year

This is me in 2014: in Edinburgh a few days ago, in Vienna a couple of weeks ago, and in Sheffield for the Doc Fest. I have been reading novels and short stories and essays hungrily. I have started taking pictures with my grandfather's old camera again. I have made plans and jokes and I have spent my lunch hour with friends and I have watched football by myself in the pub. I have been in London for a year. I have been in London for a year and nothing sums up this year better than this: I have watched football by myself in the pub.

I always felt that watching football (or any other sport - preferably stuff involving snow) encourages and enables my favourite form of togetherness, a kind of lazy quietude where no one says anything clever, where no one says anything at all even, where you reach a level of comfort where you can just float away into a sea of banality. It takes years, perhaps a lifetime, to reach that point. Definitely not something that you get when you watch football by yourself in a pub.

A year in which I have learned to love those I love even more. Because every time I see them (too rarely), I'm struck anew by how much I like them. Or, as my brother said when he dropped me off at the airport, 'Maybe I'll come visit you in London after all. Every time I see you I remember how much I like you and how much I like spending time with you.' Same, little brother. Same.