almost over / never over

In a little over a month I will leave London for good (I assume). Hard to believe, yet not surprising. More to come.

but then the ecstatic month passed

August: I was back from holiday, back to what felt like the death of summer. I spent two weeks housesitting in Chelsea. For the first time since moving to London I cycled to work; after work I walked around or read. It felt like a different life. I spent a blissful weekend in the countryside reading A Little Life, after which I stopped reading novels for a few weeks.  I ate berries and counted down the days until I could escape to Vienna for some summer heat.

moving

This is what my walk to work (or rather: to the tube station - this is definitely not Knightsbridge) looks like. Used to look like. There are boxes in the hallway and bags in my room. In true London style, our landlady has sold the flat and it's time to say goodbye to the park outside my window. To observing the kids in hoodies who took shelter under the trees. To hearing the skaters on the ramps and the children in the playground. I liked waking up to the trees. 

Summer. I've been: working (good), reading Karl Ove Knausgård (also good), watching Gilmore Girls (very good, Jess forever), drinking copious amounts of Rooibos (no caffeine!), getting into oil cleansing (yes), listening to this New Order song a lot (my life ain't no holiday). Oh and I finally got a Netflix account. So many 90s romcoms! 

a bubble

It was a Wednesday night and we were discussing the differences in mentality and temperament between various German speaking countries. We: an Australian who had lived in the UK, Germany, and Austria, and had settled in London. We: a Swiss person who repeatedly expressed regret, confusion, despair about his country's referendum on migration. We: me, quietly amused because I felt like I had had similar conversations with a wide range of people before. When German-speakers meet, they will analyse each other. Endlessly. Their perceived national characteristics. When German-speakers meet in the UK, there is an implicit understanding that we are more alike here than we will ever be at home - at home, where we often feel like we have nothing in common. Until we find ourselves in a beautiful flat in London on a Wednesday night, and realise that, as much as we wish it weren't so, countries do shape mentalities and sparkling wine loosens the tongue. (I don't drink sparkling wine.)

Where were we? In a beautiful flat near the Barbican which belongs to a cultural attaché who had invited us for an intimate networking dinner. "Intimate" "networking" "dinners" are precisely as odious as the words suggest and I'm still not sure how I got invited to one. At this one, however, I ended up at a table with people I knew and liked, and it felt more like having dinner with people who exist in that strange no man's land that I find impossible to navigate, somewhere between casual acquaintance, work contact, and almost friend. My shoulders relaxed slightly as I sat down.

A little later the violist who sat next to me would turn to me and say, 'I know it's ridiculous, but I only wear APC jeans' and I'd raise my eyebrows and laugh. A little later, I'd walk to the tube stop with a composer who, slightly tipsy, held a brief and touching, very earnest monologue on the merits and inherent timelessness of classical music.

look

I guess life is just an endless stream of banalities, and much of the internet reflects that. It only acquires meaning when you personally connect with that person posting a picture of their cappuccino. My life is as banal, as boring, as everyone else's - possibly even more so. I send the boring pictures on my phone to Peter, to my brothers, my mum, my best friend. Look, this is my life. It's not exciting, but I thought of you. 
Look, cacti live on the windowsills of the cinema in Hackney. I saw The Two Faces of January, I think you would have liked it, Viggo Mortensen is amazing, isn't he? 
Look, a Swedish café opened not five minutes from where I live, I went there this morning and ate a cinnamon bun, can you imagine how happy that makes me, to have a local café that I love? The LRB had a couple of articles about Marxism, one of them trying to read the Iliad in a Marxist light, I rolled my eyes a lot and thought of how much you'd hate it, the scathing terms with which you'd tear the article apart.
Look, this is my face, my hair, it's blue, lilac, this is what I look like when I make new friends. We went to see The Drowned Man and I wanted to take a selfie for you to show you the mask I was wearing, but I think I'd rather take you to see it yourself. I thought I wouldn't like The Drowned Man, I wasn't sure about immersing myself, but I loved it. 
Look, this is my reading material for this week, this is a good Sunday. I loved The Charioteer so much, so much that I failed at explaining to my friends why I loved it. As far as I am concerned it's a perfect novel, an extension or counterpart to Iris Murdoch's The Bell (which, as we all know, is my favourite book). The title refers to the Plato myth (souls, horses, etc.), and when I realised that was the case I sighed a tortured little sigh. Ignore the cover or the blurbs on it, read Rachel Cooke's review in The Guardian instead (which is why I bought it - although I disagree with her that "it sometimes seems overly preoccupied with ethics, with high-minded considerations of how a man might live a good and honourable life" - this is pretty much exactly what I love in a novel, give me all your high-minded considerations of goodness please! Maybe that's why I never warmed to most contemporary fiction.) Read this book.
Look, I printed out this poster for you once when you weren't sure about what to do with your life because sometimes simple messages help, even if they're cheesy, even if they feel like hipster self-help, even if they reappear in a shop window in soulless Knightsbridge.
Look. I'm not with you, but I'm thinking of you. I've been listening to this wonderful recording of Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna all week, a concert that I attended. It's beautiful, a real treat, and it will make you feel things.

Two lives: London

Another tube strike last week; I slept in the smallest guest room at work. The only redeeming factor of this arrangement was that I got to go 'running' in Hyde Park in the morning. My office is not even five minutes from the park. I'm very bad at running, but I like being out and about first thing in the morning. Running is basically an excuse to leave the house in what could be pyjamas, and very ugly shoes, and to observe other runners, people with their dogs, trees, and in this case, people swimming in the Serpentine, or riding their horses.

London: I went to the cinema and saw 'Frank', which I hated - my eyes hurt by the end because I had been constantly rolling them for an hour and a half; a documentary about the poet Michael Hamburger, which I loved; 'M', which we (i.e., the place where I work) were screening; and 'Captain America', because I love a depressing superhero film, and after which it took almost two hours to get back to the flat, two hours in which I almost lost the will to live. 

London: I have been reading the cluster of magazines that I now have subscriptions for, thoughtful gifts from myself and others; an Anthony Trollope novel which is slightly too ironic and knowing for me to really enjoy it - a shame because I haven't read a Victorian novel I really enjoyed in a long time, and I thought this might be the one; and a book about the 'Radical Case for Scottish Independence', which is excellent. 

London: I have drunk glass after glass of beetroot smoothies, cups of green chai. I had a day off (the first of May, a public holiday in Austria) and dyed my hair for the first time. Just the tips. Lilac. 

London: I distract myself.

the end of winter

I have been absent. In London, mostly. Physically. Feeling a little discouraged, a little directionless, a little lost, a little sad. But at least it's spring and there are daffodils everywhere. Outside my window in the local park in Walthamstow the trees are in bloom. Yesterday I didn't wear tights, and last week I sat in the park after coming home from work. It was still warm, and I read my book in the sunshine and felt almost happy.

I've been reading A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series that Game of Thrones is based on) for the last month and a half. I just finished the (for now) last book in the series yesterday. I had never watched the TV show and never planned on watching it or, god forbid, read five massive books of a fantasy series. But then I read this fantastic article in the London Review of Books a year ago, and that was it. It was like a challenge. A very convincing challenge. In the article, John Lanchester argues that fantasy as a genre is unpopular with the general reader, and that it is unlike other genre literature which does, occasionally, produce massive bestsellers that are loved by the general, genre-averse readership. Lanchester further shows how A Song of Ice and Fire actually works with and undermines the tropes of its own genre. 

In February I found a cheap copy of the first book in a charity shop: a copy that had a picture of a gloomy Sean Bean on the cover. I didn't even know that Sean Bean played a character in the tv show - if I had known, I might have started watching it years ago! I was half-hoping that I'd hate the book, or that it would be a cheap thrill. That one book would be enough and I'd go back to Victorian novels, Roman autobiography, or books about sad teenagers. Instead, I kept reading. My commute improved immeasurably. I like what Iris Murdoch called 'a jolly good yarn'. I also like long books, epic tales, complex character arcs, and feeling emotionally involved with what I'm reading. So reading thousands of pages about a made-up world obviously suited me very well. I read many books that are beautifully written pieces of art, but many of those have predictable plots, or hardly any plot at all - which, incidentally, is one of my main problems with much German-language literature.

Conclusion: Read John Lanchester's article, ignore the tv show (I've watched it since - utterly banal and boring compared to the books, not to mention the women-as-props issue), read the books. Especially if you have a long commute. I ended up looking forward to spending 40 minutes on the tube because it gave me uninterrupted reading time.

On a completely unrelated note: If you're in London in the coming months, you should check out Phyllida Barlow's installations at the Tate Britain. I saw it a couple of weeks ago and loved it.

On not going home

 

 I came back to London in a daze. It was six o’clock, still dark out, but the airport was packed with people. Going home. Leaving home. 

 In Vienna, we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and looked at the Old Masters, the Bruegel room, the Greek and Roman treasures. We went to the Jewish Museum and saw an exhibition about Richard Wagner (whom I dislike). We went to the cinema and saw Inside Llewyn Davies (good, especially the cat), The Hobbit (bad), and Computer Chess (undecided, but probably good). We ate out. We ate in. Wandered around. 

We spent New Year’s in an old farmhouse, eating raclette. I cuddled the cat. Peter cuddled the cat. We played board games. I stopped thinking about London, about my job, about being an adult. I slept for hours and hours. My only regret is not eating more bread. 

 Back in London, life continues much the same. It has taken months for me to settle into a routine, and to stop comparing life in London with life in Vienna, or Durham, or what life might be like in Edinburgh, Oslo or Bologna. I get up early, I go to bed early. My windows face east, and as I shuffle through my morning habits of Radio 3, cups of tea, wet hair and struggling with the daily absence of carrot bread, the sun rises slowly over the park. 

I leave the house at eight. I cycle to Walthamstow Central which is already busy with commuters, but not as busy as it will be ten minutes later. Unless I’m unlucky (or late), I get a seat on the tube. For the next forty or so minutes I read. My headphones block out most sound apart from the rumbling of the train and the apologies of the driver for the invariable delays. What I read: novels; books on history, occasionally on religion and philosophy; the LRB; the TLS; the Profil. Right now: Suetonius' history of the Twelve Caesars, which I love. What I listen to: Schubert; Elliott Smith; Sufjan Stevens; quiet stuff that will keep me calm when stuck in a tunnel. 

And then I’m in Knightsbridge. Eight, nine, twelve hours later I repeat my journey. I crawl into bed and read some more. I haven’t figured my evenings out yet – more often than not I miss my brothers, their easy familiarity and their pasta dishes. 

On weekends, I leave town. 

 Homesickness is odd. You can feel fine for days, weeks, and then all of a sudden it hits you and you will find yourself walking the aisles of a Spar supermarket, simply because the branding is familiar. 

 * Title from this talk at the British Museum. Ironically, I won't be able to go because I'll be in Vienna.

the last two months

The last two months. Too much work, and this: 

A walk to work after spending the night in Chelsea. Imagine walking to work in Chelsea every morning. A rare lunchbreak in Hyde Park. An okay book and a cat camera. What I see when I wake up in the morning, only it's pitch black these days, and all the leaves have gone. My colleague gave me flowers because I was sick and she is nice. A lovely weekend in Durham, I have learned to love the cathedral. Walking back to work on a beautiful autumn day. Waking up near the Forest of Dean. Breakfast with Kevin and Peter. A gift: House of Lords Shortbread (they're very nice). My improvised advent wreath, too minimal and all I could think of was the flower shop near my U-Bahn stop in Vienna that sells tons of advent wreaths from mid-November onwards. An afternoon in a café with real tea. Getting ready for an event at work. And a selfie in the kitchen at work before I hopped on the plane back to Vienna for Christmas.

I'm home now. The cat follows me around. My brothers follow me around (not really). I've eaten half a glass of apricot jam already, seen an excellent play, and watched Inside Llewyn Davis, which I liked. I've slept. It takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, half an hour at most. Every sound is familiar. I arrived late and took a taxi home, which I've never done before, and I... let him take the long way round and kept my shortcuts to myself. It's good to be home.

moments

My mum was here for the weekend. She left early on the Sunday, and I sat on my bed, surrounded by the pictures, trinkets, and furniture that she had brought over, idly wondering what to do with the day, trying not to feel glum. They were showing a double bill of After Sebald and Museum Hours in Dalston, and that seemed just right. I cycled to the station, got on the train, carried my bike down the stairs, cycled to the cinema, and took my seat amongst elderly couples. Mozart's clarinet concerto was playing over the speakers. 

After Sebald is a wonderful film; Museum Hours was faintly disappointing. It was strange to see Vienna in its gloomy, miserable winter glory; strange to realise that I know every corner in Vienna so well, and that I will never know London as well as that.

What I liked best about the last few weeks: listening to the new Arcade Fire album, thus drowning out the sound of the train rattling through endless tunnels; discovering a new-to-me author; watching superhero films with my flatmate; that time my train back to London got cancelled because of a storm (an extra night in Durham, a few more hours holding hands); spending an entire morning in a café, eating toast and reading. And every moment that I spent on my bike.

temporary accommodation

This is my little room in Muswell Hill. When I moved to London I knew that I'd be staying in temporary accommodation for the first few months. It has been very strange to move from one furnished room to the next, knowing that I won't be staying long, when I lived in the same room for the first 24 years of my life (a room that I miss terribly). It has made settling in much harder - especially because flathunting is a gruesome, stressful experience. In a couple of days, however, I'll be moving into my first real flat. 'Real' because it's unfurnished, because I'll be living with a friend, because I didn't grow up there, because we have a tiny garden. Saying goodbye to Muswell Hill won't be easy - I've fallen hard for the neighbourhood, its houses and trees, the proximity to Alexandra Palace, seeing familiar friendly faces at the bus stop every day, the ridiculous Planet Organic with its comedy food, the ice cream parlour, the curving hilly streets, and, above all, the quietness. But I look forward to exploring a new neighbourhood, settling in, making myself at home, hunting for charity shop furniture. Walthamstow, here we come. Send me postcards, prints, embroideries and chairs!