22 & not a clue

A balmy day that started with torrential rain and built into something similar to Southern Spain. Ice creams dripped and dogs panted whilst kids dipped dinky toes into Diana's memorial fountains.

Hiding from the sun in Hyde Park, a novel idea struck upon by hundreds of Londoners every lazy Saturday afternoon since the dawn of Londinium itself. We weren't unique.

Bunches of buddies and pools of pals broke bread and sunk ciders, celebrating 48 hours of 'well deserved' freedom - for don't we all work 5 days to live for 2?

Luxuriating on scratchy pieces of green making a patchwork of blankets smothering the lawn, each group from one to the next, the old, the young and the beautiful sagging into make-shift seats or folding into deck chairs.

Today we were young and golden, tomorrow we're back in the office.

'A pound for a cuppa tea love, just a cuppa tea, I'm homeless and cold.'
'That's a good wardrobe for a homeless person'.
'Just a pound, it's a cold day and I've been outside all night.'
She strides on past, he lifts his cap and wipes his brow, swaying on into the path of the next on-comer on the street.
'Have you got a pound for a cuppa tea mate?'
'Sorry mate I 'aven't.'
Just a cup of tea, just something warm in his belly. He clutches the bagel and leans against the bakery window. Thank god for the Polish baker who gave it to him. The jeans are only washed because a woman gave him money to go to the laundrette. His jacket is only clean because it's inside out. But people see what they want to see.
It's not even 10am and there's a drizzle. There's a hole in either corner of his plastic bag, god knows what he carries with him.

The man with the Big Issue gives him a fag and a light and he puffs, staring towards the park and wondering if he'll have more luck with the pram pushers. The runners don't hear as they gallop past. He thinks of his kids and tries his luck again, lurching forward at another woman and asks;
'Pound for a cuppa tea love? Just a cuppa tea?'
She sniffs and strides on.

She stood up too quickly as the tube juddered to a halt coming into the station, bouquet in one hand and a kiss on the other blown to a somewhat bemused looking young man. She smiled and bounced off onto the platform. He put his head in his hands, rubbed his face and looked up smiling.

His hair looked unkempt and it appeared he wasn't much of a sleeper. She had had her hair in a pony tail, diamante earrings but a rain coat; the sensible but sweet type. They may have been on a date, his lingering smile told me as much. She seemed abashed, perhaps she knew that she had jumped up too soon and maybe she should have kissed his cheek rather than her hand. The air isn't as sensitive a receiver as skin.

He clutched his satchel, scuffed in a similar way to his shoes both of which he seemed too fond of to replace. His shirt was creased, but then so were her jeans - no one irons anymore. He sat for two more stops, his expression transfixed somewhere between the evening's events and the blurring black hole of a backdrop that lies outside the window of the carriage.

He rubbed his hands together feverishly, perhaps they had been clammy from holding hers all evening as they strolled along the Strand. A cliched date idea but it appeared this had been their first, and aren't we all allowed to indulge cliche when it's the first of anything? Finally he rubbed his hands along his jeans and stood up. Straightening his satchel, his shoulders dropped and his smile fell away as he followed single file out through the sliding doors.

There is this viscious chicken or the egg paradox which comes with living in London. You can't get a flat without a job and getting a job is infinitely harder when you're sleeping on a friends sofa without your own flat. So when I lost my dream flat in Shepherds bush for the second time I realised I wasn't going to get it all. 

I have already been back in London a month. Most of which has been spent either sleeping on a friends sofa or in front of my battered cream (*grey) mac book scouring the net for either a home or a job. After many viewings of would-be drug dens & one dream adult-cream-carpeted-wooden-floored chick pad I got my dream home & I move in in under two weeks. Hurrah! 

I have always felt that Melbourne is London & San Francisco's love child, a riot of colour, cuisine and life. Having said that, the longer I stay the more it feels like Melbourne is in fact London, high. It is stuffed and practically comatose it is soo chilled. The good times are a plenty here, they are all for the taking. Anything is achievable here in Australia, just don't break a sweat unless you have to - that is what it feels like to live in this city. Sounds heavenly doesn't it?

I'm starting to feel more and more that Melbourne will be ideal in 20 years time when I am done fighting for a career, it will be an idyllic place to be married and do all of that. But right now it just isn’t hungry enough for me. It is gluttonous with easy going attitudes that just don’t force me to push harder. I don't feel any do-or-die about this city.

Part of coming out here was to figure out where to next. I had to decide what it was that drove me, not just a 2.1 or any job that pays anymore. Student days are now behind me. What actually sets my world on fire? Because what I choose next could end up being the path I follow for the rest of my life. I don't want to be chasing a goal that isn't right for me. I want to do what I love and love what I do. Turns out what I truly love is to write.

Since being out here I have written nearly every day. I have picked up the pen & run with it in a way I never have done before. I have made connections and gained valuable experiences. I have gotten out of my head and comfort zone completely and learnt more about myself than I believe I would have done had I stayed in London.

Coming out here after uni has been a great decision. Hindsight knows everything, that bitch. I came out here to the sunshine, to the good food & to the endless opportunities. I have earned more here than in my life to date. I have gotten to know a part of my family I didn't before and I have proved to myself that I can do this - be an adult; be financially independent & responsible for myself. I can take care of myself. Thanks.

So the decision to go home hasn't been an easy one. Indeed some have called me mad to go back to what is a bleak existence in a cold & grey part of the world in a dreadful financial climate. But the truth is that you can't replace people and you can't change goals. Not easily at least. Nothing can compensate being able to see my family for a weekend or having great friends around me. That isn't replaceable & certainly not with a two year visa. No, 13 months is long enough to be away for me. I will go back with my head firmly in the game. A vast difference to how I left for sure. I will come back with more experience & self assurity knowing that nothing is ever truly 'the end of the world'. What I come home to I have no control over. But so long as I take home all the positives of this experience then I can say with confidence that I have no regrets about this decision.



So thank you Australia. Thank you for giving me the past six months of sunshine, the hottest summer on record, a good job, wonderful new friends & the whackiest apartment that has to be seen to be believed. Here's to the remaining six. London, be ready.