Flashback! Homecoming.

Google Earth claimed it was part of a supermarket.

It wasn’t.

But it took a similar amount of time to get to the bathroom as it did to reach the fruit aisle.

The first time I ever saw it I had just ran 13.1 miles and couldn’t see straight. I could barely move my legs and thought the smallest of movements would end in vomiting. I couldn’t get warm. It was front door to couch path where I was parked for the next number of hours under thick blankets and endless cups of boiling hot tea. I saw the lounge and the bathroom and soon forgot both. So, my first real night’s sleep at the flat was after arriving armed with minimal clothing, sporadically packed and fresh from a glorious week away in Spain where the sun shone, the sand was soft and doing nothing became mandatory and completely natural.

I knew the flatmates by name, not face and my weary travel logged limbs followed them down streets I’d never seen in an area I didn’t know to a party in which I knew no one, following my feet and trusting my instincts under the glare of the moon.

That was the initial introduction to a home I would be spending a significant amount of time in over the course of life left for me in London. Arriving home in the pitch black night to unfamiliar walls, a strange bed and an unknown feeling welling up inside, I felt a strange sense of comfort surrounded by so much like minded, same age activity. The thought of being in such an unfamiliar location so abruptly was not dwelled on with no room for thoughts to grow, restricted by the ever present excitement and constant happenings.

My pillow was a rock and my duvet a weightless heater. The walls were thick; trapping the product of three people’s heat inside, the windows thin; a constant reminder of the lively city present outside. When the sun rose, the room was a furnace and my mouth’s shouting had turned to cursing from anger at feeling like a desert; I rose. We all rose. As if a family of over-sized children, we woke with breakfast and TV before the steady trek across London to my (now old) home. Apartment in Finsbury, complete with drug dealing neighbours and questionable building standards (but not really that bad…) now felt distant and I was unattached, as if treading on someone else’s abode, their daily rituals gleaming in the remains of products strewn haphazardly across the empty rooms. The only telling reminder of life between the walls was the dust beginning to settle on several unused areas.

Moving day was met with ill fated (read: last night-itis) problems, problemo uno lying on the other side of town as the key to the apartment remained snuggled in amongst my belongings, far away from the door I was at, needing to get into. Hot, tired and defeated by public transport, I hopped on yet another tube to heckle my roommate for hers (managing to catch her in amongst a tight study schedule, LSE kills!) before attempting to carry my legs back the way I came; joining tourists and families enjoying the balmy weather as I focused on opening my eyelids, moving my feet and on anything BUT the complex and harrowing move which lay ahead.

There is an oddly liberating aspect to moving, ridding all content s and material possessions from one place to insert into another. I was able to gather my things surprisingly (perhaps, worryingly) quickly which took a bit of time off the unfortunate beginning. Music blasted and a lot of freshly arrived New Zealand sweets were opened and emptied, crumbs scattered across an apartment I no longer felt rights to (hence the lack of ‘goodbye’ cleaning…) I thrust a travel pack on my willing and able (and dungaree clad, typically) moving buddy; kindly sweating through the afternoon to help me move my swiftly accumulated belongings to my new home. A suitcase (with a weight alluding to several people trapped inside) and a travel pack each, not to mention the mini bags split between us, set us up for a clammy tube ride for 40 minutes across about 20 tube stations (the iconography of the city I now temporarily called my own, sweeping by).

The close proximity of the house to the tube station was greatly received as my knees ached and my back complained. The sun was still pounding down from above despite the darkening hour and upon arriving my first (real) flatmate impression was the Queen of Clogging the Hallway; my stuff owning the small space, seriously reducing the already compact area. Muscles tired and a heartfelt longing to enjoy the last of the setting sun and warm temperatures meant reckless abandon to reach outdoors. Firing up the small BBQ in a miniature, but existent backdoor garden, the plumes of dark smoke billowing over the fence into the supermarket mere metres away, ignited puzzled glances from customers and passers-by. It felt wonderful to be outside in a private area; a luxury ill-afforded to those in apartment blocks and joint flats.

Amongst seven there is always activity, and in amongst eating freshly BBQ’ed sausages and burgers; there was pruning, gardening, digging as well as inventive cricket (swap ball for potato and bat for spade – the idea was the same). Followed by a small stride across the road to the local green for football, some questionable photo taking ensued giggling, pumping and quizzical glances.

We returned to the warmth and comfort of our own home at dusk, escaping the insects as their biting hour arrived. Activity swelled around me; the TV a distant noise drowned out by the lull of mixing voices; a welcome filter of life. As the rooms emptied and the tired bodies made their way to bed, I followed in their wake. Happy to be surrounded by a contagious environment, I was content in being present. Merely, present.