There’s No Place Like Home
Just the other day, I was walking along London’s beautiful South Bank with a dear friend and we were reflecting on the year that is beginning to draw to a close. I asked her for a headline that would summarise her year and when she asked me mine, it came to me immediately: “Coming Home”. Given that I have never really had much of a sense of home — geographical at least — this struck me as a) Quite late coming! And b) Miraculous. It also struck me how much of a difference it has made to my sense of wellbeing in what has by all accounts been another phenomenally rubbish year for so many people.
Growing up, I always quite envied my cousins who had a strong attachment to Devon where they spent their childhoods (and where most of them still live). I saw it as a very appealing kind of anchoring which I lacked. We had moved around a fair bit when I was little, living in four other places before arriving in Chester just in time for me to start secondary school. But I grew to dislike Chester — despite the irritating “Oh Chester is such a lovely city” refrain of every person I have ever told that I went to school there — largely because of my school experience surrounded by Cheshire set girls who for at least two years made my life a misery. I have always been adamant that I do not come from Chester and have always struggled when people ask me where I am from.
There are three places to which I have a strong emotional attachment. The first is in fact Devon where my grandparents used to have a little cottage which my mum, brother and I would visit and where we would spend many a happy school holiday counting milk churns, picking primroses and walking on Dartmoor. The second is Oxford where I spent my University years and had my first experience of belonging after being released from the exile to which I had been subjected at school. And the third is London.
London. I was first exhilarated and then terrified of London. I remember my first visit on Valentine’s Day when I was about 18 with my then boyfriend, my best schoolfriend and her boyfriend. It was a double-date; an exciting day trip down on the train from Chester. I remember being dazzled by the lights and billboards and almost delighted by the rudeness of the China Town waiters. And yet when it came to University, I never paid a visit to the capital, despite its proximity, out of fear of its immense size and what it might contain.
Later on in my twenties, on one of my first forays to London, I remember grabbing the overhead rail in the tube only to find my hand on a condom that had been hung there as some kind of joke. I was horrified! It is strange to recall the exoticism, horror and intimidation which London generated in me then, as I find myself in my 24th year of living in this city. Twenty-four years! This is by far my longest relationship to date! I have had breaks here and there, for sure. My most recent break — a four-year experimental sabbatical in Scotland — was the longest and, as it turned out, the catalyst for my realisation that London is my home.
I could write a whole piece dedicated to this wondrous city: — its energy and expansiveness; its beauty and ugliness; its ability to always surprise and inspire; its vastness that lends itself to endless wandering and discovery; its cosmopolitan diversity and liberal outlook; its glittering array of arts and culture. And more besides. But this piece is about the notion of ‘home’.
Before my return to London this year, I had given up on an external, geographical sense of home. I was fairly confident that I had developed a more internal sense of home where I could find an anchoring (most of the time), a sense of familiarity and safety. This has long been a great source of comfort and happiness to me including in the days when I used to travel a lot, taking my sense of home with me. It also proved invaluable throughout the first two Lockdowns when I was home alone in my own company for unnaturally long periods of time. In fact, my inner sense of home grew immeasurably as a result of Covid restrictions and for that, I am genuinely grateful. What a gift to be able to find a place of true sanctuary and strength in oneself, in a way that is not dependent upon anyone else or any particular place, situation or geography.
My decision to move back to London was itself also triggered by Covid and happened very quickly. In the space of a month I had made the decision, bought a home’s worth of furniture and moved in. All mid-pandemic. Many thought I was nuts. I had my moments of thinking the same but as soon as I got back, I knew to my bones that I had made the right decision. I could feel it in my body — that deep sense of ‘right place’, of comfort, groundedness and belonging.
Reconnecting with some of my favourite places and discovering new ones has been a joy; looking out south over the city’s landmarks from the top of Primrose Hill; leaning out over the river from Waterloo Bridge looking across to the South Bank; rediscovering the joys of Covent Garden on what was my first social engagement in months when the restrictions started to lift; wandering through Soho, marvelling at its transformation into a Southern European city full of outdoor diners in the late spring. Even, dare I say it, getting on the tube with other Londoners and sitting cheek by jowl with other people that look just like me and many, many, many more that look nothing like me. What a delight.
Home — by which I mean our ‘dwelling place’ — was a constant feature of the last 18 months (for those of us lucky enough to have one). We were confined to our homes for long stretches and each one of us will have had our own experience of that. Many of us are now keen to leave home and re-experience the world again, to some degree or another. I most definitely am. Home for me is not a particular set of bricks and mortar. And even if it were, I am fairly sure I would be keen to get out of it and re-engage with life. I am loving rediscovering life outside the home again and company other than my own. But I feel so incredibly lucky to have this inner and outer sense of home. So now as the anniversary of my return to London approaches, I can barely believe the speed with which this year has gone and how much happier I have been in my newfound sense of home where I feel I belong.
Don’t get me wrong: I am an adventurer at heart but as Dorothy once said in The Wizard Of Oz, “There is no place like home”.
