There’s this idea that people should know the very moment when they fall in love, that for some reason there would be a moment, ‘stars would explode in the sky’ as Nick Cave put it. But they don’t, there is no epic firework display, the earth continues to turn and nobody else on earth knows it has happened. That’s why you forget the precise moment.

I don’t recall the moment I knew I was in love with London; I think it had built slowly over the years. But I feel it more clearly now, every morning when my bus turns out onto London bridge and suddenly the sides fall away, I am over the river and I can see the city laid out before me, Tower Bridge to my right, St Pauls to my left, and everything in-between and I catch a breath, my heart swells and I feel it. Love.

I grew up out on the coast in south east Essex, an idyllic childhood of parks and playgrounds and trips to the beach after school. I used to walk home from school sometimes along the seafront, even in winter just to feel the biting air and feel alive again after a day of dusty brained learning and stuffy classrooms. I knew I was lucky to grow up there, 45 minutes train ride from London and blessed with fresh air and man-made beaches.

When I was younger, my parents used to take me to London once a year during the October half term holidays. It was so busy and lively and the shops sold things I didn’t see back home, bookshops there were palaces of literature laid out on several floors where I would lose whole afternoons in the poetry section.

I always longed to visit Whitechapel due to my interest in creepy tales of Jack the Ripper but it remained a mysterious tube station that we never got off at. As far as I was concerned it was all still dark alleys and Victorian street urchins up there.  As an older teenager I visited Camden with friends and felt at home in all the alternative shops and market stalls, although always slightly nervous of the enormity of it, days out would end with a tired scuttle back to Fenchurch Street and what felt like the longest train journey ever.

In my 20’s I visited a few more times, going to gigs mainly, staying over in hotels occasionally, but I still felt so removed from it all, like it was all behind glass and I was just there as visitor in a giant museum.

When I was 29 I went to Brick Lane for the first time and I loved it, shortly after some of my friends moved to Whitechapel so I started going up more regularly, finally getting off the tube at that mysterious station. The first time I went up on my own felt weird, I was going to places I had never been before and instead of that feeling of distance, I was starting to feel at home.

The day after my 30^th birthday I went on a date with the man I eventually married. We met up at Fenchurch Street and spent the whole day walking around, along the Southbank and back into the city where we wandered down alleyways and found hidden churches, gargoyles and streets empty of life. He showed me a part of London I had never seen before. The City of London is a different place on a Sunday compared to the weekdays when people pour in and out of the skyscrapers and fill in all the gaps between the buildings. At the weekend all that remains is quiet corners, old buildings and new building living side by side quite peacefully, endless amounts of closed branches of Starbucks and Eat that have no purpose without the city workers that fill them during the week days.

I think maybe I fell in love twice that day. With the man I had just met and with the city I had just been shown.

I left my life by the coast and got a job in North London, soon after I moved to South London. I had never lived anywhere other than where I grew up but it felt right, like it was time for me to move on.

I have lived in London for 4 years now, and I never ever get tired of it; my journey to work takes me from the foot of the Shard, past Southwark Cathedral, past Monument, up Bishopsgate, past the Gherkin and the Heron, through Shoreditch and to Hackney. Every morning I look out from the bus as though it’s all still new to me, it’s all still so beautiful to me.

At weekends we take long walks, to Brick Lane and Spitalfields, along the Southbank to Westminster or over to the back streets of Covent Garden and Soho. The difference for me now is that I don’t feel distant anymore, that I belong and I am part of it. Even though my awe still allows that feeling of visiting a giant museum, I feel now that instead of being behind glass I can touch the exhibits and even wander around back rooms not open to the public.

I take photographs incessantly like a day-tripper, I go to an endless supply of art and photography exhibitions, I wander back streets looking for street art and I say a prayer every time I have to brave Oxford Street. I know I won’t live here forever, for one reason or another I will end up by the coast again one day, so while I am here and its all on my doorstep I want to see as much as I can.

This summer in London has been wonderful, the energy and excitement around the Olympics was inspiring; for all our pre-Olympic moaning about stupid mascots, transport and other problems we all got swept away by the ridiculously happy vibe that was created once we started winning gold medals. The transport system ran fine, people talked to each other, we hugged ugly Wenlock and Mandeville statues around town.

London fell in love with itself.

I have so much to say about London, but the rest can wait.

 

(All Photo’s Copyright of the author)