Onward!!

A year ago, almost to the day, I arrived at this house, dropping my luggage in an empty square-shaped room that fit a double bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. Feeling a bit confused, I unpacked my things and thought I’d get used to it all. I remember the smell of that room, slightly dusty and warmed up by the central heating going on full blast, driving away the February chill.

It smelled exactly the same just now, when I grabbed the last pile of things and carried them out. It looked the same, too, when I put up the long red curtains that were there when I moved in. I’m only moving upstairs to the room vacated by a couple who are leaving, but it feels quite momentous. The dynamic in the house may very well change, considering the leaving flatmates were giant, affable personalities. They’ve taken quite a bit of things with them, which of course they are entitled to, but it too has contributed to a feeling of change in the house.

The mattress topper I have is slightly too big for the bed, and most of my things are spread across the floor. That reflects a bit of how I feel, too – a little uncomfortable and scattered. It remains to make this room, gutted to the bare minimum, feel like home. I guess I’ll have to spend money for that to happen, though I wouldn’t want to spend too much considering I never know where and when I’ll be moving next and moving with lots of stuff is a pain. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to spend money on throwawayism in the form of a load of flat-packed fibreboard furniture which you can’t really transport once assembled.

I’ll have to do the same thing I did a year ago and try it out. It’ll settle, as will I. It’s just made me think of how I have no clue where I’ll be in a year’s time from now.

Arriving back from African sunshine to a bright but breezy and cold London was a shock in a multitude of ways. Not only was my body unused to the temperature and artificiality, I got a few big pieces of news as well. Two rooms in our house are becoming empty as some of my housemates are getting a smaller place together. I do believe their assurances that there is no acrimony involved in their leaving, because they are all very dear to me and have significantly improved my experience of living in this city. I really hope the changes don’t impact the house dynamic or atmosphere too much, because our place is kind of special in my opinion.

The news did hit me hard, I won’t lie. I spent a good hour and a bit ambling around North London to clear my head on Sunday a week ago, wandering vaguely on a circular route that ended up being around five miles.  I will definitely have to do that again, as the lack of a camera prevented me from capturing some really nice shots, from young rowers on the canal to boarded-up post-industrial gloom of trackside business premises long abandoned.

So, to get the house full again, I’ve had to make my room look as presentable as possible for a prospective female housemate, because gender balance tends to help with things. If anything, it’s made me think about how I can effectively store my meagre belongings once I move up a floor into one of the departing housemates’ rooms. It’s been pretty stressful on the whole, having viewings/housemate auditions pretty much every night, coordinating schedules and other admin at the same time as working full days. Oh, and racking my brain about another development I’m not sure what to do with.

I’ve been offered a job that would start much earlier than my current contract finishes. Apparently it’d be mine if I applied for it, and the colleagues would be enthusiastic to have me. All good and great but though it’s more money, I can’t help but think I would have wanted something more career-oriented as my next job. I don’t want to say too much about what this offer would be but somehow I feel this’d be an easy way out, perhaps too easy. I like the field (it’s vaguely academic) but as much as I’ve never thought about career advancement, the lack of immediately visible prospects from it bothers me.

And I know I should always be looking out for number one, but telling everyone I work with, fixed-term and temporary as my current contract is, that I’d be leaving for greener pastures fills me with dread. There would be no coming back, I don’t think.

London is in the grips of the coldest weather in memory and the supposed “extreme weather” is on everyone’s lips, if only in relation to their commute. I took off from home yesterday morning ten minutes earlier than usual, and took a different route to work from normal due to transport disruptions. The result? At work a good quarter of an hour earlier than normal. The roads in central London were quiet, and buses had pretty much free reign. People with cars must have avoided driving due to the icy conditions, which suited me just fine.

To drive away the cold and the gloom, we holed up in a cosy pub with some housemates in the evening. It, too, was pretty empty, probably owing to a lot of people leaving work early.  Didn’t matter a bit to us as we had a fantastic time, from the initial chat with just three of us, to eventual rowdiness once more people joined. Somehow we ended up spilling out of the pub at closing time singing Hava Nagila, until it was remarked by someone in the group that the song had, in fact, become “too commercialised”. I don’t know either.

Having fun like that kind of made up for it being even harder than usual to get out of bed this morning.

A year ago I was gearing up to spend the Christmas holidays in Peru, on the other side of the world. It was a lovely experience, and I loved discovering things about the country and its fascinating culture. But this year, gearing up to go back to Finland for the first time since April, I am feeling extremely expectant and nostalgic at the same time. It’s like I feel like my year should end in certain surroundings, in the biting cold of sub-Arctic air, in the enveloping darkness driven away in pockets by light streaming from windows and cast down by streetlights. It’s a largely monochrome world, except where filled with colour by human activity.

London is dark too, but not in the same way. I keep thinking to the last several years aside from 2008 when I’ve spent the holiday in the house I learned to think of as my childhood home, messing about with my brother and sets of old video games and things. The smallness helps, the familiarity and the feeling that upon my arrival everything is as I left it. So much changes in my life, and there too, but enough stays the same for me to consider it home, I guess. I don’t think of many places in my life like that.

The last week and a bit (and next week too) have really been rather extreme with engagements. I’ve had work parties to go to and still have to make an appearance at one, and have met some lovely-seeming people at Christmas-themed house parties. I also did an absolutely outrageous thing with some friends and spent 15 hours in Paris seeing Rammstein for the hell of it, before doing my day at work the next day, feeling only mildly out of it. Despite of how much fun it has been, I really feel like it’s time to take a breather, some time out and just relax. Read a book. Play something silly on a computer. Listen to, I don’t know, some jazz or something.

I’d love to add “start living healthily” but that’ll have to wait until the inevitable and thoroughly expected home-cooked Christmas food is out of the way. I really was inspired today, at a party where most people were either serious about their Kung Fu or Capoeira. I don’t know if I’ll be trying either (though I was being thoroughly persuaded by an Italian girl who actually trains at the LSE) but I’ll definitely be doing something come the new year. So I guess that’s my promise, clichéd as it may be.

Until then, I’ll be obsessively checking weather forecasts and looking at silly things like weather cameras like the picture above, which allow me to live the diving temperatures from a distance, and reminisce about childhood car journeys taken in the night, with the yellow streetlights sweeping rhythmically over the car. In other words, I’ll be missing home.

It’s Sunday, and I’m at work.

When I woke up the rain rattling against the window made me want to just wrap myself tighter and stay in bed.

By the time I was on my way out the rain had stopped, and once I got to King’s Cross the sky had cleared too. In the gray-white sunlight, I walked the last twenty minutes to work to try and avoid the noise and the soot and the empty but yet still claustrophobic tube carriages, passing few people because at that time on Sunday, London is mostly asleep or only gearing up to a day of Christmas shopping.

My friends are in Cambridge today, no doubt enjoying clearer sunshine wandering around the grounds of the University or the warm company in a relaxed pub. I’m not ashamed in admitting that I’m jealous. I’d like to see them very much. Instead, on a Sunday, I’m at work.