(I’ll try and slot in posts about the details of my trip since the last update when I get the chance and a slightly clearer mind. If you follow my RSS, you should get them as soon as they are posted.)

British TV and the press are full of the political news and not much else. No matter what your personal political views are, one can’t help getting swept up in the speculation and even excitement of this new government. No doubt there will be much blaming of the situation left by the previous administration, but both the population and the markets will want specific and effective measures, not just soundbites about how times are tough.

Perhaps the biggest sign of being grown up is not only thinking you understand the machinations of politics (with the associated things like the economy) but you enjoy following them too.

Sometimes, it feels like someone else’s life I’m living.

Incidentally, today marks four years to the day of me writing here. No, I didn’t mean the above as referring to the day, but I suppose it fits.

It smells like summer.

The air is slightly chill along my arms and cheeks as I pound the pavement, rounding more corners. But it’s pleasant, invigorating, fresh.

I’ll be back in Finland in two months. No doubt it’ll feel similar then, like those nights as a kid I’d end up leaving a friend’s place way too late into the night, when the sun was far beyond the tree-covered horizon and casting only a faint Midnight glow. I’d bike along deserted streets, looking up at the pine and spruce trees standing quietly, unwaveringly, black against the dark-blue sky above. The smell of lilacs and kicked-up gravel dust, and the tender new leaves exhaling.

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.

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.

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.

Praise the name of Jesus
His my rock.
His my redeemer.
That is why I praise the name of Jesus.

I mean, the guy is generous, giving his rock and redeemer away.

I’ve been back in London mere hours, and I’m finding myself missing Finland a lot. Somehow it being really cold and really wintery, completely different from London, made it that much more attractive. London seems dimmed and grey, even bleak, compared to the strict monochrome of Finland where, even in the silver moonlight, there was mostly just black and pure white. While walls grow with Ivy here, they’re subdued in their green in a way that is hard to describe exactly. It’s ironic, there being more colour around here.

I’m due back at work tomorrow, and I think I’ll have an early night. My body is, after all, two hours ahead, or at least something that is not GMT. Thanks to everyone that made this break really good and met up with me, and apologies to those I didn’t get to catch up with. I’ll definitely try to be back as soon as resources allow.

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.

I’ve been invited to a book launch on a topic generally of interest to me through my studies. It’d be a chance to network, I suppose, though I don’t really know what sort of people will attend. Still, a couple of presentations summarising various chapters of the book (so I won’t have to, you know, buy and read it), some wine and chatter wouldn’t be too bad. I’ve known about it for two weeks and was happy to put my name down as attending at the time.

On the other hand, I’ve also been invited to a charity wine tasting evening tonight. It’d go well with my running haute cuisine theme, what with having dined at Chez Bruce last night. It’d probably be with a completely different crowd that I would most likely feel underdressed at, even though I’m planning on getting home after work and changing. Still, mingling and having some wine (I’m not sure if it’s a course or just a reception) doesn’t sound too bad. So, I remain undecided. Obviously I’m down as attending on the book launch and wouldn’t like to let anyone down, but … argh. Suggestions on an electronic postcard please. Please? It’s doing my head in. Oh woe is me.

And how was Chez Bruce? Rich, yet very, very tasty. Extremely intense flavours, in combinations I would never have thought of. I was really glad I’m not in the least bit fussy about food. Not badly priced either, considering. Must be one of the cheaper Michelin-starred restaurants around. I’d definitely recommend it, though only for a specifically planned night out. We went with a bunch of friends, a bunch that grew over time as we planned it. I glowed all the way home to North London though, just happy on a few glasses of wine and belly full of intricate cooking.

I love the weather right now. The most-read story on the BBC is about how Britain is being lashed by the storm of the year, and you can definitely feel the wind outside even in built-up London. It’d no doubt be rougher in rural areas but in the city it’s just strong enough to buffet you around a little bit, flicking trees back and forth to rip out leaves. The rain has thankfully died to a drizzle that comes at you in lashings, but no longer in waves. One of my favourite things, the colourful reflections of artificial light on the shiny black surface of paved road is in abundance with all the neon signs of shops and the tail-lights of cars.

It is, of course, all made fun by the very fact that at any moment I’m able to escape it into the relative warmth of my house, changing into comfortable clothes and settling to enjoy a book or a movie or whatever while the neighbour’s wind chimes are going nuts. But walking out there, I wasn’t just enjoying the prospect of being indoors. There was genuine enjoyment of being lashed by the elements too.

London Bridge, looking North, in 1927:

Roughly the same bit of (a different) London Bridge today on Google Street View:

You can tell  even without zooming in that a lot of the buildings are the same. The sidewalk has been hemmed in and some new buildings have replaced ones in the background. The story is the same throughout the video – distinctly recognizable scenes that have been altered subtly through the time and requirements of a changing city.