Suddenly, London

It is, unfortunately, easy to get nostalgic for a place that maybe never existed, and if it did, was over as you were being born. But you can feel it as the hills roll past on the way to Haddenham and Thame Parkway, a tiny railway station on the way to Marylebone, traveling past enclosed fields that have likely had their enclosures set for hundreds of years. The seductive call of a Jerusalem that never was. Sheep dogs being trained on the hills

You come back once a year and you can feel the country changing. The creeping Americanisms, your home town moving on and building itself anew for the 21st century, ripping old parts out with no thought as to the memories you made in them. After all, you’ve gone now. It’s not your place anymore.

And yet, the muscle memory of knowing exactly when to turn, of the cottages racing by, replaced by the terraces; the post-war consensus survivors smiling at you and whispering ‘it wasn’t a dream, we did this, once’. The modern shoebox estates, where everything is crammed together and the green disappears. The towers as London approaches, much fewer in number, but Trellick still standing proud, brutal, and at long last, loved.

Walking up the steps to the Royal Festival Hall, Saint Etienne’s ‘London Belongs To Me’ coming on random play, like the iPhone just knows, big smile as the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery come into view and the book sellers are putting out their tables. And walking up straight into a group of Pelican books. They knew, too.

But even as the Tate Modern’s huge chimney breaks out in front of you, there’s the realization - this place meant and means so much to you, and you’re happy to be back, but it’s not yours anymore. You don’t belong here in in the same way you did even five years ago. You can visit, but London will never belong to you. The construction cranes lining the sky across the water announce that it will likely not belong to your friends here for that long, either.

Saying all that, had a good time in London yesterday.