1,2, skip a few... 99, and back to the beginning

My next few posts will be all over the map as I attempt to catch up on my trip so far. And I have a lot to write about - about stony Edinburgh and sea-bound Cornwall and the magical properties of Liverpool. But first, here’s where I am now.

I arrived back in London almost four months to the day that I first came to the UK - something that I didn’t realize until I was already here, but that seems fitting. This city has an excess of gravity, I think; like a planet, it causes everything that falls into its orbit to either revolve around it endlessly or give in and come back. There are a lot of ‘ifs’ at play, too, of course. If I had found a job in Edinburgh… If I’d enjoyed St. Ives more…

But in the end, London’s gravity was strong enough to hold me, and I came back. And I am happy here, despite not yet having a job or a permanent place to stay, happy enough to realize just how much I wasn’t enjoying the last place I was in. But enough of that. This post is for the here and now.

Samuel Johnson once said “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” and I think that is even more true now than it was in his time. In just five days, I have found dinosaurs, English majors, businessmen with Disney-character ties, an Indian music video shoot, most of the known species of butterfly in the world, part of a spaceship, comic shops that I won’t let myself buy anything from until I’ve found a flat, people asking me for directions, a giant statue of Freddy Mercury, a theatre built into the side of an underpass, Shakespearean plays, a painting come to life, and a fairy-tale castle with seven dreaming princesses, among other things.

I did not find Paddington Bear, despite looking high and low.

And now I am sitting in the courtyard of the Natural History Museum, one my favourite public spaces anywhere. I’ve found a small patch of sun between the trees, and the cup of tea beside me helps chase the last of the early autumn chill away. When I am finished typing this, I will go across the street to the Victoria & Albert Museum, to look at a collection of 60s rock‘n’roll photographs, and then I will take the Tube and spend my afternoon wandering Bloomsbury, looking for places to apply for work. Bookish Bloomsbury, which is fast becoming one of my favourite parts of London

No, I don’t think I will tire of this city. Because in London, to find your way to the riverside, you don’t follow the yellow-brick road. Instead, there’s a path lit by orange streetlights for you.