I’ve been back for nearly two months. It’s time to sit back and decide if it was right to leave the great weather and the great people of Melbourne.
In the time I’ve been back I’ve moved house, rented out my own place, arranged for a motorbike to be shipped from one side of the planet to the other, re-aquainted myself with some dear friends, and more importantly re-discovered the love affair I obviously have with London.
Part of that love is the fact I don’t live in town, I think that helps a lot. I did live at one point in Muswell Hill, the nice quiet part of London that is home to Alexandra Palace. It was busy, noisy, dirty, alive. It was everything I love about London, and everything I’m very happy to leave behind at 6pm. It turns out I’m a much bigger fan of the bucolic lifestyle than I previously imagined.
That realisation has resulted in getting the best out of London town – enjoy the vibrancy, enjoy the energy and noise, enjoy the fact you can do anything you want, can find anything you want and can change the world from your office towards the east end of town. Unlike Melbourne, where I lived in the CBD for six months and loved every moment of it, London requires you to take a breath every now and again, some people swim these waters without ever needing to see the outside world – London isn’t England, but for some, you’d be excused for thinking it was.
My new gateway to the capital is Marylebone Station, that’s started a whole new love affair – both with the station and with the company that runs it, and the associated railway line all the way up to Birmingham – Chiltern Railways. There’s another post on the way about Chiltern so I’ll not wax lyrical right now about their punctuality, how nice the staff are, how clean the stations are, how well priced the tickets are, how pleasant a journey is from Buckinghamshire into the city is…. mmm I should stop now. They’re nice people, I’ll leave it there until the next post.
Back to the question at hand. Moving back to London – right or wrong? Right in every sense. I weighed in on a debate some time ago about England Vs Australia on lonelyplanet.com. I said then that I thought England won by a nose… I still hold that view and 16 months away has only re-enforced the fact that I love the green green grass of home – no matter if that’s Wales, or my adopted England. Let’s not mention the rugby.
