Arriving/Settling

It's tempting when trying to make sense of a large number of changes to impose a structure onto things that are otherwise fluid and resist easy categorisation, even chronological. That said, with our work on Harry Potter concluded, Easter just passed, our flat finally organised, the weather changing, and our three month anniversary of moving to London, it seems like a natural place to put a marker in the sand. Before it, arriving, and after it, settling and starting to live our life in London.

We're celebrating this moment by returning to the USA. Not permanently (not yet, anyway), only for this weekend in Boston for the marathon. It's another major mental marker for us - Donna's training having straddled across both autumn in San Francisco and winter in London, with all the difficulties of adjusting to a new environment whilst training. She's managed incredibly well, and knows the city backwards and forwards. With this year's Boston marathon she will have completed five marathons in a 12-month period (not including a few smaller races and one 200-mile relay race), she's considering giving marathons a rest for, well, at least three or four weeks I reckon.

Easter weekend started with The Boat Race, mostly an excuse for lots of al fresco drinking and partying. Good Friday we travelled to East Sussex and found ourselves in an idyllic English springtime countryside landscape that needed to be seen to be believed. Small villages set into the green rolling hills, bleating baby lambs leaping through daffodils, horses grazing, bubbling streams, and country churchyards alive with blossom and flowers. Easter Sunday we spent amongst family, organising an Easter egg hunt inspired by our neighbours in California. Easter Monday is a 'bank holiday' in England ("yipee let's take a day off - the banks are closed!"), which we used to good effect to rest and tidy. When I first moved to the USA only to discover that Easter was barely even noticed, let alone an excuse to take several days off work, I was traumatised. And this was before I found out that I couldn't buy Easter Eggs like the ones I was used to from the UK in US shops. It was as if someone had stolen Christmas and only I remembered it any differently.

Recently I've been meeting up with old friends, some of whom I've not seen in over a decade. Of course, the same way that I returned to London amidst a pre-midlife crisis, they are asking themselves similar questions and deciding to leave London in search of their answers. So my old university housemate Stuart decided to pursue a two-year job contract in Hong Kong a month after we arrived. Thanks Stuart. Another university friend Clare is on a career break and spending the time in both Africa and Nepal (but not before she took us on the aforementioned walk through the English pastures on Good Friday, in between travels). Another university housemate, Simon, who, as we all left our 'Physics with Space Studies' far behind, actually fulfilled the promise of our youthful dreams to become a bona fide rocket scientist, is moving to Germany to be the lead engineer on some project that sounds far too exciting. An old school friend, Sam, is about to change jobs for one that will send him traipsing all over the world on business. A fellow Master's friend Deepa has been posted for six months to California of all places. And another university friend Nikki, a successful producer in London's commercial industry, with whom we had a lovely lunch last week, is.. actually not moving far away. Thank you Nikki! Her latest project is a music video with Take That, a boy-band on a major comeback after having spent a decade mostly in obscurity, previously referred to more as 'the band in which Robbie Williams got his start' than anything else.

These are just the people I've seen or had contact with recently, there are still many people to catch up on in one form or another, to say nothing of the people who've married and made a brood of little genetic copies of themselves. I still feel frustrated that I haven't had more time to see more people, or catch up on the phone at least. Trying not to be too hard on myself.

I'm not much one for regrets. I used to spend a lot of time mulling over the past, picking over it, trying to form it into some more acceptable shape than the misshapen mostly accidental lump that it really is. Nevertheless, looking at all the paths of my friends in the last ten years, all successful in their ways, managing the slings and arrows of life, paths diverging like the train tracks leaving Waterloo, it is impossible for me not to wonder about what would have happened if I'd turned left instead of right ten or fifteen years ago, or stayed in the UK instead of going to the USA. Or.. or.. I keep wondering when I'm going to have it together and start taking things seriously. They probably feel as I do, struggling to take one day at a time, each decision as much chance as forethought, the difficult things being those that they never imagined, the things that our parents tried to impart us their wisdom on, which we wilfully ignored in favour of pursuing own ideas. Only to repeat the same mistakes, and probably a few new ones in the process, if we're lucky.

London | Soho | England | Travel | Easter