120. Is the Grass Greener? Confusing thoughts about where I feel I belong

Sunday 14 May 2023

Helped mum with her motorbike

I’m still in London. I’ve had a great few days and more revelations and altered perspectives than I could have imagined. I got back to Lewisham on Tuesday and have so far seen my mum and my friends Nana, Rachael, Duncan, Sarah, Catherine and Ciaran, all on a one-on-one basis – so, yeah, I’ve been out and about far more than I envisaged and I am seeing Lindsay and Duncan today and tomorrow too. Although we’ve had, and have, quite a lot of visitors in Scotland, Lewisham is definitely my socialising home. I’ve had pub food, hipster coffee, hipster bagels, a beach trip, Vietnamese food and lots of long walks. I’ve loved it.

I even did an in-person job with an in-person colleague in one of my pre-Covid regular courts, The Rolls Building, for the first time since March 2020 (I’d only once been back in court, Royal Courts of Justice, but not with an in-person colleague). My work issues are too complicated and irrelevant to this blog but I did have some insights about working in London again.

I went in to work on a train-strike Friday, Fridays also being a popular work-from-home day. Central London was noticeably quiet for rush hour. I caught the DLR in to Bank and a bus back. On the busy DLR, most of us wearing smart work clothes, it struck me how kind of fake it all is. I do my job just as well, if not better, while at home wearing my normal, more comfortable clothes. But I do also think that wearing a ‘uniform’ focuses you on being in work mode, which isn’t a bad thing. I don’t know really, it all just felt a bit like dressing up. I didn’t feel like I fitted in, indeed I didn’t want to. I don’t want to work in a city environment, not that I’ve ever aspired to; I just have. As I walked to work that morning, I realised that I don’t love London as a place to work, other than for seeing colleagues, many of whom are also friends, and having an array of shops, cafes and restaurants to choose from within a small radius of convenience. I do, however, love London as a place to walk around, to meet friends, to do cool stuff, to be a tourist in. I felt a bit of an outsider working there again.

St Paul’s Cathedral on my way in to work

While I’m in Lewisham, I sort of feel like I live in London, which I suppose is obvious. But I’m starting to look around and feel that home is possibly tilting towards being the middle of nowhere in Scotland. But, again, I’m well aware that I don’t want to commit to one or the other, I love and hugely appreciate having both, two amazing and hugely different places to call home.

Maybe over the next few days (I’m here until Tuesday), both here and in Scotland, I will figure out a few more things. I definitely have more thoughts about where I feel I “belong” when I come back to London, I suppose because I currently spend less time in London, and those thoughts kind of come from emphasis on the things I particularly do and don’t like about London. I’m not making sense. So I’m going to finish cleaning the kitchen, make lunch and meet Duncan for a long walk in search of baby waterfowl, something we used to regularly do on our almost-weekly long walks when I was permanently in London.