Dammit

Man, you must be really looking forward to going back.

You gonna to come back here? Are you going to miss the place?

We’ll miss you.

Dammit, just when I think I had it all sorted, I get that stab of last-minute repenting.

I am looking forward to going back, but if you ask me why, I can’t really name it. It’s nebulous - there’s no one thing that would make me say, “that, that is the reason I’m going home.”

Am I going to come back? Chances are, yeah. Given the nature of the work and the company, certainly. Within a sensible timescale? I don’t know. But then if I knew… And for sure, I’ll miss the place. London is the kind of town where your niche is catered for, in one way or another - one of the few cities around the world that would do that, I suspect, and some niches are more equal than others, but it is definitely the kind of place that grows on you. (Except…)

And I’ll miss these people most of all.

I’ve found the groove, the feeling you know where you fit, so many times now, I thought I was almost tired of doing that over and over, and yet here I am doing it over again, ripping myself out in exchange for… something.

The people here are warm and generous and open, welcoming me in and allowing me to quickly settle into a comfortable social life. As dismissive and uncomfortable as I am at times about the “fuzzy stuff”, I really know I’ll miss these people as much as I did the people in Melbourne, when I left for Sydney - only now, it’s not an hour flight and a hundred bucks to pop in to visit. The timezones are 9 hours apart at best, so communication is likely to be stuttered at best.

And just as I figure out how it all works and sticks together, just as I was getting comfortable, just as the winter was ending, I up sticks and move back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

Well, I’m not sure which one I took, and whether it has made all the difference. We shall see.