Goodbye London

The time for travelling on draws closer. I've been saying goodbye to London. Fleeting moments.

It's funny, you never really look at a place until you're leaving it. I was walking across the Waterloo Bridge today in the misty sunlight looking at the Oxo tower and the muddy, sludgy Thames. It was beautiful. I noticed bars I'll probably never go to and thought of the mass of London I've never seen or experienced and probably never will. I saw a young girl in a bus gazing up at the buildings with wonder. Fresh to the fray. Circles of London life. For me, there's an exquisite melancholy in breaking out of London.

London has overwhelmed me. It cannot be conquered. It is always changing and shifting. A truly mercurial city, it slips through my fingers. I can explain my love of folk music with reference to London. I find harmony, comfort, roots, fellowship and security in folk music. It insulates me against the beguiling yet eventually overpowering change at the surging heart of London.       

London won't miss me. I feel like I'm going away from a swirl of activity where exciting things will happen without me. But I'm tired of the distance and the drudge and the diarising. I want to knock on a friends door as I pass. I don't want to have to plan to meet him in two weeks time at a mutually agreed location for the limited amount of time before he has to catch the Death Hole.

Now for Oxford. Cohesion. Community. A pint of ale in the Half moon. And a good song.....