I would have been careful on the steps the first time I walked up them. Breath hanging in the air, the country in the grip of snow, and the short bus ride between Peckham Rye Station and The Gardens felt endless. What I would later come to think of as The Rye seemed to hover, a white expanse from the top deck.
I took the room immediately, of course I did. It was the only one I had any grasp on: no other contacts in London; no time, really, to find some on the internet. But it was a good one, if expensive. Two tall sash windows looking out into the back garden we didn’t have access to. The light filtered in through tall plane trees, the sound of parakeets. I lined up a handful of battered Penguin Classics on the chest of drawers, then read Jilly Cooper while looking out at the frozen Rye.
That winter was so empty. It took me a couple of weeks to get a temp job, another eight to get a paid journalism internship. I had a scant handful of friends in town, all of whom wore their experience more easily. I’d call those still in Newcastle, Brighton or New York and wonder why I’d moved for a minimum-wage diet of pita bread, bananas and Sammy Smith pints.
A decade is a funny thing to get a grasp on. The other week I cycled through town, passing a few nondescript landmarks: the pub where I’d meet the man who would occupy half of those years, the Bankside building we had an explosive row beneath; a club I used to go to on Shoreditch High Street, hollowed out for luxury flats; the bus stop where I’d wait for the 363 as dawn broke, making up fake names for the strange men who pestered for them. London is a city that traps memories as swiftly as it erases them. It’s become a running joke that whenever we approach the Hammersmith Flyover in the car, M will point to the right and say, “I used to live down there”.
Within the year I’d left that flat, moved in a straight line up north. My life had expanded, filled itself with friends and habits and career ladder rungs. I’d gained a couple of wheels and felt like I’d been given the keys to the city. We would ride everywhere, no matter the time or temperature. I held - and still hold - my mental map of the city more proudly than my degree.
To celebrate my entry into Grown-Up Land, I’d got myself a BlackBerry. Someone showed me an app that would change the colour of its flash depending on who had sent a message, which I committed to whole-heartedly. Facebook was something we accessed on our desktops, Twitter, too. I used that thing only for BBM and phone calls. You could only scroll with an up-down button. I took photos on my dad’s Nikon, carried around in a red backpack with an A-Z zipped in the front pocket.
It’s tempting to think of that decade as a lonely one, but I’m not entirely sure it was in the traditional sense. I had plenty of people around - flatmates, friends from school, university, work - and plenty of things to do with them. I was swept along and took others with me. Cash was a constant source of low-level anguish, but I felt grateful enough for having a journalism job in the midst of a recession to never ask for a raise. Life, I think, was lived on a teeter between curiosity and pretending to know it all. A lot of mental space was given over to wondering whether there was a better party I should have been at, instead.
The past year has been strangely reminiscent of that first one here. Fewer bus journeys, admittedly. The length of them never failed to baffle me. But I’m not sure I’ve ever cycled more voraciously, with that same desire for distraction and discovery. Stripped of much of the things often thought to make London London - the bars, the clubs, lining up outside the new restaurant, the house parties, the swish events you’re not sure how you got on the list for - 2020 has forced me to examine this city anew. Many people have, with good reason, recognised that it no longer provides them with what they need, and have left. But I’ve found it stripped back to its essence, to unlikely birdsong and letting the seasons catch you by surprise.
This Spring and Summer became one shaped by Dawson’s Hill, a place I used to take my loneliness, rattling through my phonebook and calling who would pick up. You can see the city glisten from there. Then, as it did this year, the distance from it was palpable, but the longing came from different places. Ten years of memories can be enough to make you fall in love, find a little room among it all. Before I would look and see only something I didn’t know, but now I just miss it.
Tomorrow is the sunset before the solstice, the turning of a year that has long needed turning. I plan to cycle up to Dawson’s Hill and watch the darkness come in.
