With only countable weeks left before our departure from England I am feeling down…
I don’t want to talk about packing, selling furniture, emptying the flat or last meals.
At church they ask,
“When are you leaving?”
We now have a flight booked so I have to say,
“July 18th.”
“Not long then,” they say and my eyes fill.
I’ve worked out that I have 56 more walks, calculated like that it takes on a longer quality which I’m prepared to work with. I enjoy my walks, 56 more seem like a lot!
I took no backward glances when I left England last time with a sense of excitement. I was embarking on an adventure, getting married, starting a new life independent from my parents.
Now backward glances abound and I have taken hundreds of photographs of beautiful English scenes to help me remember my year here.
This week I began photographing the not so Kodak moments of my life in London.
The scenes that aren’t depicted on postcards or in calendars.
So far it’s mostly what flashes by from the train windows on my way to and from Victoria, the busiest station in London linking us to the rest of the country.
I started with rubbish on the Beckenham Junction line,
Hubs thinks young people who can’t get jobs should be employed by the city to clean up these public places in return for their ‘no strings attached’ welfare cheques issued weekly.
I tend to agree.
Here are the allotments, we were going very fast so they rush past in a blur of green and variety. Small vegetable and flower plots for the Londoner without a garden,
Brixton is the last stop before Victoria,
It links many south of the river urban cities including Clapham and Balham where I grew up. We caught a bus here one week on our way to tea with my neighbour from 40 years ago, and the atmosphere was oppressive with neglect. Overgrown green spaces, shabby council flats, graffiti and boarded up shop windows contribute to this town’s bad reputation. The police are said to avoid the area at night.
As we draw nearer to the river a junk yard comes in view, the turn over is rapid here, one day there will be a mountain of crushed metal and the next day it will be gone.
Graffiti begins to feature more prominently as we hurtle through Clapham Junction and Wandsworth, towns not on our line.
Then Battersea Power Station hoves into view and I am surprised that when captured on digital image (I tried to say film but it isn’t film!) it is beautiful against the blue, cloud dotted sky.
We cross the river and officially start our approach into Victoria,
and the graffiti is in earnest now,
reaching high into the sky,
and along the track itself.
Today we spotted The Orient Express,
and popped into the station hotel lobby to get a brochure. There were folks being coddled prior to their departure to Europe , all dressed up and excited, sipping their champagne. A far cry from the coach station from which our daughter left for Paris.
Despite the linen table clothes, fine dining and plush surroundings, their view from the windows will be the same as ours, only more expensive.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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