A New Place

Moving to London and stumbling into a job before I know what’s happening. Not to say that any of this was easy – or that I am completely happy with where I have found myself. I expect that I am bad at adjusting to change. Everywhere I go, I bring a fleet of furnishings, chests of drawers, tranklements, perfumes, coats, and books (with bookcases to house them) – I’m not really in a place until all of this is set up. This time, everything happened so quickly that many things were left behind (all very much my fault): a cream-coloured wooden box containing all my earrings, my winter coats (I’ll have to go home very soon to retrieve these, even if I do it one coat at a time), swimming costume, jars of spices and homemade jam.

My new room is still lovely without these things, thanks to my parents bringing a van-full of furniture for me and my housemates all the way to London. I can now sit at my desk and look out of the huge sash windows onto the apple tree by the fence and the two church spires which seem to bookend our long and narrow garden. We have elaborate plans for cooking and gardening. We want to build raised beds, and grow potatoes, peas, carrots, and herbs, write a cookbook (even if the world doesn’t need another one), and collect lots of plant pots to line the patio. Yesterday I rescued a bag-full of apples from the ground, peeled and chopped them, and have just started to cook them into a sauce for porridge. The laziest form of cooking.

Really, though, all I want is a holiday. I haven’t had time to legitimately do and think about nothing for at least a year. However, here I am, and there’s no time to stop. Instead, a surprising turn of events has me reading maths books in my spare time. Puzzling over fractions, decimals, and lines of symmetry, getting frustrated over long division, and outlining the properties of a rhombus: these are not what my mind was designed for, but I hope I will learn to like (and understand) it before long… All of this means that I haven’t been able to read much else, and have spent too many days without even opening a ‘fun’ book. Fortunately, there is a lovely local library – it’s very airy, with high ceilings and a lot of space in which to work. I’m looking forward to spending more time in there (when we can work out its bizarre opening hours). Our house also has a tiny spare room which we’ve turned into our own miniature library. It’s full of books already and will hopefully encourage (or shame) me into reading again. Maths books are not enough!

xxx