"SPRING", & I'M DONE

In the last few weeks or so the sun has decided to coyly start sending suggestive looks London’s way, repeatedly flashing her warm gaze hither and yon before withdrawing behind her mask of clouds to lavish her attention on her Mediterranean bosom buddies once more.

London, of course, being starved of such attention for so long, has predictably reacted like an over-s*xed teenager being flirted with by a Penthouse Pet. You should see the lather the locals have been whipped into.

Deathly-pale legs and arms have been unwrapped and exposed to the frigid breeze. Skirts and shorts that have been languishing in the dusty bowels of wardrobes have been hauled out in the desperate hope that they’ll get more than a month’s worth of use before the changing winds of fashion render them un-wearable. People sun themselves on balconies, in parks and even on grassy footpaths like so many pale, underfed seals. The media froths with Thank-the Lord-and-all-his-angels headlines trumpeting the arrival of Spring like it was Richard the Lionheart returning from the Crusades to see off the dastardly barons. Gossip columns attribute every rumour of infidelity or celebrity seen-togethers to the Viagra-like properties of the season.

Never mind that it’s still cold enough to give you hypothermia if you got trousered and passed out in a carpark all night. There’s SUNLIGHT, by jove. Not to be wasted, ey wot?!?

In all fairness, the weekend just gone was nice, with two (count ‘em, two) cloudless days back-to-back and smiles all around. Such is the importance placed upon the weather here – the moods of millions remain, as always, intertwined with the amount of cloud cover.

Anyway, during this recent spate of brightness in The Twilight Kingdom, I:

• Went to a surprisingly-under-attended but wickedly bounce-a-licious gig at Portland Road – we saw a (very) French jazz ska band called Babylon Circus who apparently ripped it up at the Woodford Folk Festival a few years ago (hands up all those who’ve seen these boisterous Froggies in action?). Good fun, good night.

• Went to a pub billed as Clapham’s best-kept secret, the Bread and Roses, to watch the Six Nations Rugby and to farewell yet another friend who’s pulled the Eject lever on London Life (more on that below). The rugby wasn’t bad – Ireland beat Wales by a whisker at the death, so the Irish lads behind us erupted as only the Oirish can and turned the place into a party house for the rest of the night. Oh, and the name of the pub has nothing to do with the Ken Loach film of the same name - instead (I love this) it comes from an old American poem they have on the wall behind the bar which the author dedicated to the women who led the Textile Strike in 1911, demanding fair wages and dignified working conditions: “Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes; Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses ". Tremendous.

• Somehow managed to keep up with my marathon-running, ex-SAS mate on a 1.5 hour jog through London’s biggest parks in the brilliant sunshine, marveling at all the locals sitting in the deck chairs in Hyde Park wrapped up in jackets worthy of a polar expedition. First serious run since toe surgery nearly a year ago. My calf muscles have only just started talking to me again, but it was well worth it.

• Informed work that I was sorry but it never would’ve worked out between us and that I’d be moving my stuff out in a few weeks.

Yes indeedly-doodly, it’s official, folks. I gave my notice at work this morning. After 8+ months, I’ll be leaving my job here and the United Kingdom at the end of April and hitting the open road for awhile.

Reasons:

• the job was not as advertised;

• the workload has slowed right down and changed as the recession bit deep because, all of a sudden, all the developers stopped lodging applications to build bright shiny new things and are instead sitting on their cavernous, echoing bank accounts and weeping. And those who have already lodged and/or built are demanding to know how we’ve spent their Planning Obligations contributions. If those Appeals rooms in Town Hall don’t get plenty of use in the next 6 months you can slap me sideways and call me Susan;

• due to the gargantuan bollocking the bank-reliant British economy has taken, alternative job opportunities at a similar level to my current one are rarer than Robert Mugabe's apologies;

• To be frank, I’ve come to realize that London just ain’t me – yes, the cradle of the Empire has got its tasty bits, and I absolutely loved the place the other times I was here, but back then I was on holiday, very single, in party mode and looking for something different. Lobbing here focused on getting international work experience, only to be met by the biggest, ugliest recession since the 1920’s and a workplace I'd been told porky-pies about – well, that’s just bad luck really. Can't really give myself any uppercuts about my timing (hands up everyone who predicted we’d be lurching drunkenly through a global recession as horrific as this right now………... anyone?....... anyone at all?). I’m glad I finally came and experienced working here, but London bores me (cue shocked gasps from all the London-lovers reading this). It’s not the weather - that I can handle. It’s just too safe, too rules-bound, too inefficient in a befuddled way, too commodified, too pedantic, too petty for me to stay any longer. And people here are far, FAR too engrossed in entertaining themselves at every single opportunity. It seems like that's everyone's goal in life here. All well and good if you’re 18 or a YAAB or even if you’re just a bloated white Westerner who wants an easy, cushy life without being troubled too much by the real world and all it's wonderful imperfections. But how much mindless, unchallenging, soft-serve entertainment masquerading as "culture" can a homo sapien absorb before they start thinking there’s gotta be more to life than the booze / drugs / clubs / pubs / theatres / concerts / exhibitions cycle? Not much, in my case.

Anyway, that's just my personal opinion. But a lot of others here are acting like Sri Lankans who’ve just seen the next tsunami on the horizon as well. My line manager has been forced into retirement already (last week) and is off sailing for a few months, my divisional manager has called it quits as of April 1 and four other officers from different departments have also called "Chocks away!" and flown to distant shores in the last 2 weeks alone.

On the social front, no less than half of my minuscle group of London-based friends and acquaintances are also joining the mass exodus from Titanic Mk II (aka the UK ). One chum is moving back to The Land of Oz and taking ten (count ‘em, TEN) of her Brit friends with her; another pal has just moved to Hong Kong to follow her heart, and another one is about to go to Afghanistan for work on a youth project. Rather than seeing this as a depressing set of circumstances, I’ve chosen to be inspired by my scurrying friends and their grand plans for the next stages of their lives.

As such, I’m off to France first, to tour the World War One battlefields on the ANZAC Day Weekend and do the Dawn Service at Villers Brettoneux, then I’m making my way down to Morocco to try my hand at surfing the last of the winter swell for awhile, and then……. who knows. I’m waiting to see how the money situation pans out once I’ve sorted all the necessary things here in London before I can determine what my options are. But the dark places of the world have been calling to me for a long, long time; maybe it’s time I answered.