I am in London again and I say “again” because that is how it feels, “again." It's become a place I return to rather than a place I live and there is something about that shift, from inhabitant to visitor, that does something strange to the way you see a city. When you live somewhere you stop seeing it. The changes happen in your peripheral vision, too gradual to register. But when you leave and come back and leave and come back, every few months, the gap between visits becomes a kind of measuring stick. You see the distance travelled. And London every time, has moved further along without me.
This week I walked past where Argos used to be, gone for nearly twenty years and I still notice the absence. Past a WH Smith that looked hollowed out, surviving on airport confectionery and habit. These were not just shops. They were the architecture of a particular kind of British childhood. The anticipation economy, before everything became instant and the anticipation went with it.
I love that anyone can start a business now. I love the lower barriers, the more interesting playing field. But I mourn the permanence of the old world and the constant trend-obsessive newness pervading society. The coffee shop that was there last visit is gone. A chain I do not recognise has taken its window. Nothing holds its shape anymore, and you feel that more acutely when you are only passing through. The only constant is the one we all know intellectually and spend our whole lives being surprised by. Everything changes. We are just usually too close to see it.
This is the strange gift of the expat experience, if you can call it that. Distance gives you a clarity about time that proximity never does. You see the city the way you see a child you haven’t seen in months, the growth suddenly undeniable, a little breathtaking a little heartbreaking. And you notice other things too. The people who have stayed. A little older each time, a little more settled into themselves. A reminder that time is not waiting for anyone to feel ready.
I am still making sense of the life I have built away from here. There is a pull that does not fully resolve, between the family I come from and the family I am building, between obligation and choice and the uncomfortable truth that for me those two things are not always easy to separate. I love coming back. I crave it. But I also know "back" constantly evolves too, the same way I am, and I mourn the impermanence of it all.
On a less pessimistic note, we are now halfway through the summer, which if you are anything like me, lands as something between relief and panic. I feel VERY sad that the World Cup is over, it was something I unexpectedly got buckets-full of joy over. The cheering, the pub, the banter, Jude Bellingham, the collective anger against the behaviour of Argentina and the subsequent outpouring of love for Spain. I loved every ounce of it.
If you're a working parent reading this, what I have struggled with this summer as always is switching off. As the demands of the business grow it never gets easier being away from the office and working remotely. I share a lot of our summers in my Founders Journal on Instagram - the restaurants, the parks, the activities, the fun, but rarely the laptop, the 8am calls I rush for where I subsequently miss all the family chatter in the morning. I have never felt the trade-off more acutely than in this season of my life, because even in my "free time" I've realised that I am never really free, because I have chosen not to be, and I quietly hold the weight of that choice with me everywhere I go.
The halfway point in summer is useful. Halfway means there is still time.
If you have been half present, now is the moment to put the phone down properly. If you have been meaning to have a conversation, make a plan, book the thing, call the person, the second half of summer is your window. We spend so much of this season trying to hold everything at once that we sometimes miss the actual thing we came for.
Time keeps moving.
What are you going to do with it.
With love,
Roshni
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