Brand New Year - Brand New Me?

So, it's that time of year again - an arbitrary change of date, the train station flicker board clicks over in the same way as it does all the time, the clock carries on its circle from 23:59:59 on 31/12/2016 to 00:00:00 on 01/01/2017.

It's just another new day really - for most it isn't even that, for most we don't even sleep through the transition to wake anew. We cheer, down a drink and then, much later, wake bleary-eyed on a day which is - thankfully - a bank holiday. A day when otherwise - because of winter conditions and lack of daylight - we would not be desperately wanting a day off.

I don't do resolutions. I know I've covered this previously. And whilst I had some success, I attribute very little to a new day, a new year.

But years are the closest way that we really have of 'chunking' life experiences. Remembering them to certain periods of our lives. I'm lucky (not really) in that I have a December birthday, so anything I could ascribe to an age, also aligns wih a calendar year. (honestly, nearly-Christmas birthdays are horrible.)

So, 2015 was my annus horribilis. Truly it was awful. Within days of completing the heavy renovation of my house, I was given notice of my redundancy at work. There is nothing more terrifying than being told that you will not be employed after 10th December - just a week before your birthday and a few more days before the Christmas shut down.

Whilst I was working out my redundancy notice period I then found out that my friend had taken himself. At this stage, actually nothing more could have gone wrong in my mind - I was losing my job, my income, my friends. Just before my birthday and Christmas.

OH YES - I nearly forgot - surgery. I injured my shoulder a year before in a football clash. I ran into someone called 'fatlad'. Normally, when I tackle people, I come off the better. This time I hadn't. After a year of (very attractive) physio with the lovely Dan, he identified that there was something more substantial wrong. So, I was scheduled in for an operation on 20th November 2015. Brill.

Anyway, what with one thing and another, this leant itself to me achieving my long-held ambition to move to London. I'd just completed my house renovation, so it was now (finally) set to sell, I had no job keeping me in the midlands - it was [the] PERFECT [storm].

But I've told you this already.

Everyone has bemoaned how 2016 has been a terrible year. Celebrity deaths, Brexit, Trump and the rest. 

Anyway, 2016 was the year when I did London. I settled, explored, sorted. You may recall I went with #DoOneThing? This was where I was determined not to fall into "the London trap" of living in London and yet not doing anything. The number of times that I speak to my friends and they haven't done things because they haven't made time. So I made time.

So, I did #DoOneThing. The rules about #DoOneThing were not great - I had to Do One Thing a week that got me out of the house. Just one thing a week. Something a bit different. It wasn't just meeting mates, it wasn't a night down the pub or in a club. It was doing something different - a bit cultural or something else. So, for example, my Sunday wanders around Cockfosters, Greenwich, Hampstead, Peckham etc. didn't count.

I have counted up. I did 182 things.

182.

110 of these were theatre, 15 comedy, 23 music, 4 art related and 30 in the 'other' category (which included festivals, certain installations that didn't classify as art, cinema and tv/radio show recordings).

To be clear, this is almost one every other day (2016 was a leap year so technically half is 183).

I did do two things on some days - often the comedy gigs involved two (or on occasions three) in an evening. That said, I do notice from my calendar some omissions - certain gigs or events which, perhaps because I booked them on the same day as I attended - haven't been registered on my calendar. So it is probably more than 182, but I am happy with that number.

So, for me 2016 was the new start. It was a good year. It was the year I made the most of London. It was the turnaround. New job, new flat, new start.

A good year.

And 2017?

Well, I don't make resolutions. I have a few aims, but nothing set in stone. I'd like to get a better job (mine is currently a bit more temporary); ideally I would like to get a flat that I own; I'd like to aim to get a bit healthier - I haven't done much exercise or really concentrated on my diet over the last year whilst I've been doing #DoOneThing. But I'm not busting myself on any of these - if I don't achieve them I won't be disappointed. I just need to stablise a little.

A Silght Fantasy Land

So, I've lived in London for almost five months now.

One of the craziest things is the differences between when I lived in the middle land and here is that "going home" and "doing things" is so much easier.

So, for example, this bank holiday weekend. I know previously I've had "ok" bank holiday weekends. Some weekends I've even gotten drunk and woken up in San Francisco (seriously, I've never written about that?!)

Yeah, I could wander up to Piccadilly Circus after work, pop to a few bars and still be home before 8. These bars that had previously been "destination" bars, suddenly became locals. Well, regulars. And I like that.

But it still seems weirdly Hollywood - you know, in as much as people from the midlands still see a visit to these places as "destinations". And I hate to say "people from the midlands", but that is what this blog is about:

This very weird world in which I live.

Back in the Midlands, if I had nothing planned for a bank holiday, this was a disgrace. It was also rare. There were normally people that wanted to go out on the Friday night - celebrating the start of the bank holiday - and the footballers would want to go out following Sunday training.

But this was "going out". This was planned weeks in advance. Spontaneous nights happened rarely. This wasn't just "dropping into a pub" like I do now. Occasionally on a Friday someone would text "anyone fancy a night out tonight?" which would prompt "I can be out for 8:30ish"; "my tram won't get me to town until 9", "Can we make it 9:30 - I've only just got in and the cat's been sick and I have to order pizza", "bus is running late, I'll meet you guys at 10".

The pubs now are ten minutes down the road. My friends work in the city. If we want, I can text at 5:30 and meet someone before 6pm. I sometimes just drop in on my way home. My way home in my previous job was almost 2 hours from home. A walk, an hour train ride, a walk. And this wasn't just me. Transport links were such that if we were going out for drinks, people could be waiting half an hour for a twenty minute bus ride in (yes, we had taxis, but they were expensive). That's almost an hour - and that's pretty much at the least.

A couple of weeks ago down here I got home at around 10pm after a few drinks in town to a message from someone who was in a bar just down the road ... so I went straight back out, met him within 10 minutes and stayed out until 2am.

When I bought the house that I lived in for almost ten years, one of the critical selling points about it was that it would take me 15 minutes to walk to town. But that was me - other people lived further out; and that was also on this caveat that I didn't get back from work until 6:30pm; and that I was going out in town rather than some of the more tricky-to-get-to-suburbs. If I wanted to go out with people during the week, this required planning and - because of the amount of time it would ultimately take them to get home - was actually pretty unworkable spontaneously.

Now, this isn't an absolute now that I live in London. Yes, there is a lot going on, but some of these things can be a bit of a distance away. One of my friends in Camden invited me our for a rugby game a few weeks ago. Clapham to Camden is 30 minutes on the tube, not to mention the ten minutes walk at his end. But at least the tube runs until midnight even on normal, weekday nights. Buses back up in the midlands used to stop before 11pm and were at that time on between a 15 minute and an hourly cycle.

And, you know, people live far further east and west. Last weekend we did a pubcrawl starting out in Richmond. The starters were somewhat scant - we started with 7, and a lot of that was down to its westerly starting point. One of those starters came from Stratford and it took him just over an hour and a half (albeit via a bacon sandwich seller). Most of those who joined later had actually being doing other things during the day, but there were a couple who were only going to meet us once we "got more central".

I remember dating someone who lived in Tooting. For him, "heading into town" - that being Soho - was quite a big thing. They had a couple of local bars in Tooting to pop to, a bigger night out would involve Clapham; and that would be because a night bus back from Clapham could take half an hour. A night bus from "town" could be almost two. Believe me, I know - Sunday I walked for a good 10 minutes to wait 15 for a night bus which took not far shy of half an hour. So an hour in total from Tottenham Court Road to Clapham. That said, back up North on a Sunday (even a bank holiday Sunday) there would have been nothing other than taxis. And a huge queue for those with policies such as "we don't do journeys of less than 5 miles" (Uber only arrived as I left).

But, where the real fantasticness and - more to the original point of the blog, rather than just commenting on connectivity - fantasyiedness comes in occurred on Monday.

At around 5pm (bank holiday) Monday night my friend Brian rang. He wanted to watch a movie. I was in Soho photographing stuff. I said I'd be there at 7:30. Within two and a half hours I had had another drink, gotten the tube home, cooked pie and mash (I actually did, this isn't just a cliche) and gotten to Brian's - no tube, just a 30 minute walk (I stopped off to buy a sugar-free lemonade). At 11, after the film had finished and we had our post-movie chat, I poddled back home.

All sorts of awesome.

But what makes this particularly weird from my perspective is that whilst I lived up North, I stayed with Bri down South. When I turned up on a Friday I "moved in" for the weekend. I turned up with a rucksack, I stayed the nights, and then I went off to the train station.

Brian was my base - my second home.

This Monday there was no "moving in". I turned up in my own time, watched and left. I went home. Home. Not to a train station but to this weird, fantastical London home. I left with nothing - nothing at all, rather than hulking a rucksack around with me. This is the dynamic change not just to the relationship I have with my friend, but to the whole relationship I have with London. Despite the fact that I used to visit 3/4/5/6 times a year, that's what I was - a visitor.

Now?

I am a Londoner.

A Brief Life Update

Ok, so where was I?

No job, no home ... and awaiting an operation to disable one of my arms.

Yeah. All was looking good.

No - it actually was looking good.

No job lead to the no-home situation. This was the best thing ever.

No, seriously.

You see, I should have been in London ten years ago. I think I've explained this before. And the only reasons I wasn't was because of the house and the job.

I just got the house into a sellable (though not perfect) condition.

And at exactly the same point I got made redundant.

But, I got my new job - heart of Mayfair. Does it get better? Working a proper 9-5:30, few late nights, good salary, Mayfair. It's all a bit too fucking awesome.

So, I'm renting down in Clapham. This is the best thing ever. It's so convenient for everything. For town, for work, for the outer zones, for nights.

The house sale hasn't been as quick or successful as hoped. The first sale fell through, half because of the buyer's situation, half because the agents suggested that I would take responsibility for some of the works required by the buyer's lender.

Second sale - for more, although no thanks to the agents (who wanted me to take less) seems to be progressing ok. So far.

But London is the best move I made - albeit like I said 10 years too late.

I set myself a challenge: #DoOneThing . #DoOneThing involves doing one thing a week that is a little off beat. Something outside of the 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as seems to have become the norm).

How often have you spoken to people from even your own home town, said that you'd done something and heard "I must get around to that"? Too often with me. And with my London friends - it seemed as though I'd done more living outside of the city than they had.

And so in the last four months that I've been down here, I've been to more gigs, theatre, comedy, art, film and sports stuff than I perhaps ever have. I've certainly broken the rule and done more than one thing a week.

I broke my rule. Many times. Take next week - depite it being a bank holiday, I'm going to the recording of a tv show, a theatre performance and a comedy gig. That's more than one thing.

Isn't it all fantastic?