I’d moved to East London from another house share, this time in Brixton. I’d broken up with a long-time girlfriend and thought a change of scene would help me move on. After a couple of years of teaching English at the Refugee Council, also based in Brixton, I’d decided to try and teach elsewhere.
I could say here that I was looking for a fresh challenge but that was hardly the case. I was a good teacher and I loved the rapport and understanding I developed with my learners (I still do) but I was hardly bounding out of bed in the morning to get into the classroom.
I vividly remember on my morning cycle to work through Clapham Common seeing tight knots of winos gathered around a dried-up fountain full of crushed White Lighting bottles and envying them their freedom and camaraderie. My over-arching professional ambition was simple; to do work that played to my strengths, that helped others, and was flexible enough that I could travel and go off on retreats on a semi-regular basis.
For all my other failings, I am the undisputed King of the work-life balance and have been even before it became a thing. No doubt I’ve suffered financially as a result. If you’d asked me where I saw myself in 5 years…well, I wasn’t even sure where I wanted to be in 1 year’s time. “Not here,” would have been my most likely reply. And this laissez-faire attitude to the future was all sanctioned by rather generously co-opting the Buddhist maxim to live in the present moment. I thought my attitude was enlightening and, despite a fair amount evidence to the contrary, I somehow still stand by it now.
Something new was in the air that summer though, the summer that followed my painful break-up with K and my move from SW2 to E8. Mary J Blige was hollering for no more drama in our lives but I was thinking that it was time there was a bit more in mine.
That it was time, finally, to write.
0 Replies to “Brixton, London SW2”