Before Brixton, there had been Fulham, the place that I’d landed after 2 years in Paris.
After the intoxicating social scene of Paris, Fulham felt a bit flat; the cold, grinding tube; the 11pm pub curfews and London’s geographical expanse made it feel fractured in a way that the compactness of Paris hadn’t. We’d lived cheek by jowl in Paris’ 9th arrondissement; Orthodox Jews, Algerian elders, sex workers and us giddy ex-pats all rubbing up against one another heedlessly.
Fulham was also the first time I’d lived with another woman. We’d been together for going on four years and I felt duty-bound to give co-habitation a spin. Strange really as I knew I wasn’t in love with her, didn’t want to live with her and didn’t intend to spend the remainder of my life with her. This inability for me to clearly articulate my needs would cause us both a lot of grief and would continue into the relationships that were to follow.
It was whilst co-habiting in Fulham that I met the woman who would become my wife, in a train carriage at Clapham Junction station. She was reading a book by meditation wunderkind, Joseph Goldstein, I was wearing cool Nike trainers. Each clocked this aspect of the other but it wasn’t for another 3 years over in Dalston that we finally got together.
When she offered to edit my first short story.
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