Being back in England (Take 2)

Right. Let’s sit down and have that recap we’ve been promising ourselves

“Right,” he says, “write.”

So it’s just over a month since I’ve been back in England. It’s not been a bad month; in fact, it’s been a decent month. Not the month I might have feared when I was rolling around on a Mexico City couch in turmoil unable to sleep when contemplating flying back to these shores. Nor the year like the last year I was back in England, which was grim and awful and took me right to the edge.

It’s been fine. It’s been nice.

But has it been nice enough to want to prolong it?

Actually, in fairness, it’s mostly been me sitting on me laptop doing daft things, which could be anywhere, and isn’t engaging with real life at all – so difficult to judge real life on that.

But that’s a bit of a vague comment that doesn’t really fit in with the general scheme of where I want to go with this, or what’s actually in my head. So…

A month. Lots of places and people visited. All things fulfilled. Everything ticked off the list. And now at that stage where something new must occur; that stage where it’s either: sit down, stay in one place, do the good ‘normal things’; or gad off on a plane to some other country and continue the mad adventure.

Mostly I’m thinking the latter. Mostly I’m thinking of rejoining that trail I was on – which means either jetting back to Mexico, or heading into lands unknown, somewhere now East, not West, and Asia.

But first…some thoughts, numbered in a list, because they’re not really connected and I don’t know how to make a chronological narrative of them…

1.

A thought about my eyesight: this weird story I have wherein my eyes went really bad when I came back to England in summer 2015, and were scarily and upsettingly and depressingly bad for the whole time I was there – after laser eye surgery in 2008; after running out on Mexico, because of various things – and then the wonderful lovely thing of how they got better again – went back to being good – after a month or so in Mexico, and everything was groovy.

That’s weird, right? That eyes could go bad and then good again. But true.

And I’d been to the opticians, and the opticians were cool – English medical folk are always cool, I find – ‘cos instead of just prescribing and taking money and sending me on my way, she asks questions about why I think it’s happening, and suggests maybe it’s just stress.

Stress, huh? What kind of stress? I don’t really gots no stresses in my life: only low-level stuff.

But then, low level stuff is sometimes enough for me: like the times my face puffed up, just ‘cos of almost nothing really, and stopped immediately when I sorted it, so…

Anyway. Yeah. I returned to Mexico. I noticed they were still bad when I got there – inability to read the signs in Wal-Mart; the kids at the back all blurry – and then, like I say, a few weeks down the line all those things disappeared.

Except…whaddya know? The moment I get back to England, everything goes blurry again. I’m not stressed out. I’m not unhappy about being here. And yet…

I immediately think, hm, I guess I won’t be staying here long, huh?

Eyes are important. Being on the right track’s important. Following my ‘soul’.

So it’s been a month and they’re still not what they were. And I guess that means I’s gots to get out of here.

2.

I wrote a couple of things in recent months that suddenly make total sense: one was how I found it weird that Mexican women paid me no heed; and the other was how unattractive English people seemed, after all those lovely faces and hair and beautiful brown cleavages.

And walking Yorkshire and Kent streets I totally realise why the lack of attention: ‘cos we English folk are mostly pretty ugly, and even living in a moderately attractive English face don’t mean nothing to them.

It’s like being the tallest dwarf. Like being a five-foot-nine Chinaman. Like being great at football when you’re playing with kids.

Ho hum: that’s slightly depressing.

And also needs a caveat: people in Norwich were really attractive; and people in London are really attractive.

But some o’ them other places I’ve been…

3.

Norwich was really nice. Like, really incredibly surprisingly nice. And not just in a nice simple provincial English city kind of nice, like Exeter, but also the kind of nice where things are happening, and groovy cafés and arts, and medieval buildings and rivers, and hipsters and music, and young people and things being taken care of, a pride in the city.

Stark contrast to Leeds! Once a city I loved.

Yeah, man, Norwich was hip.

4.

And then London: same old story, really, with London. Some really groovy things, like the Saturday game of football, and several of my most favouritest people in the world. And nice neighbourhoods to stroll round, and a sense of things happening, and whatever you’re into, you can totally find it, no matter how niche or strange.

A part of me thinks I could live there again. Good to be around those people. Good to sense those possibilities. Good to remember when I did live there, and cycled everywhere, and had my regular game, and even got creative things done, despite the necessary busyness (and maybe because of it).

But – oh, man – the planes: the goddamn planes. Constantly overhead. Constant droning din. Zero escape, even when in lovely park, in lush green oasis garden.

Like I say: same old London story.

5.

It does make it tempting, though: to be around good old friends, and to finally be having interesting, long conversations after the weirdness of [two paragraphs deleted here].

What a shame I can’t have both.

6.

Now I’m thinking of standing in the Sainsbury’s in Balham, not long after I’d landed, and trying hard to perceive the characteristics of the people around me: to contrast them with those Cabo Wal-Mart perceptions of empty-headed and afraid North Americans and the content brown-eyed Mexicans they wandered lost amongst. The lack of anger and aggression in Mexican faces. The stresses written across English brows and eyes.

The best time to formulate a sense of a people is right when you get off the plane, having been for some time somewhere completely different. Like returning from China and marvelling at how enormous everyone’s noses were (and how miserable they looked).

And so, in Balham, what did I see, in that long snaking queue for the self-checkout, standing there content with my bread and cheese?

I saw a line of people who looked…bored, and sort of worn down. As though they’d been in prison long enough to have the fight knocked out of them. Shuffling along in their shackles. On some sort of conveyor belt. No longer struggling or striving, just wearily following its course till the end.

It was as though the lights had gone off. A group of still-young people merely going through the motions.

I think I saw that a lot in London.

I suppose it could just be projection.

Mistaken.

More of a reflection of something inside me.

But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like something I’m seeing.

And it reminded me of my early-twenties idea of England as an old man in his rocking chair, having seen it all, done it all, and being now tired beyond wearisome at the lack of novelty and newness life had to offer, and yet having to continue to live it still – in contrast to the excited child of the US, all giddy with possibility, but also kind of dumb.

Poor old London. I’m sure it’s not really like that.

7.

And elsewhere in England? Mostly it just seems to be about buying stuff.

8.

So here we are. One month on, and back to where I was: thinking of randomly flying to Asia, or to renting a room in San Miguel de Allende and trying to sit down and write (though not really the latter, now I mention it).

What else is there? Move to Exeter once more and find a little income and do some typing? Play a game or two of football a week and get back into refereeing? Slowly make some friends, and zoom up to London every now and then, and…

Or hop on a plane to northern Spain and start the walk to Santiago de Compostela and see what happens?

No signs, no dreams, but – running out of country and options while I catch up with friends and fritter away the hours in internet indulgences and generally be quite lazy while at the same time tying up loose ends and still compulsively jettisoning possessions, till I’ve almost nothing left, and…

Yes. Well. Those are the kind of paragraphs that generally lead me on to long fruitless rambles about all the possibilities and confusions – whereas what actually gets me moving forward is a simple recap of what was – a pipe cleaning exercise – and a movement towards that place where I stand up from the comp all empty and fresh and ready for the future to come greet me and make itself known.

So what else is there from this recent past?

9.

I seed me mum, I seed me da.

I bought some trainers and some jeans – you’ll remember my not being able to find any my size in tiny-personned Mexico (of course you’ll remember that) – and I bought three laptops too (sent one back; will probably sell both the others when I’m done).

I sold me solar panel. I’m down to about 15 litres of possessions (ie, one little backpack).

I seed old chums. I went from Manchester to Leeds to London to Kent to London to Birmingham to Leeds to Norwich to Whitby to London to Kent (which is where I am now; and then back to London mañana).

I did a couple of weeks of work, and put eight hundred quid in the bank.

I played three games of football.

I ate lots of Kettle Chips and cheddar cheese, and had some good ol’ Yorkshire fish ‘n’ chips (not actually that good).

I faffed around online, pretty much whenever I could, ‘cos I’m addicted and find it interesting and crave mental stimulation and can’t think of owt else to do.

I wrote not a thing.

10.

That feels like pretty much it. My month is up. I don’t know what to do next. Though that Malaysia plane ticket is starting to loom large – and I even tossed a coin yesterday to maybe buy one going in 11 days.

The coin said nope; I shall have to toss one later to see about going in 4 days then.

11.

Mad old life, huh? I don’t expect anyone to understand it – I barely do myself – nor to really understand this ‘writing’.

‘S’not as good as when I was gadding around the deserts in Mexico, is it, just six weeks ago?

But it serves its purpose.

12.

I think I’ll quit facebook if I go away. Cease being so connected.

I’ll be in a land I know nothing about, and have no interest in researching, will just chuck myself in the river.

Best to be off grid: you never know who you’ll meet, or what’s around the corner, when living like that.

Probably best to quit my metabunking too.

13.

That’s all.