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Day One Hundred and Forty Five: I Miss England

It’s impossible not to.  I miss King’s Cross station and how busy it was but how I knew where everything  went and how to maneuver and the lines!  The Oyster cards out and people running into eachother and the ads for the West End shows as you rode the escalator.  I miss the absolutely frustrating stops betweenKing’s Cross and campus, and how it took twenty minutes to get to class when in reality it shouldn’t take more than ten.  I miss the construction workers who virtually did nothing but stand around.  I miss my faschist bookstore with the cute booksellers and I miss Drink Shop Do.  I miss my Tesco’s, with it’s alcohol and its Miller’s bar that turned into a lame show after eleven.  I miss the cross that was always green.  I miss the tree’s, and the cobblestone street before Nido.  I miss the revolving oors that lead to our building and I miss the big Christmas tree’s and wreaths in the lobby. 

I miss Angel, and the weird fork in the road between Angel and Camden Passage, which I knew all the steps and how to get there.  The shopping centres with their student population and discounts, and the telephone booths everywhere.

I miss Covent Garden, desperately, enough to make my heart hurt every time I think about it and not being able to just take the Picadilly down for the afternoon and drooling outside of Burberry and watching the performer’s in the square.  I miss knowing where I was at all times because of the streets beneath my feet.

I miss the Thames.  So intensely that it actually hurts.  I miss breathing in and knowing history was around me, and that normal, vibrant, important people were around me.  I miss crossing bridges and feeling a part of it.  I miss living there, in all of its glory, because that means that I was a part of it too.

I miss London so desperately that I want to go back immediately.  I want to be there, and laugh and do my shopping and fly through Heathrow and Gatwick and Luton.  I wish I could be there right now, sipping a tea and looking out of my window and seeing Pentonville Road, and knowing that I was there.

There is so much I could write, about Portobello Road Market and every store I remember and the people I spoke to and the times I got lost.  The times on the busses, getting lost in bathrooms, in restaurants, meeting people, spilling drinks on people, laughing, laughing a lot, dancing a lot, laughing and dancing to jazz music on a Saturday night drinking whiskey and rollerskating to disco hip hop and laughing a lot.

Wearing wrist guards in the absolute pouring rain.  Getting lost.

Eating cupcakes in the dark, waiting for shows to start, the first time I rode the tube, the first time in a cab, the first time in King’s Cross, my first time on Green Park, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, Kensington St.James, my first time infront of Buckingham Palace.  And the second.  Third.  Tenth.

Climbing the stiars of busses and laughing when I fell, and laughing when we sat at the front watching bikers try to beat the busses.  The top of the busses at night, the lights, being in London.  Being there.

I miss it because I was there.  This is all coming out jumbled but I just finished watching a video of one of my youtuber’s at the Harry Potter Studio’s and eating Pret and being at Eusten station and I just can’t stop remembering things.  Remembering my first Pret sou, or sandwich, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, croissant, and loving it.  Being infront of Harry Potter manuscripts and books from 1664 at the British Library.  I guess I can’t talk about everything, you can get what I’m feeling from all that.

It’s not secret that I had an amazing time.  I suppose it might be a secret that I want to live there, and not come back.

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