In hindsight, it was a rather stupid move to uproot my life for a boy I met on a boat in Sydney one summer. But, ever the hopeless romantic, after a six-day holiday romance nine years ago when I was 29, I packed up my life in London to move across the world for him. When I told friends and family my plan, while most of them were supportive, a few looked (understandably) baffled.
I had a job I loved heading up the social media for a well-known literary prize, lived in a gorgeous flat in a pretty part of Battersea, south London, was training for the London marathon, and had a wide circle of friends. One particularly wary pal quoted Samuel Johnson at me, saying that if I was tired of London, I must be tired of life. But that sentiment never rang true.
For the five years I lived in London , my house, my housemates, the street on which I lived, the leafy lanes down which I jogged and the bars in which I drank were everything to me. I lived and breathed London, in all its potent, polluted glory. I loved the city’s energy, its cultural tapestry, its grit and its grime.
I was simply lured by the promise of sunshine, and a man I naively thought was the one. Soon after landing in Sydney six months later, I knew I had made a mistake. It became immediately clear that my hopes of continuing where we left off was naïve at best, idiotic at worst.
Things with him ended soon after, but despite the triple onslaught of heartbreak , humiliation and homesickness, I began to appreciate the rhy.