These days are pigeon feeding and weekly planning, health board activities and dodged gym sessions, hoarding then decluttering, filling in holes and drilling new ones and painting over them.  In between, I sit down to try and find the centre of myself, because if I want to be a great writer I must.  There are so many copycats and so few genuine voices.  All my life, I’ve let everyone else’s voice scream so loud in my head that my own is all but silenced.  How can I identify it through the noise?  It changes, too.  Like the seasons or the tides, it’s never consistent, and its fluidity makes it hard to grasp and channel.  Each new impression or suggestion brings a new flow and inevitably changes the direction.

The London skyline has changed so much since I moved here ten years ago.  I remember when the Gherkin (“the dildo” as we knew it back then) was the most prominent building in the City, rising proud and round from a low-rise, unassuming city.  Now it’s been swallowed up by a forest of skinny skyscrapers, and overshadowed by the aggressive Shard which sits on top of the vaults where we once danced from dusk till dawn and caught the bus home in the scarlet light of morning, against the backdrop of Tower Bridge casting its reflection in the choppy waters of the Thames.

But now the vaults are closed and life is something else.  I suppose ten years is a long time.  Ten years ago I was an entirely different person, so it would make sense if the city, too, has changed.  Hopefully when the old makes way for the new we don’t lose too much of who we were.

It’s still cold and grey and I stay in with my DIY and podcasts, and hold out for springtime and new adventures.  “April, come she will…”