Say It Again, Sam

I’m like a stick of rock. No matter how much you nibble, you always find the word ‘London’ running through me. But, my love affair with the Old Smoke has cooled of late. Now I’m older, slower and stiffer, I’m less in the mood for the no-time-to-talk, coffee-on-the-go fast lane of many colours that is the great metropolis. These days I’m content to dip in and out as and when. And each time I do, London whacks me across the face to remind me not to neglect my ardour. Just like the time, during the Turkey years, we returned for Christmas and found ourselves surrounded by a gaggle of girls painting the town red and having a ball. We’d got so used the absence of women from our Turkish townscape, it felt totally liberating. Then there was the afternoon we emerged from Tottenham Court Tube Station to be swept along by a tsunami of people drawn from the four corners of the world demonstrating how truly international London has become. And just recently, I stood in the concourse of Victoria Station and noticed how young everyone was as they darted around me. I suddenly felt ancient. Norwich, by comparison, seems positively geriatric despite her two universities and student vibe. Wasn’t it Samuel Pepys who famously wrote, ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’? I may have slowed down a little but I hope I will never tire of either.