new hori­zons

Sep­tem­ber in Lon­don.  Life has resumed that fran­tic “Who’s com­ing to din­ner tonight?”, “When did I say we were going to that play?” and “Did I men­tion I won’t be home until 5 tomor­row because of dra­ma?” and “Can you help me car­ry the ban­quet table to the kitchen for 30 vol­un­teer ladies to come to lunch tomor­row?” qual­i­ty.  Every morn­ing my email inbox is filled with sug­ges­tions of meet­ing times for Lost Prop­er­ty, for the school Christ­mas Fair, the church Christ­mas Fair, for vis­its to my Home-Start social work fam­i­ly, for spe­cial bell­ring­ing prac­tices and ring­ing for extra ser­vices, for weddings.

Some­times we have to put away the com­put­ers, set aside the home­work, switch the phones to “silent” and gath­er around the table for a bowl of restora­tive com­fort.  I promise you will nev­er make or eat any­thing  more sus­tain­ing, more inspir­ing, more savoury, than this soup, the recipe for which has made its way to my love­ly food­writ­ing site, Hand­Picked Nation.  Chick­en meat­balls in a mag­i­cal her­by broth!

Every­thing inter­est­ing and busy in our lives pales, how­ev­er, in com­par­i­son with our big news: we are the proud own­ers of a… plot of dirt.  Well, a plot of net­tles.  A plot of dirty net­tles in a place where Shake­speare walked from home to his office at the Globe The­atre.  A plot of land 300 yards from the Thames where in 43 AD the Romans land­ed and built a port city.  I am not mak­ing this up.

After three years’ work look­ing for a place to ren­o­vate, John has suc­ceed­ed in going one step far­ther.  We’re start­ing lit­er­al­ly on the ground.  With an ancient wall and ancient grave­stones to respect, as we build our house.

Of course the road will be long.  Believe it or not, we’ve bought this dirty plot with absolute­ly no per­mis­sion to build any­thing on it.  That will be the first hur­dle.  There will be many, many peo­ple breath­ing down our necks to say “No way!  We want to keep this piece of dirt emp­ty!”  And then if and when we get per­mis­sion to build some­thing, there will be a lot of intru­sive inter­est in WHAT we build.  Should it fit into the land­scape, or stand out?  Actu­al­ly that’s an odd ques­tion because Lon­don is the kind of city where you can find one of just about every­thing just by look­ing around you.  With­in shout­ing dis­tance of our new pos­ses­sion are a huge glass office build­ing, a Vic­to­ri­an school, a mar­vel of 1960s munic­i­pal archi­tec­ture and a giant hole in the ground about to be filled with an enor­mous apart­ment building.

And, because it’s fuzzy, enrivon­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive Lon­don, our back­yard will be a huge, eter­nal­ly pro­tect­ed herb garden.

Isn’t it thrilling?

Avery is incensed, in a com­plete­ly sweet way, because she’s being forced to live out her teenage years in our West Lon­don bucol­ic vil­lage.  Boo!  “How is it that JUST when I get ready to go to uni­ver­si­ty, you guys will be mov­ing into this total­ly cool East Lon­don heav­en?” is her refrain.  Oh, well, she can visit.

Nico, the secu­ri­ty guard whose job for the last 23 years (he was hired the year we were mar­ried!) has been to go over to the plot with his flash­light at dawn and dusk, is over the moon.  “May I ask what you plan to… DO with it?” he asked del­i­cate­ly.  “Live in it!”  He’s very excit­ed for us.

We brought home the key to our pad­lock, feel­ing like chil­dren who’ve been giv­en a tree­house.  John is beside him­self with joy, over­flow­ing with ideas about mate­ri­als, light, mak­ing sure we have enough blank walls for the art instal­la­tions we had to leave in stor­age in New Jer­sey when we moved here.  All I want is a porce­lain sink!  And room for my books.

So John’s life now has gone from obsess­ing over find­ing a place, obsess­ing over the strat­e­gy nec­es­sary to buy the place, into over­drive on what the place will even­tu­al­ly BE.  To this excit­ing end, he is meet­ing all the time with archi­tects to explain his vision for our even­tu­al house.  Mean­while we’ll be apply­ing for per­mits, beg­ging the indul­gence of var­i­ous pub­lic offi­cials, get­ting to know the neigh­bor­hood.  I have already staked out the beau­ti­ful mar­ket near­by, and the enor­mous church with TWELVE BELLS where I will be ring­ing, even­tu­al­ly.  We antic­i­pate mov­ing date in 2016.

Because I am at heart a dark Scan­di­na­vian just wait­ing for the sky to fall, I real­ly don’t believe any of it.  I imag­ine the city will make us give it back, or nev­er let us put down a brick.  Or I’ll be hit by a bus before we get to move in.  But luck­i­ly my bet­ter half is hap­py Ital­ian and Irish, and he might just pull me along, as a part­ner on an amaz­ing journey.

Watch this space!  Literally.