Ne vedem mai tărziu, London
My flight was five hours late landing in Toronto on Tuesday night and although that would normally put me in a rage beyond words, I just didn't care. I was too glad to be leaving London. When I arrived at Gatwick to check in, I was told that the flight would be two hours delayed. Not a problem, I had books and what's two hours when you don't have anything else to do, anyways? So I had final terrible, overpriced English coffee at apostrophe and waited. The flight itself was fine, I was too stuck into my books to mind. But just before landing in Toronto, the captain told us that we'd have to circle for 10-15 minutes. Again, fine, what's 10-15 minutes anyways? However, when they showed the screen with the time to distance, speed, elevation etc., it said that we were 47 minutes to destination and no matter how long we circled, it stayed at 47 minutes. (It then occured to me that A) Zoom and the Czechs must know something about time control that I don't and that B) we weren't going to be landing in 10-15 minutes) Eventually, the captain announced that we'd have to go to Ottawa to land because there was a thunderstorm that we couldn't land in and that we would run out of fuel before we'd be able to land. So back to Ottawa we went, where we sat on the runway for about 15 minutes before it was announced that we'd be leaving in 15 minutes. When we did finally land in Toronto, we had to taxi for another 15-20 minutes before getting a gate at the terminal. But it didn't matter. Because when the captain signed off the final current weather conditions and local time at destination update with "and if Toronto is your home...welcome home", I couldn't help but tear up.
It hasn't taken many days back in Toronto to fully realise that London isn't the place for me; it isn't home. They're small things that I miss when I'm there, small things that I have a hard time getting over. When was the last time I had a good coffe in London? When was the last time I spent a day in sandals without coming home at the end of the day with completely blackened feet? When was the last time I stood perfectly still and felt completely, wholly warm, inside or outside? When was the last time someone from one of my regular haunts noticed when I wasn't around and asked where I'd been? When was the last time I woke up to birds and went to sleep with total silence coming in the open window?
London is big, busy, filthy, perpetually damp and completely anonymous. It's overpriced, pretentious and self-important. It's such a pervasively annoying city; it won't shut up, it won't go away. I don't want to go back.