I can’t tell you how many many times I’ve visited and walked through and around Temple, exploring all the nooks and crannies, visiting Temple Church again and again, awed by the history.
I never for one second thought I would find myself working and living in the complex. And yet here I am and its strange.
If I had stopped to think about it, if I’d even imagined people actually lived here, I certainly would have thought it would be amazing to live in such a historical area; an area of myths and legends, of Knights Templar and King John…..he of Magna Carta fame.
You know how sometimes you’ve visited a place and thought “oh how much I’d love to live there!” – usually a cute thatched cottage or a beautiful mansion. But we never really get to know what it is like, because we don’t explore the opportunity of it. Would it even be as magical as what we imagine?
Weirdly it doesn’t feel any different to living anywhere else. There’s nothing special about the flat, its dingy and old with no mystery at all….no feel of the history of the area.
We’re located very close to the archway made famous in The Da Vinci code and yet it holds no mysticism.
Have I been away too long, lost my awe for these places, or is it still there but buried over time? Have I been keeping my eye for too long on other horizons to explore? Been here, done that type of thing.
Or is it that its wet, and cold and grim out and the flat too lifeless and uninviting? I can find nothing to excite me, no feeling of lives past, no ghosts…..
I’ve lived in a 16th century cottage in Montgomery in Wales with more atmospheric feeling and loved it. I’ve worked and lived in a castle in Scotland and stayed a few weeks in a gypsy caravan on the banks of the River Thames on Eel Pie island. I felt the atmosphere, I felt the air of people gone before.
And yet here I am, about to spend my 1st night in one of the most historic areas of London, and its leaving me stone cold. I’d rather be back in the guest house…
I think I’ve lost my sense of home. It’s so long now that I had a place to call home, a place where I returned to after each job. My own bed, my clothes in a cupboard instead of a suitcase in a storage unit.
I seldom even use the word ‘home’ now and if I say it, it’s a slip of the tongue. A habit I’ve yet to lose. I don’t belong anywhere, although I go back to the same area after each job, just different guest houses, none of them are home.
They say that home is where the heart is. That’s not true. I know where my heart is, but it’s not my home.
And so I’ll be sleeping in another strange bed (not a very comfortable one either 😜😜) and I know by morning my hips will be aching and I’ll be stiff and sore from metal springs pressing….
And in the meantime, reading The Salt Path has evoked a longing in me. A longing to just shuck my arms through the straps of my backpack and go.
The reviews of the book make it sound amazing and wonderful and romantic. It’s anything but. It about hardship and pain and hunger, and love…and a strong enduring love that overcomes hardship and pain and hunger, to find freedom and joy in living free.
It’s making me melancholic and pulling me towards doing the same thing. Do you think that once the walking bug enters your soul, it leaves you wanting more, with an uneasy longing to just go? To walk and walk and walk…..to walk despite the pain, the blisters, the hardships and the rain.
Is there a sense of home in having no home?
Meanwhile, besides the loud TV tuned into Midsomer Murders, its quiet and still as if the air is holding its breath, the lights of the city twinkling in the dark, the silhouette of St Paul’s Cathedral dark and foreboding and if I crane my neck out one of the windows I can see the shimmering movement of the Thames as it rushes out to sea…
Have I moved on from London? Or has London left me behind?
I can find none of the enchantment I used to feel coming into the city, and that saddens me.
So tomorrow I’m going to go out during my break and see if I can find the thrill, the excitement and my love of the city….hope it’s not raining, I’ve got 477.7kms to catch up on before 31 December.
These are some interesting questions you raise. What is home? Where is it really? I know I have felt these feeling in the past when I was living on the road and that was only for 3 months. Yet even when I am at my so-called home, I house that I own, with all my belongings exactly where I want them to be, I have felt this same feeling. Sometimes I feel more at home when I go and sleep on the beach. It’s weird no doubt and I’m sure some will point out that you should feel lucky to just have a roof over your head and an uncomfortable bed to sleep on when so many don’t. But that doesn’t change the feelings as feelings are relevant to the situation they are in. I have met people who are homeless and yet feel more at home where they are than I have ever felt.
I think we are sold on this idea of what a home “should” be. A house, a comfortable bed, couch, TV, closet to hang our clothes. But I don’t think that’s the case for many of us who experience the world beyond the 9 to 5 home to work, work to home cycle.
For me, home is in my car, on the open road, driving somewhere I haven’t been. For you, it sounds like home is on the open path, walking, exploring. It is a meditation, a place of peace and contentment, even with the pains that come with it.
Don’t let someone else’s idea of home cloud your own. Cause really, “home” is just an idea we can hold on to or let go of. When you really think about it, home can only ever really be within us as that is the only place we truly exist.
💜💜
I am definitely a homebody and would struggle not to have a permanent home somewhere. But I do love the romance of the open road, too. Especially walking…I would love to do at least part of the Camino sometime. I also love books about walking. One of my faves is The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. That’s a great walking book! I do envy you your ability to experience first-hand all those wonderful historic sights but I also understand that it’s different to visit a place and to live there. Would like to get the chance, though, that’s for sure! 🙂
😃 yes, it’s a conundrum. I love travel and consider myself lucky to have the opportunity that millions do not. But oh how much I long for my own front door, that I can step through and shut out the world, a space where I can put out all my books, my CDs, my clothes and a space I can have my grandson to visit. Its hard living out of a storage unit ….
Thanks for the reminder of that book….I keep forgetting the title.
You should definitely walk the Camino, I can highly recommend the Portuguese coastal route from Porto.
I think the idea of walking the open road is more romantic than the reality. Its amazing no doubt, but its hard. I cried every day from pain and exhaustion and I was very fit…but would I do it again…absolutely. my long distance walks now define how I view myself. 😄🙃
Lovely to hear from you