A Bend in The Road

It looks like a permanent move to Edinburgh could be on the cards.

I love my house here, the birds singing, the trees so close by, so much light and air up here on the hill. But do I still love London? My closest friends in the city are moving, the scenes I used to enjoy have palled considerably, though there is some underlying link to the Old Town that will never change. I would sooner live here than most places in England, excepting Oxford, Stroud and York, but it would feel like a relief to leave England right now.

It's a sweet almost-synchronicity that I've been doing all this prodding around my father's background only to suddenly have the opportunity to buy up there. Edinburgh I knew in the 80s; the city, always grimly elegant, is cleaner now, the drug addicts and HIV sufferers far fewer. It was beautiful in the days of its soot, and is even more so now.

I have just had a neighbour come around to tell me that they have been broken into. Second burglary on this street in less than a month, this road that has always been so quiet. It makes me feel sick. One can't run away from the fear of robbery for ever, wherever you go there are people, and people aren't always nice or decent or good. The answer I guess is a good alarm system.

It certainly makes the idea of leaving London a bit less daunting.

Strange dreams, perhaps reflecting my new choices. An enemy, no words spoken but a gentle atmosphere between us, a memory of being good friends back in the 90s. My mother, finding a baby bird and when I asked her to bring it, throwing it out of the window down at me! I was able to catch it before it impacted the ground, and I started nursing it. Next dream, watching as a giant weasel came into view then went away again and then in came some quadruped rather like a dog but covered in spines thicker than porcupine quills. I had no idea what the beast was. It looked friendly though.

No sleep recently, even writing here tires me. I'll be back later.