A Kind Of Homecoming

I returned to London last weekend for the Total Bollywood Extravaganza of my cousin's wedding. This was an absolutely wonderful affair - lots of drumming, lots of singing, lots of dancing. And more drumming. And singing. And dancing. And did I mention the drumming? There was a lot of it. The whole thing was great fun & the sharp-eyed may even catch a brief glimpse of your bloggist, deep in conversation with the groom's mother, among the photos in the link.
The experience of return was a mixed one. Earlier in the weekend, walking around the streets of a western suburb with a cherished former lover, I'd been struck more strongly than ever before by how this was no longer my town. The imaginative experience of living in a great city, falling in love with one of its inhabitants and enjoying the lived moment in the desires of another is absolutely matchless. Truthfully, I probably lived that most intensely in Washington DC years ago, but London had always been the focus of my longing for the incomparable life of a city when you're in love. On Saturday the skies were grey & the pavements covered in leaves, the pollens of summer that concentrate in the great curve of the river between Molesey and Richmond had long since blown away from Bushey Park. London seemed to me to be shockingly inert - it had neither the immediacy of the instantly lived, nor the patina of memories that can make a revisited place such a powerfully felt experience. The fever had gone. On Sunday morning I drove back to Cumbria.