July 19, 2019
My first attempt to "romanticize where I live" started on Instagram. I was in my second year at university and had just moved to Peckham, sharing a small townhouse with four other friends. I used to wander the neighborhood, taking pictures that felt like little love letters. There was that gorgeous red convertible that sat outside my house for weeks, stuffed with newspapers and garbage piled high in the front seats like a tragic, urban sculpture. Or the way the glowing sun dipped below Queens Road Peckham’s barren platform. Once, on a warm summer night, I stopped dead in the middle of the road to capture the idyllic row of lit-up houses on my street.
I started this 'project' because I was beginning to dislike my neighbourhood, and that didn’t sit with me very well. Peckham was where I lived, where I walked every day, where I came home to at night - it was beautiful, and vibrant, a haven just south of the river. People outside of Peckham seemed all too happy to reinforce negative feelings. Friends, relatives, even strangers carried an unshakable prejudice. In their eyes, South London was poor, ugly, and bleak. Above all else, it was dangerous.
No one understood that I actually loved living in Peckham. How could they? They didn’t wake up to its blistering summer heat, or walk down Rye Lane to the sound of a dozen foreign tongues, reggae spilling out of car windows, and buses honking as they battled for space. Then there would be that unmistakable smell - the sharp stench of vomit in the gutter, raw fish on ice, pigs hooves, and chickens stripped and hung at the butcher's. It’s true. Peckham is chaos. It's alive. And most importantly, it does not need you to exist.
I remember walking home one night, exhausted and bitter. I had three assignments due and just finished my 10-hour waitressing shift at Smithfield. As I trudged home between the dimly lit lanes, an older man suddenly turned the corner on the street opposite me. He was balancing a boombox on his shoulder, a spliff dangling from his mouth. He was grinning at me. I smiled back. Without missing a beat, he turned up the volume, bobbing his head to the beat. He turned around the block, the faint echo of his music trailing behind.
There is something raw about Peckham, a realness that frightens people. It stands liberated and carefree, opposing anyone who dares to walk with a high nose: your opinion does not matter here, stand down and melt in.
Fast-forward three years later, and I am now living in Hackney. It’s different, to say the least, but what has changed more than my postcode is me. The vitality I once clung to has softened, exchanged for something more polished, more predictable. In return, I have now, more than ever, become terrified of opinion.
I think back to my time as a student when the question that haunted me most was: what’s the story? Time and time again, I'd walk into class, sit in my creative writing workshops and tear at the pages, breaking myself in half to find it. Every time I thought I had, the question would return: No, but really, what’s the story?
Now, that question has evolved - or maybe devolved - into something sharper: What’s your ambition? Everywhere I turn, it seems like people are waiting for me to declare my life’s purpose, to reveal a grand plan or even the stepping stones to one. Once again, I’m being asked to craft a story, but this time, it’s personal. This time, it's humiliating because the only harsh conclusion I wind up with is that frankly: I don’t care.
At university, I spent three years hovering over plotlines, sleeping with my protagonists, and dining with their nemeses. I lived in those stories, yet I never dared to call myself a writer. To be a writer meant being published. To be published meant being brilliant.
I long for the days in Peckham when the world didn’t care who I was, and I didn’t care much for it either. And while not much has changed - the world still doesn’t care - I have become acutely aware of what little time I have left in it, and how what I love to do most, I do little of. I’ve yet to figure out what my ambition is, but I do know I am excited to be alive. Can that be enough?
London is hard and ever-changing. It is a city where you can easily lose yourself and everything with you. That doesn’t sit with me very well. So, I return to my idea of romanticizing where I live, and I invite you to join me on this journey, as I go every week from borough to borough, to explore this wild metropolis and the reasons worth living in it.
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