The Jollies

I work in Staines now, and rent in Hounslow. Both are, as far as I can see in my limited exposure, not the most beautiful places in and around London. But Staines is on the river, has pubs with terraces and will be quite lovely in summer I suspect. And Hounslow, well, it's convenient. 

To get from one to the other I mainly take a bus. One of the routes goes around Heathrow and through Ashford, the other through Feltham and Ashford in order to get to Staines. And I gotta say, as far as dreary goes, those places have to be near the top... Granted, I hardly know them, I just see what the bus window presents, but oh, how very much do I not want to explore this area. 

Funny thing though, the shops and pubs seem to have taken quite a liking to names with the word "jolly" in it. The Jolly Baker, Jolly Butchers, The Jolly Farmer... Or things like The Happy Landing. Most of these do not look particularly jolly, or happy, or even inviting. Or maybe I'm just an ignorant snob, who knows. 

Be that as it may, I wonder, in my years here in London I have not come across many pubs with jolly or happy in their name; none comes to mind although I am sure there must have been one or the other Jolly Whatsisname. But in this area, they are everywhere! Why is that? 

My theory, and feel free to contradict me, is that because it all looks so dreary around here they had to try and get at least some sort of positive note in. Power of suggestion and that kind of thing, maybe throw in a bit of conspiracy theory as well, government's secret plan to keep the inhabitants of squalid suburbia from aiming for too much change... If you see the words jolly and happy often enough you might, at some point, start to believe it actually is jolly or happy, or so the logic goes. And even though just by calling a ramshackle old dive Jolly Something doesn't make it any less of a ramshackle dive, maybe, just maybe, and given that there really isn't much of any other choice around there anyway, once you've had a couple of pints you really do believe anything they say, even if it is convincing you that this indeed is jolly. 

Well, jolly good I say. You enjoy the Jolly Butcher, and I stick to the nice pubs! Slainte!

All New and Everything Still the Same

It's strange, but somehow I feel like I return to the same place over and over again. Where common expectation wants to see a linear progression I tend to run around and around on a spiral, never in the same place twice, but somehow recognising the situations and patterns. 

So here I am again, another job, another flat, another area, another set of people. It's good, I like it, and after those intense last 8 months I was craving some big change in my life. It's just weird to be here, still in London, but everything is so different, none of the areas I now see every day are familiar, none of the faces are, everything is new. I haven't really figured out where to go if I want to get some things, or who to call if I want to meet for a beer nearby, and I miss my Turkish bread and the Palace on the hill behind my flat... 

Hounslow is certainly interesting, a lot of Indian food etc, but I have yet to find something pretty around here, or a nice park, or even a pub that looks at least somewhat inviting... But then again, who would I go with, I don't know anyone in Hounslow, yet, so for pubs I will still arrange to meet people in town.
Distances have suddenly taken on a very different meaning. London seems so far away, meaning Central London, although hopping on the tube would mean I'd be there in 40 mins. Well, it took me that same time to get into town from Wood Green, too, although admittedly that was because I would always prefer the bus. By bus from here would take way longer. So, I am not actually that far away from my old familiar life, and I've had the chance to meet up with a few friends who live not too far away from me now, over in posh town, which I must say is really pretty: Places like Richmond or Kingston, they do look very nice. I still feel out of place there, though, I guess I prefer a certain amount of scruffiness after all. Within reason...

Not so far away from my old familiar life, but far enough to make me feel like I have again ended up in some completely new place. It does feel like a bit more of an effort to meet up with friends, maybe because they are not part of my daily surroundings anymore. Before I would pass a place and remember having been there with one or the other person, and that would remind me to call them. Now all is new. All faces I meet everyday are new. At the new office I am starting to get to know new people, which is all good and exciting, but it again opens up an entire new chapter in my life, and I am not sure how to connect this to my old life. I will manage eventually, I always do, by finding ways of throwing people from different parts of my life together into one big experiment... sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, depending on how these people get along. But I don't see it as my problem if they don't. Mah, anyway...

All new, all different, and I again feel a bit of that schizophrenia... where I adapt to yet another environment, with different people, different requirements, different expectations... They take over for the moment, and define my life for the time being, until the newness fades and I realise what to focus on. But all my other lives are there with me as well, my Japanese family and my home in Osaka, my parents in Germany and the places I have lived there, Malaysia with my friends and the heavenly food on every street corner... All those places and people that were once daily life for me, but which have nothing much in common with other places and people of other daily lives in my past. 

I'm not complaining, I chose to do this, I wanted to experience life in different places, make these places my home, these friends my family. What I didn't expect is how confusing it can be at times when I look at all these different people I love in my life, each in their own particular world which used to be my world as well at some point, but has somewhat changed since I was a part of it. And even more confusing, I connect to these people on the same level, but use a different language in each of these worlds, which includes not just words but thoughts and gestures and even the way I talk or present myself. If that makes any sense... As such, talking to different people in different languages is not so big a thing, but I tend to associate certain levels of intimacy to friends with certain languages. And find it difficult to separate them from each other. Which means I on occasion start using German with my Spanish friend, or English when talking to my dad... and sometimes only notice when I see those hesitant looks...

So here I am again, in a new chapter of my life, all new and different, another challenge to find my way around in. After having done this so many times I just really want to find a place to stay and settle, find some routine. I don't mean to get rid of change, I like change, change is good. I just want to scale it down a bit, and keep changes to smaller things, to some aspects of my life, not all of them all at once... Been there, done that, so many times. Don't you think it's time to change from constantly changing?