the vomit.

puke, gag, retch.

i’ve lived in boston, montreal, and new york. i’ve visited cities big and small all around the globe. and i have never anywhere else seen as much vomit as i have in london.

upchuck, blowing chunks, tossing cookies, spewing – call it what you will, but it’s everywhere on the pavements of the big smoke. it makes running on sunday mornings a minefield, and turns a monday morning commute a stomach-churning experience.

against walls, in bus shelters, next to gutters – you’re always encountering the remnants of someone’s unsuccessful drunken curry or hungover chips. if you’re particularly unlucky, you’ll see the heave in action, in full technicolour effect with sound. i’ve seen more strangers puking in public than i care to count. the pigeons peck at it, then it dries to a dark spatter, eventually washing away with the rain.

it’s a particularly nasty side effect of the binge-drinking culture that’s so prevalent here, and i will not miss it at all.

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the thing about london spring? you start feeling it in the air at the end of january – the cold starts to lose its edge. and you think to yourself, “it can’t possibly be spring yet.” and it isn’t – not quite yet.

but in february those crocuses and daffodils start emerging, and they tease you with the scent of greenery in the air. what follows is usually weeks of grey damp – the kind where you can’t remember what the hell compelled you to set up shop on this crazy island where dreariness seems endless and the gloom is so dispiriting it crushes the hope right out of you.

and then, it hits. like someone’s turned on a thousand brilliant lights all at once. there is grass and there are warm breezes, and the sun is so dazzling it stuns all your senses. your nose and lungs fill and fill and all your nerves are vibrating with energy from the warm glow on your skin. it happens on *one day* and everyone londoner feels it on that same day, migrating out into the fresh air and open spaces en masse, like birds returning home.

it happened this weekend, and reminded me what a magical thing it is – and even though it arrives in exactly the same way each year, it makes you feel alive as if you’ve never been alive quite that intensely before.

I will miss that.

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i fly to vancouver in less than 3 weeks, and it’s all starting to feel a little too real. i’ve got 9 days left in the office, my replacement has been hired. i need to think about what to pack. i need to think about what i’m going to do when i get there.

but at the same time, all my plans are so tenuous, i’m afraid to even talk about them for fear of jinxing it all. or for fear of having to eat a large slice of humble pie if i have to come crawling back to london in a few months. or for fear of finding a job, making the move, and then realising i hate it. or for fear of not finding a job in vancouver, not finding a job back in london, and ending up long-term unemployed and running out of money. or for fear of moving and having something go horribly wrong with health/relationship/family and having no network of support.

there’s a lot of fear. which is why i’m not talking about it.

i’m starting to look at everything as if it’s the last time i will be experiencing it. which, if everything goes smoothly, it very well might be. come april, it is all into the great unknown, so i’m doing what i do best: ignoring it.

i’ll let you know how that works out.

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… i am most grateful for:

- my childhood copy of “Free to Be You and Me”. it was my first exposure to feminist and in a million subtle ways it would shape my view of my life as a woman-to-be.

- my local library for stocking it, and letting me check it out over and over and over again.

- and my mom. who modeled equality and capability for me every day. and still does

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