Two weeks ago, I stayed at my friend Linsey’s place for a couple of days to take care of her baby seedlings and the plants growing in her allotment whilst she was on holiday in Venice. On Wednesday afternoon, I packed my little backpack, got on my bike, and cycled an hour and a half through what was essentially all of London — through Clapham Common, over Westminster Bridge, past the Houses of Parliament to Embankment and through a long tunnel beyond which I didn’t recognise much until I got to the Olympic Park.
Linsey lives in Leyton, on a quiet little street in a flat that makes you feel calm as soon as you cross the threshold. This fits with Linsey’s general nature, really. Each item — from the stools at the kitchen counter to the soap in the bathroom, the Japanese knives, the ceramics from Norfolk, and the meticulously organised pantry — perfectly reflect the care and time she takes choosing what to fill her life with. “My boyfriend also insists on Scandi sparseness,” she tells me, which definitely checks out as I look around.
After putting my stuff down and taking some deep breaths after my big long cycle, I tucked the watering can under my arm and got back on my bike (only 4 minutes this time) to go and tend to the allotment. A space I would liken to a very green, very ramshackle slice of heaven. The kind of place where time slows down and everyone can just chill out for a second. There was a family with young kids having an evening picnic, a man who had clearly just come from the office tending to his courgettes, and another sitting on a little bench, staring at his sunflowers.
Linsey’s plot, a bit like her flat, is meticulously organised, with tomatoes and corn and cucumbers and little baby herbs and cosmos sprouts all planted in neat rows. To spend a pink-skied evening lugging water from the trough to all these signs of new life was a breath of fresh air in what I was beginning to realise had been quite a same-same few weeks.
On my way back to the flat, I stopped off at Aldi to pick up some bits for dinner. Given the wide array of Japanese condiments at my disposal at Linsey’s, I figured I should run with that theme and make some kind of Asian concoction. I picked up some mushrooms and herbs and some berries for brekky too.
In the weeks leading up to this point, I had thought a few times about the fact that I hadn’t run into anyone in a while. Usually, I bump into people all the time but in the last few months, nothing. So as I stood in line at self-checkout and saw the face of an old housemate, I couldn’t quite believe it. Here I was, in a place I’d been in for all of two hours, seeing someone I hadn’t laid eyes on since 2017. It’s not like the exchange was anything groundbreaking — we greeted each other with surprise, caught up on what we were both doing with our lives and went on our merry way.
The thing is, this wasn’t the only coincidental run-in I had during my little getaway. The next day, I cycled to Coal Drops Yard to meet a friend only to spot an old colleague who I thought was in Indonesia. It was such a joy to see her smiling face looking just as I remembered it and to realise that she wasn’t so far away and that we really should have dinner very soon.
Both of these chance meetings left me feeling like I’d flipped into some kind of alternate reality. One where I realise that all the people I used to know — and not just knew, but shared a house and a desk with — are just living their lives as normal with no overlap with my own until one of us jumps through a portal and into the other’s space. A good old jolt out of my own little bubble.
It really was a lovely couple of days. I would wake up early and tend to the sprouts on the windowsills before heading to the allotment. It was easy to concentrate on the work I had to do, I looked at my phone a lot less, and on my first evening, I watched a film by Agnès Varda that reminded me how much I love movies from a long time ago.
This little step into another life blew the proverbial windows open and swept away the cobwebs that had been building up in my everyday. The first cobweb being that although working from home is very practical and economical, it is also sneakily claustrophobic. Sneakily because at first it feels cosy and then you get used to it, and then all of a sudden you realise it’s Friday and the last time you actually did anything was Sunday afternoon and you haven’t seen anyone in days.
Sometimes all you need is a few hours in a new place or a place that isn’t your literal living room. I had my Human Design analysed once and I don’t remember much about it apart from that my particular profile means that I can’t just stay home and wait for action. I need to get out and about and let the ideas and the old friends and the threads of fresh thoughts come to me, not the other way around.
The next was that just because I like to collect things doesn’t mean my kitchen cupboards have to be quite so anxiety-inducing. Spending time at Linsey’s opened my eyes to all of the stuff piling up in my own house. Bits of paper that I pick up everywhere I go, tangled pairs of headphones, old batteries that I don’t know what to do with, mail that needs throwing out that always seems to end up in a cupboard by the front door.
So this past Sunday afternoon, with a mild hangover and an uncharacteristic wave of motivation to tidy, I removed every single thing from all of the cabinets and drawers, wiped them out, consolidated the spices, moved our bottles of oil and vinegar out of the smallest cupboard into a drawer where we can see them all at once, and got rid of all that no longer served us. The next step will be to do the closet in the bedroom and the overflowing bookshelves which I can’t seem to keep under control.
And lastly, it reminded me of the real-life pleasures that exist beyond the distractions of my phone. I’ve been having a bit of trouble with that lately but spending some time alone in someone else’s home jerked me right out of my screen-addicted little cycle. I’m still picking it up for no reason and scrolling aimlessly more than I would like, but I’ve also watched some great films these past few weeks — Chungking Express, Blow Up, La Piscine. I’ve eaten most of my meals in the garden, inspected the new shoots here in my own personal allotment, and watched the birds and the cats that pass through in the mornings. I just needed a bit of a shake out of my own life to come back with fresh eyes and I’m feeling a lot lighter for it.
So the next time a friend needs you to look after their flat or their cat or their little baby plants, take them up on it. It’ll leave you feeling like new.
See you in the next one,
Annabel x