I wanted to write about the New Year, and seeing York again, the warmth of hot apple pie and camaraderie in the Evil Eye, curling up with Inkheart and tea in the homey familiarity of Halifax College, walking through snowfall in the dark and gazing out at the undisturbed layer of white in the Wood Court courtyard.

But then I had a long and tiring journey home, and a list of things to do that caught up with me, and I dallied over fixing dinner and tidying the kitchen, and before I knew it I was yawning over code and Photoshop and thinking aw crap I have to sleep because I’m really tired and tomorrow starts my first full 5-day week since before I went on holiday :(

So in a nutshell, three things:

one: Long, long overdue new layout is up – or perhaps "re-coloured layout" would be a more accurate term – as I’ve basically stopped varying the basic 3-column liquid layout (it is perfection and one shouldn’t mess with perfection).

two: The beginning of this year’s Project 365 is up here (RSS). I remember saying to Louis that I would do it this year if he did (which he is), but even before that I think I was already toying with the idea in my head – I have a woefully patchy documentary record of my life in London so far (heavily biased towards food, the South Bank, and baking), and it would probably be good for me, if for no one else, to have some sort of impetus to take more regular pictures. Maybe some will even have people in them!

three: I always think I’ve properly said goodbye to York, but then every time I return, I can’t quash the swelling sense of joyful anticipation inside me. Try as I might, I feel like a part of me is always going to think of York as my happy place, but at least, I think, I’ve now made my peace enough with the fact that that part of my life is in the past.

just a small-town girl, livin’ in a lonely world
she took the midnight train going anywhere

snapshots of perfect moments like this are what makes city life worthwhile. there was something beautifully alive about it all – the colours changing in the fountain, the national gallery lit up in the background, trafalgar square illuminated on an unnaturally balmy autumn evening – and all around the lively buzz of friday night, there but in the background, almost like movie music – so that as we sat down in the square leaning against a pillar, it was like a private little oasis of quiet contentment.

and in that moment i felt the city live, i felt i understood what dickens and the victorians meant by the city having a life of its own in a way the country doesn’t, there is a pulse running through london that i don’t know how to pin down or describe – but the way it lights up, the way its streets are worn down and its alleys twist, the way you never know who you’ll meet, the way it never ceases to surprise you after living here so long, the way it never sleeps…

all this flashed through my head almost subconsciously in a suspended instant, everything frozen, except for the constantly changing coloured lights in the fountains. i am, by nature, not a night person; i love my sunshine and the long days in summer, i love the calm of early mornings. but the more i spend nights out in london with good friends, coffee and ever-surprising night views, the more it is growing on me. night, and the city.

This hilarious photo near Blenheim Palace, from the Daily Telegraph, cracked me up when I first saw it but the more I look at it the more strangely evocative it seems. I think I have been feeling a lot like this over the past few days – like no matter how hard I try to fence myself off, to close the gate, there is a wide open expanse of chinks in my armour, whole gaping areas which can’t be blocked off. Where things just creep through anyway. At 23-going-on-24 there are so many things I feel I ought to be, to have learned by now, but haven’t; I am still so worried about how I am viewed, about being vulnerable, about doing what pleases others. I haven’t learned anything all that much, other than that I still have a long way to go – but maybe that in itself is a worthwhile lesson.

Weekends when good friends come to visit are always the best :) and Saturday mornings have taken on a new shade of happy altogether since picking up Japanese again. I love the language, I love my sensei, and my classmates are made of win. Never have I met a more diverse group of people with differing interests who clicked better. A fortnight ago I was saying to Pak how I feel that sometimes, you know instinctively you can get along with someone even if you haven’t all that much in common – there’s just this click, and you know, even if you’re a floaty-artsy-type and they’re into science or banking or architecture. I had a lot of trouble describing this clicky-feeling and what it was based on, and I don’t think I really succeeded, but I’m sure it’s there. I have felt it so often with the unlikeliest of people. And interestingly enough, hardly hardly ever with people who share my interests – my colleagues in theatre, my lit coursemates from uni.

A while ago, the realisation that by the end of this year, much of my London company will have left – either for greener pastures overseas, or to other parts of England – hit me pretty hard. And I guess maybe the time is long overdue to open the gate, to let others in, to be what i want, and stop being so afraid.