In search of Home

On returning to London, I find myself homeless, sleeping on floors and sofas - my back broken, tip-toeing around other people’s schedules, my internet borrowed, my belongings in boxes. I struggle to find a space in which to be creative, a house to shelter my daydreams and begin to question what it is I need to feel ‘at home’.

In the midst of all this I face the dreaded London flat hunt; hours spent wading through listings, faking laughter at the jokes of unfunny estate agents, contemplating windowless bedrooms and neighbourhoods that do not exist in my pocket sized A to Z. 
I begin to view the whole experience as an education in notions of home. I take on a duality: that of intellectual-detached-observer and homeless-person-in-need-of-a-flat. In the guise of a flat hunter, I venture into private realms, looking down into alleys and back gardens, catching glimpses into the lifestyles of unknown people. Every unsuitable flat in my search for shelter is at the same moment a treasure-chest full of clues to its past inhabitants and their ideas of home.

I begin to notice myself warming to cold tiles and high ceilings whilst finding English cosiness oppressive and claustrophobic - the fitted carpet my worst nightmare. These instinctive impulses towards spaces, materials and objects stem from nostalgic emotions and memories of my childhood Mediterranean home.

Whilst flat hunting I begin to notice remnants of other people’s nostalgias; a grape vine and an olive tree in a garden, a semi-circular arched opening between a kitchen and a dining room, a bedroom covered in embossed green and gold wallpaper, thick flowery pastel curtains and matching wicker sofas, packets of incense on a window sill, a kitchen painted pink. 
These fragments of culture, memory and personality are left behind to be removed, repainted, remoulded and recycled into a new tenant’s home.

I finally find a flat and begin to dream of filling it and shaping it into something that feels like my home. It is not just nostalgic trinkets of my childhood that I will fill it with, but souvenirs of holidays, gingham tablecloths, photographs of friends, inherited kitchen appliances, posters that represent feelings I cannot describe, books that I have come to love, furniture recalling eras I have never known, plants that have accompanied me year after year. 
Rented accommodation only allows for temporary inhabitation, and so the rented home is created as an impermanent collage of items. And so mine becomes a museum of fragments, of happy moments in my life, sheltering daydreams.

Goodbye Placa de Sant Felip Neri

Dear Placa de Sant Felip Neri,
you drove me to my limits, and yet I miss you.
Funny how often I contemplated leaving you but couldn't. And now that I finally have I am filled with sadness.