Home Sweet East London

I love my neighbourhood.

I crutched down to Roman Road today—an area known either for its tourist-attracting market or prevalent pick-pockets, depending on whom you ask—to return a library book and pick up a few grocery items.  It was (momentarily) sunny, the Cockney salesmen were shouting from their stalls, and my foot was feeling pretty good.

(I went for my latest check-up/rebandaging on Monday, by the way, and it's looking good.  Half of the skin has grown back, and my fingers are crossed for full coverage by my next appointment on Thursday.  I'm still using the crutches, but I'm able to put partial weight on my foot, as opposed to its previous state of too-sore-to-touch-ground.  Exciting stuff!)

I had completed my errands and was returning back down the road towards my house as two construction workers approached me.  One of them looked at me, made a sad face and said, "Aw, babes*, are you alright?"  I chuckled lightly and said, "Yeah, thanks."

A minute later, after a very old man briskly overtook me on the sidewalk—this probably would have depressed me last week, but today I just found it funny—, another man who was walking in front of me stepped into a doorway, turned, saw me and said, "Oh, sorry love, you alright?"

Now, British people do have a propensity towards being overly apologetic—the word "sorry" tends to be used  in place of "Excuse me", "Watch out", and "Oh my god if you don't move I will kick you"—and "Alright?" is a common East London greeting, rather than a genuine enquiry after one's well-being, but I still felt the love.

I've now been in London a year (as of the 1st of April), and I've been in my current place since July.  Moving to London was an exciting but rough transition, and it's taken me this long to finally start feeling at home.  I'm doing lots of writing and filming these days, I'm looking for new, less terrible jobs,  and members of my community call me "babes" and "love" and clear out of my crutchy path.  I may have a bum foot at the moment, but the cockles of my heart are toasty warm.

*It took me a while to adjust to the fact that everyone on this isle uses terms of endearment in a very familiar fashion.  I used to get a little bit offended and want to yell things back like, "I'm not your sweetheart!", but now I like it.