Longridge Road

This was the street where I found my first home in London.

For many people, a home is a destination. For me it has almost always been the opposite: a starting point.

I have changed homes, neighbourhoods, cities and even countries often enough for my mother to lose count. At one point she started calling me Gipsy. The meaning was perfectly clear: I had changed address again.

Longridge Road was one of those beginnings.

I remember the wet pavement, the lit windows, that blue above the rooftops and the feeling of having stepped into a new life without knowing what shape it would take.

Looking at this photograph now, what strikes me is not how much London has changed.

It is how convinced I was that this was simply a new home.

In reality, it was the beginning of a long series of departures.

Perhaps that is why I have always had a strange relationship with homes.

They have never held me still.

They have always set me in motion again.