Black Tea with Milk and Sugar

After three weeks it’s still surprisingly hard for me to find back to my ‘daily life’.
I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking, where am I? and why?

I remember every detail of my stay in London. Every tiny detail. From what I was wearing when i stepped into the plane in Frankfurt and out of it at Heathwor airport, I remember all the poor fast food chains and the really amazing dinners we’ve had. I remember shedloads of red telephone cabins that made my heart jump with silly touristy glee, that made me rummage through my handbag to dig out my crappy point&shoot because I just wanted to remember without bothering about aperture, light, dropshadows, dof… I just snapped.

I remember dozens of young men in red uniforms with huge fur heats, looking stern, looking like 25°C in such a suit wouldn’t do them any harm. I could feel the tension as the trotted by though, and I thought it must be a very dreadful job to walk up and down the same path every day. Resting for a few minutes just to see hundreds of tourists rushing towards you to snap pictures or trying to make you laugh. I carefully and quickly snapped, and I did notice a smirk. Very faint but it was there nontheless.

I remember shopping at picadilly circus, turning my map up and down to find the green spot that I marked near Fortnum&Mason. I remember Dieu et mon droit being displayed in one of their windows, and everything just felt the way I imagined it 15 years ago when we started English in secondary school and I was just blown away by its amazingness. I wanted to go there. And i went there after all.

And I remember Jackie from Canary Wharf, who I met in a pub directly next to Big Ben. Who gave me the warmest ‘Welcome to the UK’ I could have imagined. Who gave me handfulls of confidence. Who made my trip there extra special and made me feel much less like a stranger upon thousands of tourists.
Who made me realize:

And indeed I do.

My heart aches when I look at this. Greatest time of my life so far. I wish one could captivate luck in a jar and take a whiff every now and then when you miss it so much, its almost unbearable.