It took me over six months to get back to Portobello Rd which is just a 5minute walk from my flat but it might as well have been at the top of Mt Everest because I did not have the capacity to get there. Before I became housebound I would be down there every day, even throughout my illness, and if I ever skipped a day I felt off. I felt liked I’d missed something. The street also became my number one destination for taking photographs so for me going there was like going to work. And you go to work every day right? And then it was like I’d got laid off. I was actually laid up but the end result was the same. And for most of my months indoors I pined to be back there, desperate to be back amongst the throng (is that right? sounds right looks wrong..and btw wtf even IS a throng anyway?)
I was so excited to finally get back there but the moment I put my foot down on the street it was actually incredibly anti-climatic. Nothing had changed. I had been on this intense journey (even though i didn’t actually go anywhere) which seemed to have lasted a lifetime and here I was back on the ‘Bello and it was as if I had never left. The flower seller was sat where she was always sat looking at her phone. The old narky guy who was always in the window at Joe and the Juice was still there. Eerily the seemingly same tourists were standing in the doorway of the Ginstitute taking pictures of each other.
The falafel guy who I had spoken to every day just said..oh, havent seen you in a while like it had been a few days. I’d been gone half a year and no-one had noticed. Not that I expected them too. Actually maybe I did a little bit. Actually tell a lie, I imagined there would be crowds cheering my triumphant return, ticker tape, a mariachi band, the full fucking works. And nada. Not a sausage. I didn’t take it personally. It just shows how wrapped up in their own heads everyone is. And that’s fair enough. We all are.
But having said all that I was still happy to be back, although as you can see from the photographs not everyone was. There had probably been some relief that there wasn’t that guy going round sticking his camera in people’s faces as they went about their day. Fair enough. And it took me a little while to get back into my stride but once I see someone I can’t resist capturing that’s it, I am off and running. Well not actually running. I’ve just mastered walking again. One step at a time…
p.,s what’s going on with that woman’s bag? What does that mean? And isn’t a weird thing to put on a bag?
Great to have you back on the street, BCR x