East London is starting to feel like a village and I like it: neighbors brought us food, a guy on a Deliveroo bike shouted at me to say he’d seen me before, I ran into a colleague a few days ago, kids from the building opposite wave at me, the Turkish guy in my local fruit shop has started giving me free dates… Why is it that the first 4 years in London were so impersonal and cold and weird and all of a sudden, it’s such a different story? I only moved around the corner from where I used to live so it must be #Lockdownmagic?
Also, I love the style of these buildings and watching people come one go, shout at each other, knock on each other’s doors, go up and down the stairs… All the young dad’s in white shirts, the boys playing football, this one little girl doing something different every time – from dancing to skateboarding… And then there’s that one annoying neighbor that plays his music too loud. I wonder if there’s a picture somewhere on the internet taken of me by one of these kids captioned as: that lady that looks out of the window all the time….