april 2012 update: maida vale is no longer home! it was a good year. alice moved over from new york, and we shared a lovely flat with a strangely dark blue carpet. she's since moved back stateside, and i've relocated back to nw3.
maida vale was: quiet, anonymous mansion blocks. sometimes i'd sit on our little grated balcony four floors up and watch the lives being lived through the windows of the [posher] block behind ours. hundreds of windows, hundreds of souls eating, watching tv, ironing, trying on hats. we named some of our neighbours and made up the stories of their lives. ben and danielle lived across from us for a few months, then mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by a family with a little girl and a cat. the cat came over to visit a few times and reminded us of our last home together in irvine. there's something so wistful about saying goodbye to an animal.
maida vale was: canals. i loved running up the canal as far as i could, imagining if i kept going i would get to birmingham and beyond. the houseboats were so brightly painted, and spoke of an entirely different world with its own language, inhabitants and secret places. i occasionally exchanged words with them, and wondered what it might be like - coming and going and mooring as you please, making homemade jam and chutney to sell from your deck, learning how to fix a motor. they inspired a story of mine once.
the water is murky now, and hides all sorts of discarded rubbish. it's sad to watch it flow slowly under the bridge, and remember the life vein it once was. thousands of miles of canals still criss-cross the uk, and the paths alongside them where the animals pulled the boats are used now by cyclists and joggers in their lycra and nike tops. no more horses, no more 'legging' through tunnels. why is nostalgia so appealing?
maida vale was: olives and other bits of deliciousness you could find in the local delis and bakeries.
i miss our place and the quiet, leafy streets of w9. but it's good not to have to depend on the 46 bus anymore.
