London Rooms

London, April 2011
18 Allfarthing Lane, London SW18 2PQ. Second floor. I turned off the lights and set off to Tanzania on March 5th 1985. I returned to these rooms on March 6th 2011.

The upper part of a Victorian, 1899, terrace, converted to three flats in 1981 by the property developer Graham Cox. It was on my bicycle route home from the Agents to the place in Wandsworth I shared with student friends. I chose the second floor flat; I had already a taste for attics.

These rooms are more than an attic. A split level, lots of space taken up with stairs lit by skylights. The bedroom and main room is big, a place to sleep and live looking out on the back gardens, not known from the street. The first and ground floor make the presentation to Allfarthing Lane, my rooms were hidden then as now. It is a starter flat said Graham Cox, you will sell it and move on. I thought not even then. My job as a civil servant gave me access to a mortgage loan, 95% of £28500. In some stressful times I had talked of selling it but I hung on, believing I would come home. The bed I bought as my first and only piece of furniture, now as then, as I return after twenty six years of Africa.

There is a large bedroom facing a back garden through a big sash window. On this level a bathroom which I rarely used prefering the more social ablutions available at my Club. The bed is the same reinforced pine that I had put there in 1985. There are more electic sockets now to power my modern collection of screens. On the upper level a kitchen, big enough to eat in with back garden facing window. I had modernised the kitchen several times in the intevening years so as to please the tenants and had a new version installed for my return. I prefered not to use the kitchen since the washing up is an irritation: I eat in the cafe thirty yards down the street. The lady who serves there said, "Hello, I have not seen you for a while- how long is it?

"Ten years"  Well, who would believe it, time does fly. Your usual? Liver, bacon, greens and mushrooms.

On the same level a day room once more devoid of furniture as it was when I left. I am wating for the pieces, just three that had been made in Zanzibar from the wood of a redundant dhow. These three small tables had been in the bar that I had run at Sazani Beach Hotel. I was for a while well known as the host there.

The window, an attic eye, looks out to Allfarthing Lane. But from the street it is not apparent that there are rooms beyond the window. The flat is flooded with light from skylights on the passage way between the two levels and in the sitting room. There are no blinds, I have an aversion to curtains, darkness and light will come as London town decrees.

There is a loft.. In that space there are the clothes and books, the letters I left there in 1985. This dust has been untouched by the tenants that have come and gone in the years that I spent in Africa.

I was thirty two years old when I left and am fifty seven returning. the loves and lost love, the fortunes made and lost, until here I am as single and as broke as when I left. Holding my tackle I thought, well not quite so, the intervening years have paid off the mortgage.

And now the last stage of a life gone by fast enough. Looking around my empty London rooms, the sunlight making live memories of past sunlit days. Will there be any more events to intersperse with the memories? Perhaps there have been enough events.