last morning in London

Didn’t see too much of it on this trip, which was Oxford-dominated.

Last night, while walking and talking with a friend, the thought occurred to me that in some ways my knowledge of London has degenerated since I’ve started to know people here.

It makes sense when you think about it. Whenever I come here now, I’m going straight to them, and they always frequent the same limited circle of places as we all do in our home cities. On top of that, since they’re the London residents I’m always following them around like a child and paying no attention to how we’re getting where we’re going, since I can trust them to do it for me.

What made me think of this was that we happened to be walking last night in a neighborhood where I spent a lot of time on my first couple of trips to London before I ever knew a soul in this city. And it brought back the freshness of those early visits, when I never had any idea where I was, and would simply look for interesting streets and follow them. We ended up on some of those very same streets last night, and I remembered them pretty clearly, considering the amount of time that has passed.