Pigeons & Peacocks

It’s an intoxicating Mecca that draws in the immigrant, by which I mean anyone from outside the M25, like a frail, gossamer-winged moth to a burning ball of tantalising flame. My story is no different than so many others,

‘boy from the devolved nations seeks excitement and thrills in the big city’

and like so many others I followed the same tawdry path of falling in with a Shoreditch set (there’s thousands of them, don’t you know) and the adoption of a faux London accent straight out of the Russell Brand School of Enunciation. Truly heinous in retrospect. Luckily I did a foundation so I’d thrown off most of the horrible rituals and affectations of the ‘newbie’ by the time I began my studies proper.

This isn’t a tale about my ever-so-exciting move to the capital of course as, frankly, you’ve heard it all before. Instead what I’m pointing at is the ceaseless capacity for the cycle of the city to continue ensnaring the imaginations of the young and then releasing them with an education, in so many respects, into the big bad world as contemporary urbanites seeking prosperity within the confines of the tube map. London is a ‘no exit’ destination; a life choice as well as a simple collection of bricks and used needles.

In many ways I feel I grew up in London. Not in the toddler-to-adolescence sense but in a way that was no less impactful on the person I have become. London became my home and it was in London that I settled into myself, carefully sculpted a neat little topiary of friends and acquaintances and matured from an overexciteable, green behind the ears late-teen who was always conscious of other’s opinions into a reasonably self-assured twenty-something with a first-class degree and a propensity to shrug and let the little things slide off his shoulders like a badly tailored bolero.

It may seem wholly unbelievable therefore that my rite of passage was putting something of a full stop on life in the capital and swimming against the tide of fresh meat in bidding it all farewell in a move that both astounded and terrified even myself. I moved North.

Of course it was not only the act itself that was a turning point in my own personal development but the context and thought process that precipitated the audacious decision. With greater age often comes greater choices, or certainly grander ones. One reaches a point where it becomes apparent that the forks we navigate on the road of general existence are no longer slender byways but roaring highways and that a single turn will irrevocably change the ultimate destination, even if that destination is still merely a blank spot on an uncompleted map. It’s a daunting realisation.

As a recent graduate I’ve been spat out into society and sit in a kind of limbo, hoping like a Venus Fly Trap that the right opportunity comes along for me to snap up with hungrily waiting pincers. London would seem like the natural environment when one has set their sights on the top and yet when a greedy landlord decided it was time to sell his townhouse in Clapham my life was thrown into disarray and I was confronted with the devastating decision I’d been hoping to put off, at least until the gloss had dried on my graduation photos… do I commit to another tenancy in the capital with no promise of gainful employment, losing the opportunity to apply for the possible dream job in Manchester coming up just a few short months away; or do I take a premature leap of faith and set my sights on that singular prize, leaving behind the stable, comfortable and for the most part happy life I had built for myself in the South? A pickle of a quandary if ever there was one.

Ultimately I decided that a change was as good as a rest and the opportunity, even if only that, to work as a journalist for the BBC at the new multi-million pound media city springing up on the banks of the Tame was too good to let slip from my ambitious grasp. Then there’s that feeling in the gut, that events transpire and something is just meant to be. Call it foolish but the gut has powers and so I left behind the bright lights for the chance of a brighter future. It was a mammoth step not only in physicality but in approach to life. I had followed the electric impulses of my head and not the deep pull of my heart.

Whether the choice was the correct one is as yet unseen and I’m falling only to wait for a parachute to open or for the ground to approach with a painful crunch. As colleagues move on to positions with Vogue, WGSN and Elle playing the waiting game feels more like Russian Roulette, with my comrades in arms having dodged the bullet of dismally falling into some admin job or selling copyright rights for mugs. This rite of passage will determine the road trekked and yet the decision, on my part, has been made and nothing more can be done. So is the rite of passage the maturity to make a calculated decision not measured in pure emotion, the process of leaving all that felt comfortable and secure in one’s life in academia or merely the excruciating wait to see how the plan unfolds as one’s life and future prospects are decided by a woman called Merrell in the HR department? Inevitably it is all of these, and inevitably they are journeys as certain to befall those who come after me as those who have come before, and only one thing is certain: like reaching puberty, moving away for university or that first love affair, one can’t help but come but come out of it changed forever.