One of the quirks of living in London is the frequency with which people you know disappear: here one minute, gone the next. They came for work and left again, either exhausted, bored or rich. Over the years, I’ve said goodbye to many loved ones who headed “home”, or reverse-Brexited to the continent looking for champagne cosmopolitanism at lemonade prices.
But, painful as that was, I always had friends from my east London school – the ones who, like me, had city roots that ran too deep to think about leaving.
Until now. Next year, our band of seven becomes four, as three trade in the Big Smoke for the dream of Big Healthy Lungs. One’s off to the Midlands, another to Eastbourne and the third Down Under.
“The thing about London,” the Aussie-in-waiting says, “is that unless you’re absolutely loaded, you’ll always be a little fish, waiting to become some shark’s dinner.”
Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond? It’s a question that’s been weighing on my mind, and though I don’t yet know the answer, one thing’s for sure: wherever I am in this great ocean we call life, I will need to replenish my stock of friends.
How do you make friends as an adult? It’s one of life’s great mysteries, and trying is my resolution for 2019. It feels wrong, somehow, to replace such long-loved friends, a betrayal to suggest they could ever be matched; a show of disloyalty to our shared experience. Though I’ve come to accept that sometimes people part even when no bad blood has been spilled.
“Well, if it’s people you need, London’s the right place,” the Bondi bestie says. “Let’s just say there are plenty more fish in the sea.”
