Little London Lunch Break: Home

Little London Lunch Break posts will appear every Wednesday around lunch time. I’ll ask a questions or start a discussion, give my answer and leave the comments open for the rest of you the same when you have a minute or two. If you would like to suggest a question, please email me at littlelondonobservationist@hotmail.co.uk.

Question: What does “home” mean to you?

My Answer:
I’m home in New York for Christmas, so I thought it would be fitting to start with the topic of home because the meaning has changed for me since I moved to London.

In a city of immigrants, home needs to become more than a physical place for a lot of people. Instead, it becomes an idea or a feeling. It is easy to feel like you belong to two places and nowhere at the same time when you live in a country other than the place where you grew up.

For me, the feeling of “home” is in laughter among friends, a glass of red wine over good conversation, in waking up in the arms of someone I love on a Saturday morning, wrapping cold hands around a warm mug of tea. It comes in memories, like the sound of songs from my childhood, the smell of rain on a summer’s day, reminiscing over old photographs, watching the odd bit of London snow blanket the ground.

It’s about finding a place in the city – a certain bench in a certain park, a specific corner of a bookshop, a dock along the river Thames – somewhere that is yours as much as anyone else’s but somewhere you can always return to clear your mind. 

Home has become something I carry with me rather than the house I return to every night.   

And you?