This is the last one. I promise. This shall be the last post about London. I will keep updating the photographic content for as long as I stay here (not long now), if I manage to take any decent pictures, but I solemnly swear I will not rant any further.
Mind you, I don’t regret coming here. I may not like it here, but I don’t wish I hadn’t decided to leave everything behind and move to London 5 years ago. I felt like it was the right adventure to embark on, so I did. I made money that I would have dreamt about had I stayed at home, money that will now allow me to pursue yet another adventure, a bigger one, the biggest one yet, that is about to start.
In August 2012 I left Prague with two suitcases and very few personal objects (I am such a drama queen, I sound as if I had left Naples for the USA in 1920s). Anyway, among those objects were “Waltz of Shadows” by Joe R. Lansdale (not because it’s my favourite book, I don’t have one to be honest, but because I was reading it at the time) and Abbey Road by the Beatles. I mean, come on. What other record would anyone bring to London. Either that or London Calling by The Clash, but I was feeling positive back then. Oh, the blissful ignorance…
One of my favourite London related memories goes back to the first year. Our offices were still in Belgravia, and somehow it felt much more like London (the London you know from Woody Allen’s films) and I popped down to the local newsagent’s to get a birthday card for a friend. I spent several minutes browsing through the cards, searching for the least tacky one, the radio was playing and “The Long and Winding Road” came up. Several people entered the shop in that moment, and each one of them started singing along. So did the shopkeeper. So did I.
Three years later, on May 23rd 2015, I went to see Paul McCartney live to the O2. I managed to hold my shit together for some time, but when the first notes of the very same song echoed through the arena, I completely lost it and started crying and carried on crying throughout the rest of the show (I wasn’t the only one, either). It was probably the best non-Springsteen concert I have ever seen.
Anyway, none of this matters now. The photos. Random shots, really. Bridges (that I failed to build), details (that I most likely (dis)missed), reflections, drawings on the walls, skies…whatever caught my eye.
Kacenka on the road 