An Ode to Peckham and its Palace

It's not all kms and maps and bike parts, you know (though there is a lot of that - stay tuned). 

Getting on your bike to cycle away from the little home you've carved out for yourself is not only physically and technically demanding. 

I've done it before. Because the thing is, I love making new homes. I love the challenge, the discovery, the intrigue, figuring out how the place makes the people make the place. I love exploring. I love getting it wrong sometimes until you get it right just once: I'll take 3 dead ends for one surprise view as a happy exchange. I like knowing communities and the details of places and finding their hearts and finding a place for them in mine. (Because: adventure.)

In different ways, my heart aches for all my homes - I want delicious fresh sushi and incomprehensible gardens of raked over stones; I want endless desert skies and sand underfoot; I want painfully artistic coffee and the ding of trams in my ears. But this town, and in particular, this flat, has been my home for longer than anywhere else in my entire adult life.

I love it. I love its nooks, and its crannies, its stars and its tumbleweave (more the town than the flat, thankfully, but we do have a plughole 'monster' thanks to Jai's 'my hair'). I walk down the street in this town and I recongise people. And they reconise me. And it feels like home. The delightful family in my off license of choice, the pervy dry cleaner and his lovely long-suffering wife, Edwin the homeless former Chelsea College of Art student, my mate at the station who hurries me up the stairs when I'm running late and then shoots the breeze with me when I miss my train, the emaciated wino lady and friends, that kid at Khan's who valiantly brandishes his pubescent moustance but is waaaaay too young to be working the day shift, the cobbler in the markets who complements my shoe choice, Eileen Conn the tireless campaigner empowering the Peckham community to be the masters of their own destiny, the gaggle of children giggling by the station's South exit and their enterprising parents whos all-hours hair salons make for a nightlife like no other, the old man on nightshift at the 24 hour store who judges my late night snacks, the legends of Wednesday morning BMF on the Rye who know not to talk to one another before the cool down because what-time-do-you-call-this-anyway?, Benedict O'Swooney whose treaties on the architecture of Peckham had me swooning from the word go, and probably the worst barrista in all London who inflicts himself on the unsuspecting commuters of Peckham from his concession inside the station. These people aren't my friends, but they are my community. 

And all that's before you even enter the Palace, whose characters actually are my friends. (At this point, I honestly can't talk about the ridiculousness that is handing out pieces of your heart as friendship tokens and then waving them goodbye - like I said, probably mental but I'm doing it anyway.) 

So here's to Peckham, my cosy homeplace, where I've loved and cried and laughed and raged and brewed and scehemed and danced with everyone watching. 

And also to my next home, and the one after that, without ever less loving the ones gone before.