Hello London

Hello London

Seventeen countries, four continents, an international dateline and a complete trip around the world later, we are home

We are home.

We said goodbye in August last year. Seventeen countries, four continents, an international dateline and a complete trip around the world later, we are home.

Things are different. Boris bikes are now red. The Tories have the majority. And Robert Peston grew hair.

Men appear taller. Women are more glamorous, but I might only think that after a year in hiking clothes. heels. God, they feel amazing. Suddenly I'm elegant again. And then of course they hurt, but hell, they'll get me from Charing Cross to Sagar where I'm meeting friends for dinner.

"The hipster invasion has reached Stepney Green. East London doesn't belong to anyone, but I'm still territorial."

I scour the stores for a knee-length cardigan, my old one still packed. I can't possibly see mother without my jeans covering her, immodest when she's naked. She kisses me as a greeting.

Ee kitha obesta oyseh beh? she greets me. What kind of state is this? She refers to the complexion she passed on to me, which I so carelessly soiled with sun. She leads me inside.

There are no tears. Tears are not our thing. The youngest of my five sisters is now married. Another has a new child. We Abdullahs are nothing but marriageable and fertile.

The hipster invasion has reached Stepney Green. East London doesn't belong to anyone, but I'm still territorial. I walk across St Dunstan's churchyard and it calms me as always. I walk faster past Ben Johnson Road. At 33, I'm too old to be harassed by boys on street corners, but memories are stronger than muscles, so I pick up my pace anyway.

I watch commuters on the London Underground and a traveler's smugness wells up in me. It doesn't matter, I chastise their haste - but the truth is that it is so. People still have lives to live. Nobody knows and nobody cares that I was gone for so long or that I see things differently.

We're leaving soon for our few months in France, so I'm hugging London as hard as I can. I eat. Oh, I eat and and eat and eat. Bangalore Express in Bank, Kati Roll Company in Oxford Circus, Lahore Kebab House in Whitechapel, Zeera in Mile End. To balance out the gluttony, I walk along canals. I'm doing my first sub-30 5k. I'm fitter than I feared.

I go to the cinema - my first in a year - and I buy a huge popcorn and coke combination. I sit alone and feel comfortable.

I spend. I buy Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair and Thierry Mugler's Angel and Viviscal vitamin capsules and a versatile Italian tote bag. They swallow hundreds from my back-home buffer and contradict the traveler's philosophy, but I don't mind because I haven't felt completely clean and completely beautiful in a very long time, and now I do.

I visit Richmond Park and watch deer roaming around. I walk across Waterloo Bridge at dusk and watch the skylines darken under the late summer sun. I feel the hum and heartbeat of my hometown and I feel a happiness that is deep and profound.

Hello London, I cry quietly. It's so, so nice to be home.

Very British Problems by Rob Temple is a hilarious look into the British psyche, showing how we are a nation of socially awkward but well-meaning weirdos who struggle every day to make it through without apologizing to an inanimate object.

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