London Calling

Today I have to visit a friend in hospital. The hospital is on the other side of London – the other side of the river, in fact. In London, you’re either a South London girl or a North London girl. Large swathes of the population do not cross the River Thames by choice, even though they may holiday in Spain, or Florida, and cheerfully visit long-lost relatives in Australia every three years. To get to the hospital, I catch a red London bus to Golders Green and then, at Golders Green I get out, and change to another bus. At London Bridge, I change again. By this means, using a plastic monthly ticket we Londoners call an Oyster, I can travel across the whole wide city. I barely notice that I’m in South London. That’s the journey of a writer – from known territory to the great unknown, and all in the space of forty minutes. My friend’s symptoms are not good. I cry a little, take solace in a capuccino and write a little of my novel. I look up, and the bus is outside the café.

Jennifer Pittam blogs about the writer's life every Tuesday on http://weaversofdreams.blogspot.com. She recently won first prize in the ‘Coast to Coast’ Writing Competition with her short story, ‘I Remember Very Well.'