From the archives: Acknowledging the shitshow
Leaving Europe in chaos – Buenos Aires, 24-30th October
The first thing to say about this trip is that it’s been a slow launch: three-and-a-half years since Dave quit his job the first time around, but closer to a decade in the making. After seven years of dreaming, and about four years of me nagging Dave about it, we booked some flights for May 2020 – and everyone knows how that panned out. But I’ve probably been whinging on about my itchy feet for as long as many of my friends in London have known me. Which could explain why, by the time I finally fired out some save-the-date messages for a leaving party, a lot of people appeared to have forgotten (or maybe repressed) my annoying plans and replied with something along the lines of, “Cool, where are you off to?”
When it finally came, it’s fair to say the departure itself was also drawn out. In the weeks leading up to October, I pretty much adopted the persona of a dying matriarch. My closest friends couldn’t escape a weekend without my asking their whereabouts. I planned lunches, dinners, trips to the coast… friends I had all but lost touch with suddenly became a top priority. I squeezed in coffees between drinks before dinners; I took an expensive and spontaneous day trip to Norwich to see a cousin; I single-handedly organised a 10-years-on reunion with my journalism MA group for godsakes. I’ve always found comfort in organisation and making plans – and the distraction that comes from it, but this was a step beyond. I was possessed.
The thing about prioritising social plans (over work, packing, admin, anything else important) is that it gives you a slightly false sense of reality. Suddenly I was Carrie Bradshaw, running about town from engagement to engagement, funded mysteriously by a very loose idea of ‘writing’. Oh I definitely had deadlines to meet. But I’ll just send that piece of work off later, I told myself. When I get home from the pub. At 1am. Before I get up at seven to pack up my entire flat. Two entire flats (that’s another story). Sure! Work could wait! And I had a blast. August was fun. September was even more fun. Early October was… ill-advisably full.
I’ve never been able to cope very well without sleep, which is unfortunate for someone who builds their life around being busy. Dave can (and did, routinely) get home from the pub at midnight, watch tv and dribble over a kebab for two hours, fall asleep at 2am and then jump out of bed like a functioning human again for work at 5.40am. I get tearful, and despairing. Paired with the melodrama of leaving the country for a year (maybe more!) I found myself having a few little cries after far too many wines about just how lovely my life was in London, how much I loved our little flat, my friends, my bathtub, and was I insane to make us leave all of that?
Anyway. Far too late. I’d made (encouraged?) Dave to quit the job he loved (twice, thanks Covid); we had flights booked once again and tenants lined up for the flat. On the 30th of September for my semi-birthday we held a house party with a rule that participants could only bring mixers and had to help us finish the 100-ish bottles of disgusting spirits of all lurid colours that we had hoarded over the best part of a decade. The following weekend, I stood on a chair and gave a solid 3/10 speech to a room packed full of people, in spite of the best efforts of another wave of Covid and the news cycle knocking down journalist pals left, right and centre. It was all definitely happening, and the fact that I’d made it happen was exciting but also mildly horrifying.
I would like to give some space here to acknowledge the shitstorm that was the packing-up-and-leaving process. I’m writing this three weeks on and Dave still has a haunted look in his eyes whenever it comes up.
I’ve lived in the same flat in London for almost ten years: first with my best pal, Anthony, and then a few years later following a tactical reshuffle, Dave. Think about how much crap a normal person gathers over ten years. But then imagine not clearing anything out for that period of time, and then imagine you’re not a normal person when it comes to stuff but actually a bit of a hoarder – a hoarder who works in the media and gets freebies and has an unhealthy relationship with ASOS and magazines and condiments.
Once, the flat got broken into while Anthony and I were away for the Easter weekend. When the police arrived, they were shocked at the way the burglars had left so much stuff on the floor, emptying out my entire wardrobe and bathroom cabinets, even the laundry basket. “God, they really got to work here, those bastards,” one kindly officer said. I couldn’t quite meet her eye.
In planning our exit, I can honestly say I was naïve to the amount of crap I had gathered. I’d never really had to move house properly like this, which I realise is a privilege in the cut-throat world of renting in London. And in any case, normally when a person moves house they have another one lined up to move their stuff into. We were leaving home with just our backpacks and a couple of bags to dump at my parents’ house on route. I guess I imagined I’d turn all Marie Kondo overnight and simply… make everything disappear?
I palmed off books, plants, musical instruments and wine racks to anyone who expressed an interest. I took so many bags to the British Heart Foundation charity shop that eventually the manager got quite pissy and told us he had enough donations now, thanks. Our donations became a stake-out game of drop-and-run. I borrowed Anthony’s car and stuffed a loft in Margate full of treasures. We fly tipped. Oh god, how we fly tipped. But it turns out you can put anything outside on the street in Stratford – old duvets, vodka, a toilet cistern (really) – and within minutes it will be gone. But the flat still didn’t seem to get much emptier.
Flash forward to 10th October, the day before our flight out of London, and I was taking Ubers all across the city laden with boxes and bags to all the lovely friends who had innocently said in the weeks before that they “had a bit of loft space” if we needed it (I love you all and I’m SORRY).
Anyway. We are here, in Buenos Aires, after a very indulgent couple of weeks in Portugal visiting my parents* (dumping a load of stuff) followed by a wedding in San Sebastián, Spain, via Seville and Bilbao, and then Madrid, where it poured with rain and I posted yet more stuff back to my parents. I do not know what shape this blog will take, or if I will even publicise it before dying of cringe at the fact I’m writing it… it may just end up being a weird little journal read by Dave and his mum. But I do know that I am grateful to past me for writing a travel blog from the last big backpacking trip I took in 2013 – it kept the memories bright and provides endless lols for present me and probably all my enemies. So here we go – maybe future me will be glad.
Standing on the platform waiting for the train to Gatwick, Dave, who never loses his temper about anything, said to me with a thousand-yard stare in a quiet, faraway voice: “I think when we get back to London, you could get rid of some stuff.” I felt seen.
A brief list of things I bulk bought/ packed for this trip in panic:
Clinique pore refining serum (three bottles). My desert island product, however vain and tragic that might be. The thought of running out brings me out in hives, requiring more serum.
Clarins anti-pollution SPF lotion for face, factor 50 (four bottles, similar reasons).
Fexofenadine anti-allergy tabs (around a thousand. Possibly an exaggeration).
Boots dissolvable vitamin C tablets (24 tabs). Don’t know what I was anticipating, scurvy? Hangovers, possibly.
No fewer than seven lip salves.
Travel brand miniature laundry detergent leaves (pack of 50). Absolutely useless, equivalent to water, yet can’t bring myself to bin them because they weigh about one gram – and that’s efficient packing.