Managing the Seven-year Itch

Having arrived in London, two large suitcases and a one-year work contract in tow, I had not expected that I’d still be here seven years later. In fact, it’s a smidge over seven years now. So what am I itchy about?

You’re thinking the Marilyn Monroe movie. Yeah, it’s the one where she’s standing above the subway grate and her lovely white dress billows up. A seven-year itch is also a psychological term that suggests that happiness in a relationship declines after around year seven.

So how’s my relationship with London doing?

I am honestly amazed that so many years have passed; it has gone so quickly that I have paused to think about events that have happened and think it can’t possibly be . . . has Julian Assange really been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for over three years? (Recently in the news here.) Were the Summer Olympics in Stratford, London, really in 2012? I can recall turning the key to my little Cowes house for the first time—and that was a few months shy of five years ago.

London, and life here, is still interesting and exciting and wonderful, and I’m looking forward to the next seven. There’s so much more to see and do—and not just in The Big Smoke—and I feel so fortunate to be living in London, not on the perimeter, to be able to experience all it has to offer so easily from where we live. This morning I took a walk and on my way back to the house I took in a view of our road and thought, you lucky so-and-so.

Though, to be honest, there are these small itches after seven years; less about London and more about, perhaps, seven years passing through my fingers, and thinking about doing things differently. Nothing serious.

First itch: you may have noticed I stopped writing my blog regularly. I started writing as a way of sharing my experiences with family in friends abroad. It’s not that I don’t still experience things; I just haven’t been inspired to sit in front of a laptop on my free time, and I’ve found that I use Facebook to share more immediately (though I realise not everyone is on FB). Occasionally I’m on the bus heading home and I think of something that would be worth a post . . . and then I lose the enthusiasm (and sometimes even what I was thinking, LOL) by the time I get home. 

Lack of discipline?  Certainly. This one is most certainly a “watch this space” development; I haven’t quite sorted how to scratch this one.

Second itch: I picked up a subscription for the New York Times crossword puzzle, having given up on trying to understand anyone but Wil Shortz. I can play the puzzle on my iPhone on the way home, perfect for winding down and doing something I enjoy. (Maybe that’s stifling my thinking about blog posts; I’m not spending so much time staring out of the window of the double-decker 341.) Since living in London I have always read the New York Times on line; for one thing, the London papers will dip a toe into US politics, but not every day and not nearly enough (well, for me). I quite enjoy keeping up with what’s happening in my other sphere where so many friends and family still reside.

This itch is sufficiently scratched for a small annual fee.

Third itch: I cut my hair, back to near-2008 length. Having received comments both complimentary and, well, less so (nothing insulting, you understand . . . just not complimentary), in the end I was just ready for something different after all these years. My hairdresser Mark was pleased to see me—I was getting micro-trims sporadically but hadn’t seen him at all in 2015. And I didn’t even take notice of the inches of hair, once near my waist, falling around the chair. It did remind me of the last time I made the same change—the woman in the chair next to mine actually cried out, “Oh my God he’s cutting off all your hair!” Also on that occasion my sister Robyn walked by me while I was sitting at the bar at Angelo’s in Lyndhurst, NJ, have been just shorn and styled a la Garay in New York City.

This time it took Tim two days to notice. To be fair to him, we barely saw each other in the light of day until Saturday morning.

Last itch: I’m not seeing the Super Bowl L. I mean 50. (Apparently they’ve suspended using Roman numerals this year.) I did, however, fill my weekend with Six Nations Rugby. It’s great, but I have to admit I do occasionally itch for American sports. And haven’t they all made it so accessible, with football games at Wembley and a few basketball matches to boot played here in London. Still, it’s not as easy as turning on the TV to watch at a reasonable time. In seven years I likely can’t name the best players (though “old timers” like Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant are still in the game) and know which teams are on top. Lazy? Yes. Of course I can look it up, stay on top of it. I have friends in America who follow the Premier League, after all.

I suppose this one comes down to too much effort to scratch the itch.

A toast to the next seven years, then, and a quote from the movie, which, I must say, is definitely worth trying:

“Hey, did you ever try dunking a potato chip in champagne? It's real crazy!”