What a difference a day makes

This weekend I've hopped on a Virgin Pedalino and leaned my way out of the city to my former life. I'm spending a few days with my family in the house I grew up in. My room is no longer my room. Each time I go back more of my hoarded belongings seem to have entered obscurity, lost forever to a charity shop. I don't really mind. Though I love the city like the paving stones are my long-lost friends, after Thursday's events I was kinda relieved to be breathing different air. London has changed. I have changed. Things will never be the same again. On the tube to Euston on Friday evening, I caught myself getting up way before my stop, so eager was I to leave the coffin underground that was choking my breath. I've never been one of those claustrophobic tube-haters, or a Ken Livingstone grumbler moaning about the price of a travelcard. I loved the tube, it was a bit exciting burrowing underground every day with thousands of others, watching strangers in stranger clothes with stranger habits, all pretending not to look at each other. I'm not sure it will ever be the same again. For now, I'm sweaty from cycling in the park with my sister, on the bikes we rode as teenagers. Now slightly less fit and more unsure of the way to the lake, we ride side-by-side reminiscing. Punctures and falling off miles from home, mum letting us swim in a lake with a red danger flag, the adrenelin of rushing down a steep incline with the wind in our air. People grow up. Bicycle chains rust. Lungs get smaller. Cities cry.