Back in London this week to do, as I put in an email, the “grown-up parts of moving out”. Also to celebrate the new year.

Or at least, that was the plan. You know what they say about the best laid plans? Well lots of things did not go to plan this week, but we still executed on all the important bits.

Firstly, and most importantly, I neglected to review the in-flight entertainment over from Hong Kong. I watched Madame Web (2024). It was everything I hoped it would be, everything they said it would be, and so much less. Lots of things happened for no coherent reason. Solid cast though. 2/5.

This week in data:

• 🗑️ Visits to a bin: 16 round-trips
• 💉 Blood tests: 1 draw
• 🍻 Spoons visits: 4 meals

Secondly, Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed all the AI-generated HNYs. I know I did.

No, that other jigsaw wasn’t me, I honestly don’t know who put it there. Please keep me posted: I’m ever-so-curious.

After getting into my old flat, I went to say hi to CR. Before I left, covered in sweat and airplane grime, I changed shirts — donning my “let’s get relfed” shirt — a moment of foreshadowing I would come to regret. A coffee turned into a chat turned into a crawl, and before I knew it, we had made it into deepest Bermondsey and to Poulet with some friendly Americans talking about tax. At some point I got home having fulfilled the shirt’s prophecy.

It’s at this point that I should talk a little bit about my emotions. Yeah, sorry, I know, I tricked you with all these pictures of food.

Since I started preparing to leave London, many things came to a head. But since my news became public, my brain started swimming in a curious cocktail of emotions. There’s excitement, nostalgia, sadness, anger, curiosity and a whole lot more. At many points I felt myself holding back a tear or three. And at some point — around when I’d written a three-paragraph long goodbye message only for it to be erased by the whims of Slack — I stopped holding them back. These feelings haven’t fully gone away. Even when we aren’t saying goodbye, sometimes, we’re saying goodbye to a lot.

At some point my emotions got the better of me again. And the resulting hangxiety lasted for daaaaays.

Since Matt Andrews does a great job at articulating something similar to how I have felt, as well as just writing a bloody good article, it’s at this point I’ll include a link to Eternal London haunts us still. Please read it!

OK! So how do you deal with hangxiety? You put everything off, get on a train to Barking, get to Barking, wonder why you’re in Barking, and hastily arrange to have coffee with a friend in North Greenwich instead. So I did that which morphed into dinner.

And then LF came by to help with some disassembly of furniture. Like, a lot of it. This didn’t morph into dinner, but it did morph into lunch. Some grumpy men from the BHF came by, took some bits, and didn’t take some other bits. As they were leaving, one of them muttered a thank-you.

It’s at this point that the lurgy (definitely caught on the plane, JFC I wish people would mask more) caught up to me and I had to cancel all my NYE plans. Fireworks were pretty good on the livestream, and I’m loving this moment that Sophie Ellis-Baxter is having.

New Years day I was feeling CONSIDERABLY better so I met up with an equally jet-lagged MT and we consumed NYE leftovers. So many leftovers.

Thursday and Friday are generally spent the same way: Packing, cleaning, sending things to a tip, and dropping other things off in charity shops.

Thursday afternoon I am summoned to BH to catch-up with EH and JV, who both missed my leaving drinks proper. EH helps me hide a box of KitKats in the office. We end up at the sinisterly named Pelt Trader which is so good that I don’t know why it fell out of normal rotation.

Friday evening I swing by BH again - this time by choice - and this time I actually go in. It is eerily empty and the front-desk don’t believe me when I say that I don’t work there anymore, and try to let me in. Thankfully JC saves the day by appearing and registering me correctly* as a guest. Gosh that was close.

We end up at The Banker and some more people swing by. I remember in November telling lots of nice people that I’d do something like this, but, a combination of feelings and lurgy have forced this to be a more intimate affair. I genuinely prefer these. The tide drops and we faff around a bit on the exposed bank of the Thames - one of my favourite spots in the City. Dinner at Pizza Pilgrims where I finally right a several-month-old wrong, and finally order the Carbonara. Folks: It’s worth it.

Thanks for coming everyone. I really, really appreciate it.

I end up in a car to Birmingham with the rest of my worldly possessions in tow. I have a very short spell in Birmingham to have dinner with the family before heading back out onto the road and taking the train back to London, bumping into WH on the way out.

Finally, Sunday morning arrives. My cleaners ring to say that they’re coming by soon, I let them know that I need to shift a mattress. They appear, pop on the radio and we exchange keys. I head to Paddington and meet JW and LF for a final fly-by and a veggie wrap before heading onto the airport.

There's an uplifting theme here and it's all truly wonderful people. I hope to stay in touch, and to meet equally wonderful people in Tokyo.

Hum. And with that, I’ve run out of words. Now it feels kinda real.

See you in summer, yeah?