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5.11.05 Remember, Remember...

The Fifth of November. Fireworks boom over Primrose Hill. My dog caprioles and levades, the sound of the shells urging something primal in her blood to dizzy glee. Seven years ago I arrived in London, from Mexico City by way of Argentina, the Philippines and (longest and most lovely) Hong Kong. My first landfall that year was to a friend's wedding, with a houseparty the weekend before down near Kingsbridge in Devon. I rolled up looking like Steve McQueen: white jeans, leather jacket, sunglasses. Mexico clothes. They stared at me like I'd just walked in from the moon, and asked if I brought a coat. I looked around and saw palm trees, and thought "how cold can it get?". It snowed. I froze. They busied themselves re-landscaping a garden or three (it was that sort of slave-labour houseparty) whilst I refused to budge more than five feet from the sitting-room fire, wearing clothes borrowed from everyone else and swearing I was about to die.

I moved here for good in September 1998, transferred by the French investment bank I was working for at the time. I hadn't yet admitted the blindingly obvious: that I was completely unsuited to any sort of corporate work. I tried my hardest, and frequently worked late. November 5, 1998 was one such night, and I didn't start bicycling home until about 9pm. Halfway along the South Bank, a volley of fireworks crashed cerise and green and white over the Thames and I, still fresh out of the Third World, dived off my bike and rolled, head down, convinced I'd ended up in the middle of a government coup. I'd never heard of Guy Fawkes Night.

It seems incredible, fantastical now, but such things had been a quotidian risk where I lived for much of the 1990s. I used to hang out at nightclubs where there was a special waiting area for bodyguards and drivers, and a "check your guns at the door" policy. (Nobody did, of course. At least, nobody important.) These weren't dives. These were the top nightclubs in the city. If a couple really rich Manila teens wanted to go for a spin in their brand new Z3 convertible, they'd be flanked in front and behind by bulletproof SUVs filled with automatic-toting minders. The tiny, ground-hugging red convertible looked like a Matchbox car next to the black Land Cruisers, like if the one in front stopped too suddenly the Z3 could carry on beneath it.

The fireworks don't bother me any more, but they do make me remember: all the lives I led, the choices I didn't make, the things I could still become. The measure of seven years.

( 7:22 PM )

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