A Heat Wave in February

I can see a palace out my kitchen window. Sometimes in the mornings I stand in my kitchen with a cup of tea and stare out my window and over the gardens and look at the glass curved roof of Alexandra Palace. And at night when I get home from work, I stand in my kitchen again and can see the roof of Ally Pally glowing, the light shining through the weather beaten glass panels.

It sounds pretty damn romantic I know, but there's more to it. Ally isn't exactly a Pally anymore. It used to be the Queens estate, the park surrounding it used to be her personal grounds, but now its more of a public domain. The park has a coffee shop and a farmer's market on Sundays, and even the actual building that used to be a palace is now a concert venue, an ice skating rink, and sometimes a convention hall. It's beautiful and it's sprawling and sometimes if you're lucky enough to be there when no one else is around, you can lean on the railings up by the palace and stare down on the whole of Northern London.

Ally Pally sitting above North London

My flatmate Tess told me stories of how POWs were kept in the dungeon-y bits below the palace during war times and how parts of the park used to be racing tracks for the Queen's entertainment. She told me you can see deer there (a rarity in London) and when she offered to show me I assumed we would be going to a more isolated, rural part of the park in hopes of stumbling onto them. What she really showed me however was a small portion of the park, big enough to see from one end to the other, that was entirely fenced in. The deer live in there, she told me, but we never saw them then.

And even when I stand in my kitchen and stare out my window, whether its after the sun has risen or hours after it has set, my romantic view necessitates peering through the plastic cling film that hangs taught around our windows to keep the winter wind out. Our house is old, most of them are here, and the plastic beats the alternative of paying a higher heating bill.

So there is this magical piece to it all. There's a palace out my kitchen window that's roof glows at night for my own personal amusement. But there's reality in it all too. Modern day has caught up with the romanticism of the place. Living in London means removing your rose tinted glasses and seeing that the palace that you watch at night is really a run down convention center where local kids go to learn the basics of figure skating. Living in London means realizing that most times nature here is merely and illusion and that deer will never be something you stumble upon and catch by surprise. The palace isn't only a palace, London isn't only the London you see on postcards and the travel channel.

This all may sound incredibly depressing but really I don't think it is. Ally Pally gets to be more than what is was originally intended to be. London gets to change and morph and reinvent itself any moment it chooses. The streets are dirty and the tube is crowded and good for you if you ever find a bin to throw your trash in. Its the realities that make this place more interesting, it's the ways that the city fails to be on par with my expectations that keeps me guessing. Of course there are things that I can't stand and times when I wish I could be back in Columbus walking down Grandview Ave eating Jeni's Ice Cream, but this city is layered and grimy and colorful and frustrating and stifling and inspirational all at once.

Today the sun shone and a light breeze blew and there was no need for a jacket. London surprised us all by being nearly 10*C hotter than the average February day. So today I wore sunglasses and let my shoulders meet the sun and when I got back to my flat this afternoon I stood in my kitchen and stared at the roof of Ally Pally and thought how amazing this life is that I get to live so close to the giant, dirty, worn down, oversized shack, and how even more amazing it is to live in a city that's always changing and never quite what you expect.