Home away from home?

Sometimes, I walk out my front door and even though I'm in Vancouver, it smells like London or feels like London or even looks like London....Well, it doesn't look like London, but the light is London-like or something. This time of year, as things come back to life and it starts to warm up, I start missing the strange, humid London air and the Pax Lodge smell. When I was in London in October, I was surprised how much London really does have that London smell and that there really is a Pax Lodge smell. I'm not sure what the Pax Lodge smell is, but the London smell is a sweaty, electrical, humid, just after the rain, underground smell. It's not easily duplicated, but every once in a while I get a whiff of it...usually just before it rains, before Vancouver smells clean. And so, this time of year I miss the places I used to haunt...the Rat and Parrot (now called the George)...Covent Garden...Paperchase, oh how I miss Paperchase. I could spend hours in there just looking and touching and smelling that smell of new paper. I came home with a huge, heavy bag full of Paperchase products in October. It's probably a good thing we don't have Paperchase here yet or there would be no money in my bank account and no room in my house....ah...the paper and pen addiction! What else...H&M...same thing, not enough money in my bank account, not enough room in my house!
Camden Town...home of crazy people, fun shops, stalls of goods, antiques (and not so antiques) galore...Trafalgar Square with Canada House and the National Gallery....All those theatres...Hampstead Heath....and of course the endless balcony parties at Pax Lodge...and every spring it all comes back and I get "homesick" for somewhere I didn't really consider home while I was there. If I could jump in a plane go there right now, I would - not a permanent thing, but just to get a taste of that world that used to be mine. I know that if I went and the people I knew in the time I was there weren't around, it probably wouldn't feel the same, but there are always people around who were there when I was there...so for now it would have that different but the same feeling and I'd be happy to be there. I know it wouldn't last and I'd be happy to come home too, but some days...and today is one of those days...I wish I could pretend I still lived that life...the one where in the summer you got hot and sticky the moment you stepped out of the shower from the humidity...the one where you sleep with a fan blowing in your face in your way up there near the ceiling bed...the one where days off meant wandering through London or catching a train to some other part of the country...the one where 6:00 meant a quick dinner and then a trip to the pub...the one where Nights and Earlies meant staying in...the one where rambling walks with Heather were the norm...yeah...I miss that life sometimes, but then I'm happy to come back to my other life. The one where Nights and Earlies don't exist and I get to sleep in a double bed, a reasonable distance from the floor. I guess it's good to miss it - it means it probably was a good as I remember it! And hey...I can always go back and visit!