A couple of weeks ago I was walking home though Shoreditch when I heard a voice beside me:

“Jess! Heey-ohh Jess!”

I am not used to have my name called in the streets - let alone in London: I usually have my headphones on and I’m quite oblivious of the world surrounding me when I do. And of course, being relatively new to this city (under one year still makes you a newbie, or so I hear) I don’t have many acquaintances. But, being headphone free this day, I quickly turned around and saw my ex colleague/ buddy Anamik:

“This great to see you.” I said. “Especially since I think you’re the first person to ever call my name in London! This feels like a landmark”.

He had some time to kill before going to an exhibition at Rich Mix to see Gavin Hernandez’s cool photographic series, so we decided to have a quick drink in a pub nearby. His friend joined us a couple of minutes later, and he introduced me by pointing out that I had just gained my official Londoner title. The friend, a tall and chatty guy talking quite fast, laughed:

“What a strange coincidence. I usually never see people I know in the street, but I just bumped into my ex-girlfriend before joining you”.

He then told us about the first time he bumped into someone in the capital: like me, almost a decade ago, he had decided to London and had been trying to call London a home for months. One day, and for the first time in his entire life, he decided to enter a sex shop. While reaching for the exist he walked through the gay section of the store, and bumped into one of (gay) his classmate. Apparently the conversation went like this:

“Hey!”

“Hey…”

“Uhm… Weird to see you here… Do you want to go for a drink?”

“Sure”.

And so they left. I must admit I enjoyed the anecdote immensely. From what I gathered from the story, they never mentioned this encounter again, except for a couple of years ago when he threw an allusion in a coversation:

“Hey, do you remember this time….”

“(hastily) Yeah, I remember the time”.

Sometimes big cities are tiny places indeed. I could tell you about the time I bumped into my Canadian friend from Victoria/Toronto in Piccadilly Circus in the middle of summer, and how it turned out that we had rooms on the exact same floor of the same hostel, but I think I already mentioned it elsewhere (very last post on the page - I guess I didn’t know what permalinks were at the time of posting).