Encore Radio plays songs from your favourite musicals,
all day, every day
blithely singing along to this song from Rent when it dawned on me.
We've been here for more than a year.
More than 525,600 minutes.
We've been here long enough to have survived all the 'firsts' away from home, those dates that are so replete with tradition and family history that they tug and pull and ache ... birthdays, anniversary days, Christmas, New Year.
Long enough that time passes more quickly.
Long enough for me to have stopped counting how long we've been here.
We've even been here long enough to have grown so familiar with life in our compact attic flat in Fitzrovia that it had become tiresome.
No, that's not the right word.
Not tiresome.
Too many awe-inspiring, mind-expanding, life-affirming things surrounded us for it to be tiresome.
What I should have said is that we had lived there long enough to have grown fed-up with ceaseless traffic and choked footpaths; exhausted by the parade of grey, airless days; jaded by brick and concrete.
Down the Thames we moved. No longer in the heart of the city, now in an airy modern North Greenwich apartment we can see the river, watch the sunset, enjoy growing plants on the expansive balcony. It's mind-opening in a whole different way. An additional way. The way that means so much to so many Australians.
Here there is head space.
Expanse of sky.
Light.
Anyway, I began at the point when I was musing about how I would measure that first year.
And I thought, how about in shows?
When we decided to move here, I promised myself that I would take me to every play, concert, musical or exhibition that took my fancy.
I did not let myself down.
In our first year in London, I took myself to 14 musicals, 17 plays, 5 concerts, 2 stand-up comedy performances, the Chelsea Flower Show, the Longines Global Champions showjumping, 12 museums, the taping of 3 television shows and the truly spectacular Lucha Libre masked wrestling.
And here are some of the amazing actors who have shared some of their 525,600 minutes with me.
So how do you measure a year?
