It’s my birthday. Fifty-five today and I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be which has got to be the best birthday present of all. Birthday presence. I’ll take that. Normally I cry on my birthday but I get the feeling this time I won’t.

I moved into the new flat a week or so ago and then was high-tailing it to France after only a night here. M and I flew back on Wednesday and went west first to hers and then Chaggers to see S and doggles and her incredible show. What it is to have such talented friends and celebrate them.

I love staying at hers, or rather, her neighbour’s which is linked to hers by secret doors behind bookshelves and curtains. I always think when I go there that if an American could see it (yes Adam Nathan, I’m looking at you) they’d think they’d fallen into a fairy fantasy hobbit film of entirely unreal proportions. Up on the moors, the final lurch a sunken road dripping moss on ancient stone, a hamlet firmly ignoring time, its shoulders to the wind and each other’s walls, shells along the path to steps happy to break your ankle. The twists and turns of rooms and stairs that could easily lead you in circles even with the lights on, low ceilings and rugs and inching past sofas and stepping over settles and a kitchen that would give even the mildest of agents a heart attack. There is no compliance here. There is the best of sleeps.

We hung out at the show and then went for tea at F’s who’s inherited another parrot called pigeon who will only speak to her. The other looks on with mild disgust. Dinner at the pub and we all, on sudden food, felt the exhaustion of our pillar to post (me and M) and hanging a show (S).

M dropped me at the station the next morning, the train to Paddington, a quick change and forty winks at home and T arrived with dancing shoes on. We got food and chatted the catch up we’ve been missing and then there we were, heading into Annie Macmanus ‘s Before Midnight at 7:45pm and so ready my body started moving before I’d folded my coat into a locker. I’d been looking forward to this for months.

There are no photos - of course there are no photos because that was the point. “We’re here to dance,” said Annie. Two thousand people brought together for the love of the beat; it’s been years since I’ve been in a club and I’d forgotten the joy of the faces. Two thousand up turned smiling humans all agreeing that dancing is the best, that coming together to move in unison is a world-beating way of feeling the love, that love is without bounds or limits. Up on the balcony behind the decks, Annie doing what she does best, spinning the room into unity, arms raised, hearts open, bodies moving as one. It’s a prayer and a church and we are all devotees and when Human League remixed into a chorus that everyone knew I felt that despite all the madness outside, it was going to be all right. Look what we’re capable of. Look what we love doing. Annie - we love you. I will be doing that again and again.

I danced non-stop for four hours, a thirty something pulled me into a hug and shouted I can’t believe your stamina! and I thought, yes, the years of dirty desert outback parties, dancing for a week and my body knows this place. Give me a beat and my body can keep going forever.

On the way home one of those tableaus that make the late night tube a theatre - a man slumped in comatose sleep, another man and his wife boarded the train, he in suit and coat and hat, she in rain Mac and small walking tour rucksack. He took the space half taken already by the sleeping man, and the man snuggled into his shoulder, quite happy. The wife refused to sit.

Minutes later, the man and his wife left and the sleeping man lay down, his head on the lap of his new bed fellow and throughout it all there was laughter and gentleness and care.

The weekend’s been spent here in London and I woke on Saturday morning with the distinct impression that I was playing truant from my life. What is this easy space with carpets and walk to the shops? With no heavy load of thirty years driving and caring and running the beauty that is the farm no doubt, but is no doubt a load to carry? Here I can go out, forget something, come back and it doesn’t involve a three point turn in a sloping lane. Here I am light. I carry nothing but the dustpan and brush picked up from the local hardware store as I slowly gather the essentials. Have I really escaped my life? Or is this a new one? The latter, obviously, a new iteration, a chapter of me that begins At fifty-five I moved to London and I am filled with gratitude. How lucky I am to have this happen, to be able to make this happen.

Yesterday J and I sat on the floor prepping his portfolio, the carpet covered in double-sided tape strips. In the print shop a couple with their three-week old baby came in for passport photos. It made me think of my conversation with Marc Typo , how exactly the thing happened that we discussed, the immediate language of mothers, intimate and to the point, how she can’t think what she used to do with all her time and here I was with J, nearly nineteen years later, that exquisite, precious time in the past and how much I cherish it. She held up the print for me to see, she looks like a little mafia boss all dark hair and scrunched face and sleep and we laughed and off she went into her nineteen years.

Meanwhile the farm of course, in true farm style decided to mark the occasion of my leaving by exploding the AGA; a frantic call with K got it turned off while she valiantly cleaned up the soot which by all accounts has plastered every surface and turned Percy Cat a shade of grey. No matter. All change tends to come with a shifting of bodies and the farm has rustled her full muddy skirts and lifted her giant arms in the air and the beats have knocked a few things over. I will be home there tomorrow. All will be well. Happy Birthday to me.

Eleanor

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