Four years ago my partner Ben and I left Auckland, and set off on a 4 month backpacking trip across North America and Europe, ending up in London, our new home by September that same year. We arrived with just two backpacks each, a friend’s couch to stay on, and not much else to our name.
Cut to May 2021 and we’ve now been living outside of New Zealand for a full four years and have been loving our London life for most of that time. I look back on my ‘year in review’ posts about our travels from 2018 & 2019 and I both smile and cringe. Smile for all the memories we’ve made, at the freedom that we had and with pride at all we have achieved since we moved here. And yet I cringe because little did we know then what was to come…
I don’t need to tell you the story – you’ve lived through it too in some way, no matter where you are in the world.
But to give you the gist of the situation from our perspective, we went from being able to frolic around Europe with glee, hitting a new city or country every month, squeezing every little juicy drop out of our life in London, to being majorly restricted from travelling beyond our own neighbourhood or even our own apartment. Since the pandemic struck the UK hard in March 2020 we have travelled to a grand total of one other European country (we managed a brief week and half in the South of France during the late summer of 2020 before the second wave hit and the borders slammed shut again.) Our ability to enjoy our life in London has been majorly curtailed – with more months spent in lockdown than not, over the past 14 months.
Now don’t get me wrong – we have been incredibly fortunate, compared to what some people have faced.
Empty tube carriages 
Indoor Gardening 
Board Games 
Watching the snow fall 
Park Walks
We’ve kept our jobs, we’ve had a steady living situation, a reasonably spacious apartment and we’ve had two great flatmates to be social with. With no commutes, less eating out and not much else to spend our money on, we have increased our ability to save. We both contracted covid earlier this year- but even then, we’re grateful to have come out the other side relatively unscathed.
However there is no doubt that compared to what we had anticipated, expected, and hoped for, our lives have massively changed.
I’ve been forced to work entirely from home since last March, seeing my workmates in person on only one occasion. With no access to any outdoor space or even a balcony, it’s definitely felt stifling and isolating at times. Under wide sweeping social restrictions and with everyone facing the same disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic we’ve watched as our friend circle has dwindled- to the point where combined we can probably count the totality of our London based friends on two hands. We’ve then lacked crucial occasions and venues where we could meet people and try to expand our social circle again.
At the same time, being far from our homeland, with expensive and unreliable flight schedules and weeks of hotel quarantine separating us from our families, we’ve hoped and prayed that no one back in New Zealand falls critically ill or has a serious accident (because we just can’t guarantee that we would be able to get back into the country in time if we needed to be at a hospital bedside, or worse.) We’ve watched as the hurdles that we have to face in order to re-enter our own country grow ever more challenging, and as public sentiment has turned against people coming back, because we might all be a vector for a deadly virus.
We’ve considered that covid free paradise that exists over the seas, and wondered if this time the grass truly is greener on the other side.
We’ve agonized over the decision. We’ve clung to all the good that London has brought us, and all the plans that we had to yet to realise in our time here and all the people that we are leaving behind. But on the flip side, we’ve desperately longed for a life beyond our apartment, beyond lockdown, beyond covid. We’ve longed to see our families more often and hold our loved ones close. We’ve longed to connect with old friends again. We’ve longed for wide open spaces and greenery and fresh air. We’ve longed for simple normality – a trip to a shopping mall, a restaurant dinner, a group fitness class.
We’ve longed to be able to move forward in some way, to achieve more than just surviving the latest week of monotony.
And so, after over a year of ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’ it is with much sadness that we have decided to call it a day and head back to New Zealand ‘for good’ (although I hate those words, because you can never say forever.) We know how lucky we are that we have some sort of choice, a kind of ‘get out of covid free’ card, but it feels scary to be leaving all that has become so familiar to us and I don’t think that I expected for it to come with such a huge sense of loss.
I’ll miss my job in Higher Education that I love so much, I’ll miss all my wonderful colleagues and, after a few years working at the same institution, I’ll miss being the person that can answer all the tricky technical questions.
I’ll miss the cosmopolitan nature of this city – that embraces you no matter where you’re from, what language you speak (or should I say what accent you speak English with…) or the colour of your skin.
I’ll miss our first true ‘home’ together as a couple and our ‘little London village’ of Clapham that we’ve loved since we first laid eyes on it.
I’ll miss London’s beautiful streetscapes, and marvelling at the views as I cross the Thames on the train.
I’ll miss our wee circle of fellow kiwi stalwarts who have weathered the storm with us (you know who you are) and our British and European friends (who all ask me if they can come with me.)
I’ll miss drinking pints in historic pubs and sunbathing in parks along with every other Londoner when a rare heatwave hits.
I’ll miss our proximity to mainland Europe and having six international airports at our fingertips and the endless possibilities of all the places we could go (but yet can’t.)
I’ll miss this outward-looking, globally connected community, that overwhelmingly voted to stay inside the European Union (yes I’m a ‘remoaner’ and I’ll bloody well own it.)
But after a two person referendum of our own, the votes are in and leave has the edge. Brexit means Brexit so, at least for now, it is goodbye and farewell from us.
Who knows, we might apply to join the union again some day…