Britain could welcome more than 200,000 refugees fleeing the Ukrainian war this week after easing its visa requirements. Ukrainians settled in the UK will now be able to bring their parents, grandparents, children over the age of 18 and siblings.
Many of these refugees will no doubt end up in London, new immigrants joining those of us who arrived in previous decades. It is coming up to 25 years since I first moved to the big city. I was born in Pakistan, but have no memories of it; grew up in Luton, but left as soon as I could (for obvious reasons); and moved to study in Manchester in the year that The Stone Roses released their debut album.
Each place played a part in the story of me and left an imprint. But it is London where I have lived longest. My life has changed so much in the past quarter century, and so has my relationship with my city; what once felt so immense now feels intimate. Yes it has world-famous theatres, galleries and restaurants but it also offers more local and social pleasures: the coffee shop whose guitar-playing owner will restring my acoustic for free and the Turkish café whose walls are plastered with pictures drawn by my daughter. I value the roots I have laid down in London and the community of friends and neighbours of which I am a part.
In recent years, however, some of those friends have started to doubt whether London is truly for them anymore. Last week, two friends returned from visiting Portugal, where they are thinking of moving, and this week another friend told me she was looking at putting in an offer for a place in Devon. In both their cases the reasons are the same: a desire for new adventures, a chance to show that there is a new act in their lives.
I used to spin through the same cycle of emotions whenever London friends left, ranging from confusion to sadness to envy. I would worry that there was something wrong with me, that I was not filled with that same yearning to flee. Why was I so dull? I’ve been here since the first Blair government. Did I not seek a fresh chapter and new chapters in my story?
But these days I have realised that as much as I love to zip around the globe, I have absolutely no desire to move out. I think of London in the same way that I think of my kids: relentless, demanding, loud and exhausting but without it life would be dull beyond belief. People sometimes say about London that “it’s not really Britain”. They say that as if it’s a bad thing. But for me London represents the best of Britain, precisely because it feels so global, everyone coming from across the country and world. Maybe it is because I am a child of immigrants but I prize the feeling of being settled — I prefer roots to wings.
The Ukrainian refugees who end up in London will in time lay down their own roots and add their own verse to the song of London. As for me, 25 years on, I have no wish to leave the city I am so proud to call my own, and to call my home.
In other news...
Madonna’s Instagram post for Ukraine was a welcome break from her edited selfies
I was pleased to see Madonna posting her support for Ukraine on Instagram this week. It meant her followers were briefly spared yet more heavily filtered social media posts featuring the 63-year-old singer as a vague approximation of a much younger woman but without the distraction of skin pores.I have been a Madonna fan since the Eighties but the woman who was once fearless now seems so uncomfortable in her own skin she cannot bare her authentic self to the world.
What makes it all even sadder is that the woman who in her youth gloriously smashed taboos around sex and religion now had the opportunity to confront ageism in society and culture. Madonna could have shown how there is there is nothing to be ashamed about in getting older. Instead she posts heavily edited selfies which leave us wondering who’s that girl.
