I was learning what my job was while I did it. This required a suspension of disbelief from my team.

The account manager, with her gin and tonic and cigarette, shoots me a look and says: you don’t have to answer that.

Originally published on my Patreon, 8th November 2023.

I’m twenty four years-old and I’m striding through Islington towards Rosebery Avenue. The contents of my life in Manchester sits in a storage unit three hours away, the rest is inside the room I’m sub-letting through spring; it has views across the old Arsenal Stadium (now flats) and a flat roof where me and my friend sit at night, talking about discuss our futures, where we want to holiday, the jobs we want these ones to lead to.

I walk the hour into work, stopping to photograph the cherry blossoms. The big vote hasn’t yet been decided, and I feel able to take chances: I commute without an umbrella. The comparative lack of rain in this new city is just another luxurious promise this place extends to me. Really, anything could happen here.

There was a man I passed some mornings. He wore over-ear headphones and he sang for his life. Here he is now, bouncing up the pavement beside the black speartop railings, the clipped lawns and curving facade of what used to be known as The Laboratory building. His head and the sports bag at his shoulder are swinging as he throws his body into the song and into us without instrumental accompaniment. People glance and their faces give nothing away. I drink him up openly, like a child. Energy! He is on his own path. What emboldens a person to break through like this?