This was the street where I found my first home in London.
For many people, a home is a destination. For me it has almost always been the opposite: a starting point.
I have changed homes, neighbourhoods, cities and even countries often enough for my mother to lose count. At one point she started calling me Gipsy. The meaning was perfectly clear: I had changed address again.
Longridge Road was one of those beginnings.
I remember the wet pavement, the lit windows, that blue above the rooftops and the feeling of having stepped into a new life without knowing what shape it would take.
Looking at this photograph now, what strikes me is not how much London has changed.
It is how convinced I was that this was simply a new home.
In reality, it was the beginning of a long series of departures.
Perhaps that is why I have always had a strange relationship with homes.
They have never held me still.
They have always set me in motion again.