Back then, 

watching cargo ships dock on the river elbe. pass a restaurant on the riverside with the same name as my fiancée. the river’s perfume is the smell of the city. staying in stefan’s apartment on zeiseweg, you can almost smell the fish as they come into the docks at the end of the street. his homemade rye bread with malt spread. his husband ralf’s attempt at humour. sitting reading my book in jungfernsteig. drinking the german beers. us four drinking around their kitchen table. olaf thinking his music career is over. preparing to bury my mother that forthcoming february. driving too fast from stefan and ralf’s weekend retreat near the denmark border to hamburg airport to make sure fiancée doesn’t miss the end of 2023 celebrations. watching fireworks over the river elbe from ines’ balcony. fireworks thrown by kids in the street. new year’s eve party with savoury cheesecake and orange crème. me asking this guy for a lighter on the riverside as the clock strikes 12. noticing the next morning, he had slipped a note in my back pocket with the words ‘beautiful eyes, beautiful smile’, call me, please, angelo, +49 171 1435226’. you, were hovering in the distance back in London. boiled egg eaten out of a light blue cockerel egg cup

And now,

olaf is playing at the london palladium in october. they’ve changed the typeface on the station signs on the s-bahn. my father has been taking flowers to my mother’s grave for nearly 18 months. visited the same art galleries as last time, but different exhibitions. a gentle flirt with the receptionist at the kunstverein, he gave me a free entrance ticket. stayed in touch with angelo. met him for drinks which ended with exchanging kisses by the river. it’s only me, stefan and ralf around their kitchen table. prefer the macadamia paste now. you, who’d have thought that our friendship would go this way. learnt that cockerel egg cup was a once most sought-after object in east germany as was only available in west germany before the fall of the berlin wall. only need to make the guest sofa bed up in their lounge for one not two, i’m no longer engaged. the river took a different turn. roared its way through the streets of south london and flooded our flat back home. all my coordinates of what I thought the meaning of love was before the flood, cut loose. and now I am sitting in its wake. but it is not wreckage - destroy, and you create. build bridges and discover something beautiful emerging out of the wreckage. but right now, I am in hamburg, looking out across the river elbe alone, missing you.