The last twenty-four hours was a blur. There is an ethereal atmosphere that surrounds the Last Time you do something. The last time I hear the buskers acoustics echo through the tube station. The last time I share a jug of Snake Bite, also known as the Poor Man’s Black Velvet. The last time I walk down Old Street at 4am when the streets are lined with homeless people and exploding rubbish bins. The rubbish that I once loathed had looked like poetry that last morning.

Goodbyes are asphyxiating. The first goodbye was that morning, on the rooftop. It was the first clear day that London had birthed in weeks. The air was fresh and the streets were fuzzy from the glare. I gazed over East London’s imperfections, like a mother over her first-born. This place had ushered me into my eighteenth year, showed me the ropes and now I had to cut them loose.

I was fresh out of high school and I had fallen in love with the first city I met... With all its charlatans and drudgery it was a beautiful world to which no one but we had keys.