URSABLOG: A Change in Space and Time

I’ve just moved house – from one part of central Athens to another – and even though the distance is short, and the new flat is more or less the same size, this change has proved more significant than I expected. I had been living in the flat I have just moved out of for six years, having moved in with the woman I was in a relationship with at the time. Preparing to move out made me think deeply not only about the time when we moved in, but of all the time I spent there.

When we started looking for a new place together, it was the first time that we had to consider the other’s different ideas of what we wanted: apart from personal differences, there were cultural differences too, ones that had not been evident before in our relationship.

I thought I had no need of a balcony: I had not grown up with one, and knew nothing of the joys of sitting outside from Easter until October, or later. I had grown up in England with a large garden, but access to it was very much weather permitting, it was not a place where, as a family, we hung out; it was more of a place for the children to go and play in, and let off steam, and for my father to repair the consequent damage to his plants and flowers afterwards. As gardens, even small ones, certainly do not exist in abundance in central Athens, I had put it out of my mind. But my partner was adamant about what she wanted: a balcony and a view, across the rooftops with no-one living opposite. The layout, number and state of the rooms was not as important, or maybe they were a little lower down on our list of priorities. It was late May, and the end of the first lockdown, and the weather and our mood were good; in retrospect we may have overlooked things that we should have paid more attention to.

What really sold the flat to us was the huge balcony the length of the building, overlooking a church opposite with big fir trees in the grounds. It faced southwest, promising glorious sunsets over Filopappou, glimpsed in between apartment blocks. And if you leant over the balcony and looked right, you could just about glimpse the Acropolis.

The flat was refurbished, with a new kitchen and bathroom and in its empty state it looked large enough for both of us, and although we knew we needed to buy some furniture – particularly for storage – we agreed the rent and started making plans to move.

The first challenge was what to take and what to throw. A lot of my existing furniture was old, and dated from before my divorce, and from England. I hadn’t paid much attention – I thought a sofa was just a sofa – but space was at a premium so many things started to be jettisoned: my old bed, the desk I had had since I was a teenager, lamps, bedside tables, stereo stands, pictures, a complete but dated set of crockery, a broken guitar and so on. It turned out to be cathartic for me: stuff from my marriage – long over – hanging around which I had not been bothered about, but had also not been bothered to throw out.

This meant buying a new bed, a new sofa bed, new wardrobes, a new kitchen table (the old dining table was installed on the balcony, with the old sofa bed), and new bookshelves, although I had far too many books to put out. Space became increasingly tight even as I learnt about the winter/summer change of clothes: the ones not in season in suitcases and storage boxes in the top of wardrobes waiting for their turn in the winter or summer sun.

And the seasons turned, and life went on, lockdowns came again, and although the balcony was still amazing, our relationship was not, and we broke up a year and a half later.

I was left in the flat, with the evidence of our new life together staring at me in accusation and remorse, and although I tried to grow into the increased space, I realise now that I was trying to surround myself with the old things that comforted me – books mostly – but also to prove a point, although I am not sure who to. Maybe myself, maybe my now ex-partner who might come back one day, even to visit. I kept the place scrupulously clean, spent a lot of time with my beautiful golden cat Xrysa, I cooked a lot of incredible meals for one, I took over the desk and the office and wrote, and read, and tried to make the place my own. It was not, let’s say, entirely successful.

Stubborn foolish man that I am, for a long time after that I never for one moment considered moving, even though some kind people had gently suggested to me that I should. The flat was convenient – fifteen minutes from the office by Vespa, ten minutes to Koukaki and Syngrou Fix metro station and twenty minutes to Plaka by foot, two very good street markets within maximum ten minutes’ walk, three good supermarkets – and I was making friends, good friends in the area. I was getting into a routine, a new routine, and getting used to convenience.

But I see now that I was not happy there. It was not just the fact that the church bells woke me up early every Sunday and on any other significant name day in the liturgical calendar, or that although I hosted a few gatherings on the balcony on summer evenings I rarely sat out there by myself, except later in the evening when the heat of the day was receding. It was not even that I was reminded in flashbacks of our time together – both the good and the bad times – as I wandered around alone. I did not realise it then – because it did not, it could not occur to me – that we had moved in there together in hope, and I was there by myself trying to make the best of something that hadn’t worked out. Hope dies last.

And eventually it did. I cannot pinpoint the time, but an accumulation of events and realisations gathered until I reached a tipping point, which I cannot accurately locate, even in retrospect.

Xrysa died – quickly and painlessly enough (I hope) of lymphoma – but I was not with her, not even in the same country (she was in hospital and I was in Japan) at the time she reached the end. I never really got over the fact that she wasn’t there to greet me when I got home. And even though I bought an expensive new sofa bed to replace the cheaper one bought when we moved in – scratched to death by Xrysa in the interim – I realised that it wasn’t enough to change the energy of the space for the better. A sofa is a sofa.

And routine, and convenience are all very well and good, but a fifteen-minute commute is not the be all and end all in life, especially when the evening commute brings you quicker back to the place where you no longer fit. But if routine and convenience increase isolation and narrow engagement with the world, then things have to change. It was not the place’s fault, I suppose, but it did play a part.

There is a temptation here to extrapolate this stubborn tenacity to not move on to other areas of my life. Not willing to give up a certain way of working that is evidently not working (with a lack of positive results being all the evidence you need to prove it) because this is how it should be done. Not willing to listen to others who may have a solution to a problem because you want to fix it yourself. Repeatedly trying to do business with a client – who will gratefully take your call, and keep you talking, and download your brain for all they need – but nonetheless showing no willingness to do actual business with you. The list is endless, it seems.

But things change, thankfully, even when the change is unseen as it moves in deeper, murkier waters below the frantic and troubled surface of daily life. One day I went to see – almost randomly – a flat in an area completely new to me. It turned out that the flat wasn’t for me – great big balconies, lovely kitchen, but too much space for a single man to rattle around in on the off-chance that family might come to visit – but it began a process of thinking about where and how I wanted to live, and the how became more dominant in my thinking. I realised that yes, I actually did have a choice.

Despite not finding the ideal place at first – not a huge surprise or disappointment – I continued to go and see potential new places and spaces to live. Some were really nice spaces, but in the wrong places: on busy streets, or facing other apartments across a deep, narrow canyon of a street. Others were in the right places, but were the wrong spaces: narrow, long rooms with eccentrically laid out kitchens which you would not want to linger in. And yet other roomier places – converted from workshops or offices – might be great places to host a cocktail party in, but terrible to curl up and read a book in.

Which led to the thought – simple and obvious I know – that all I really wanted was to live in a place where I could feel at home. And what did that home look like? I kept searching, and began to narrow down my preferences, but also broaden my horizons. My ideal place could not be found by simply putting filters on a property website’s search engine. I found myself scrolling through everything, and by being definitively judgemental when I saw something I didn’t like, I began to understand what I was perhaps looking for.

But of course it’s easy to tick boxes and decide on a course of action, a relationship, a place of work, a new project by simply rejecting the negatives, but without exploring the possibility of as yet unknown positives you may never find what you want. And positives sometimes have to be seen, to be felt, to be believed and chosen.

I began to develop a feeling made up of vague ideas of my ideal place, but I find it hard – even now – to pinpoint what those parameters are. It had to feel right, I suppose, a place that was calm enough within that I didn’t feel as though I had to escape from it, a place where I didn’t feel trapped. I am fortunate enough not to be too restricted by budget, either practically or temperamentally, but the layout, the number of rooms, the square metres, the balcony even? I would know it when I saw it.

And that is how it happened: an estate agent called me and said she had something that she thought would suit me just right. It was in an area I had not looked into before, one that I had in fact consciously overlooked because it wasn’t an area that someone like me would consider living in; prejudices can get in the way of many potential good decisions.

So, one morning I went and looked at the flat and immediately it felt just right for me. I consulted my circle of close friends – sharing a video of the place with them – expressing my misgivings about the area, but also my feelings about how it seemed right. All of them were positive, and encouraged me, except one, who still lives with his parents when he is in Athens, and has never moved into a place of his own, and so is super cautious, and, dare I say it, conservative. Some of them also expressed – in different ways – that yes, it really was time to move on.

Then came a rather surreal experience: the owners of the flat had shortlisted their preferred would-be tenants down to two, and I was one of them. Could I come for a short interview? I did, and they asked me questions about my profession, where I worked, how long I intended to stay in Greece, my working and living habits, whether I was in a relationship, if I had any family – i.e. kids – whether I could actually afford the rent, and wasn’t Piraeus too far for me to go to work every day? They also wanted references. I was successful; my reputation, as a good potential tenant at least, goes before me, it seems.

It was the references that put me in pole position, although perhaps the willingness to pay two deposits promptly may have been a factor too. I put my future landlords in touch with my existing landlord, and my previous landlady, by phone, and although I was not party to their conversations, their references were generous enough (he is quiet, doesn’t bother anyone, always pays the rent on time, looks after the place) that the new lease was signed the following week.

The actual process of moving was enervating enough, but by employing movers who would pack everything (one day) and then move all the boxes and furniture (the next day) to the new place it was as stress-free as it could be. They were excellent: not one thing – not a plate, a wine glass, a book – was broken or damaged in the process.

On the final night in the old place, surrounded by packed boxes and cellophaned furniture, I retreated to the balcony with my take-away dinner, and drinking a glass of red wine, I said goodbye to the place, to the memories, to my stubbornness that had kept me there, to the life I had lived there.

It was a poignant moment: I had a nagging feeling that I was betraying the place, and the memories that still clung to it, that I was tearing myself from a place where I had failed, where I had not succeeded in what I set out to do when I moved in, with hope. I sat there, gazing at the familiar view: the sun setting behind Filopappou, and the sky in that direction becoming that curious green-mauve light that lasts for only a minute or two before the inky blue curtain is drawn down, with Venus rising above the dome of the church. Had I tried hard enough?

But then the excitement of the move took over: here was a new chance, and even though I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the weeks-long process of unpacking, of arranging – and rearranging – my old things in a new place, and working out where things would go, I found I was looking forward to the move with hope. Hope does die last, apparently.

It’s been just over three weeks since then, and in future blogs I intend to share and reflect on themes that have surfaced whilst adapting to my new place, and how one big change can be a catalyst for other smaller but nonetheless significant changes in how I think about work, life and the other things that I find are important to me.

But for now, I will comment that I find it amazing that living in a flat of more or less the same size should have such a positive effect on me. The layout is better, the ceilings are higher, the light is fuller, brighter and kinder. It has a new bathroom, and a new(ish) kitchen which suits this single, food-and-wine-obsessed man very well. It also has a balcony the length of the building, and although it is narrow, without enough space for a dinner table, it is enough for me to sit and smoke a cigarette, contemplating the view.

And what a view! Even though it is only on the third floor, it is the top floor of a building on top of a hill; I may as well be on the twelfth floor. I do not immediately overlook a church (no longer will I be woken – or summoned – by bells) but I can gaze over Goudi, Kypseli and beyond all the way up to Parnitha. And although I will never be able to watch the sun go down from here, because the windows of my bedroom, office and living room all face the northeast, I awake to the sun rising above Tourkovounia, warming my legs on the bed once I open the shutters.

The freshness and novelty of this new place is inspiring and energising. I guess I will eventually get used to it, and end up taking it for granted, but for now what seems more important is that it is mine, chosen by me, for me, and for how I wish to live. It is not perfect, there are still things that have to be done, things to be arranged and rearranged, but this is the process of continually adapting to a space in time, a new time, as time moves on, as time itself adjusts.

I think I made a mistake in the past by trying to convince myself that if only by working harder, by stubbornly insisting on a certain way of doing things, by persisting in my chosen way of thinking, that eventually things would work out well, that I would be – well – vindicated. How foolish I was. But it is only by losing things – and precious things – that I have seen that persistence, however laudable and admirable it appears in certain parts of the self-help universe, is fundamentally flawed if I persist in error. But it is only through making those necessary errors that lessons can be learned, and life can change, and then I can move on, in space, in time, in life.

Simon Ward