Last spring, just when everyone else was fleeing the capital, I was returning, hungry for all its glorious chaos
Most days I would walk along the coast road, past the bungalows facing the Channel, where the sea was implacably grey, and the gardens so neatly plotted that the space between each tulip, each daffodil, seemed to have been measured with graticule precision. Each day I would ask myself: “What am I doing here?”
I had left London in the summer of 2014. Having flirted with the idea of moving to Los Angeles, instead I chose the Kent coast, then in the early flush of regeneration. I was looking for something that felt more like a community, close enough for creativity to mingle. Somewhere, perhaps, to finally feel settled.
Laura Barton is a writer and broadcaster specialising in music
