I wish it was all beneath me

But it is not. I can not yet come up with a theory that appeals to me to explain my constant desire to improve my environment, myself and the people around me. When I say improve people around me, I barely mean help them improve themselves. At the end of the day you can not improve someone else without their desire to do so. People are not dolls.

This is not what I wanted to write about. Having left the outskirts of London behind, has created an urge to have a little bit of London at home. This includes the ridiculous desire to own a London tube map shower curtain amongst other things. Of course I don't need it, I can be quite happy with a basic plain white shower curtain, and this is what makes me wander whether it is just a consumerist urge in me to have all I want, rather than just be happy with what I need.

I admit having spent most of my life, going without things I need or want, I can be quite notorious in a sense that I will go quite far to get all I need and almost all I want. I have somewhere deep inside convinced myself that as a working adult, even on the low income scale, I should never go without what I really need, and should from time to time be able to fulfill my wants too. At the end of the day my new small and cosy flat is not filled with things that have no purpose (if there are any of those things they are certainly not mine!) I always seem to want within the need range anyway. I buy shoes only when I need them, however when I do I usually splash out on the ones I really like and those that have some quality element going for them. I sort out my wardrobe every three months and anything that has not been worn for that period goes to charity shop (with the sole exception of my wedding dress, which shall be sold this summer), I only buy bare minimum of clothes as I always seem to get a load of hand outs from someone, and generally I get clothes as a gift. So when I look so critically at myself it seems that is not so bad, but do I really need that tube map shower curtain? Or that building blocks bedding set (yet another thing that makes me think of London)? At the end of the day I wasn't half obsessed with London when I lived there, so where all this obsession is coming from? I suppose we only love or realise we love something when we lose it, but I always knew I loved London, I simply could not afford to live there. In fact I am going to London this week for a coffee with a friend, for a lecture on 9th May, for a coffee with my mum on the 14th May, for a book launch party on the 17th. I am probably have more visits planned to go into London now than when I actually lived five minutes from the tube.

So is this obsession simply a form of materialism, or yet another expression of my anglophilia? I wish I could justify it for myself, I would feel so much better about it.