MIKEY BELL

It wasn’t immediately after I left. 

It wasn’t when I was scrubbing the bathroom floors, running cloths over skirting boards, labelling cardboard boxes with KITCHEN, LOUNGE or BEDROOM labels, or taking photo frames off the wall. It wasn’t when I contacted all my utility providers to tell them about my new address (that was a ballache, could’ve done without it to be honest), and it wasn’t when I stripped my kitchen pantry – my shrine, my anchor – of its equipment and ingredients; the items that had long served as a line of breadcrumbs that always led me back home to safety.

No, it wasn’t then.

I was swollen with anticipation and excitement for what to was to come, so much so that I had never really fathomed what it would be like to leave the flat I had lived in for ten years. Onwards and upwards, apparently. I left without hesitation, and walked down the little winding staircase and through the door and around the creaking circular corridor towards the lift, a route I could navigate safely blindfolded, and as I lifted my finger to press the button, a thought curled into the corners of my mind.

‘You left the hob on.’

Or the oven was leaking gas, or the iron (that had long been packed away) was ablaze or left the tap had flooded the flat or the window wide open and the killer now free to run rampant. Anybody with a mind crammed wall-to-wall with obsessive thoughts knows this feeling all too well. I stopped myself from pressing the button, turned on my heel, and made my way back to flat on autopilot, having done this routine for a decade every time I left the flat.

I arrived at the flat door and slid my keys into the lock. Automatically, as I have done for years, I turned the key quietly and opened the door very, very slowly, aware that I would be greeted by the excited tidal of barks from Waffle and Rico, my dogs, and they would pounce at the door from the other side.

And then I opened the door to nothing.

No dogs, no hob, no oven on, no iron, no window wide open; just long, tall, empty walls and a lot of space.

And that’s when it happened. That’s when I realised I would never walk into the flat ever again. That’s when I cried. 

I cried when I realised that my body was so used to the routines of this home that I move on autopilot, almost as if my limbs are connected to string, in perfectly synchronised choreography with the walls that have kept me safe for so long. I could do nothing but cry. I sat against the wall in my empty living room and cried until it felt useless to do it anymore.

When I could unfold myself from the floor, I stood alone in my empty kitchen, as I had done so many times. Ten years of the same triangular room, the same counter tops, the same counter heights, the same croaky cupboards with unreliable hinges, the same freezer that was always curiously frozen over so that now and then I would need to stab at the ice with the pointy bit of a wooden spoon like I was slaying a vampire (didn’t know how to defrost a freezer. Still don’t).

I stood in silence and thought about all the ways I knew that kitchen.

I knew how cold it got in the winter so I had to bring my ingredients out of the fridge for a little longer than normal to bring them to room temperature. I knew which counter to cook on depending on how much space around me I needed for the recipe’s preparation. I knew exactly where the sun rose, wrapped around the flat, and then set, so I could take wonderful photos of my food (and self…). I knew not to move too enthusiastically when holding hot pans because a dog would always be curling around my ankles. I knew exactly where to sit on the kitchen countertop so that I could open cupboards with my hands and drawers with my feet while talking to my partner who was fumbling his way around a strange kitchen for the first time.

I knew that kitchen as well as I knew myself, and it, in turn, knew me.

It knew me when I was feral and enthusiastic, desperately wanting to be a food writer, well before I truly was, following recipes to the letter. It knew me when I was over-confident and a bit pissed, serving my friends food that was magically both under and over cooked. It knew me when I started drafting my own recipes, sharing my love for food, cooking, and writing with a small readership that made me feel like a superstar. It cradled me right up until the moment I stood there, with wet, hot cheeks, pressing myself into small arch that separated it from the living room. I thanked it for absorbing my stresses, my celebrations, my miseries, and my jubilance. I thanked it for every meal, every memory, every moment, and for never letting me go through a sourdough phase.

I thanked it for the years of dancing.

For ten years, we danced together. I knew it’s musicality, and my hands could move in time with it; from cupboard to hob, from hob to oven, from fridge to counter, from sink to drawer. Chopping stirring, tasting, wiping, eating, each action bleeding into the next, and it’s only when synchronicity like this in place does work not feel like labour. When I was in it, even if for a little while, even if for the time it took to boil the kettle or take a chicken out of the fridge or preheat the oven, I could hear the music, and I could lose myself in sound and movement, which allowed me to make sense of everything in a way that I found soothing and comfortable. That kind of intimacy can only come from a decade of dancing. 

And I must keep dancing.

My new kitchen is gorgeous. Sure, it’s a little dark (not a fan of grey, shiny cupboard doors) and the doors themselves don’t have handles and if I have to snap another nail on trying to open them from the bottom I think I’ll have an aneurism, but it’s gorgeous nonetheless. It’s perfectly wonderful in its own perfectly wonderful way.

But it doesn’t know me yet, and I don’t know it.

The light is different. The oven runs hotter and scalds in odd places. The water runs faster and harder. The drawers don’t make sense to me yet. I enter it every time with an air of caution, like a suspicious seven-year-old being introduced to a step mother for the first time. I reach for handles that aren’t there, turn to cupboards that won’t open, and feel for buttons that don’t exist. I feel like a ghost haunting my own old habits. It’s a very odd situation to put someone who, at the best (maybe even worst?) of times is quite a controlling force, and given that I have always found my kitchen to be the root of all calm in my life, putting me in a new kitchen permanently feels like throwing me into a brand new universe. 

And the biggest change to absorb, the most crucial one that comes with softness and edginess in equal measures, is that this kitchen isn’t mine anymore. 

It’s ours.

That means, learning the new rhythms, actual literal ones. I’d never considered having to consult with someone on where we keep the ketchup and eggs or where we stack the pots and pans or how we fold tea towels or how we organise the fridge, because these are not just my decisions alone. I’ve helicopter-mothered by poor partner so many times in the old kitchen, my kitchen, but now this is our kitchen, in our home, it must be different. It’s a different dance. It’s a complete act of surrender, and I can’t dominate this space the way I had done for a decade. 

That alchemy of the old and the new has been the hardest part. Living and cooking with my partner, of course, is a joy like none other, but it’s also strange, learning how to share a space that you once owned entirely. My little universe has now become our universe. There’s still pieces of the old me here. Some of my favourite tools, old battered pans here and there, my favourite ingredients that are always on permanent rotation no matter where I am (I carry Halen Mon salt in my bag…) but the flow is different now, and maybe that means I’m different now.

You can’t ever, really step into something new if you’re continuously looking for how things used to be. Yes, being in this new kitchen means I’ve left so much behind, but it also means I have so much ahead. I’ve allowed myself to lament on how sad I was to say goodbye (this entire post) but I cannot let that overshadow how excited I am for what is to come. That’s what I have quietly been pushing myself to keep dancing.

I dropped AND THE KITCHEN from my website, and it’s a change that means nothing to no one but me. I thought that perhaps THE KITCHEN could mean any kitchen, that it was a metaphorical kitchen, and the website was just an exploration of how I can take my kitchen anywhere I go, but no. To frame it that way would be to dishonour the kitchen I had, the kitchen that was real, the kitchen that made me the cook I am, that got me here. So THE KITCHEN indeed was the kitchen I left behind, not because it didn’t serve me anymore, but because it served me exactly everything it was supposed to. It was meant to bring me here, so that I can get there. I don’t know where there is, just yet, but I’ll keep dancing until I do.

So here we are. 

But for now, I’m sat in my new kitchen as we speak eating a sandwich I didn’t make from a plate that didn’t come from the old flat. I’m still figuring out where everything goes and maybe I always will no matter what kitchen I am in, but that feels like the best place to be, I think? Hands always looking for the next thing to pick up, cupboards always being open for new opportunities, buttons that maybe don’t need to exist, and me, us, always hoping that the dance will never be over.