It occurred to me the other day that every Londoner has their own London. The reason this occurred to me was that I had to meet a friend in Charing Cross station – a big train station in central London right by Trafalgar Square – on Friday evening. And on my way there I realised that, even though I’ve lived in this city for five years now, I’d never once been to Charing Cross station before.

London is like this; we all have our own pockets that we inhabit, and unless we are particularly intrepid, we rarely stray from them. My pockets are the part of West London (Barons Court/Hammersmith/Earls Court) where I live, and the part of central London (Holborn/Bank/Chancery Lane) where I work. Most days, I travel from one to the other, and that’s it. I am also familiar with my former pockets – Knightsbridge, from when I worked in Harrods; Wandsworth, from when I worked there; Dulwich, where I lived before I moved in with J; and the incredibly terrifying and dangerous part of North London – Turnpike Lane – where I lived when I first moved to London and couldn’t afford anywhere better, and where I once saw somebody stabbed with a pair of scissors in a bus shelter.

All of these places, I could confidently navigate without a map. I know where the good places are to get a sandwich. I know which buses go where. But drop me down in another bit of London and I’m as clueless as a tourist. I mean, I can do the central part. I can find my way from Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square without too much trouble. But I will cling nervously to my A-Z in Notting Hill, or Regent’s Park, or Shoreditch.

The problem, and also the joy, of London, is that it’s not laid out in a handy grid system. It’s just an enormous spaghetti-bowl-like mess of winding roads and unexpected corners and wrong turns. So unless you actually know a part of it, have walked the streets regularly, and have a mental image in your head of how it all fits together, there’s no way to bluff it. There is no shame in having lived here five years, or ten or twenty, and still having to use an A-Z in unfamiliar parts of the city. In fact I don’t know a Londoner who doesn’t own an A-Z. We’d be hopelessly lost without it.

But, be all that as it may, I feel slightly sorry to acknowledge that I live on the edge of this enormous, fascinating city, and yet am only really comfortably familiar with small parts of it. When I first moved here I had barely enough money to eat, let alone entertain myself. But I had a bus pass, and the buses were heated (it was November) so when I had some free time I would go down to Victoria Bus Station, hop on a random bus, and see where it took me. I got to know the city that way, learned how it all fit together, began to see it as a bustling whole rather than disparate stops on a tube map. That was fun. I should do it again.

So 2008 is going to be my year of the city. I am going to go out and find new bits of it. I’m going to work out for myself the best place to get a sandwich in Shoreditch. I’m going to find my favourite bench to sit on in Regent’s Park. I am going to put my A-Z away in my bag, and explore new places without worrying about getting lost or being late or which bus I should take to get home.

I’m looking forward to it.