Simon Armitage writes a Letter to London

Dear London

I've applied for a restraining order requiring that you remain two hundred miles from Huddersfield at all times and at least one hour fifty eight minutes from Wakefield Westgate station. Sorry I've had to take this draconian measure. You know how proud I am to call you a friend, London, and I admit to being a little star-struck on occasions by your fame and glamour, a little turned on even by your power and swank. We've come long way since I drew you as a target on a wall-map of Britain and threw darts into your bull's eye. I'm not digging for gold, filing for custody of our nation's greatest institutions. I don't want the Bank of England relocating to Rotherham or the Albert Hall rebuilding on a brown field site next to the M62. What I need is my space, London. I need my moors and valleys, my hills and escarpments, my rarefied air and my moral high ground. I need my own place.

We've been seeing a lot of each other recently, London, twice a week sometimes, and I couldn't bear to lose our walks by the river, our visits to galleries and theatres, our nights on the town. But I can't move in with you, London, I can't live in the spinning roulette wheel of your peoples and postcodes, and I'm asking you to respect the distance I need, and for you not to come here looking for me. Please don't send the long arms of your proposed high speed railway lines stretching this way, they'd only pull me in, make me part of your circle, drain the life out of me when what I like about us is our differences. And I'll be honest here, I'm not pretty in a morning. I need that one hour and fifty eight minutes to Kings Cross to straighten my face, to wake up, read the paper, drink an expensive takeaway coffee and to do the work I should have done the night before.

London, If you love and respect me as you say you do and want to shower me with gifts and see me thrive and be happy then just send the money in the post. But keep your distance, London. You stay south and I'll stay north, not coupled but attracted across two hundred miles of magnetic field.

Yours affectionately

Simon Armitage

Yorkshire