When I am cycling around London, my bike is my home. When I am sat on park benches or in cafes or in galleries writing, my notebook is my home.

Freedom of Movement drops the reader straight into the life and everyday concerns of Reuben Lane with no preamble or introduction. One learns about Lane and his backstory little by little as the book progresses. He lives in London’s Earlsfield, south of the river, and is experiencing mounting pressure because of his need to find somewhere else to live as the date when he must move out of his current home comes ever closer.

There is no plot in the conventional sense of the word, no real narrative arc. What we are presented with is a slice of Lane’s life. He works front of house in theatres and cinemas in the evenings and the rest of the time he writes, spends time with his boyfriend, Joseph, and explores the city in which he was born.

Lane travels around London by bike, by bus and on foot. This is not a journey from A to B, rather it is a series of wanderings around London, joining up the dots of the city’s public spaces. Despite their steady erosion by the privatisation of the public realm, Lane still finds squares, parks and cafes where he can hang out, watch people and contemplate life. Leicester Square, Russell Square, Harleyford Road Community Garden, Butterfield Green: the names trip off the tongue like the stations of Lane’s personal cross.

The period covered is September 2018 to March 2019 which gives the whole book a feeling of immediacy and the conviction that Lane’s journeys across London on his bike are still happening as we read his words. Freedom of Movement is a beautiful little book. I say that not to diminish its merits, but simply because it comprises just 62 pages and comes in a plain but pleasingly designed cover, each one featuring an outline of the River Thames bisecting Lane’s London and hand-coloured by the author.

But overshadowing the whole narrative is the spectre of homelessness. Lane realises that his own situation is not as desperate as that of many others: ‘nothing like as bad as those guys sleeping rough on Clapham Common or in tents along Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road.’ But this is the UK in 2018 and the precariousness of existence is a daily concern for many people paying high rents from low wages. Freedom of Movement succeeds in giving the dry statistics of austerity Britain a human face and heart.

Freedom of Movement is a self-published pamphlet with a limited print-run. It costs £9.00, with all proceeds going to CRISIS, and is available from:

Gay’s The Word, 66 Marchmont Street, London WC1 1AB
Phone: 0207 278 7654
Email: sales@gaystheword.co.uk

Or contact the author at: reuben_lane@protonmail.com.