Tanya Sweeney: A virtual trip back to dingy bedsits and old haunts of my London days reminds me why I left when I did

'There comes a moment in many an Irish person’s London journey where they have to decide if this is their city or not.' Photo posed

Tanya Sweeney

There must be some law that decrees that any website, technology or app relating to tax affairs should be an experience on par with sticking your hand in a fire. This week, I found myself in the incredibly unfortunate position of playing Catch-22 on the UK’s HMRC website. Want to proceed? You’ll need your old National Insurance number first, sunshine. Need your National Insurance number (the equivalent to a PPS number)? You’ll need your old address and the address of your last employer.

Which is how, in the course of some overdue life admin, I found myself trying to sift through the sands of time to remember long-forgotten addresses. Did I live at 824 or 642 Harrow Road? 235 or 345 Camden Road? There was only one thing for it — to find specific houses and flat complexes, I had to log onto Google Street View and take a virtual walk down the old roads I lived on in London back in the 1990s.