Ridiculous question about living in London

[Skunkandnancy]

I’ve just come back from a few days in London. We stayed in Paddington (Sussex gardens), just across the road from the station.

I LOVE London and when I get back I’m always a bit fascinated and think about it a lot. Where we stayed there appeared to be ‘normal’ flats just along from Sussex Gdns where people were just living.

I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous but I can’t get my head around being able to live right in the middle of London like this. Surely it must cost a fortune. It was noisy at night (all night partying it sounded like) so how do people just live alongside this.

We walked up Whitehall, around Covent Garden, Fleet Street, St Paul’s etc and am just fascinated at the thought that people live amongst this. I look at people on the tube and imagine just being able to travel around like this so easily.

London history is so fascinating too, so much to see everywhere. Do ‘ordinary’ people live right in the centre like this? How is life? I bet it must be amazing 🤩

A mix of online and aldi, its the same size of aldi you would find elsewhere.

Many people get supermarketing delivered. My big shops then were mostly restricted by space to keep stuff.

@factfile I just heard 'hair ambulance' in a Jamaican accent like one of my old uncles 🤣 iykyk I suppose. we've walked though as lot of the places mentioned today around Notting hill of course and Sussex Gardens for a course I went to in a nice hotel the other day. for me in like being close to 'town'

We used to live a 5 minute walk from St Pauls Cathedral. So that was our evening walk, around there and by the river. I LOVED it!

DS lives in an absolutely beautiful flat about 5 minutes walk from Parliament Square. He and mates got it during lockdown when rent was much cheaper as landlords couldn't find tenants. And they have a nice landlord so he's let them stay with only a tiny rent increase. I am SO jealous. I too assumed only filthy rich people could live in the centre but they are all students on full student loans. It would never have occurred to me to even look that centrally on his behalf. I'd probably have started in Wood Green or somewhere in Zone 3. But he started by looking at West End flats and found this one.

Must be great to experience the London life. Wonder if we could afford to move from Cheshire to London anytime soon? 🤔😊

Ah, I would love to live there even now. There's magic around there.

I grew up in Zone 1 in an ex LA flat and looking back I realise just how much I took for granted.

For us it was just home, where we (and generations of our family) had always lived.

I live in Zone 5/6 now and pay stupid rent and may as well live anywhere else in the country because it is in no way comparable to central London living.

I think going to school in central London, even though we were not rich (mum was single and on benefits), I truly believed the world was my oyster and I could be anything I wanted to be. I do worry that my own DC don't have that same belief because where we live, it's just people like us, not wealthy London millionaires getting on the bus or passing us in the supermarket.

I used to be able to walk home from Oxford street/ the West end or just stand outside my block of flats and hail a black taxi. You get used to the noise and the people and the sirens and the traffic. I like all of that and feel lonely and a bit vulnerable living out in the suburbs.

You're right about the lack of big supermarkets though. Where I am now, we have a huge Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Lidl all 5 mins drive away. I remember being so excited that we live near 2 drive- thru McDonald's because we didn't have them where I grew up.

We moved out so that the DC would grow up in a safer area without really understanding what we'd be losing and I would move back in a heartbeat (if I won the lottery).

Notting Hill has million pound places literally next to very deprived social housing all muddled up together.

You don't have to walk 10 minutes there, more like 2.

As a tourist you generally go to nice or touristy places, and aren't tuned in to the crap.

The people I know in central London social housing (thinking of my immediate neighbours, friends and family) are NHS staff, academics, artists, teachers, civil servants, gardeners, bricklayers, actors; carpenters, hotel and pub staff, nursery staff; postal workers, youth and community workers. In my own family: civil servant; teacher; professor; student; therapist; chef.
So I suppose it's quite a mix really, though I only know my own and friends' areas.

And we called a taxi a black cab and the tube the train. Don't know if that's a central London thing or not but out here it's taxi and tube.

Zone one is indeed a big area but there are lots of big supermarkets. There's a huge sainsburys marketplace near Victoria, for example as well as smaller supermarkets and a big M&S foodhall all in the vicinity.

If you live in Zone 1, you never need to do a big shop, just pick stuff up every other day or so.

We lived very near Sussex Gardens - just the other side of Edgware Rd - for 10 years. We bought in 2003 before prices rocketed - still not cheap, but our flat cost about what a 3 bed house would in other areas we were looking outside London. It was a basement flat in a mansion block where apparently all the basement flats had been brothels in the 70s. There was still one next door, but fortunately the walls were thick, and they moved the bed when we asked nicely.

An interesting mix of people - some protected rent tenants who'd been there for 50 years or more, some big flatshares and an increasing number of minor oligarchs and Middle Eastern wealth in the later years. It was surprisingly quiet - on a side road which helped. I did emerge one morning to find blue police tape at both ends of the road - a bomb had gone off at Edgware Rd station an hour earlier and I'd managed not to hear a thing.

The great thing for me was being able to walk, bus or cycle everywhere - I hardly used the tube - and popping to the park was a bit more fun when it was Hyde or Regent rather than a bit of grass with a running track round it. A lovely walk to the Zoo once we had a family, and some really interesting backgrounds of the other children in nursery. Church Street market was great too. Our son started at a lovely primary school too, but we moved soon after that to somewhere a bit more normal, but still with easy access to the middle.

Most of the downside was mainly to do with flat living, and knowing we'd always be in a flat if we didn't move out. Some of the flats were quite big, so popular as noisy Air B&Bs (though the freeholders were pretty good at trying to stop it). The parking wasn't great either, but at least the Zone F permit let us park pretty close to the West End when need be. Still miss it in some ways, but it already was getting less pleasant when we left. Visiting Edgware Rd now doesn't make me want to go back.

My SIL lives near King's Cross and she has everything on her doorstep but never gets to use it because the job she has to pay for it requires insane hours. DH went to a private school abroad and lots of his classmates bought houses and flats in Central London when they were studying at uni in London. As students we used to go to a few of their house parties and I remember how small and cramped it was.

Like a PP, I used to work on Fleet St - and I walked to work. I lived in Spitalfields, 2 minutes from Liverpool Street Station and loved being able to walk everywhere. There was always somewhere to go - and something to eat! (Bagels and curries from Brick Lane, and middle-of-the-night burgers from Tinseltown in Farringdon are particularly tantalising memories.) For a supermarket, we mostly used the Tesco Metro on Bishopsgate (much smaller than today's store) or the M&S Foodhall in Liverpool St station. Occasionally, we'd schlep down to the Waitrose in Wapping but, tbh, I remember a lot of takeaways and meals out. Ah, the happy, profligate days of Before Children......

I lived on Sloane Avenue for a while in the mid 90's. Fantastic location but London is so busy (well it was when everyone actually worked there)

By the way, wasn't Sinner Winner man the subject of a harrassment court case? I think he overstepped the mark with some of the people he condemned to eternal hellfire. Passion Protein man was altogether a nicer fellow.

I used to live round there. Though it’s very central, it’s actually a very mixed area, with lots of council estates, as well as posh parts.

As for shopping, there’s a massive Waitrose on Edgware Road, just across from Sussex Gardens, and another in Bayswater, in addition to the zillions of Middle Eastern supermarkets and convenience stores.

Also, Sinner Winner man was a dick.

I lived in Central London for a while, it had positives and negatives. Upsides were easy access to most places, lots to do all the time, range of places/foods to eat.

Downsides were terrible pollution, very high housing costs, tricky to go for a run during the day as loads of tourists milling about on the pavement.

We moved up North just before we had DC, it was a brilliant decision for us - I'd hate to bring children up in London.

there are plenty of decent sized supermarkets but like anyone else you just get a Tesco delivery

our first flat was in zone 1 - bought in late 70's, we traded that in for a terraced house in zone 2 when we had children, then for an extra £10k traded "up" to an out of london, detached house with garden, when they were about to start school in the mid-late 90's.

I've just checked on Zoopla. That first flat - which we sold for £150K in 1990 is now worth £1.2m SUBSTANTIALLY more than I got when I sold the large family home we had eventually moved to. London prices are bonkers.

Having said that - with a large lottery win I would move back in a heartbeat!

The most central flat I've ever visited in London was in one of those red brick mansion blocks right behind Oxford St. Maybe on Welbeck St. It was a second home owned by a wealthy Asian couple and their daughter (friend of a friend) was living in it while working in London. It was a very large, opulent flat and I was absolutely floored by the glamour of living so centrally!

I lived about 4 roads back from
Oxford circus for a year, it was actually pretty quiet away from the pubs and yes, was SO convenient! The flat was a friend of a friend, two of us living in a huge 2 bed and paying £600/month inc bills 😬.

DH’s parents live in a house just south of Waterloo, also so convenient, not especially noisy on their row, guessing the house is £1.5m? It’s a small 1700s terrace in need of modernization!

I lived on the Notting Hill/ Westminster border until a year ago; Carnival went down our street (I'm actually really sad not to be there - the DCs used to go on the local float, with their school friends.) We LOVED it. Except we were in a two bedroom flat, we couldn't afford anything bigger in the same area, and I didn't see the point of Zone 5. I would have stayed, DH insisted we move, and we now have a large house by the sea on the south coast (Zone 7? I can walk to the station that takes me back to London!) It took me a long time to get used to the comparative quiet, and the sound of seagulls instead of buses and trains etc. Shopping was a doddle incidentally - we had a Tesco's and a Sainsbury's within a 5 minute walk, and the Portobello Road fruit and veg market, and the Spanish delicatessen and amazing bakeries and more. I love where we live now (finally!) but there's much less choice, and running errands takes longer.
I'd move back to London - but only central London - in a heartbeat. And I'm still there two days a week for work.