London

[User452734838]

I was in London earlier this week and it was manic. Everyone rushing around, tubes packed, people rushing down escalators when the tubes are 2 mins apart. Road noise, Sirens everywhere, People getting trains home at 7.30pm to commute an hour, people stood up on this train. As someone who only visits now and again on business it left me shattered and I was only there a day!

Is this just something you get used to in London? Is late working the norm? Travelling for what seems like hours either way to do a job?

It did feel alive though! Is this part of the attraction or is it a case of being born there and knowing nothing else?

I was glad to get back up North where the pace of life is so much less frenetic. We do have to put up with the awful weather though! It was definitely warmer in London 😂

There are parakeets in St James's Park. At this time of year it attracts loads of beautiful waterfowl from the cold bits of north and eastern Europe. And the resident pelicans who are dangerous to unwary pigeons. I love the horrified yet excited voiceover from the tourist. Yes, London is exactly like the National Geographic channel.

BTW Don't watch this if of a sensitive disposition

I grew up in the London suburbs and moved closer to the centre asap, about 1976/8. I lived mainly around Waterloo. There was no pressure to buy back then, most people lived in shared houses or shared flats, renting. Waterloo was run down, dirty, dangerous and CHEAP! I do wish I’d bought back then, but buying was unaffordable as it is now, and renting was far easier and cheaper.

I walked everywhere. Get off the tube, walk, wander. Catch a bus and get off before your normal stop, catch a different bus and see where you go. Carry a small A to Z in your bag if you’re nervous.

Also, Cyclogeography by Jon Day is another fab book about the hidden bits of London.

If you think London is grim, then your attitude is probably too grim

Why though? Why isn't it just a case of different people responding to and enjoying different things?

I can't tolerate noise or crowds so I hated London, despite having lived there until I was 30.

The relief when I moved to small market town was just bliss. Sadly, that small market town has grown massively (it's within commuting distance of London), it's now crowded, noisy, log-jammed with traffic and its character has completely changed.

We're planning to move right away in the next couple of years. I'd love to live somewhere where I can't see or hear another house, ideally at least half a mile down a track so I don't even see cars passing. I wouldn't mind having to drive miles to pick up a pint of milk.

I think I may be turning into a hermit.

If you think London is grim, then your attitude is probably too grim

Why though? Why isn't it just a case of different people responding to and enjoying different things?

There is a bit of that to it, certainly. However, a lot more of it is simply arrogance and wanton ignorance.

When I would meet new people (not from London) and they'd ask me where I lived I'd always give the honest answer of "Croydon", I'd never try to sugar the pill or hide it. I'd always keep it real and some of the reactions I got were amazing, most were "oh, right." Some people went as far as "oh my god. Why would you want to live THERE? It's horrible!!" With reactions like that, I'd always ask those people if they'd ever lived there, the answer was always "no". Some of these people had visited once, some of them had never even passed through, they were just making assumptions based over-hyped news reports they'd seen at some point in the past five years.

People hear a word, people make an assumption. People make wrong assumptions and they keep them forever. They then assume that the people who live in those areas are shitty, horrible people who all live on council estates or in tiny flats, and carry knives. They assume that the borough is riddled with crime, that you're going to get assaulted, raped, beaten or robbed when you go out. That you couldn't possibly go out after dark because "IT'S UNSAFE!!" Will someone think of the children?!?

From October '16 to September '17 there were 30,272 recorded crimes in Croydon.
In the same period in WESTMINSTER there were 55,681 recorded crimes. This includes about 2000 more recorded crimes of "violence against a person" than occurred in Croydon.

Knife crime specifically is something that people always used to bring up with me. Sure, London has a knife crime problem. There are 37,000 recorded knife crime incidents in England and Wales every year, about 21,000 of them happen in London. 1300 of them are in Croydon, 1500+ happen in each Lambeth and Southwark. It's a reality of life in London. Is it going to happen to you walking down the street? No, probably not. There over 775,000 crimes reported to the Met each year, and knife crime only accounts for around 2% of them. It is not a problem for the average Londoner just going about their normal life.

Yes I witnessed knife crime, very up close. Very, very close. It was horrific. I understand some of the background to it, I understand how kids end up in knife crime because of where I worked when I lived in London. The people who used to make me justify why I lived in London and told me how shit it was there, have no idea how it happens, they also have no willingness to learn, they prefer their ignorance.

People stick with these ideas and only see them, deliberately choosing not to find anything good with London. There is so much to do in London, so many beautiful places to visit and see, so much to learn and enrich your life with. There are quiet, tranquil places to go as well as loud boisterous places. But no, people only see the knives, the drugs, the violence. For the most part, 9 million people live quite happily and peacefully together.

The people who used to give me this crap were the type of people who always lived in a secure little bubble believing that crime happened to someone else. When they looked at London they just saw it as some kind of festering pit where nothing good happened. They had a completely blinkered view - their home town never experienced anything bad, of course! "These things don't happen here."

I can assure you that the crimes that go on in London happen everywhere else in the UK, but not always to the same extent. The Child Sexual Exploitation gangs in Rotherham and Rochdale opened people's eyes to the idea that mass organised crime does go on in places other than London and it's just as disgusting and heinous.

Sure, some people do react differently to things. But just like moving anywhere else in the country, you have to change to fit in with the area, it will never change to fit you. I wasn't born in London, but to my dying day I will defend it with the last breath in my body. As I tell people who are sometimes surprised by my attitude despite having left London some months ago, "You can take the girl outta Croydon, you can never take Croydon outta the girl."

@InappropriateGavels

I think your post is a touch bizarre. My not wanting to live in London is nothing to do with crime or anything like that.

However it is an irrefutable fact that London is busier than the semi-rural village I live in. I don't enjoy crowds or noise or a fast paced way of living and there's an excess of ALL of those things in London.

I would never sneer at someone who enjoys living in London because it obviously suits them. I do think the assertion that people who don't like London are somehow lacking - as evidenced on this thread - is rather odd.

I agree with you, Jacques. Although I’d hate to live in the countryside myself, I totally understand why some people want to live there. I can even see positives, just that for me personally they wouldn’t outweigh how bored I’d likely be as I love the stimulation of a big city. I think Inappropriate is just sick of the same old comments about living in a “rough” area of London. Yes, Croydon has a bad reputation, but many residents probably don’t mind and even quite like it. I don’t think London-bashers are lacking, though.

@JacquesHammer

It's not odd in the slightest, it's merely reacting in the same way as people have reacted to my answer in the past.

I've never sneered at people I've met when they've told me where they live outside London. Yet 70%+ of people I met reacted in the way that I described above, and then go on to treat me like I'm shit on their shoe because I chose to live in Croydon. They've assumed they're better than me because I lived in Croydon, so treated me poorly, they talked down to me and accused me of horrible things. The truth? I was a professional who chose to live in that borough and do a long commute.

It suited me. It's no different from the person who lives in Haywards Heath and does a five minute walk to work because they want a quiet life. It's just unlikely that they go out at the weekend, meet someone new and get asked if they do a bit of drug dealing on the side for extra income - bad joke or not. The person from Haywards Heath is probably never made to justify their choice to live there. Since leaving London, not a single person has asked me why I live where I do now, but when they ask me where I moved from, the first question is always "Why did you live THERE?!"

People rushing around? When I go to London I walk faster than anyone else. I wish people would rush around a bit but generally they wander around very very slowly looking at their mobile phones.

I don't find it fast-paced at all.

The only time I found it a bit difficult was a few years ago going in with ds to meet a friend. We used the tube at commuter time. That did feel a bit frenetic, especially when trying not to lose ds.

But for an adult? It's fine, no different to anywhere else.

It's awful. I have a nearly 6 hour round trip commute twice a week. The stations, trains and buses are heaving. The pavements are just full of people and I rarely go out of the office at lunchtime as it would involve sidestepping hundreds of phototaking tourists and people asking for money. Last week I got home at 10pm as they were turning the Christmas Lights on in Oxford Street and Marble Arch was at a standstill so I missed my bus and usual train.

I work about 200 metres from the corner of Oxford Street and can see Marble Arch from the office kitchen window. I used to walk over to the benches at Marble Arch and eat my lunch but it's horrendously noisy and every bench is filthy with a strong smell of piss.

I only do it because I work from home the other 3 days (deepest, darkest Kent) and the money is good. If I did the same role in the same industry in my hometown, I'd earm 8K less a year.

I don't enjoy crowds or noise or a fast paced way of living and there's an excess of ALL of those things in London
But we don’t all live like that and many people only live like that sometimes.** I think it’s a bit ridiculous to characterise what it’s like to live in London based on visiting or only on experiences of people who are working

But we don’t all live like that and many people only live like that sometimes. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to characterise what it’s like to live in London based on visiting or only on experiences of people who are working

But I would have to be working. I have potentially another 30 working years so of course that's my biggest consideration. I can't think of anything worse than commuting in a town or city. It just isn't for me.

My commute is currently 5 mins over the moors to drive DD to school. 5 mins back home. Work.

I love London, the station is 10 minute walk from my house, I can be in Euston in half an hour but I love coming home, walked the dogs for 2.5 miles today and didn't see a sole. I am only 30 mins away from London but worlds away

I agree with disahsterdahling. I moved faster than most, I think if you live there then you just do move faster, you acclimatise to the pace and stop noticing.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it now though, not in my mobility scooter! Everyone would be quietly furious with me

Yawn. Everytime someone posts about London, we get a predictable plethora of posts about his unfriendly, expensive, dirty etc it is. (Should say at this point that I don't live in London or come from anywhere near it). I'm sure Londoners get very pissed off with all this. London subsidises the rest of the country (bonus points to anyone who can name the ONLY other city in the country that pays more to the treasury than it takes). It's a cultural hot-spot, with probably its only serious rival being NY (maybe Paris too?) It's a complete, huge, complex melting pot with an amazing history. Britain as a whole is fantastic, but the bigoted anti-London brigade seriously need to DO ONE.

Thank you Book!

I love London. And I didn't always. I moved here in 2002 and found it grimy and anxiety-making. I couldn't understand why people made disparaging remarks about rough bits of other cities like Liverpool when London felt like one big sprawl of kebab shops and traffic jams, and no one could afford a house. I left for a 6 month secondment in 2005 and changed jobs on my return. Somehow having a different job made me fall in love with it as I was able to experience the good as well. The bad bits do exist -and now I've added air quality to my list of cons. It's just so different and ever-changing. There are still a load of places on my "to visit" list after 14 years and I wake up on a Saturday with no idea what I'm going to do and end up going somewhere I've never been before. I like the fact that people come from all over and there's no set idea of what a Londoner is - you don't have to be born into it. I like that you can wear what you like and no one judges you for being too dressed up or too dressed down. I never felt I fit in growing up, whereas in London I don't worry about fitting in, I'm just me. The kids love it too.

There are still a load of places on my "to visit" list after 14 years and I wake up on a Saturday with no idea what I'm going to do and end up going somewhere I've never been before.

Yes! This!

Gavels, isn't Croydon one of the parts of London with the most green space?

but the bigoted anti-London brigade seriously need to DO ONE

Since when is it bigoted to, you know, have a different opinion? Most important to me is MY quality of life; and I know I wouldn't get anywhere near what I have here in London. That doesn't mean other people don't; I wouldn't expect everyone to love living here.

It's ok to say that.

Since when is it bigoted to, you know, have a different opinion? I think the problem is that these threads always turn into a sneering jibe about how you'd have to be mad to live in London. Londoners then defend what they like about their city and get accused of thinking nowhere else in the country has culture. Whereas if a Londoner started a thread saying "AIBU to think Newcastle (or wherever) is shit" they'd be told where to go.

"Experimental data from the ONS showed that only three regions of the UK – London, the south-east and the east of England – ran a budget surplus in the 2015-16 financial year, the latest year for which figures are available.

Every Londoner provided £3,070 more in tax revenues than they received in public spending"

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-deficit-grows-to-more-than-10bn-as-people-spend-less

I enjoy visiting London but always find it exhausting and a bit overwhelming. It's a magical place in many ways- so exciting...but just a bit too hectic for me. I live 300 metres from a beautiful quiet beach, and just a couple of miles from a National Park. I wouldn't live anywhere else, but especially not a city.

Im up north at the moment and shocked how busy it is on the roads and saying i miss london where its quieter on the roads. I dont live in london anymore (who can afford housing). Saying that i dont miss london apart from the drivers.