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 😂

I think it may be different if you live and work in London, or have (reasonable) commute in from the surrounds. You probably get used to it or even enjoy the madness of it all! It is your "normal".

If you visit now and then I think some might have a different impression.

I don't live in UK but had need to visit London twice recently for four days each time.

First time stayed up around London Bridge, it was magic. Went to Borough Market and all the other things to do around there.

Second time was a family illness thing DPs side. We stayed in Stratford by the Westfield, lovely hotel and all that. Went to the Olympic Park, really enjoyed that. And we were able to get into central London in 15 minutes from Stratford Station. I don't know why this part of London seems to get such a bad press! Maybe that's just my imagination though.

Borough of Newham beside DLR and London City Airport, which we used. Fantastic.

I love London, but it's probably a bit different if you live and work there, as I said.

I grew up in London and live here now (not central, zone 3). I am just used to it, I suppose. I do love it and it's where my roots and my family are so it's a part of me and always will be. I love that I can get any kind of food, any kind of entertainment, any kind of anything at all that I want at any time I want it. I love the busy feel, and can't quite understand why that would be a bad thing. You just learn to negotiate it and not get in other people's way all the time. I don't mind the tube. I commuted to school in central London from 11-18 so was constantly spending time on rush hour tubes and I can't say it bothers me. I'm enormously grateful for the huge, efficient and convenient public transport network.

I've never particularly worked longer hours than normal. In fact, I currently work from home and could live anywhere in the country but here is where I like best.

I have lived elsewhere in the UK (two cities, one large and one small) and did not like it at all. Both places felt dead in comparison. I longed to get back to where I felt I belonged.

I can hear sirens right now and a train just went past the bottom of my garden and there will be a plane overhead in a few minutes (and more trains) and I can hear traffic noise, but all this is what I grew up hearing and it feels comforting and normal to me. Traffic noise in particular is a great way to put me to sleep! My worst night's sleep ever was in a farmhouse near Warwick and I woke up about every ten minutes during the night because it was too quiet and it freaked me out a bit.

For the person who asked about schools, London schools are some of the best in the country - and not just in posh areas.

Oh nb I used to do a daily commute. Initially when I got jobs I used to ask the agencies to only get me jobs in the city so I wouldn't have to get the tube but eventually I commuted everywhere. There are certain lines I'd hate to commute on though. Central, northern in rush hour ewwww

if you haven't lived in a world city...London, New York, Paris Berlin...

New York, New York? Meh
Paris? Boff
Berlin? Nein Danke

But London....Labbly Jabbly !!!!

@Curlyhaired, that's exactly the point: everyone is from somewhere else. That is what makes it so fantastic. Until the pointless idiocy of Brexit spoils it.

Until the pointless idiocy of Brexit spoils it

See I don't believe this for a second. All the American banks can threaten to move their offices to Frankfurt but the point is no-one is willing to give up London for Frankfurt.

We will ALWAYS be the Centre of the world and we will always attract the brightest and best from all over Yurp and the rest of the world - long after the Bibulous President Junkers has stopped being such a meany to us.

See I don't believe this for a second

Maybe you don’t but you’ll see if for yourself soon enough. “We will always be the centre of the world” is just embarrassing frankly.

I like London in short bursts but do look on in amazement as people throw themselves up and down the escalators in the Tube

That's the whole point of Stand on the right though. I sit in an office all day. Once I'm out I want to leap / run / bounce down the escalator, just like climbing up it is good morning exercise. And yes, I do (politely) ask people to move if they're on the wrong side.

Ooh I love going away and hearing actual silence! I grew up with the noise too but I don't like it now.

I love it.
I live in zone 6 which is the countryside and basically too quiet for me.
I miss it.
The noise and the galleries do it for me.

Where are you from TatianaLarina?

Melody, Tatiana, I'm on the same side as both of you. Melody is being a proud Londoner (maybe from somewhere else, doesn't stop you being a Londoner; I was a New Yorker 30 years ago, from London, so what) plus she's having a laugh, and Tatiana is regretting the pointless stupidity.

One thing I’ll never get used to is the fact that you can hardly ever see the stars in central-ish London because of the light pollution. Being able to look up and see the stars is something I really look forward to when I’m travelling outside London.

Silence is nice, but then you want Deliveroo sushi, 3 good supermarkets within walking distance, and the world on your doorstep.

EmpressOfTheSpartacusOceans

That's the whole point of Stand on the right though. I sit in an office all day. Once I'm out I want to leap / run / bounce down the escalator, just like climbing up it is good morning exercise. And yes, I do (politely) ask people to move if they're on the wrong side

You never see a fat daily London commuter.

Scientific FACT!

London is amazing. Busy but amazing. Everywhere had a little local community
Most areas are quite villagy, local shops, local communities
If you don't live here I can understand.
I can't stand NYC or Paris.
But we all love what we know!
I love the country too, but can find it quite stifling.
I know my neighbours, we help each other out, I've never lived in a part of London where that isn't the case and everyone has a story, not all white middle class folk. I've made friends I would never have had the opportunity to meet. From all walks of life.
It really is a great city, and not so homogenised as other places

I’m from London

I moved from a pokey flat to an enormous house with a barn in rural Sweden three years ago and I MISS LONDON with every cell and fibre of my whole body. I would go back in a heartbeat.

Well in that case you shouldn't be worried. London has been blessed with waves of immigrants long before the EU (from the Hugenots, to the Eastern European Jews, to the West Indians, the Indians, Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, to the more recent settlers) and I honestly believe we will continue be long after Junkers has his nefarious way with us.

I moved to London as a grown up many years ago but i actually grew up in a tiny tiny village. I love London. My commute, door to door, is almost an hour however and it involves a sardine-like tube journey part of the way but still, the good outweights the bad.

The thing I hate most about smaller places is the way everyone knows your business and feels free to comment on it. People seem more keen to engage and ask you stuff that, you know, what's it to you, none of your business and I don't want to have a conversation about it. A big city like London is the best to me because you have all the stuff you could possibly ever need in terms of culture, food, places to go, things to do and yet we all respect one another's privacy and nobody knows your business unless you want them to. If I didn't live in London, I'd like to live in splendid isolation in the middle of nowhere because I absolutely need privacy and the ability to get on with my own stuff without having to talk to other people about it. I have spent some time in quite villagey countryside communities for short periods and the sense of entitlement I felt from others to know what was going on in my life felt immensely claustrophobic. Did not like it at all and went running back to the big city the first chance I got.

I left last year after living there for many years as I was sick and tired of the expense and hassle of commuting. I've got a much better quality of life here in the big northern city I moved to but all the same, I do miss London and enjoy visiting there. £600 pcm to rent a room in Brixton? No thanks.

I suspect most, if not all, of the Londoners posting on this thread enthusing about living in London have substantial disposable incomes and/or got on the property ladder early and live in decent areas. Not a dig, just pointing out how expensive it is now to live there.

Why wouldn’t Oscar Wilde have travelled on the Tube? Seems a perfectly reasonable thing for him to do.

I think a lot of people think “I’m exhausted after a trip to London because it’s so incredibly busy” when at least 50% of it’s down to the fact that it’s strange and you don’t know your way around. I’m a born and bred Londoner but if I have a trip to New York, or Birmingham, or even if I have to go Up West for a meeting, it really takes it out of me. On my normal commute I can negotiate umpteen traffic lights, escalators, lifts, and two different tube lines whilst still giving 45% of my attention to the Kermode and Mayo podcast and another 45% to my game of Angry Birds. It’s all done on autopilot. If I go somewhere new then I have to think and pay attention and look around me and read signs. It’s knackering.

I lived in London in my 20s. I wouldn't change that for anything. I loved it, particularly the feeling that you were at the centre of things. I moved away and missed it. I moved back briefly with small children and hated every miserable second of it. For years now, I have enjoyed visiting it once or twice a yearr ..... until the last time I went, when I was suddenly overwhelmed by the noise and the relentlessness of the place. Oh and the tackiness of it! Oxford Street, which, in my 20s was the centre of the universe, now seems like a complete irrelevance. There is nothing there that cannot be bought a hundred times over online. That was quite a surprise. And as for the West End cinemas. I can't believe I spent so much time and money there in my 20s! Really honestly, for history and multi-culturalism and theatre, central London still has it. For everything else, the rest of the country and the internet do it so much better.