Born in london, lived in, on the outskirts of or worked in for most of half a century.
Its a fabulous place when young free and single, the sheer choice of entertainment, eating and drinking is amazing. It has a buzz. - Great place to work in limited timeframe bursts.
Its a transient place, a busy place, a place you need to get away from from time to time. Terrible place to live in if you have no friends. A real pain to commute to every day for 40 years, It will grind you down.
Unless you are born and brought up there, no one spends the rest of their life in London.
Things to do
Highgate & Cemetary, Hamstead Heath, Richmond park. Hampton court, greenwich, walks along the river (all parts) tower bridge, the tower of london, Get on the bike, any sunday and tour the surrey hills in this lovely biking weather (two bike meeting places are Newlands Corner or The base of Box Hill) If you are living in Fulham get down to putney at high tides and watch the cars parked along the bank disapear into the thames at high tide.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I lived in London for three months in the mid sixties. I was single in my teens then. As TVM says "Its a terrible place if you have no friends". It didn't suit me at all. I went to all the parks and museums but still didn't like it. I have lived in lots of cities since then however I would never willingly go back to London.
My advice to the OP is that if you aren't happy there then go back to where you are happy. Life is too short to waste years staying in a place you don't like.
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Moved to London for my first job in 1990 and pretty much hated everything about it. Five years later I woke up one morning and fell in love with the place. Had a blast for the next ten years.
Traffic and housing drove me away in the end. An hour to drive a couple of miles to Asda on Saturday morning. It's the best place in the world, just got fed up of driving round it. If you drive an automatic, it's possible to do a whole journey on the creep. And your reward for all that effort was nowhere to park when you get there. Congestion charges, this that, the other. I'd love to still be there but got sick of handing all my money over to other people. Sort it out.
Moved to Warsaw and bought a new five bedroomed house for the same as I paid for my first London flat back in 91. Plenty of other people doing the same thing too. I'm 3 hours away, so it's like being in Manchester.
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"....so it's like being in Manchester."
Suddenly the appeal has vanished.
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Yeah I could have put that a bit better Xileno
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"If you are living in Fulham get down to putney at high tides and watch the cars parked along the bank disapear into the thames at high tide."
Funny, that's what I used to do while drinking in the Blue Anchor. There are two mega tides every year when the moon and the sun are pulling at the same time. Make sure you're down by the Thames to watch all the footpaths disappear. It's out of this world.
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Born within sound of Bow Bells, left age 1 and raised elsewhere, returned at 19 and been here ever since. It's changed a lot since then, essentially for the worse, but I still don't want to retire to the country let alone some one-horse joint like Manchester or Edinburgh (that's a joke, don't defend those fine big villages, I like them really).
The only other place I wd really care to live is Paris, partly because it's within quite easy reach. London is expensive, dirty, inconvenient, decaying, full of loathsome restrictions and byelaws especially on the roads, rough and (by British standards obviously, not Iraqi ones) dangerous. But I agree with Samuel Johnson on this one.
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"But I agree with Samuel Johnson on this one."
You mean?
It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Can't be bothered to look up the proper quote TVM, but it's something along the lines of:
'Sir, the man who is tired of London is tired of life; for in London may be found everything that life can provide.'
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I know you dipstick, I was being sarcastic.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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The best one is
Johnson: "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the world." Boswell: "The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another." Johnson: "Yes, Sir, but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages." Boswell: "Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desart." Johnson: "Sir, you have desart enough in Scotland."
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Greg - you have some useful comment but none of it is based on anything that we know about you and your circumstances and that would help. Are you a lottery winner, a hedge fund manager, do you sell the Big Issue, do you have a 'significant other'? - stuff like that! Help us to help you!
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Hi Greg,
I was in a similar position to you, having lived three years in Dublin yet never really come to like the place. I guess some people are ''city" people and some aren't.
I've also spent time in Paris (great) and Reading (umm...) and, comparing notes with friends who've lived in Toronto, New York and Frankfurt, I'd suggest that if you want to change your view of London, you need to either live in the centre of the city or be willing to make a determined effort to travel into the city regularly to enjoy what it has to offer. Among my circle of friends, those who immersed themselves in city life enjoyed whatever city they lived in; those who didn't , or lived at a distance from the city, tolerated most of the inconvenience of urban life with little occasion to enjoy the benefits.
Maybe after three years its time to consider moving on, but I'd urge you not to do so without thinking about what you want instead of "London life" first. But having done that, its sure to work out because you'll know what you want and when you compare your lot to your time in Fulham, you'll appreciate it all the more. I certainly do now I've moved from Dublin to the west of Ireland!
Good luck whatever you do,
- Gromit
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How about
"John, I can't get Jurassic Park back on line without Dennis Nedry"
Samuel L Jackson
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I know you dipstick, I was being sarcastic. ------------------------------ TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
Sir, you are evidently a true Johnsonian; but the devil of it is, this has had but slight influence on your prose style...
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Sir , to mock the heaviest of human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Do not take offence Sir, nor be downhearted; for compared to many of our worthy colleagues you are a veritable Homer, a Milton indeed...
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Hi
Thanks for your replies.
I work for the council in a nice comfortable role. I am only 21 yrs old, have a nice social network and love activity sport.
My granparents live here, so I live here as well. Low rent, good company etc etc.
I think my problem is I need to adapt and appreciate the area more. Hove where my parents live is a wonderful place to live. But here I will get a lot more independence, so it is a bit of a dilema, but nothing huge really.
Well, thanks everyone.
Greg
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Hey Greg,
Life is too short. If you feel you've given it long enough then you should follow your heart. I had a similar attitude when I moved to Sydney, but after 3 months I was loving it. Brighton is only an short train ride away. Do you feel that your missing your mates aswell as the comfort of surroundings? Why don't you try living in a shared flat for 6 months where you can meet people ouside your normal social network, may open a few different doors for you.
Hope everything works out. Remember you should only regret things you've done, opposed to those you haven't.
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>>Remember you should only regret things you've done, opposed to those you haven't.
Oh no, I couldn't agree with that.
I would regret all the things I didn't try, not the things that I tried but didn't like.
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Sorry guys. I meant you should regret the things you haven't done oppposed to those you have. Thanks for the correction
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In the past I have lived in London for a total of 15 years and enjoyed every minute of it. I did not have a car or a motorcycle. I certainly never felt that I needed one. The people that I knew were fairly close-knit as you simply cannot get to know everybody. London, and for that matter any large city has always been and always will be a very lonely place to live if you are not careful - it can take a long time to get to know people who live just next door.
I also know Brighton quite well. Brighton used to be great about ten years ago, but now has become a victim of its own success in that it attracts too many of a certain type of people - as if they all came off a production line somewhere. The only good thing about Brighton now-a-days is that it is next to the sea. Hastings, for me, would be a much better place to live.
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Greg: you need one or more circles to circulate in. Start off with colleagues, existing friends and relations and work your way outwards.
London seems and often is a harsh place, vast and basically indifferent, but it is inhabited largely by ordinary decent human beings. This harshness makes people adopt a defensive posture. This and the general roughness of modern manners can make it hard for a diffident or shy individual to make friends.
Give it time, go to a couple of parties, cultivate those of like mind. You can be sure of one thing: among 7 or 8 million there will be many such.
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