East Anglia

Leave London? Never

Ex-Londoners complain that life in the capital circa 2018, is getting worse but Kaye Holland is hooked and hopes never to leave

 

I’ll confess: I don’t need to live in London. That requirement expired with the rise of the digital office.

Providing I can fire up my laptop and connect to WiFi, I can make a living just as easily in Leeds or Lincoln - two cities where the living is easier than London.

Yet every time I log onto Rightmove or Zoopla and look at the properties available in East Anglia - where the relatives live - or Exeter which my friend Heidi now calls home, a wave of my panic grips my heart.

For the fact of the matter is that I have a bad case of FOMO - not fear of missing out, rather fear or moving out.

In London there’s always something to do. You have everything you want in terms of activity and accessibility. Every week a new (independent, natch) pop up bar or restaurant is opening - little wonder then Londoners don’t know how to stay in.

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The capital also offers a cornucopia of world class carnivals, museums, theatres and art galleries, plus gorgeous gardens and parks (30 percent of the capital is given over to green space so wherever you find yourself in the city, a leafy retreat isn’t far away) so it’s nigh on impossible to get bored.

My country dwelling family and friends counter that the capital gets crowded and can be costly (they’re correct – you’ll fork to £3 for a filter coffee and £4.70 to travel for a single journey from my home in Harrow to Baker Street) but I’d argue that it gives you something you can’t put a price on: energy.

My East Anglia based cousins also claim that London is a lonely place to live, but I’ve never understood that argument. Next time you’re in town, look around: you’ll find that you’re surrounded by Londoners - aka some of the most interesting, outgoing and open people in the country.

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I’m biased, of course, but in my mind Londoners are the most fascinating people on the planet. They’re people who want to participate in life, with many having come to London to escape their humdrum hometowns.

Regardless of what time of year you visit, you’ll find the Windward rush generation interacting with immigrants from India, Asian neighbourhoods juxtaposed alongside Jewish communities – and Poles working alongside Portuguese.

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On any given day in the capital. I can learn a little about their cultures  – not exactly something you can do in a homogenous suburb in Middle England.

For London is not really about is blockbuster sights, world class cultural venues and top notch clubs as it is about the people you meet. London’s sheer size and its internationality, ensures that no matter how quirky your tastes may be, you’ll meet like minded people without any difficulty.

If I was to - gulp - leave London, I’d also miss the fact that within a five minute walk of my flat I can tuck into into Thai, Turkish, Lebanese or Ethiopian food at any hour.

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So while moving out might mean that I could afford to trade up from a two bedroom flat in Brixton to a four bedroom house in Bishops Stortford or Stevenage, the consequences - suffocation out in the sticks - wouldn’t be worth it.

And how can you be sure that towns outside of the capital aren’t a bit - how to put this  - Brexity? Living in Yorkshire and the Humber, the Midlands or the south coast (take a bow Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton et al) - all areas which voted overwhelming to leave the EU - might make my bank manager happy, but I don’t think heated political debates with people who fail to grasp that Brexit is clearly a bad idea, would be good for the soul.

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All told, while the maths might indicate that I would be wise to relocate, the fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t be able to handle leaving London: I am a city girl and need a vibrant community around me.

Plus while I’m told that is now possible to get a decent Flat White outside of the M25, you can’t get a night tube, can you?

View the post here: http://www.justabouttravel.net/2018/03/07/the-dark-side-of-turning-your-back-on-the-capital/

I love London, so why did I leave?

“Watford is the sort of town that makes you want to travel”. So said Lonely Planet. The travel bible’s declaration may sound harsh but as someone who hails from Watford, it rings true. There’s nothing really wrong with Watford per se. It’s not a tiny town by any means, but nonetheless growing up in this corner of Hertfordshire, I felt trapped and couldn’t quieten the voice in my head that kept screaming: surely there has be more to life than the Harlequin centre?

I think I’ve known since the age of 11, that one day I’d be gone. Throughout my teens, as a wannabe journalist, I dreamed of living in London - a mecca for media types - with its bright lights and black cabs. Subsequently while at weekends school friends were busy with boyfriends, I spent Saturdays working at the Watford Football Club shop before babysitting for the Ratcliffe family, and Sundays at Saracens Rugby Club shop in a desperate attempt to bolster my ‘get the hell out of Watford’ fund. A fractious family life (my parents were living under the same roof, while leading very separate lives and my younger, by one year, brother was going through an annoying Ali G phase) no doubt played a part in my desire to escape.

At 18, my wish was granted when I was offered a place at King’s College London. I deferred it for 12 months to embark on the prerequisite gap year, down under. It was a bitter sweet experience: make no mistake Oz is just wizard but on my second night in Sydney, I was sexually assaulted - a traumatic experience for any woman, not least a hitherto innocent 18 year old. However as Kelly Clarkson sings: “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller”. I regrouped and returned to read English, followed by a one year postgraduate diploma in periodical journalism at City University leaving London only in the summer, to work as an au pair in Switzerland. (Home still resembled a war zone - my parents had separated but stayed put in the family house and my brother, despite being in his early 20s, was still behaving like Harry Enfield’s creation Kevin the teenager.)

It was after graduation, that my life in London really began. Somehow I scored a job at BBC Sport and rented a room in a house on Stowe Road, Shepherds Bush - a stone’s throw away from the BBC Television Centre.

My job wasn’t well paid and my room - replete with a creaking boiler, on the ground floor between the kitchen and living room - far from ideal. But I didn’t care. Finally I was fulfilling my childhood fantasy and living and working in London! I loved waking up in the mornings and walking the short distance to BBC Television Centre, savouring the buzz of Shepherds Bush - an area that has everything you could want in terms of activity and accessibility.

When I wasn’t at White City, I was out living and loving London - so much so, that my friends would jokingly refer to me as a walking, talking Time Out guide. If you wanted to know what shows were worth seeing (Democracy and Avenue Q), where to eat Ethiopian food at 3am (Mandola), order a mean mojito (Red and Green), get a caffeine fix (Flat White), take a date (Gordans), do brunch or body bop until you drop (KLR), I was your go-to-girl.

Of course all this exploring and experiencing, didn’t come cheap. Often, at the end of the month, I was so skint that a £1.20 patty or portion of plantain from Ochi Caribbean was all I’d eat for a day. But then when the pay check arrived, I’d splurge: shopping sprees at Spitalfields, lunch at the Electric and drinks, dinner and dancing at Floridita. Yes, London life was sweet. Sure it could be eye wateringly expensive but I figured - usually after a visit to see relatives in cheap, but not especially cheerful, East Anglia - for good reason. When visiting friends and family would complain about the capital’s prices, I’d go on about how London might make your palms moisten but that, unlike Little Thetford and Ely, it gives you something you can’t put a price on: energy. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but London. For me, the capital was the only place in the world to be.

It follows then, that when the BBC asked staff in the sport department who would be prepared to relocate to Salford (BBC Sport’s brand new home) I knew that despite the overwhelming affection I felt for ‘Auntie’ and the camaraderie I enjoyed with my colleagues, my unwavering love of London meant that I wouldn’t be making the move up the M1. In many ways, you could say that left my job at the BBC (which back then, pre Saville scandal, was a cherished institution) for the capital.

And then I turned 25 and almost overnight, something strange happened. I began to grow weary of being squashed up against a stranger’s armpit on a packed Central line tube during rush hour (at this point, I was working for a London lifestyle magazine in Primrose Hill). Of sending my white winter coat to the cleaners, after just one wear. I grew fed up of wearing ear plugs every night to block out the sound (walls in London are paper thin) of my housemates snoring, or worse, having sex. Of waking up with my feet overhanging my single bed in a tiny box on Tunis Road, W12, where there wasn’t enough room (and back then I was all of seven and a half stone) to swing a cat. Of the nightmare that is the night bus home (expect urination, violence and vomiting) at the end of an evening out. Bottom line? I no longer felt ‘tough’ - merely tired.

Of course as claustrophobic and filthy as it could be, I still loved London - with its brilliant bars, restaurants, parks, carnivals, museums, theatres and art galleries - but began to dream about living in a place where the sky wasn’t permanently the colour of porridge. So when out of the blue I was offered a journalistic job at Time Out Abu Dhabi (followed by Time Out Dubai), I pretty much jumped on the plane. Colleagues questioned whether, as woman, I would like working in the Middle East. School friends wondered aloud how I could even consider relocating solo to a destination, I had never previously stepped foot in. And family were concerned that I didn’t know anyone in Arabia. Me? I knew that leaving London was necessary for both my wallet and well being and the promise of year round sunshine helped allay any fears of the unknown.

To read the second part of my story, don't forget to check back next week!