If you've been following my life with the meticulousness that I expect from you, you will have noticed that I have spent quite a lot of time outside of my city recently. Most of this travel has been for fun, which I'm sure will be covered in a blog post next time I find myself still in bed at 4pm with crisp crumbs in my hair and the desire to convince the world that I have my life together. The trips that inspired me to write today, however, have been for work, which has made me feel terribly grown-up and important. Nothing says "I have arrived professionally" like claiming your train tickets back on expenses. Of course, these train tickets were to the city that everyone in the UK finds themselves in for work at some point in their professional lives: London.
I grew up in the commuter belt, too far from London to know it as a local but close enough that I had to go there every time I wanted to do anything fun. I did my time as a badly dressed teenager loitering around Camden Market, and I was dragged round galleries too good for me to appreciate by parents determined that I become at least a little cultured. Looking back, the time I spent in London helped lay the foundations for the adult I have become. It is now I that drags unappreciative friends and relatives round expensive Tate Modern exhibitions, and my legging collection certainly wouldn't look out of place on the racks of my fourteen-year-old self's favourite stalls in Camden Market. When I lived in a town the biggest attraction of which is a giant bed that isn't even that giant, trips to London were a treat. They meant excitement, or, at least, something more exciting than sitting in a park with my schoolfriends drinking Caffè Nero milkshakes. But I live in Bristol now, and things have changed.
My current relationship with London can be summed up by an afternoon that I spent there recently. I had been sent to Borough for a copy-editing course, and was making my way back to the station. It was sunny, and I was walking along the south bank. The river looked beautiful, the atmosphere was busy but not uncomfortably so, and I found myself picturing my life a few years down the line. In this imaginary future I was, of course, wildly successful and working at one of the big London publishing houses, ensuring that there aren't any errant hyphens or apostrophised plurals in the latest Booker Prize winner. I spent the evenings at late museum openings and the weekends at achingly trendy east London bars where the drinks come in jam jars and the least fancy gin is Hendrick's. I felt excited at the prospect of this sophisticated cosmopolitan life, and like I could one day make this city, this alien place with its unshakeable familiarity, my home.
Then I arrived at Paddington, and things took a turn.
I have been waiting 3 HOURS for a train I can board. London, you and your off-peak train system can suck a giant sack of dicks.— Rowena (@row_fb) March 22, 2016
A mere three hours after I had been planning my dream life in London and I was cursing the place as a cancer upon the Earth. Nothing shatters the rose-coloured spectacles like a stint on the Circle Line at rush hour. Having been more of a London tourist than a London resident, I have mostly found myself on the Tube at off-peak times, and was, therefore, unprepared for the full-frontal assault on my boundaries that occurs during city travel between 4 and 6pm. To add insult to considerable injury, one of the people who was forced into my personal space had a mullet, which I don't think I need to explain was unacceptable. By the time I was back in Bristol, I would have been happy to never return to our proud nation's capital ever again. This was inconvenient, as I had to return there two days later.
There is a lot to love about London, but there is a lot to hate about it as well. The Tube is an incredibly convenient and useful form of public transport, but it is also dirty, crowded, and frustrating to manoeuvre any kind of bag through. The nightlife is second to none, but you have to take out a small bank loan to fully enjoy it. Its population is the largest and most diverse of any city in Europe, but the people you encounter in the street a far more likely to treat you as a mildly irritating visual disturbance than an actual person. These contrasts leave me conflicted, and I've never been able to settle on a concrete opinion of the place. I want to like London, and I think that overall I do, but I can never feel completely comfortable there. The only thing I can be certain of about London is the fact that my idealised, glamorous vision of living there doesn't exist. I've seen too many people move there thinking that it does and become completely disillusioned to cling on to the fantasy for longer than a few minutes.
Having spent most of my adult life in Bristol, which isn't even a tenth of the size of London, I have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. It's a lifestyle that involves being able to walk around the city centre without fear of being trampled by camera-wielding tourists. I love the music scene, and I love the river, and I love the fact that most of the buildings I walk past on my way to work have actually commissioned graffiti artists to decorate them. But most of all I love the way that everyone seems relaxed, even in the centre. I can understand why some might find this boring, but it suits me just fine. The I'm-so-busy-get-out-of-my-way attitude doesn't suit me. The truth is I'm not busy. I don't get paid any more for getting to work early, and if I'm not walking to work I'm probably walking towards either food or drum & bass. Whichever it is, I can afford to walk a little slowly. I'm absolutely certain that there are plenty of people like me in London, but in Bristol I am part of the majority. I see London as a gazelle: quick, elegant, and sleek. Bristol is more like a koala: they don't do much and no one's really sure what they are, but they're inherently likeable and you'd like to hang out with one.
London is totally unique and some people are well suited to living in it – from my experience, those who thrive off a faster pace of life and earn over £30,000 a year. As much as I wish I was cool enough to be one of them, I am now OK with admitting that I'm not. The lure of the bright lights and the air of smugness that comes with saying you live in Dalston is strong, but the lure of living two minutes from a park and being able to walk to work is stronger. The lure of being able to live centrally for £400 per month is stronger still. Bristol may not be home to anywhere near as much history, culture, or entertainment as London, but it feels like a home to me. Plus when a city hosts one of the world's biggest hot-air balloon festivals every year it's hard to feel like you're missing out on anything at all.
