I’ve wanted to write a blog about London ever since I moved, but I’ve never quite known the words to type. This partly stems from the fact that for the first week of living here, I cried every day out of panic, anxiety, and loneliness, and I’ve never known how to articulate why it was such a shock to my system. But, more than that, I’ve been reluctant to say what’s on my mind because of a reason someone whose friendship and opinion I’d held very close (and whose London location had impacted where I’d chosen to live) had given as to why they didn’t want my friendship anymore. Namely, they didn’t understand why or how I could move to London when I’d been so vocal with criticism for the city whilst at university.
The criticism this person was referring to, was when I would get annoyed, upset, or frustrated about the fact that London has everything: it’s a cultural and economic hive of activity. Yes, this tends to be the way of capital cities, but in this country, the north-south divide is so much that if you’re from anywhere above Birmingham, it can feel like you may as well have a different passport. This feeling is then reinforced by our government coming across as so London-centric, that the North often seems to be treated like a different, somewhat irrelevant country by those who have the power and the money. And that’s not fair. A view, which after living here for over a year, I stand by.
I’m a northerner, but I’m not from the middle of nowhere, nor was my family ever in a situation where we seriously struggled with money whilst I was growing up – we didn’t have heaps of it, but I never had to think about money as a problem in the house as a child. Therefore, I don’t have an issue here because I grew up with a chip on my shoulder due to my own family’s financial situation: I know that I am very privileged in lots of ways. However, what I also know is that every time I go home something else is shut. And wherever I go – whether that be to a university in the Northeast which is mostly populated by students from in and around London, or to a BBC newsroom in the capital itself, I never feel like I totally fit. Or, as my fellow generation z-ers might say: I’m not truly seen. But to achieve what I want to achieve, I’ve got to be here, because this is where the opportunities and bosses are.
The north-south divide might be an uncomfortable topic if you’re in the firing line, but it is a real, tangible thing, and it doesn’t sit so well for me to hear people from London saying that everything above Birmingham blurs into one for them, because the implication is that everything above doesn’t matter. So HS2 doesn’t continue up towards Manchester, the jobs stay down here, and I have my accent (though playfully) mocked at university by people who don’t fancy going out on a Saturday because it’s locals night and the locals are just ‘a bit embarrassing’.
Where I’m from has a multitude of issues – socially, economically, culturally, historically: all of the above. But it seems like when you’re in a place that has been somewhat cast aside and deemed irrelevant by those in power, a sort of kindness and f*** it attitude emerges. Some of the men might have a tendency to go out on a weekend, get blind drunk, and look for a fight because they’ve got nothing else to do, but I remember car crashes on the main roads, and every single person in the terraces flooding outside with blankets, coffees, and offers of support. I don’t feel that same trust and vulnerability here.
This being said, it’s difficult not to like London, with its huge variety of vibrant, kind, amazing spaces and people, but that doesn’t make it an easy place to call home. The fact is that no matter how much I might love moments of living here, I feel a smugness to London which says that if you’re from here, why would you ever leave or care about anywhere else? Only, the capital is where all the rules are made, and until the disparity between the North and South is actually confronted without people seeing it as a personal attack on them and their home, then we’ll continue to subconsciously hate each other, and nothing will improve for anyone except the ultra-rich and privileged – many of whom, live down here.
So, do I like living in London? In lots of ways, yes – in fact, most of the time, yes. But with the hustle and bustle comes an impersonality, where after a while, I feel myself get meaner and more focused on what I’m doing, rather than what’s going on around me. The weather is better, it’s exciting, and London is beautiful, but if I smile at someone on the street or on the tube, they either look surprised or uncomfortable and you can only go 20mph everywhere, so I’m constantly staring at traffic lights; not going anywhere. My career is here though, so I’ll have to stay for a while, and I’ve concluded that to give myself the best chance of loving my life here, I’ll have to regularly leave because otherwise I’ll lose my mind.
An Indelible Friend 