1193: London Calling

I went to London today. I do not like going to London. I do not like London generally, in fact.

Fortunately, my trip to London today meant that I didn’t have to go very far, as in I didn’t have to catch the tube or the train or the bus or anything like that. We got a coach in (which, yes, did require getting up at 5 in the morning, but which was a relatively painless experience) then were able to walk to where we were going (the passport office, if you were curious) and then walk back, catch the bus home and not have to piss about with Londoners and their attitudes towards other people.

For many, living in London appears to be some sort of ultimate goal, some sort of Ultimate Cool Status. It is, of course, certainly true that a lot of industries make their home in the nation’s capital — the UK video games industry barely acknowledges that any other city exists, for example — but I cannot possibly imagine ever living there. It must be hellish. And expensive. Why would you want to pay a fortune to live somewhere that is hellish?

I had a job offer a while back that would have required me to move to London. I’ve thought back on my career path since then, which has been entirely working from home for American companies, and I wonder if I might have been better off taking that one as it was a more inherently “stable” position. The conclusion I inevitably reach is “no”, incidentally, with a large contributing factor to feeling that way being the fact that I don’t have to live in London. (The others being that I wouldn’t, by now, be living back in Southampton near my friends and with Andie, which are all awesome things in my life that I’m happy about.)

I’ll tell you why I don’t like London. Well, some of the reasons, anyway.

The weather is never right. When it’s grey and miserable, it’s really grey and miserable, and the dirty streets and oppressive, cramped way in which all the buildings are crammed together just emphasises how grey and miserable it is. When it’s hot, meanwhile, like it was today, it’s really hot, and humid, and the thickness of the dirty air from the hordes of cars who inexplicably think it’s a good idea to drive around Central London (hint: it’s really not) just makes it all the more unpleasant to immerse yourself in. Particularly when, yes, you’ve been up since five in the morning.

As I said above, thankfully I didn’t really run into my other London bugbears today as we were pretty much “in and out” — or as close to “in and out” as is possible when riding a bus from a couple of hours’ drive away. For the record, though, said bugbears largely revolve around people who have to be wherever they’re going faster than you getting wherever you’re going. This most commonly shows itself on the Underground escalators, where the left lane is the “dickhead” lane of people who think that barging past people who are often carrying large, heavy suitcases and/or bags will get them where they’re going a bit faster. (Hint: it probably doesn’t, given that when you get to the bottom you all have to wait for the same train.) It also shows itself on the street, where if you dare walk anywhere except smooshed up against a wall, some jerkoff in a suit will come charging past you on Important City-Boy Business and make you — just for one, single, blissful, homicidal instant — consider pushing him into the path of the open-top tour bus that is coming around the corner.

As I say, though, thankfully I didn’t encounter any of these issues today, and instead we saw some ducks, geese and other unidentified (well, someone has identified them, obviously) birds in St. James’ Park. Which was quite nice.

I still hate London, though. Even with its “nice bits”.