\n After four years back in London, the Beetle is scuttling to
\n pastures new. She will continue to be involved with the
\n Globetrotter e-newsletter, so please keep your stories, anecdotes
\n and comments coming!\n <\/p>\n
\n “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is
\n willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired
\n of London, he is tired of life; for there is in
\n London all that life can afford.” – Samuel
\n Johnson<\/i>\n <\/p>\n
\n I've lived longer in London than any other place. I love
\n London; if based in the UK, it's the only place I'd chose
\n to live, but…you knew there was a 'but'
\n coming…..like any large city, it has its downsides. On the
\n plus side, I like London for its cosmopolitan mix of people and all
\n that they bring with them. So, for example, one of my favourite
\n restaurants is the Ethiopian restaurant, Merkato on Cally
\n Rd.\n <\/p>\n
\n I like London's tolerance for dress and eccentricity – if you
\n want to have a pink Mohican, well fine, no-one is going to stop and
\n stare, if you want to have 1000 piercings or walk down the road
\n holding hands with the same sex – nobody minds, or is it more a
\n question that nobody cares? One day whilst walking in the City, I
\n almost bumped into a very tall man with 3 day stubble, blue eye
\n shadow, pink lipstick, wearing a Laura Ashley print dress and Doc
\n Martin boots, and he had amazingly hairy legs! I like the tolerance
\n of however you want to present yourself goes, it's not frowned
\n up to stand out. I like it that we have a live and let live
\n attitude, so no matter what your personal, sexual or religious
\n preferences are, that's fine in London.\n <\/p>\n
\n I guess I like the diversity of people and backgrounds London
\n offers and all the activities available. If you want to learn
\n tango, go to origami classes, learn car maintenance or Japanese or
\n dress making, there's always a class for you. The night life is
\n good too, ranging from the sort of full on clubs you'd see in
\n any big city to individual hang outs, great wine bars, coffee shops
\n – there's something for everyone – at a price.\n <\/p>\n
\n Most British people take our heritage completely for granted. I
\n have to confess, I lived 3 minutes walk from St Paul's
\n cathedral, but I've never been in it – I objected to the
\n outrageous entry fee. I could have attended a service, but I
\n didn't. I went to the Tower of London as a child, but not
\n since. One job I had involved working in a John Nash designed
\n building and walking past the Royal National Opera House and St
\n Martins in the Fields on my way to work. I admit, I used to look up
\n and think how lucky I was, but I have only been to the opera twice,
\n though I use the café in the crypt at St Martins in the Field on
\n the odd occasion, but both are very expensive. I like the theatre
\n very much, and there are ways of obtaining reasonably priced
\n tickets, but if you want to go and see a movie in the West End,
\n it'll set you back around £10. The cinemas at the Barbican are
\n my favourite, because you can choose where to sit, it's not
\n quite so expensive and people are generally better behaved – and
\n this is the key to my leaving London.\n <\/p>\n
\n In London, there is a two tier system of activities and places to
\n go. There are the places that tourists go, like Oxford St, Covent
\n Garden and all of the shops, bars and restaurants around there that
\n no self-respecting Londoner would admit to going to. They are
\n usually too expensive, too loud, too busy and of embarrassing
\n quality; you really have to know where to go, and if you are new to
\n London, this takes time to build up. For me, and I am not a native
\n Londoner, part of the fun in London is discovering new haunts and
\n hang outs. Building this knowledge can be frustrating too. It took
\n me years to find a decent plumber, electrician and painter, and
\n still not found a good builder.\n <\/p>\n
\n I find London expensive, and I live here, so I imagine that
\n visitors must feel the same. I also think it often offers very poor
\n value for money, ranging from the tourist trap restaurants to
\n historic site entrance fees. Having lived and worked in the US,
\n Germany, Switzerland, Cayman to name but a few places, I don't
\n think we have a very good service culture here in the UK, in shops
\n restaurants and other services. The costs of renting, and even
\n buying a place in Central London are often prohibitive. Bus fares
\n are outrageous – £1.20 a journey and usually take twice the time of
\n a crowded tube in London's traffic. A tube journey costs a
\n minimum now of £2.20 – just avoid rush hour if you can, tube travel
\n is becoming unbearable. Weekly passes are better value, but still
\n expensive. Londoners regularly complain about London transport, but
\n I think we are lucky in having a good network of buses, tubes and
\n trains, even if they are often unpleasantly crowded, smelly, dirty,
\n expensive, slow and late – you try using public transport outside
\n London, in rural areas in the UK, it is almost non existent. Mind
\n you, when I compare the attitude of New York City subway kiosk
\n attendants to the London Underground counter attendants, London
\n wins, hands down for not being as rude and as unhelpful as their
\n NYC counterparts. I won't even bother to discuss driving in
\n London, with congestion zone charges, cameras, lack pf parking,
\n astronomical parking charges and over zealous ticket toting traffic
\n wardens.\n <\/p>\n
\n Whilst I like the live and let live attitude in London about
\n people's dress and preferences, there are chinks in this when
\n it comes to public behaviour. In the past month, I have witnessed
\n three incidents of bus rage – seriously! The first was a man who
\n was too late to get on a bus on Upper St in Islington. The bus
\n driver refused to let him on the bus as he'd pulled away from
\n the bus stop, so the man walked in front of the bus, arms stretched
\n out wide and refused to let the bus move on. After 10 minutes of
\n this and a torrent of the foulest abuse imaginable, and the bus
\n driver calmly radio-ing “we have a problem”, the man
\n decided to try and punch in the driver's window, repeatedly
\n spat at it and then tried to kick in the bus' folding doors.
\n The passengers and I was one, sat frozen and mute in horror.
\n Another bus incident involved a woman who was either mad or badly
\n in need of help and announced that she was going to kill the
\n vandals responsible for chopping down some tress near where she
\n lived. She took to accusing the entire downstairs of the crowded
\n bus and in particular a gaggle of chip eating school girls at the
\n back of the bus who refused to open the window to let in some fresh
\n air to dilute the stink of chips they were eating. The mad woman
\n and the girls then proceeded to engage in a battle of the foulest
\n language and threats until the mad woman got off. The third
\n incident just makes for more depressing retelling. And yet, I have
\n seen Asian youths give up their seat for older people, but no-one
\n offer their seat on a sweltering and crowded tube for a very
\n pregnant woman. I offered, she refused, like she expected this kind
\n of behaviour. But there are good Samaritans: a couple of months
\n back, I saw a lady trip on the bottom stair of a moving escalator
\n at Euston and a huge number of people stopped to help pick her up,
\n dust her down and collect her bags for her. We are not entirely a
\n capital of monsters, but I do wonder sometimes. When I recounted
\n these tales to my friends, they shrug and say, well, this is
\n London.\n <\/p>\n
\n I could be boring and go on about the weather, the politics, the
\n dumbing down of our tv, (ironically, the only tv programmes I watch
\n are from the US – CSI, Law & Order, Futurama and the odd film),
\n the British press – we have some of the most obnoxious and
\n intrusive tabloids in the world. We've just had a general
\n election, though you wouldn't know it. Our political apathy is
\n maybe based on the pathetic characters available for election.
\n What's that Dr Johnson said?\n <\/p>\n
After four years back in London, the Beetle is scuttling to pastures new. She will continue to be involved with the Globetrotter e-newsletter, so please keep your stories, anecdotes and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-article"],"yoast_head":"\n