I was chatting to a friend online last night who has recently emigrated and he was giving his newly adopted home the big thumbs up. “Get yourself over here” he typed, or words to that effect. Don’t suppose for a moment that I haven’t given it serious thought. I may have mentioned before that several years ago I tried to escape to Australia. I was to be a £500 Pom ha ha. I told no-one of my plan, I was simply “going travelling”. In fact I was going travelling as well, I just didn’t intend to return any time soon. My mother rumbled my plan and got very upset when I changed my email signature to read
–
Blue Eyes
Sydney, NSW
But it was not to be. As much as I liked Australia – which is in many ways a much freer, democratic and sensibly run country than Britain is – I didn’t quite gel with it. The people were friendly and I probably eventually could have found a sensible job (despite the Australian government’s entirely justified efforts to restrict unqualified foreigners to certain industries) but I just didn’t feel at home. Perversely, I also felt as if Australia wasn’t sufficiently different from home to warrant uprooting myself from my family and friends. Sydney was Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome.
I live 5.9 miles as the crow flies from where I was born and 7.7 miles as the bike flies to my mother’s house who still lives in the same area. Although I don’t live in an area at all similar to where I grew up, inner London is very definitely my home. I know how it works.
Apparently one third of current London residents were born abroad. Add all those Northerners, Brummies and sundry country bumpkins and I reckon us pure bloods* must be in the minority. I often wonder what the newcomers make of London. Do they get annoyed that their cars which were designed for the Californian suburbs won’t fit down our narrow Victorian “roads”? Do they wonder how anyone can possibly prefer living in a city so full of rudeness, litter and unacceptable behaviour? I will never know what London looks to an “outsider”. Perhaps some pine for the clean suburban order of Coogee. Maybe some just never see the wonders of London from their commuter carriage. Probably it’s just not quite “home”.
So although the grass may appear very much greener on the other side of various fences I would find it very difficult to export myself somewhere sunnier and better administered. London is part of me. Things would have to get quite a lot worse here before I gave up completely. I really hope they don’t.
* don’t get all offended by this, it’s a joke
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I too live within a short distance from where generations of my family were born. I also have a home in California and spend considerable time enjoying all that California has to offer…the thing is though that I just can’t visualise me actually living there,no real idea why.
Well, I’m afraid I’m past it but……I sure as heck tell my son to go. This country,has had it!
I also seem to gravitate back to the same corner of Sarf East Lahdan and I guess I will always be a Londoner at heart.
Tokyo was the only place I visited that seemed to compare and was indeed “home” for a few years, I would have stayed longer, but the girlfriend / partner was incredibly homesick, so being in love and stupid I agreed to come back (and if you’ve read my profile you know how well that all worked out)
Would I have stayed forever? I don’t know, maybe. But there is a certain pull about London that you can’t explain to anyone who was not born here.
I’ve lived North, South, East and West London. It definitely gets in your blood.
(London) “I know how it works.”
That sums it up Blues – I don’t think you can describe your position any better!
I’m still a Londoner, albeit 250 miles away. I’d still be one if I was living in the land of my other passport, but my home country now seems to have a jagged, ugly edge to it that I’ve watched get more jagged and more ugly. I don’t like it.
Yea, BE. You know how it works but it won’t be working after 2012.
Don’t you remember the dilapidated buildings, the rubbish on the streets, the potholes and the lack of buses in the eighties or am I just being nostalgic?
As a sheep-shagger who has lived in London a few times (a 3 month stint, a 20 month stint, a 2 month stint, then a 4 month stint, I can tell you that London is overwhelming. I love it and hate it. When I’m not in London I miss it and fantasise about returning. When I’m living there I get claustrophobic.
I’m only 100 minutes away on the train or a 2 hour drive down the M4 away now. So I get my fix from time to time, and am always sorry to leave. The sad truth of the matter is, I can’t afford to live there and nor can my liver.
Leave London sheep for the Londoners.