One year.
Exactly a year ago today — the 2nd July 2015 — I moved from my home, the tiny little island of Guernsey, to the inimitable and buzzing city of London. The year has gone by so fast, and whilst I couldn’t possibly list everything I’ve learnt over the past 365 exhilarating days, here’s a few of the things I’ve picked up along the way. I’ve tried to stick to ten. And I hope you’ll enjoy.
- You get really good at being on your own.
Is that a sad note to start out on? It’s not meant to be. In fact, I find it a thrill — knowing you have an entire city to explore and nobody to worry about impressing. No expectations, no throngs of people you have to organise, and nobody to keep entertained but yourself. You can be the quintessential London tourist if you really want to be. You can go to a restaurant, the cinema, a musical — all by yourself and still have an amazing time doing it. I recently fell in love with Nell Frizzell’s article in Time Out, since she captures my feelings perfectly:
Ditch the nonsense idea that you have to experience [London] with someone else and suddenly you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, in the way you want, for as long as you want. Break out of the belief that going it alone is lonely and you can start to enjoy London without compromise. If you want to go to a midnight screening of ‘Total Recall’, you can just go, no questions asked. If you want to have a pre-work outdoor swim surrounded by geese, you can do it, nothing to hold you back. If you want to eat three puddings and no main, literally nobody is going to stop you. [Source]
I find that just the opposite of depressing.
2. It’s expensive.
Sure — to move somewhere like the capital city of the UK is of course going to cost you a fair bit of money. Luckily, my move to London, and my views about its cost of living, were suitably skewed anyway; it turns out Guernsey is the most expensive place to rent in Britain — London came second. But yeah: for the price you pay to rent a room in London, you could probably live like a king in Norwich for the same amount.
But then you’d be living in Norwich.
3. It’s cheap.
Yes, in the same breath that London can sometimes be obscenely and prohibitively expensive, the capital opens up a veritable pantload of new experiences and things to do which you just couldn’t get elsewhere; plenty of which range from being sub £20 to completely free. £15 to go down the world’s tallest, longest, and fastest slide? Sure, I’m up for that. (Stay tuned for it, too!). £14 to watch the brilliant farmyard twist on the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race: the Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race? Priceless.
Further to the more obscure, one-off experiences, in January I got to see one of my favourite bands, The Correspondents, perform an intimate gig in an Islington pub for just £5. Pizza Pilgrims, perhaps my favourite pizza parlour in the city, is tucked away just around the corner from Oxford Street, and yet nearly all of their pizzas cost less than a tenner. It’s well worth a visit if you’re ever in the city (and let me know, I’ll join!).
Yes: to live here might be costly, but to have fun here can be free.
4. It opens up a world of travel.
One lovely thing about living in London is, paradoxically, how easy it is to get out again. It’s almost depressing to me how it’s now cheaper for me to get a 2-hour flight to Copenhagen than the £120 it typically costs for a 35-minute flight back home to Guernsey. In April, I went up to Manchester for the first time, and all it required was for me to hop on a train that departed from next to our office in Euston; it was no hassle at all. I love how effortless it is to explore now.
4b. Travelling by first class train is incredible.
Okay, so this is really a side note, but it turns out that if you book first class on Virgin Trains and travel on a weekday (which is sometimes only a minimal increase in price), you get an extra perk which you might not have realised:
COMPLIMENTARY ALCOHOL.
Oh yes. When we took that train up to Manchester I think we ended up drinking about 3 or 4 G&Ts each, and then they brought round wine. That’s my way to travel. Sure, I practically fell out of the train when we arrived, and all I wanted to do that evening was nap, but it was oh so worth it.
5. London is only as busy as you make it.
“Oh no”, they’ll say. “I could never live there. Too busy.”, they’ll shun. That was always the inevitable response I received when I told people that I’d moved to London.
Yes, of course it’s busy. For some reason, I decided to leave my quaint population of 60k in Guernsey to go somewhere where I was one in 8.5 million. But I love it. A culture shock is what I wanted, and it’s what I’m so thrilled to be experiencing every day. And here’s the thing: whilst, yes, London can often be this tiring, unending rat race — an unforgiving metropolis — I’ve learnt you don’t have to go far at all to end up somewhere that feels completely different. The city is so well connected that, if you’re tired of the Tube every day, you can hop on a bus, enjoy a sleepy ride into work, and still get into the office on time. If the hoi polloi of the city centre is all getting a bit much, all it takes is a short Tube ride and you can find yourself alone in one of the city’s quietest parks. Those people who shun London and say they could never live here must be the same people who only ever visit to go to Oxford Street; something you quickly learn not to do unless you’re a masochist.
6. You begin to feel like a local really quickly.
“Aaaaargh” you scream, internally, as some idiot with a suitcase the size of the damn Hindenburg decides it’d be a great place to stop in front of you at the top of Euston station’s escalator. “What is wrong with you?!”, you’ll later ponder, as what seems to be the two slowest people in the world are preventing you from getting on board that Tube train in time. You’ll watch in exasperation as someone decides to try using Apple Pay for the first time ever — in the middle of rush-hour at Piccadilly Circus Tube station.
Of course, you’ll just stand there huffing and puffing, conveniently forgetting that 6 months ago, you probably were that idiot with the suitcase; you were the one who waited unnecessarily long to put your Oyster card on the reader. But that doesn’t matter now: you’re a Londoner. As far as you care, you’re a local, safe in the knowledge that you’d never make a rookie mistake like that again. You begin to learn a routine and you get to know about the quirks of the city. You’ll put your card on the reader and you’ll keep walking as the gates open in front of you. You’ll know that it’s much more pleasant — even quicker, sometimes — to walk between two Tube stations. And you’ll also begin to notice that you now walk twice as fast as you ever did before.
7. It makes you appreciate what you have more.
Now, I don’t mean to be getting all deep and philosophical here — I don’t want to bore you with it and I’m not really clever enough to talk about it in the first place. What I really mean, though, is that moving to London has totally changed the way I think about what I have in my life. When I talk to my family at home, I feel we connect so much better and that I can be more open with them than I ever was before. It’s taught me to think about what news really matters to me — and not the marrow-thrown-at-car, small-town-way-of-thinking I was so used to from home. It’s quite refreshing being somewhere that constantly challenges my ideas, makes me more political, and teaches me it’s okay to think for myself and to have my own opinions.
8: It teaches you who your friends are, gives you a whole host of new ones, and:
9: It makes you feel more comfortable.
I’m tackling these together since they’re so inherently related to each other.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about myself since moving, it’s at how much more extroverted I’ve become. Or rather: how much more extroverted I’ve probably always been, it’s just how I never felt comfortable enough to be when I lived in Guernsey. Moving to a city as anonymising as London has meant that I feel inherently more comfortable in myself; I feel it’s given me the permission to be kinda weird, to explore who I am, and to write stupid shit like this and not be afraid to publish and share it.
Remarkably, given all I’ve said above, people apparently enjoy hanging out with me still; indeed, I’ve made loads of new friends since being in London, and if I’m honest, I’m not really sure how. I don’t personally see the appeal in a partially-funny, former rock-dweller with low energy, but hey, I’m not complaining.
10. It makes you so much happier.
I mean, I can’t guarantee that. Your mileage may vary. But I can confidently tell you that moving to London has been one of the most incredible, defining moments of my life. Yes, not all of it has been easy or much fun: it’s sometimes been challenging for my family, my morale, and not to mention my finances. But looking back, I can see it’s made me so much happier in so many ways, and I’ve not even had the chance to mention how awesome it’s been for my career.
Yes, Guernsey will always be my home, and I do continue to miss it, my family, my friends, and especially my memory foam mattress (damn that was such a good bed)… but London will continue to inspire me, thrill me, and give me plenty to write about.
It’s been one incredible year. And I can’t wait to tell you about the next.
I’m Olly, an occasional writer based in London. You can follow me here on Medium for the latest posts and follow @yourolly on Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat where the stupidity continues.
PS: Forgive me, but this is important. To Mum, Dad and the family: thank you for letting me take this jump and for your emotional, and not to mention, financial support. I really appreciate it. To my new friends: thank you for being so awesome and for giving me such a warm welcome. To employers, past and present: thank you for letting me be a part of your teams— I’ve learnt so much and I’m thrilled to have been able to work on so many awesome accounts so early in my career. Here’s to more!
