I still find it hard to adjust sometimes from living in London. Even though I only spent 4/5 years there it affects a lot of what I do, say, think etc.
Although born in London (circa 1985) I didn't "live" there till I was 19.
I lived my heady days of finding myself half at warehouse parties, working in achingly "hip" nightclubs where they served beer out of bins full of ice and Johnny Borrell was doing lines in the non-locking toilets and half of it sitting in my damp, mice infested room on a council estate known for gun crime, miserable as fuck, usually slightly malnourished and worried I had no friends.
It was hardly a charmed lifestyle and I was in no way part of any scene (though I was on the fringe of many which I'd rather forget) but it's left me with some unrealistic expectations on things such as pub closing times, how tight trousers should be and how it can be occasionally ok to use people. And now none of these things apply to my day to day life.
I spent 4/5 years learning and observing rules that have absolutely no relevance in 99.9999% of people's daily life.
If you asked me how to say Thank You in Albanian I could relate to the time when I knew some (very scary) Albanian criminals. Or the best place to get a cheap drink at 6am would involve you being able to speak a couple of words of Spanish to a doorman on a side street off Oxford Street.
However none of this is useful when negotiating a night out in Hampshire. Everything closes at 2 and if you don't get your head kicked in you should be happy with that.
I don't dislike my current life but when I find myself blogging at 1am on a Friday night. G snoozing contentedly next to me after a day's worth of honest graft behind him, the likes of which are unknown in some East London districts (that means you arty types!) I can't help but feel like a bit like an alien in a foreign world.
It bemused me on my return two years ago that people didn't want to continue the party till the sun came up. It was never a question of age as I'd be hanging with people up to and into their 40s but mostly a sense of responsibility. Life in London can seem fleeting and uncertain. You never know when the bottom will fall out and you'll have to return to Hampshire/Shropshire/Buckinghamshire or wherever you herald from and the party stops and you have to get a "proper job".
Living in London can suck you in and spit you out but it'll stay with you in the form of an annoying series of bad habits of excess in all things hedonistic and a tendency to start sentences with "when I was in London...."
No comments:
Post a Comment