Retreat from Neverland
The lifecycle of the London young professional is as well-documented as that of any domesticated animal. Starting with a compromised living situation, the newcomer is typically ensnared by many of the other traps laid by the city (calls with clueless recruiters, spending too much time in Camden, ricocheting around Tesco Metro three times a day, etc) before achieving a degree of comfort and familiarity.
The well of hedonism never runs dry, but swampy bedrooms and mushy pea tube carriages mean that absolute satisfaction is impossible. Dramatic threats to leave are made to other inhabitants while outsiders only hear manic declarations of love for the capital. When departure eventually comes, prompted perhaps by sprogs, or soul searching, or yearning for space, an explanation must be made by Facebook status or tedious blog post.
I’m part of a visible and often privileged segment of migrants — typically the young who arrive after university, chasing jobs, glamour and novelty. The hipsters and gentrifiers, the easily mocked avocado munchers. Nathan Fucking Barleys. Some disposable income, the shaky beginnings of a career and fewer responsibilities than a GCSE student with a paper round. I turned up at the end of 2012 with the family’s outdated A to Z in my hand and grain still leaking from my pockets. A classic sucker for the bright lights, many of which — all pop-ups, queuing for restaurants, Infernos, Shoreditch Boxpark — I now scorn with the rest of the insufferable old hands. It took time, but I found what I wanted here, and more.
The London I have loved for the last five years starts with beers. Beers, drinking beers in the sunshine in the park. Drinking beers while watching jazz standards. Drinking beers on a balcony when the night is warm and the air is electric. The early evening deal at Bistrotheque, thalis from Diwana, Brasserie Zedel’s dining room, egg naan from Ararat Bread, pound a bowl from Ridley Road market, Rasa, the oily twin peaks of Tayyabs and Needos, Brick Lane Beigels, Rasa again, Roti King, Brixton Market, chai and a newspaper in Dishoom’s conservatory before it became impossible to get in, Mangal, Franco Manca, BiBimBap, anything from Whitecross Street market especially those calorific Turkish wraps, and, for sheer grotesque volume, the Indian YMCA’s evening buffet. The parks, Victoria Park, Clissold Park, the lurid festival fashion incubator at London Fields, fruit cider on Primrose Hill, a bottle of prosecco on the Heath. The Barbican when the evening light plays tricks with the serrated edges of the towers, or at lunchtime on the first day of spring warm enough to sit by the water with your sleeves rolled up. A string of green lights through Shoreditch, into the City and over London Bridge, pausing to look at the Belfast. Ignoring red lights as part of the noisy, chaotic Critical Mass. Bombing Archway Road ski slope solo, overtaking tens of cars and praying your brake cable doesn’t snap. Heading into unfamiliar turf and feeling like you’re unlocking a fresh section of the GTA map. A trip to the theatre on a whim. Going to a stadium concert and arriving home with the final kick drum boom still rolling around your head. Occasional forays into places you definitely don’t belong, like The Ivy or Whitehall. Tiny basement bars playing unknown music which somehow perfectly matches your mood. Union Chapel. Sir John Soane’s Museum. The Frontline Club. First Thursday’s at the little galleries in the east. All public libraries. Any blue plaque or information board. Smugly knowing the location of every restaurant, shop and faddish activity referenced in the Sunday supplements. Listening to strangers put one of those public upright pianos through its paces. Reading any book set in London. Amy Winehouse, Kano, Jamie XX. Living closer to old friends than you ever did in your hometown or at university. Working with, befriending, loving brilliant people from all over the world, many of whom also arrived in the capital with a suitcase and a dream.
But having been so completely spoiled by this checklist of frivolity, what next? In craft breweries and at dinner parties the Peter Pan hipsters anxiously assess other cities mostly by dint of how similar they are to the metropolis. “I reckon we’ll move to Bristol in a few years,” people say. “Or Manchester, but my mate lives there and the public transport’s useless, they have about fifty different bus companies.” Some consider the countryside but worry about ending up in Royston Vasey amongst instant coffee drinking UKIPpers. Others start to realise that nobody outside of E1 has even heard of their entire industry.
The real nightmare is either a provincial market town strangled by a noose of dual carriageways, or, worse, a shabby semi somewhere in an anonymous suburb where the only local features are retail parks and dilapidated bookies. Don’t even mention the season ticket costs. After mere weeks here such snobbery comes naturally and the potency of the venom is alarming. Probably it is the outcome of years of aiming all national resources and attention in the direction of the Thames. It is obvious that much of the city’s greatness has come at the expense of other regions, and indeed some of its own born and bred inhabitants.
As anyone who doesn’t live here will be quick to tell you, there are many things wrong with London. Monopoly men with armfuls of baksheesh are forcing the city to eat itself, pouring social housing and warehouse art studios into a vast funnel and luxuriating in the profits from the glassy high rises it excretes. And yeah, it’s true that even with the best of intentions my cohort acts as an unwilling laxative by treating Zone 2 as a giant alcohol fuelled creche before genuine adulthood. Strained metaphors aside, it has been a privilege to enjoy such a carefree existence here and to have frequented a few of the corners which still make it so special. When my plans for the next couple of years are finished I’ll try to stay away, but I know it’ll be hard to resist the sirens.
