h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...and why, ever since I was at High School, I always wanted to live in London. It was part of Ken Livingstone's speech that I saw on the news that reminded me:

"If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. It is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear they freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail."

I almost cried when I read that. For me, getting away from Staffordshire and moving to London was all about being me and doing what I wanted to do, and not wanting to live the kind of life I was supposed to. I've lived in this dirty old city for seven years now, and I love it.

Speaking the right words calmly - I've always been a Ken fan on the quiet, but he's been fantastic in the last couple of days.

If it's all right with you, I found the whole thing here:

http://www.london.gov.uk/news/2005/bombing-statement-080705.jsp

And yesterday's here:

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/mayor_statement_070705.jsp

I went the whole hog and blubbed outright

I moved out of London a couple of years ago - I lived there for nine years prior to that. I never intended staying away from it this long either and I miss it a great deal of the time: but at the moment especially badly (I don't know if that's slightly perverse or not). A great city and the world's city too: I read something today which suggested that London might have got the Olympic Games because every member of the IOC would have known somebody who lives there.

I hit that 'Reply' button... but now I don't know what to say.

I know that sometimes I miss London like crazy and almost cry with the feeling of being homesick for the place, but other times I just dont want to be part of such a big city any more. There's no doubt though that it's one of the most exciting places to live, even if you don't have much wedge.

Want to go see a classical concert? Go to the Proms or the Wigmore Hall - very affordable. Want to see some cricket? Go to any of the local parks on a Saturday or a Sunday and watch it for free. If you love fireworks there are some terrific displays all over London around November 5th. And for a brief period when Ken was head of the GLC there were the most incredible shows and events at places like the South Bank, and Victoria Park in Hackney. Where else could I have seen Slim Gaillard for free? The man was a bloody legend fer cryin' out loud. And if I'd had my wits about me at the time, I could have gone to the legendary punk festival at the 100 Club - Siouxsie and the Banshees with Sid Vicious on drums, The Clash before Topper Headon was their drummer, plus the Pistols and The Damned. At least I got to see the Stranglers and XTC at the Hope and Anchor (not on the same bill mind).

London in May and June is just magical if the weather's good. Long summer evenings, Wimbledon, sitting outside a pub (breathing in fumes ), the sunlight casting shadows underneath the London Plane trees... sometimes when you're in London it just feels like everything's for the best in this best of all possible worlds. You can take the boy out of London but you can't take London out of the boy. I'm damn proud that on my birth certificate it says 'County Borough of West Ham'. Or something like that.

There are a handful of places around the world that you can truly call 'world class cities' - London, New York, Paris, Rome, maybe one or two others. They can grind you into the earth or they can lift you up to the sky - sometimes both at the same time!

I'll never forget one day in the early 80s when I was working in a little place on Old Street making pine beds. I was on a bus heading towards Shoreditch around 5pm and I saw the three members of Bronski Beat come barrelling out of the London Apprentice, which at the time was one of the most well known gay pubs in London. It seemed to me like they were riding the wave of their new found fame and the whole of London was their playground. And anyone who's either grown up in, or lived in London for any length of time knows exactly why Waterloo Sunset is one of the best pop songs ever, bar none. You can't put it into words, you have to experience it.

Maybe I'll live there again one day, but I think I'd have to win the lottery first I dunno... I can almost see myself working somewhere like Peter Jones on Oxford Street and getting the tube to work every day, then home again at night to some little flat on the Northern or Piccadilly Line. Hendon maybe, Arnos Grove, Southgate. Perhaps I'd end up like Mr Grainger - some doddery old geezer with a tape measure around me neck and hanging on to my job in the menswear department because I just can't face retirement. The last two years I was there I lived in a van because I could hardly afford a decent place to live.

It's not just the people who make London what it is - it's got a life all its own. No-one can kill it cos all human life is there and has been for so long that the place is unstoppable.

I've always wanted to live in London, but because I live so tantalisingly close that I can get there whenever I like, I've never made the effort to actually move there. I'm constantly jealous of those who do, but now I've got the means (well, when I was working of course) it seemed that J's best chance of a good education and not being mugged for his pocket money seemed to be in my home town. After all, there must have been a reason why my grandmother moved out of Holborn to live in Brentwood.

But when I stopped working in London, and was moving between White Bread Brentwood and Whimsical Welwyn Garden City I missed the diversity that London offers. I want my child to grow up in a multi-cultural society, not a bland commuter town. We spend as much time in London as we can, and I'm not going to change that.

Ken's speech moved me too, although I'm not a Londoner, I really wish I was.

For probably only the third time in my life, I've started a thread on Askh2g2 - F19585?thread=681974 - asking what people love about London. Hopefully I'll get some interesting answers.

Come to think about it, I've just remembered something else. Because it's so huge, no-one's London is the same as anyone else's - you make your own city and then you live in it. Everyone has their own places that they go, pubs and bars they drink in, shops they shop in - but sometimes we meet up on the common ground.

It's the antithesis of being stuck living somewhere small and provincial, when you only ever see (as they say in Venice) the same four cats.

Another thing is that everyone does go on about the cultural diversity, but it is true from time to time. There was a free festival (Stokefest) in Clissold Park in Stoke Newington a few weeks ago, and I spent most of my time in the reggae tent and it did strike me - as it does from time to time - what a variety of people of different ages, races, shapes and sizes that were there, all grinning widely at each other and having a good time.

Of course, the melting pot isn't always functioning smoothly on all four cylinders - you've only got to watch the news every now and then to see evidence of that - but I reckon we do pretty well here compared to most places in the world.

Anyway, it's the Finfest 2005 festival in Finsbury Park tomorrow afternoon - http://www.finsburypark.org.uk/news_article.asp?id=717 - so hopefully that should be a good larf as well.

'Because it's so huge, no-one's London is the same as anyone else's - you make your own city and then you live in it. Everyone has their own places that they go, pubs and bars they drink in, shops they shop in ...'

That's very true, not only for the people who live there but for those of us who regularly visit friends and family there. I can find my way to and around the Merton, Wimbledon, Twickenham and Teddington areas (including watering holes and eateries) and am also fairly good at the South Bank and not bad in the West End. And I'm a Northerner

Jules

Impressive

When I used to visit London as a teenager, Centre Point by Tottenham Court Road was my homing beacon. Used to hang around Denmark Street (Tin Pan Alley) just to the south where all the guitar shops are and play the bass guitars (on the pretext of that I had the money to buy a Rickenbacker. Yeah right!) as well as all the bookshops on Charing Cross Road (Foyle's in particular), then to the north all the hi-fi shops on Tottenham Court Road (odd how having a great hi-fi becomes less important as time goes on) and of course the Virgin Megastore and cheap but cool jeans and retro sportswear at what was Cromwell's Madhouse on the east end of Oxford Street. And then I used to wander through Soho to Berwick Street, where the best two record shops in London were - Sister Ray and Selectadisc.

There used to be a great and cheap all-you-could-eat Chinese buffet near the Argos on New Oxford Street, too - really good grub, much better than those Mr Wu's ones you get around Leicester Square. But that shut down years ago.

I've only been to London three times. Once when I was too young to remember anything about it (though I'm told I refused to eat anything there apart from jaffa cakes). I went for the day a couple of years ago, with college. So I spent that day going to art galleries and then having a walk beside the Thames. Then I went for a weekend last year, which I spent trekking down Oxford Street, wandering around Covent Garden and then eating an icecream in Hyde Park.

Though I've not spent a great deal of time there, I would love to live there one day.

Overall, I don't like London.

A few years ago I had a job that meant I spent several days a week travelling around the city. My patch wasn't the centre, it wasn't just the bits that everyone knows: it was the whole damn place. The list of sites where I could be having a meeting was well over 100 venues long - NHS and local government offices mainly - and spread across every single borough in the city.

As a result, I've driven through more suburban sprawl than I ever imagined could possibly exist. When you've started your day in Bromley; gone to Streatham then to Merton, and on to Ealing for an evening meeting. You just become lost in a sea of semi-detached housing and 1930s parades of shops with flats over the top (they've all got a branch of Threshers and a Kentucky/Other US state Fried Chicken outlet in them - it's the law) that you just lose all orientation of who you are and why you're there.

Now, I know there are great things in London. No f*ck that, there are amazing things in London. But my experience of the city is not one of being in and of knowing a small area in detail. It is one of knowing a small amount about all of it. And most of it is looks like banality for mile after mile.

As I said, there are many many great things in London. But for me the road out ranks high amongst them.

Reckon you might like to this Six:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4736731

Followed by this
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4736734

They came one after the other on Weekend Edition this morning.

I did that for about 12 years GD - spent my days driving around the suburbs/inner city, hardly ever venturing into the centre, except when I was working at night and the place was empty.

I never tired of it (I loved driving around London but came to hate driving amongst the traffic and the idiot drivers, and trying to find somewhere to park and load/unload) and I never found banality, but having grown up on the outskirts of London and spent almost 20 years living within London, usually the inner city, I guess that's to be expected since I was more familiar with it than someone who had moved in.

Every single area of London has something different about it although you might have to dig a bit in order to find it sometimes. Even parts of London which have similarities about them are different. Whitechapel, Stamford Hill, Golders Green - all very Jewish parts of London but all completely different.

North of the river and south - they might as well be two different cities. I lived in Limehouse, East Ham, Plashet, Clapton, Stoke Newington and Wood Green... and for three months in Streatham. Hated it - couldn't wait to get back north of the Thames. I rarely had calls from people who wanted to move from south to north or vice versa, and of those who did, a surprisingly large proportion called me within a year - often within six months - to move back again.

But it's all relative and it's a very personal thing.

Commuting from North London to West, and only passing under the centre if I choose to take the tube, I always feel much better about living in London when I make sure I do things in the centre of town ("Up West" as my Mum's parents always used to say) or by the river.

If I'd spent the whole time only seeing anonymous cimmuter land like you, GD, it would have got me down as well. And seeing as my Dad's family are from there, I've got a huge soft spot for Brighton as well...

Anyway, I've just come back from a free festival in Finsbury Park (Finfest, they call it) where - due to losing my ongoing battle with Captain Faff - I only got there for the last half hour, but I went in the diversity tent and saw a band with lots of crrrazzzzzy drummers and then a great Brazilian band on the World stage.

But what really did my heart good was to see so many different ages, races, shapes and sizes having a great time, and in particular so many families and kids playing happily as well as reprobates like myself.