It all became inevitable in July 2001 when I scored myself a job in the West End after years of living in the sticks. I could have found digs in the Home Counties and commuted but instead I wanted to grasp the capital and take advantage of everything it offered. The more my Mum asked "You don't really want to live in London do you?" the more I realised I did. And so it proved.
At the start of August I took the train to Stratford and starting asking letting agents what they had on offer. They showed me flats in Canning Town, Manor Park, Bethnal Green, Bow and the Isle of Dogs, some of which were absolutely horrid, as previously blogged. I had to make my mind up really fast and plumped for the E3 option with the filthy toilet, which thankfully a few limescale tablets fixed. I often congratulate myself for picking the right place because not only was the rent reasonable but the landlord was too, hence I'm somehow still in the same flat 25 years later.
The day I came to Bow to collect the keys was 25 years ago yesterday. I turned up at the letting agents to sign the paperwork and to pay the deposit, which I did by cheque because 2001 was a very different era. I was surprised to be given a bottle of champagne for my trouble... which I still have because opportunities for sharing a bottle have been thin on the ground ever since, so I should probably open it today to celebrate the 25th anniversary, although I suspect it went flat years ago.
I caught the bus to my new front door, which shows just what a newbie I was because I could easily have walked. First I emptied the letterbox which was rammed with flyers, free papers and all sorts of mail the previous tenant hadn't redirected. Then I unlocked my new front door with my new keys, once I'd worked out which was which, and stepped inside. Blimey it was dark because there were no windows in the hallway, also those weren't the lampshades I'd have chosen, but the rest of the flat was a blank canvas I was about to make my own.
I didn't hang about. I opened the kitchen cupboards to see what I'd been left and wrote myself an inventory because the letting agent hadn't... which one day they're going to be very embarrassed about not doing. I tried to decide which of my belongings would go where and whether or not to switch the bedroom round. I nipped out to Tesco to buy some grocery staples, including milk for the fridge and those all-too necessary limescale tablets. But I didn't stay overnight because I hadn't moved my stuff down yet, so I wasn't a proper Londoner at that point.
The next day I woke up back in Suffolk surrounded by a lot of boxes. The removal men arrived in a white van at 9am, two blokes called Geoff and Nigel who helped pile half my life inside. They then drove everything down the A12, somehow acquiring my AA road atlas in the process which I never got back. I was more grateful of their help at the other end because that involved lugging everything upstairs, also they switched the beds which are so heavy I've never been able to move them since.
At 1pm on Sunday 26th August 2001 they drove off and left me in my new home, my centre of gravity now switched. I did a lot of unpacking, reshelving and cleaning of sticky surfaces, also I managed to cook some pasta on an unfamiliar hob. I discovered that TV reception was appalling and that BT hadn't connected my phone yet, which was far more of a communications disaster then than it would be today. I also realised that the flat had no fitted cupboards other than in the kitchen, so either I'd have to go minimalist or have a lot of stuff on display.
By the end of the day I had all my shelves filled, my clothes hung up and the jumbo prize crossword completed, this because I'd had very few external distractions. I started wondering how the previous occupant had survived without curtains and put that on my urgent to-do list. Without a shower in the bathroom I noted it would now be baths or nothing, and so it still is 25 years later. And with fresh sheets on my bed I was able to stay in my own flat overnight, and I reckon that's when I finally became a Londoner.
My first full day in London was a bank holiday so I took full advantage. First I dashed to Argos for a TV signal booster and a bath rack from Woolworths. In my diary I described Stratford as 'very Luton-y', which I guess it was at the time. My second outing was much more on-brand - I rode the number 8 bus all the way to Victoria, excited to be living somewhere with ubiquitous public transport rather than in a village with six buses a day. I spent time mooching round bookshops and record shops (because you could do that then) and eased my communication issues in an internet cafe. And for my final round trip of the day I took the tube to Tottenham Court Road, was propositioned by a prostitute and drank some beers I could safely travel home from. Hell yes.
I still had four weeks of my old job left, so after the bank holiday weekend I took the train back east and started using my new London pad for weekends only. The first weekend I found a new barber, BT connected my phone and I rolled back home on the nightbus at three in the morning. The second weekend I started visiting London friends and spent £130 on things they didn't sell in Suffolk. The third weekend I ventured to Canary Wharf and got a photo taken for my new London Travelcard. And on the fourth weekend I finally vanned the other half of my belongings down to Bow and abandoned my former life altogether. I've been a London resident ever since.
I was very nearly a Londoner by birth having been born within 400 yards of a tube station, except it was 10 miles outside the capital at the time because Greater London wasn't invented until I was three weeks old. I then grew up two miles beyond its boundary thus am very much a product of Hertfordshire rather than the capital, so complete was the administrative divide. It took until I was 36 years old before I finally managed to move to London, which feels late in life but might also never have happened if the cards had fallen a different way. How lucky am I?
London is a very different kind of community to where I was before. With 9 million neighbours it's easy to blend in with everyone and to walk down even a local street without ever being addressed by anyone you know. E3 doesn't have the same level of social organisation as a village, nor a network of societies everyone belongs to, nor an urban centre you can't avoid using. I couldn't even tell you how many people live nextdoor to me, let alone what their names are, because in London it's so much easier to be anonymous.
And living in London doesn't come cheap. Unless you were born into property here, house prices are ridiculous and rents are extortionate compared to what you could get for the same money elsewhere. I'm extremely fortunate to still be in the same flat, my packing boxes tucked away where I left them 25 years ago, but I've had to make 300 rent payments for the privilege. Many of my London neighbours haven't been able to withstand the financial pressure so have moved the other way. And yet it's still true that anyone can be a Londoner, you just have to live here, which diverse people at all levels of society somehow manage to do.
My adopted city has kept me busy in ways that the county towns of East Anglia never could. London has a dense cultural heart, extensive suburbs and a wide range of landscapes. It has world-class cultural highlights that tourists travel round the world to visit, also centuries of history on the doorstep, also every kind of global cuisine. More importantly it has a public transport system second to none which is why I sold my car 25 years ago and have never looked back.
Since 2001 I've explored London more than most, indeed that's an understatement, from the council estates of Hounslow to the deep woodland beyond Orpington. It took me a year before I started a blog to tell you about it, relating the capital's minutiae in ever increasing detail, a creative output I could never have sustained where I'd previously lived. After quarter of a century I reckon I've been everywhere in London, yet simultaneously barely scratched the surface.
I have now spent 40% of my life in the city that I love, increasingly convinced it was the best decision I ever made.
25 years, and absolutely no plans to move away unless they drag me out.
