A woman who’s tired of London is tired of lying

I thought today about writing down a list of what’s stopping me making the changes I want to make, to serve as a reminder of why when my resolve might be weakening.

1. It’s not the first time I have seriously contemplated how to get the hell out of London. Once I spent months planning an escape to Edinburgh after a familial visit. This only went on hold when I chanced upon an ex-boyfriend on friends reunited who was still living in Cardiff and decided to set my sights on that instead (easier and closer). The fact I was using him as a means to return to a much-loved home soon became apparent and the whole thing collapsed. By then Edinburgh had been forgotten and I embarked on a dating whirl in London to build up my self-esteem, thus all thoughts of moving out became secondary to finding my soulmate. But the original motivation for leaving never went away, it just died down whilst other things took priority. When my husband and I first visited Rye, it was for a weekend break so we could see if we could stand each other for 2 whole days. I chose it as it was small, peaceful and near the sea – all the things I regularly crave. It lived up to my expectations and every subsequent trip only reinforced how much better a place like Rye fitted me than the place I currently live.
London and I fell out of love a long time ago (and no amount of relationship counselling is going to help!).

2. I don’t want/enjoy all the things that London can offer. London is a box of mixed chocolates – I hate the white ones, can take or leave the plain dark ones, gorge on the few milk ones that I love and end up feeling sick about the whole thing! I have tried to embrace everything that London has to offer and have done courses, joined clubs, found friends to attend exercise classes with and visited as much of it as possible to have truly given it a go. My ‘circuit’ as my hubby calls the places he frequents when he has free time, has vastly reduced and is not getting any bigger. Far from it, it only ever seems to get smaller! New places invariably disappoint and old places lose their sheen. London may never sleep and changes constantly but change in itself is not a good thing. Everything nowadays is about being the newest, most original and most exciting, but not always the best. I actually crave the familiar, and find nothing more comforting than going back somewhere and finding things as they were/should be. I am all for improvements but I also believe firmly in the ‘if it aint broke, don’t try to fix it’ adage and this sums up London all over. A tweak here and there and they relaunch something on the gullible public, day in day out, all in pursuit of financial gain. Unless I am planning a life in the Outer Hebrides (which I’m not – yet!) London is never that far away so if I really wanted to see/visit something, it’s doable.
London is for others now; I’ve clearly had my fill.

3. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes when I go back to an old stomping ground in London I get a lovely sense of nostalgia. Chiswick now is a pretty little villagey place with cute boutiques. When I lived there it was a chore to shop there on a Saturday, squeezing in a shop at the inadequate-sized Sainsburys, dodging the yummy mummies and bugaboos and I couldn’t get home fast enough. The King’s Road is a trip down memory lane, given how many bars I frequented and remembering the things I bought there with my first half-way decent pay cheques. When I walked it every day battling the other commuters on my way to work I couldn’t get the journey over fast enough. Neither place inspires me to return permanently but I have fond memories now when I do see them. I am currently cursing about life in Greenwich – I am sure it too will have a rosy glow when I’ve gone. I’d much rather that than end up hating it all so much that I have no inclination to ever return. What is it they say about leaving before the rot sets in properly?
London is definitely worth a visit but no-one should feel duty-bound to sacrifice their life to it.

4. I never was a big city person. I’ve always preferred more manageable places that I can walk around without needing to use public transport or even, for my holidays, places that were in the back of beyond. If there is one thing guaranteed to set my teeth on edge it’s a crowd. That was always the case but it’s certainly got worse as I’ve got older. I had a friend who was so determined to wind me up (don’t ask me why – she chose never to share the reasons with me and simply defriended me on facebook as a statement) that she insisted I meet her one evening at Covent Garden tube and nowhere else; places that I proposed being ones which I considered that bit quieter. Just being in the vicinity of Covent Garden brings me out in hives but standing there being jostled by other folk, having someone on either side speaking far too loudly into a mobile, screeching and screaming from everywhere and the general ‘tourist trap’ aura that hangs over it made me seethe. She then insisted on eating at Belgos (pouting when I suggested that trading standards had accused them of poor hygiene) and to keep her happy I agreed. Belgo’s is one of those joints where a mass of people is seen as a prerequisite and turnover must be fast in order to create a ‘buzz’ in the place. Well, that’s the marketing hype. Reality is it’s deafeningly noisy, the waiter bugs you every 2 minutes to hurry you along and the conveyor belt kitchen produces sub-standard food which is usually tepid by the time it reaches you. Even she couldn’t ignore the poor quality of both food and service, nor the utterly filthy unisex loos. I like small, cosy and quiet places. Huge warehouse like joints crammed with people are simply abhorrent. London is full of them, its squares are teaming with tourists night and day and a walk in the park is like a stroll down the M6 motorway. What’s to like?
London often feels like a cesspit full of ugly people, buildings, motives and feelings.

5. I don’t really like other people. I grew up with few friends. This annoyed the hell out of my mother and she chastised me regularly for not being popular. Fact is, I have never suffered fools gladly. I can’t recall being so discerning as to have chosen not to have friends, but I think I put every potential one off by not being ‘compliant’. I was never destined to be the sort of girl everyone else wanted to be. I was quite clearly one of those meant to be relegated to the sidelines at school, Miss Ordinary, the only exception being my academic achievements, which were above average. I didn’t suck up to or endear myself to the sort of folk whom everyone else admired. Being friends with the popular ones was out of the question: they didn’t like me and, truth be told, I didn’t like them. I’ve never seen a reason to hang out with people unless I truly enjoy their company. If I don’t, I won’t. Over the years I have broken this rule and always lived to regret it, but no more. I am very selective about who I spend time with now and a city like London does not help me achieve that goal. Here I have to suffer other people, like it or not – at work, on my commute, in the shops etc. I never go in somewhere and have the place all to myself. I love being in a town where I am truly the only woman in the coffee shop or browsing a boutique. I spent a childhood at family parties, down the rugby club wherever I went with my parents, surrounded by folk they invariably slagged off later. Why? Why not stay at home and save yourself the bother? I happily spend time with my selected friends and family when the mood takes me, but as for everyone else, thanks but I think I will live without the brain-dulling company of many and will appreciate the benefit of the few!
London is too frantic, busy and stuffed full of people to ever satisfy my cravings for peace, quiet and harmony.

6. London and money go together like pie and mash. London is for the rich. To be fair, this is less about the cost of living (which is high but not as exorbitant as people imagine and I am noticing more and more London type prices outside of the metropolis) and more about the avariciousness of the inhabitants. The reason it is for the rich is that London is all about money. People work here to make money and spend a lot of it in the shops, bars and restaurants in the centre. They slide out of their offices, effortlessly into a black cab and out again at the latest place to see and be seen. What goes on around them is irrelevant, just as long as their wine is chilled, the starters are on their way and their dealer doesn’t let them down later. For Joe Bloggs coming into London to do a desk job there is little to praise. Most commuters try to leave on the earliest possible train, other than when they are obliged to meet someone after work. Twentysomethings get high on the social side, which is fun while it lasts but the shine soon goes off it when their credit card bill arrives; over the limit for the enth month running. Elsewhere you don’t need to be a ‘name’ to get a table at a good restaurant or the right kind of clothes to get into a decent shop. Where we go at weekends the retailers welcome anyone who comes through their door without a ritual appraisal of what they might be worth and you can only get a table at the best restaurant if you are local or lucky, not by name dropping or flashing the cash.

London is for show-offs; something I never have been and am sure I never will be.

Treasure the present

My commute is simply unpleasant. No other description sums it up more accurately. I get irritated actually (quelle surprise!) at people who use words inappropriately. Travesty, abomination, disaster and horrific are the sort of words used routinely by people to describe minor issues. The traffic is NOT horrific, it’s annoying. Your night out was not a disaster, it was disappointing. I am sure there are folk who think I down-play things and am over-optimistic, but I prefer to reserve words for appropriate use. How can a word used to describe the situation in Haiti, such as devastating, be used by some rent-a-gob on the TV news to describe their feelings at missing out on their fancy holiday due to weather. No, it’s not about relativity, because that sanctions the amount of misery these folk are claiming to suffer from. Real grief and sadness are not caused by a cancelled flight, being unable to get into the restaurant of your choice or other such ‘calamities’.

The words that really infuriate me being used out of context are abortion and rape. My ex-boss once described a document that he’d been sent as a total abortion. I overheard and was compelled to tell him never to use that word in such a context again. He did at least ‘get it’ though I imagine he went away thinking ‘hysterical, feminist bitch, better not upset her as she’s not pretty when she’s angry’. I also did a double take the first time I saw face-rape being used on facebook. I do appreciate that these words have probably been misappropriated by teens, desperate to shock and have a language of their own. What saddens me is when people my age adopt them and bandy them around to try to be cool. Abortions and rape are serious, life-affecting events that should not be trivialised and whilst I am sure being a woman has an impact on my reaction, anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would know not to use words in public that might upset others.

Anyway, back to my commute! It’s unpleasant. I don’t want to do it any more but can’t find a solution. Moving in to town would be expensive. It’s doable but I would rather not have rent which feels exorbitant.

I have 40 minutes each way to endure (on a good day – more like 50 on a bad) and I can not seem to make these in any way, shape or form enjoyable. Sure, it’s a lot to ask, given the fact that commuting is not renowned for it’s pleasures, but something has to be more pleasant than the daily grind on South Eastern trains.

I have tried getting up early and avoiding the crowds – ha, clearly there are a lot more people who have to be in before 7.30 than I realised. There is obviously a dearth of trains at that time so having tested the 6.30 and realised it’s no better, my 7.15 departure remains my train of choice. It’s always crowded by the time it reaches me and I have rarely sat down on a journey in the whole time I’ve been commuting from Charlton. But crowded is bearable if people showed some semblance of respect towards their fellow passengers. I could rant for Britain on the innumerable transgressions of my fellow passengers but the major gripes include:

- Being hemmed in. I am 5ft 1.5”. My head is about level with the average man’s armpit and they appear oblivious to this fact. The over 6ft guys don’t even see me. I might as well be an ant. They often sport rucksacks and happily swing them in my face. All I need is two men with ipods on, both towering above me with various appendages on either side of me and I feel claustrophobic and invisible. Imagine this of a morning, before one has really woken up, the rain tipping down outside and the tinny sound of popular music adding to the atmosphere. If I’m not depressed already I am then.
- Activists. There are some women who are simply hell bent on sitting down. Even when there are no seats. They will tut and stare angrily at every seated person until a man worries she might be pregnant (she’s usually just fat) and offers her his seat. However, if she fails to secure a seat she will end up standing next to me (yes, always me) and doing what I term ‘spreading out’. The bag goes on the floor as it’s usually heavy and if it lands on my foot, so what? She wants to read the Metro and she wants to have it fully open so she can see everything at once, rather than folding in half as considerate folk do. Her phone goes but she has a coffee in one hand and the mobile is at the bottom of the bag so after rummaging around for it, elbowing everyone in close proximity, it’s almost a guarantee that said coffee will be decorating my shoes. Women feel the cold more than men so she’s probably sporting one of those puffa jackets or about 13 layers and is therefore taking up twice the space others do before she’s even started her appropriation of all the available space. Yes, men do it too but I can assure you that my tutting or headshaking towards a man usually gets results. Women tend to respond by doing it more or pushing for an all out fight.
- Utterly selfish bastards (non-gender specific) who think bikes and push chairs should not be folded during rush hour. I class each unfolded item as one extra seat/space per person. The mother who has a seat for her, one for her child and an unfolded pushchair blocking the standing area is quite simply a selfish 3-seat hogging (for the price of one ticket) cunt.

So how does this relate to treasuring the present? Well I have calculated that I spend at least 1.5 hours every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks of the year inhaling someone’s armpit like a sardine. Not only does this time feel like it is being wasted (my attempts at reading are invariably thwarted) but it is also spent wishing it was over and the sooner the better. I can neither treasure it nor avoid it and I feel cheated. God knows other people suffer far worse hardships but what annoys me is that I willingly subject myself to this. I buy the ticket and shove my way on to this hell hole on wheels on a daily basis. There is absolutely nothing to treasure about this daily grind and I am determined to find a workable solution.

Slow down and enjoy the journey

Just before I got married last year I caught myself wishing that my wedding day would hurry up and come round so that it would be over. I was shocked (even though it was at myself!) and disappointed that rather than being unable to wait for it to come round and savouring every moment, I wanted all the organisation elements over and done with and the sooner it got to the day and everything went to plan, the better!

If I am honest, that’s how my entire life is run. Everything has a ‘sell-by-date’ at which point my life will be easier because of XYZ. Of course, no sooner has that deadline come and gone and the next ones are looming large. Everything done on a daily basis is a means to an end, rather than me actually enjoying it at the time, for the sake of it and with abandon. Maybe it’s to do with my protestant background, as ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’ was drummed in to me as a child. Recreation was a dirty word as it was associated with doing nothing. If my brother kicked a football he was ‘practising’, if my mother made a cake she was ‘making the tea’ and if my father was in the garden he was ‘doing the vegetable patch’. It probably explains why reading was so frowned upon. Unless it was a school book it was basically doing nothing; the thought that I might actually be lying on my bed enjoying a Jilly Cooper novel (yup, appalling, I know but I was a teenager) was enough to enrage my mother to provoke me. I’d be immediately assigned something to ‘do’ if she caught me, such as dusting or hoovering or basically being busy. Her house was spotless. I didn’t realise at the time as she was never satisfied with the state of it and instilled in me a sense of dissatisfaction at even the most perfectly executed thing. Now when I go to other people’s homes and see things lying around, a slightly sticky table or a curtain that needs rehung, I don’t think ‘dirty, filthy bastards’ but instead accept that a family home will never be pristine. Equally, I can see that ‘lived in’ means ‘loved in’ though I struggle every day with my thoughts to accept that.

On my way home last night I was thinking about going on a run when I got in, but my plans were thwarted when my train was diverted and I had to get off at a station about 40mins walk from my house instead. I canned the run idea and decided to speedwalk home instead, then started thinking of things I could do on the walk to make the most of the time (get money for cleaner from cashpoint in case you don’t have any – I did – pick up some groceries from M&S – even though you have tonight’s dinner in the fridge). Basically, I couldn’t settle until I had made something of that impromptu walk, instead of just going with the flow. On my walk I got a text from my cleaner asking to swap her weekly shift to a different time. That was the final straw for me, and I decided she’d given me the perfect excuse to get rid of her permanently. I did it nicely – I didn’t say yes or no but told her I’d think about it and leave a note, which I did saying thanks but K will be working from home now (a white lie) and can’t have the disruption.

This left me with a dilemma. What next? Return to the situation we were in beforehand (me ‘blitz’ cleaning the flat periodically to within an inch of its life, letting it fester for weeks then doing it again, refusing to let K get involved as he’d never get it right) or employing a new cleaner who, let’s face it would be as unlikely to live up to my standards as the poor girl who has just got the chop. K proposed we split the cleaning when I mentioned it later and we decided to stop discussing it in case it led to a row after I made it clear he too would give me more grief with his ‘ways’ than doing it myself.

I torment myself with the smallest things and create the ‘work’ that I (and often only I!) consider needs done. If someone else is doing something for me, guaranteed I will feel disappointment at the end, having discovered a minor flaw or imperfection, always with a sense of ‘I’d have been better off doing it myself’.

Basically, it’s time I learnt to let go. I can’t bear chaos and I loathe slovenliness, yet aspiring to perfection and order creates a never-ending to do list. In my head I have a ‘one day’ scenario, when all these things that need done are done and then I can relax. Obviously that day will never come – partly because I keep generating things that need done and partly because when one thing is complete I start looking for the problems with it. Take, for example, my flat. I made a decision when my parents and I fell out to tackle all the DIY jobs needing done. I worked out pretty early on that I had neither the time nor the ability to do them myself. I also wished that my childhood weekends had not revolved around my mother’s DIY projects. My dad worked an extremely long week and then, come the weekend, her jobs list came out and he was hard at it again before he had time to swap his suit for an old t-shirt. So I opted to pay someone to do it. The first was a disaster and I handed him money to finish it off and not come back! The second has been a relative success in that the work was done to an adequate standard. However, all the little niggly things that I see remind me every day that I didn’t get the level of service I expected and it irritates. I know it shouldn’t, but it does.

I have to learn to let go, live and let live and accept that everything in life is imperfect. Blimey – just a tiny little thing then :-)

Believe the impossible

Monday morning in Charlton town. Grey, wet, cold and miserable, which accurately reflects my mood. In the absence of anything important or indeed factually based to put in the paper today we are reliably informed that this be Blue Monday – the third one of January when everyone feels worse than they do for the entire rest of the year.

Aside from the fact that this is one of those statistics that has me scratching my head for relevance (do they wish to increase the suicide rate or make everyone feel worse than they already do as they jump on the ‘me too’ bandwagon?) it’s pretty obviously also based on precious little actual cold, hard research. Scaremongering, attention grabbing and something the masses can identify with makes it memorable but it does nothing for the poor saps like me trapped in a cycle of commuting hell, mortgage payments, demanding bosses and the general malaise of a recession.

K and I have been discussing getting out of the rat race for a long time now. Am not sure whether it predates my redundancy from my last job or not, but it feels like forever. We had a real heart to heart this weekend and it’s fairly obvious to me that there is one ginormous obstacle holding us both back.

We’re both fairly reasoned and organised (he’s more spontaneous and I am more adventurous but it boils down to the same thing in that neither of us would throw everything up in the air without having done the groundwork first) and we know if we put our minds to it, sold my flat, cut down our outgoings and set ourselves up outside of London that we would survive and, hopefully, thrive.

We are not materialistic, conspicuous consumers with credit card debts or fancy tastes. As long as he has CD’s and guitars and I have kitchenalia and a pair of trainers, we’d be happy little bunnies in the right environment.

We both know we are capable of getting other jobs. Heaven knows we’ve worked for some of the most demanding people in Britain, so potential employers can see that we can cope with stress, have impressed these titans in the past and possess the qualifications and skills for a wide range of positions.

We love the calm and peace of the countryside. I almost feel compelled to put my hands over my ears on the train these days and the prospect of spending the next 36 years of my life in a city saddens me. I’ve tried i-pods, avoiding the hotspots at peak times (e.g. Oxford Street at any time of day or night ) and basically living a calm and quiet life in the middle of all the hubbub, yet nothing makes it any easier to bear.

Everything points towards selling up, moving out and making ourselves a new and peaceful home somewhere we love with a passion (maybe Rye – oh yeah, definitely Rye!). Yet something huge is holding us both back from saying sod it, let’s do it, namely the fact we can never go back.

It’s just out of the question that when we make this move, one of us turns round after say 6 months and says, I want to go back to what we had before. It’s not an option. Yes, it’s not possible because pride will get in the way for both of us but I don’t mean in that sense. It just isn’t an option to jump back on the frantic merry-go-round of London once you’ve finally, totally waved goodbye. No-one wants a has-been crawling back, tail between their legs saying they have had a change of heart. It’s a new life forever, not until we tire of that one. This (the next) one has to be the one that we construct.

We are both guilty of having fallen into our lives. I was a quiet, reflective, artistic child with an aptitude for languages and a love of homemaking. These qualities, however, did not endear me to my mother who was hell bent on bringing up a mini-me. She did everything to bully me ‘out of myself’, until a few years ago when I finally rebelled and said enough’s enough. Over that time I had done everything the young woman she had wanted to produce was expected to do. That’s how I ended up in London working for a major corporation in the early 2000’s. To get me to that point she had secured me a job in Parliament, then literally driven me away (sobbing on the back seat), from Cardiff where I studied, lest I didn’t get out of there and move to London before it was too late.

This all followed my tormented teens, when she would scream at me for having no friends and then my early twenties, when going home in the holidays from university was not an option; if I wasn’t working shifts behind a local bar within days of returning, I was packed off on a plane to France to au pair before I had chance to catch my breath.

Over the years I have tried. I have done everything to fit into the life that she had imagined for me and I can honestly say I am now certain that mother most definitely does not know best. Far from it. For years I hid my sadness with excessive amounts of alcohol. I felt like the Pierrot clown. All dressed up in a good time outfit, a tear tickling down my cheek (albeit invisibly) as I made small talk with people whose very existence bored me.

K has battled his own demons and we both know exactly how it feels when your life is dictated by other forces; people’s opinions and chance encounters that led to where you study/work/socialise. He’s been through the wringer far more than me, but the results the same. We both want to lead our own lives now, planned out by us from start to finish.

Last year I spent a great deal of time on my friendships. In some cases I made a special effort to see people I had neglected, including a lady in her early ‘70’s that I had worked with over 10 years ago. I also cast off folk whose presence in my life was not enhancing, rewarding nor in any way, shape or form beneficial to either my health or my happiness. I never once regretted cutting ties and whilst some of them still haven’t got the message (12 months on!!) I am no longer meeting people out of obligation or turning up to their parties to stand in the corner counting down the minutes until I can get the hell out. In a slight twist, some people have binned me during my ‘cull’, not necessarily the ones I was aiming to lose! That said, of the people I have somehow offended and who have cut ties with me, I realised they were right and that in spite of efforts on both parts, the end of our friendship was for the best.

I feel sure that my close confidantes are now people with my best interests at heart. I am content with my familial relations, and whilst they are very different to before they are no longer fuelled by hatred and animosity. I am civil to my parents and have re-established loving, caring relations with my brother, aunts, uncles and cousins.

I feel free of all the things that bound me and I’m generally in a good place. So why the hell am I still terrified of jumping off the parapet and changing my life for the better? Because I am unable to believe that my hopes, dreams and ambitions could ever come true. Nope, I do not dream of topping the charts with a self-penned album, jetting off to Milan for a modelling assignment or commiserating with Paula Radcliffe when I beat her in the 2012 marathon. I have found my Mr Right in the shape of K, I have held down a job all my adult life and remained out of debt, other than for very short periods and am fit enough to run a 10k when it suits me. I am not a useless waste of space whose every next plan or project ends in failure. I have achieved a lot in my 36 years, yet I am still surprised, nay stunned, when things turn out alright after all.

Take my current job. I’d been here over 9 months when they made the role permanent and yet I still went down to see HR trembling like a leaf, wondering if they were about to pull the rug out from underneath me. In all the time I’d been here nothing had gone wrong and my boss seemed content, but the relief that I was staying on was palpable. I floated away like someone had handed me the Nobel Prize (rather than a fairly bog standard work contract) for fucks sake. No amount of achievements will ever make the slightest impact on this lack of self-esteem. It’s been ingrained in me ever since my preferences were first challenged as a child and they aren’t buggering off in a hurry. My love of books, painting and crafting was rubbished, sniffed at, laughed at and brushed over, whilst the joy of socialising, drinking and partying were brought to the fore. The fact I didn’t enjoy the opposite to my choices mattered not. The only message I got from that was that I was wrong/weird/misguided to think differently and would benefit from doing all these things that I actually dreaded.

Fact is, I have simply never been in a position to test my actual (as opposed to perceived/imposed) limits. Falling flat on my face isn’t the problem, as I’ve been doing that since childhood and know exactly how it feels to be jeered at and mocked for being lousy at sports, not making the top maths set or failing a GCSE in chemistry. I’ve been shoved so far out of my comfort zone at times that when failure inevitably happened it was spectacular – and almost always my fault. But the driving forces behind these achievements (or more precisely, lack of) weren’t me but other people. My parents, my teachers, my colleagues and my friends. All with my ‘best interests at heart’ because I obviously don’t know myself as well as they do! No-one ever let me indulge my creative streak to see where it took me. My ability to run was a shock to everyone, when I proved I was capable of completing a marathon as they’d written off my sporting prowess years ago. My inability to drive, however, is seen as a huge, serious fault and not as it should be, as a blessing for other motorists! I am lots of good things and lots of bad, all in one imperfect human being. What I’d dearly like to do now is play to my strengths and never again subject myself to the humiliations I’ve previously endured over my weaknesses.

I need to basically tackle what I have always considered the impossible. In doing so I will also have to accept setbacks with good grace, learn from mistakes and move on when necessary. All the fears I have about leaving London are just that; worries and anxieties based on supposition. My heart left here a long, long time ago but my head is taking that bit longer to follow. I have to believe that I can move on, make a new life elsewhere and be happy. For once the place I go, the job I do, the flat we rent will be a choice we make together, regardless of other expectations. And do you know what, that’s putting the fear of God into me big time :-)