London is Shit
Well it isn’t, but it is. I’ll explain.
As I’m often reminded (mostly by people in their late forties who read something in The Mail about graduate unemployment), I’m pretty lucky. I work with people I like, doing something I enjoy, in the industry in which I’ve always wanted to work. I don’t despise coming to work and am never in the office on weekends. There’s also some nice perks, such as going to gigs, free CD’s and meeting some people that you see on the telly.
There are, however, a few downsides to being a young recent graduate in a very expensive city. Mainly, I’ve found, it’s being able to afford food.
You see, I work in the music industry, for a major record label, on the bottom rung of a very top-heavy corporate ladder. It’s a ‘cool’ job that means that when I’m in a pub people usually ask a follow up question to “what do you do”. Either that or they do that fake amazement / genuine envy thing that you did when your mate told you he got a better Christmas present than you when you were 12 (“oh wow! That’s ace!”). It makes me look quite cool. What I don’t tell them, is how much (little) I get paid. A lot of people would quite like my job, I don’t mean to be arrogant but it’s true. My company knows this and as such can offer me pretty much anything it wants in terms of pay. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. Getting paid at all is just a bonus on top of being able to gloat that you work ‘in music’ to girls in bars.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whinging, I’m explaining why London is shit, stick with me.
Because I didn’t know London all that well, I first lived in Clapham, as it’s where graduates seemed to flock. This was a mistake. I know now that the sort of ‘young professionals’ that you’d actually want to hang out with don’t live in Clapham. Graduates in Clapham work in The City and did Economics at Bath and wear red trousers. Graduates in Clapham often too closely resemble that fictional bloke in the ‘Gap Yah’ video. Graduates in Clapham did coke once and will remind you of that if you ever play ‘I Have Never’. Graduates in Clapham actually didn’t do coke once but will tell you they did because they think it makes them look cool during a game of ‘I Have Never’. Sorry to rant, but I didn’t particularly like Clapham.
My other problem with Clapham is that it’s really fucking expensive. As such, if you want to live near a train station or a decent bus stop and don’t want to live in a shared bedroom with a bloke named Brian (I went SpeedFlatmating, believe me, this was an offer I was asked to consider) then you’re going to be paying a fortune.
My rent was £650 per month excluding all bills (about another £100), sharing with four others. When you take that, coupled with your £100 railcard and whatever other personal bills you’ve got, you’re not left with an awful lot of pennies to enjoy yourself. You can’t go and visit all these restaurants and bars that you hear so much about. Well you can, but you can’t eat or drink anything when you get there. I once paid £6.50 for a bottle of Corona whilst watching a band, I nearly shat myself. I tell you this six months later because I’m still pretty angry about it. There is a lot of stuff to do for free, but to be honest, on a Friday night, I want to go for a pint rather than for a walk down the Thames.
Anyway, I’m not going to run off a list of my monthly outgoings and what I actually spend on food, but needless to say, I’m not getting my 5-a-day and my mum would probably have a shitfit if she saw the sort of cheap food I was actually living off.
There is, however, another reason why I’m not too keen on London.
I moved down from t’north after t’university to find, to my disgust, that everybody had heard of the cool indie band I’d been to see at some crap pub in York. Everybody here spent money on a particular ridiculous extravagance (mine was shoes) or had a favourite German wheat beer (mine’s Maisel's Weisse). You no longer have a niche, or an individual character quirk. Mostly, I’ve found that you just become Amy from Bristol or Scottish Dave or fucking Benedict from Eton. Where you’re from becomes who are and everyone’s got a mate from there, or visited once, or went past it on the train or can spell it.
The reason that I don’t like being known as ‘James from Blackpool’ is that Blackpool is shit. Everyone has been there, everyone has a mate from there, everyone has passed it on the train. Everyone knows that it’s shit. And when we start talking about Blackpool, everyone forgets how fucking cool my job is.
(James Somerside - @JimbobSomeroo)
