Day 54… Not a City Girl just yet…

To quote the brilliant song writer that is Ed Sheeren “London calls me a stranger, it is not my home”

When people ask me where I live, I hesitate, I come from a lovely small quite town up North and that is always Home, but nowadays I work and live in a house in London. It does not feel like a place I am going to stay for long, but for now it is some kind of fake  H O M E.

1. Commuting

“In a city that never sleeps”  I am a country girl trying to keep up with the pace. The day starts early and finishes late. It is not just starting work early it is the daily commute that causes thousands of people to dive deep into the tube system at once. In my little town back home driving is the only option or walking of course. There is not a regular 5 minute bus, you are lucky if it runs every half hour. Here in London you do not have to drive a car and would rather not with the traffic. Tubes and Buses are in substantial amount. However you are not the only one heading into work that one way, you are packed into a small tin can for up to an hour before you get to work. If my colleges have to be at work for 7 they are up at 5 and heading out at 6. I am pretty lucky, the studio is only a 10 min bus drive so I am at the stop at 6.30 just in-case the drive decides to call at every stop. This brings me to another bizarre point that people are willing to travel over an hour to get to work. Not everyone wants to live in central London and don’t have to choice with its pricing. It is significantly cheaper to live in the outer zones than central London. I know that I might have to travel and hour for my next job which would be crazy seen as I have to be first in to set up all the cameras. With location shoots I will have to be a the studio latest at 6 in the morning so setting off at 5. 😦 I am not liking the sound of that. I love my sleep and at least 8 hour of it.  This would mean I have to go to bed at 9ish … if I say I get up at 4.30. This leads me to another point…

Finishing work at 18.30/19.00 is a stupid time to finish work, Firstly it means the hour traveling back takes up most of your night, even if you go out with work afterwards you still have an hours journey home. So people would get back around 20.30. That is not enough time to do what I need to be done to relax. I have to make dinner, shower, write this blog. . . Have some sort of life. There is not enough time in the day. Oh and Dinner well I just do not have the energy to make anything by the time I get home, it is usually a sandwich as I am given a huge lunch at work. Or a microwaved meal, I am finding it hard to get the motivation to make proper meals. I miss home cooked dinners.  So I get home and just go straight to bed, back up north you would finish work at 5 and be home at 5 past.  You would spend time making a proper meal, sit down and take your time in eating. Have a bath which as I live in a crappy house I do not have one. Then spend another few hours relaxing. Maybe going to a friend house. I just cant find the hours to do that.

It must be only me who gets lost in time, I scroll through Facebook to see other London friends who are grabbing time by the hands and really discovering the London life, whether it is out at a restaurant, a cool pub or a comedy night. My friends seem to know something I do not. They have something that I am missing.

2.Housing

Now this is a northern thing to say but everything is so blooming expensive down here. I would happily move to Manchester right now as it is way cheaper. For my room I pay £460 a month then I have to pay bills on top of that. It is cheap for London, I acutally have a living roome and two toilets too, but it is a tip. If I decided to get a job in Manchester I would have such a Lush place for that price. I live in a council house which is shared with five people. I have a landlady that I do not see, and mold is growing in all our rooms. We do not keep the heating on or the hot water. It could be worse…  Now lets not get started on the price of a pint. Expensive!

3.Grey and busy

Nothing wrong with the colour it is just a very grey city. I am lucky that when I look out my room I only have half a block of flats in my way the other half of my view is Wimbledon tennis court so it aint bad. It is just there is not much of a horizon, everywhere you look your horizon ends at the grey building in front of you. No green hills, or land. It is a street sandwich, two grey cement buns smush you into a hectic traffic ‘jam’ and a hundred other people. The key is never go to central on the weekend. You wont be able to breath.

London life just generally moves too fast for my liking. What can I do, it is where the work is, my friend are and to be truthful there is more to do here than back home where it is just green rolling fields. Maybe I should be more constructive with my time… Anyway I am still a country girl at heart but I think I might change one day when I get used to  it. I will leave you two links, one to the brilliant song City and another called Home which is one of my favorite songs because that is actually where home is.

“London calls me a stranger, A traveller, This is now my home, my home”

“Home is wherever I am with you”

Night,

L

Day 41 ?Good Fences?

Having a bit of writers block, thank goodness there is a blog called Daily Prompt! This one is from a few days ago and really takes my interest.

Who are your neighbors? Are you friends with them, barely say hi, or avoid them altogether? Tell us a story — real or invented — about the people on the other side of your wall (or street, or farm, or… you get the point).

I live in London so do you really think I know my neighbours? All I know is that the people on one side get up early and slam the front door when they go out to work. The other side I don’t hear or see. It is quite sad. On the other hand, the house that I really call home, back up north in a small town called Carnforth, is where neighbors are everything. You know everything about next door, three doors down and even around the corner. I miss that.

My family house sits on a quiet estate, on the left a couple in their 70s who do not look their age. Our house bellows over their little bungalow and it’s garden is their gem. When they go away they entrust us to look after the garden, we collect their post and put it in to a neat pile on the stairs.When they return, we are given gifts for caring for their home, usually biscuits or cake. We both grow veg in ours gardens and give to ours neighbors generously.

Now the other side, the right side, holds a lot of memories and friends. Firstly the people who used to live in that house years ago. The Simons, the three young brothers ran riot in that house, and circles around me. We would have so much fun, playing for hours, our favorite summer game was to run through the water from the hosepipe. One of the boys, Nathan was not just my neighbor, he was my classmate and really good friend.  Then suddenly he got really ill, the playing stopped and they moved across the street. In a few months I lost my neighbor and my friend. He was too young to die. I kept going around to my old neighbors and played with Nathans brothers, we sang Elvis songs and played UNO and Kirby till it went dark. A house never stays empty for long, we gain a new neighbor, this one an elderish lady and her adult daughter. Norma was a ex-teahcer, this was the best thing ever… I would go around more than twice a week to get help with my homework, we would bake cakes for each other, my dad mowed their lawn. Her daughter Judith, is the kindest person you would ever know. They are both like family. We help each other, look after one another. A few years ago Norma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s it is strange to watch someone you went to help for as a child become a child herself, so distant and fragile. I do not think she would recognize me today. However after all these years she still knows my dad. I don’t think anyone has neighbors like ours, they are the best kind. It would be amazing to find some like them in London, someone I could trust , people we could call family.

I don’t think I have portrayed my story well, I could go so deep into why neighbours are important. They are the security of the street, they are there when you need them. And that’s just from one house.

Night,

L

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