Living in London has its benefits, but it also certainly has its downfalls. Think of emergency service sirens sending you off to sleep, your neighbours using your dustbin, your neighbours stealing your preferred parking space, your neighbours having a techno rave on a Sunday night (seriously, WHO does that!).
Love thy neighbour?
Yeah right! I am a Londoner, and we Londoners have a funny unwritten way of getting around the uncomfortable situations that living in close proximity with other ACTUAL people serves us up. That is, politely ignore. Greet them should you have to, and borrow some sugar if you have to, but for goodness sakes don’t be too friendly with them!
What if they invite you for a drink or something?
If you’ve ever travelled on the London Underground you will be familiar with the extraordinary sense of utter loneliness that it creates. Sometimes you are packed into a carriage so tightly that you become more familiar with a strangers’ body than your own lovers’, yet still you think that if you were to just lie down and curl up would anyone actually notice?
Anyway who cares?
I’m sick of everyone whining about how miserable it is to be a Londoner and here I am having my own little rant! The point of this article is to share a couple of tips to aid ‘effective urban living’. I like to think that in my relatively short time in the Oyster-card-reliant-drinking-in-Sam-Smiths-pubs-and-spending-too-much-time-commuting group that I have nailed it.
- Firstly and probably most randomly of all rip up the carpet in your house. If you’re as cool as I am (ahem!) then you’re probably always entertaining and having parties at your house. Avoid the red wine stains, filthy dirt puddles near your front door and having your deposit stolen off you when you move out for ‘professional carpet cleaning’, and just rip it all up. If you insist on having some nice softness for your cold wintery tootsies then head down to a decent rug shop and splash out. They may look pricey, but compare it to a quote from a wall-to-wall carpet fitter!
- Second of all, whatever you do and whatever your pain-in-the-backside estate agent says, make sure that you live close to a transport link that you can use to get directly to work. Trust me, the last thing you want when you wake up bleary-eyed on a February morning is a two mile walk to your bus in the rain, and even worse is that walk at the other end of the day. So DO pay the extra rent, DO accept the smaller bedroom and dry rot in the living room and reap the wonders of short workday works. You’ll love me for it.
- Finally in my list of exclusive insight into the savvy urban brain, whatever you do, only buy seven day Oyster card season tickets. Friends of mine talk about the incredible value of their year-long subscriptions. Rubbish! What about that two week Summer holiday you took was your Oyster card generating good returns for you then!? Some people get monthly season tickets again, why! The saving you make over buying four weekly tickets is so minimal that it is literally worth paying the slightly higher ‘cost per journey’ of a seven day ticket just so you know that if you need to spend a week away from London at short notice that you aren’t just wasting your precious cash.
So there you have it – the words of advice from a guy who has been there and done it when it comes to living sensibly in London: Don’t bother with carpets, live near transport links, and don’t be fooled by buying a one year pass on your Oyster Card. It might all sound very random, but just trust me.