LONDON - Classic or Dud?

Its warmness is what I hate about it. It's always too hot in London. Even in the winter. At least I think it is.

The main benefit for me is that at least 80% of my best friends are hereabouts.

that doesn't necessarily mean I'd choose to live there, though.

it's the only place other than manhattan that i want to live, and i'm going to be back in eight days. i can't wait. basically, it's got all the historic/ian sinclair/etc stuff, *and* it's one of the few places where if you want to do something, you can. whay anyone lives anyhere else in britain escapes me.

I could not imagine living anywhere else. Brighton is nice, yes, but walk three miles in any direction and its run out - or you are very, very wet. Maybe its becoz though....

that having been said, it does sometimes feel like a distant empire outpost. weirdly, being in oxford last weekend felt much more like "london" to me. strange.

so er yeah, south london = london after all and i haf been a fule all along

(it's true: i saw that fox and fell in love with where it lived!!)

This, however, is not nearly as good as when, in the summer shortly after I moved to London, a lady duck hatched out all her eggs in the back garden, then was mightily perturbed when she realised that she couldn't get her incredibly cute offspring out again. The wickle ducklings were all running up and down wearing a groove in the grass for ages. Then they got taken back to the park, where I hope the aforementioned fox didn't eat them until they'd had a chance to see the tramps and rollerbladers in action.

London is great. This may be a lie, but I don't care.

we know what cities are
the uniforms, the sights
the pleasure palaces
the things that take all night

oh they're so special
so very special

but above all there's another
littered with landmarks
it quarantines ten million souls
way above the likes of us
its people are so very hot
heated in the mind
must be that never-ending noise
the sound of money burning in
lon don

oh everyone moves there
to make their careers
it sucks up ambition
it eats up ideas
it feeds them illusions
and power and greed
their heads grow fat
full of conceit
they're too big to leave now
they've learnt too late it's an abbatoir is
lon don

cities are built on mistakes of the past
the front door's labelled heaven
the back door leads to hell
they seem to open on the same room
we're stood too far away to tell

yet so cold about the things they see
(they say it's nothing to do with me)
the diplomats and derelicts
falling off each other's backs
so many peacocks in one park
so many lice on so many rats
how can they take it day by day
they must be very very dumb in
lon don

oh everyone moves there
to make their careers
it fucks up ambition
it plays on their fears
they cling to illusions
of wisdom and wit
when they're so high above us
they can't help dropping shit
on our words and our habits
but they can't even see what a sewerage is
lon don

cities are built on mistakes of the past
the front door's labelled heaven
the back door leads to hell
are we standing in the same room?
it's far too dark for me to tell

(from lon don by The Passage)

And it has lots of gig venues. And there's nowhere else in Britain where you'd be able to go ice skating at Somerset House in December.

Snowy - tell me about that band, that song, everything! take it to email, maybe ...?

surely the M25 is the de facto *psychological* boundary of Greater London these days? if it had existed when the modern local government boundaries were drawn up in 1965, Dartford and Watford would be within the GLA area, and South Ockendon outside it.

judging by how the south-east changed when I lived there, and since (my old friends from north-west Kent write to me now and detail the development of the area, split emotionally between appreciation of Thrusting Ecomomic Success and fear for Erotion Of The Community) that seems pretty much an inevitability. I may well be living in Brighton by then, interestingly.

there is an early morning through-commuter train from shrewbury to london: i have always wanted to see who takes it, but sadly it leaves at 6.45am or something, a time of "day" i have great difficulty believing in

ha, Mark has just reminded me of when InterCity (the BR brand had gone by then, even though it was still nationalised) started advertising the executive business pullman or whatever it was: EXETER TO LONDON IN TWO HOURS!!! always thought that symbolised the shift from old Tory to new, somehow. very *very* 1988, anyway.

her- oh, it's almost convincing
me- cheers, have another love

granted, my accent is kinda forqued when i'm imbibing (half-southern drawl, half-californian ), but get off it deary!

other than that: classic. esp: the garage for my 24th bday. ah, good times.

Also look here -
http://www.yammer.co.uk/passage/
for a recent website been set up.
(sorry don't have time to link it properly, got a train to catch)

haha robin I finally found that 70's BBC RW material they sent me btw, and it was pretty useless, so I feel guilty about getting yr hopes up now - so tell you what, I'll make you a compilation of The Passage as a consolation and guilt-reliever as well?
Can't do CD-R's though - do you want C90 or Minidisc?

This was not true for A Walk To Remember.

Snowy - I'm afraid I can't play Minidiscs, so C90 it will have to be.

fucking *cheers*.

i said it once before but it bears repeating now :
i went to 93 feet east last week, they charged us 10 quid each,
the decks were knackered
so they played a cd. one cd. all the way through.

you
be
the
judge.

Dr. C I feel better already! I'd heard from the fangroup that DW was 'in discussions' about it, but no confirmation. Let's hope they sort out all the EP's/singles as extra tracks too, eh?

Robin, I'll mail you with more info about the RW pathetic-ness, and I WILL get you those C90's before 2003 - post/terrorists permitting haha

London gets considered in this thread in relation to other UK places. It should be put alongside cities of its own size and clout for the true 'Classic or Dud' square-off. So, London compared with New York, with Berlin, with Paris, with Tokyo?

You have to actually live in all these cities to be able to answer that. I sometimes think I've made my whole life a project to be able to answer this very question. Ask me when I'm 84 and on my deathbed. In the meantime, I can give you the half-time results. London was knocked out in round 2. The moment I started to go to Tokyo I stopped being able to stand London.

Come back from living in a London-sized city -- New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo -- and you may well find yourself asking 'Why are the people so rude and tough-minded and negative here? Why are the buildings this muddy brown colour? What is with this mustn't-grumble tolerance of appalling traffic (the traffic that this week killed Stereolab's Mary Hansen, but mustn't grumble) and insultingly degraded public transport? What is with this all-pervading class obsession? This focus on house-ownership rather than rental? These stodgy pubs, this overpriced food?'

Of course there are great things about London, and of course if you live in the UK it's a very powerful magnet. But personally I do not find London good for the soul. Check back and ask me in a few years, though.

london= little stockholm, little tokyo, little melbourne in particular!

Oh, and people stared at me rudely on the street. Haven't they seen an indie pirate before?

I get claustrophobia there. Scared of going there this weekend..

these are my peoples

But it's pretty much as good as you can get, in the uk. A bit more 24-hour-ness to it would be nice, but once again this is the UK.

At least there are more 24 hour shops around now. Public transport (buses) is nice, it is expensive - it never hits home how expensive it is until say you have friends visiting from afar, though, and suddenly you feel guilty they have to pay £4.50 each day for a travelcard. (when you think how cheap a METROCARD is in new york)

i've never had a problem with the claustrophobia really, i've grown up in hong kong in its glory days and in comparison london is pretty much a quaint quiet little town.

The only thing i really hate about it is the outrageous house prices. that sucks. but it is a sign that a lot of people want to live here (and once again i could be living in hong kong where i can get a shoebox for my current rent probably)

However I do only like it here really because of friends who are here. London is a very, very lonely place on your own.

London has its many faults but ultimately it's so much better than anywhere else in the UK that I'd be prepared to put up with a lot worse.

3 or 4 months ago i was feeling much like i did three years ago (my snarky criticism at the time based largely at frustration from both living in ZONE 6 and not having visited certain places I was desperate to visit). 3 or 4 months ago I wanted to get out of the city for a while despite having just moved and everything. it's better now though.