Moving to London

Those who know me are probably well aware that I wasn't dancing the merriest of jigs over moving to London. The tube would be sticky and unpleasant, the pubs sometimes trendy and always expensive. People in shops would make me repeat things because they couldn't understand my perfectly-enunciated Queen's English. I'd be accosted in the street by Apprentice contestants trying to convince me to pay Combobulus Jacket-Buttering five quid to butter my jacket. Possibly, just possibly, I'd be beaten by the Met or knifecrimed by a freesheet distributor.

In reality, my clothing remains dairy-free and my body has the same number of holes in as it did a month ago. My other expectations, however, were all too accurate, and while they've emerged in much lower volume than I had foreseen, that's largely down to the fact that I've been far too busy having extensive dental work and (only marginally less enjoyable) dealing with 3 customer services to leave the flat. On the other hand, I can work out how to get pretty much anywhere using one piece of paper with some pretty lines on it instead of seven different badly-designed websites. I can easily sample a pretty hefty range of delicious ales, and come to that, buy just about anything I could possibly want in an actual, physically manifested shop. There are lots of nicely kept parks, the review sections of the papers have suddenly become relevant (or will once Edinburgh's out of them) and apparently there are some jobs somewhere, though I've yet to get a sniff of them.

All in all, and with the disclaimer that I've yet to be affected by the regional pricing of Boots Meal Deals, I'm pretty satisfied with London. And if I ever get homesick, there's a manhole cover down the road that was made in Brighouse which I like to think of as "the embassy".