I’m in London for a job interview, and I had forgotten just what a pain in the neck this place is to be in if you’re just mooching here, if you’re not working, not a tourist, just here. It’s not unwelcoming, not exactly, you just get the feeling the place couldn’t give a stuff if you were here or not, it’s too busy to be bothering with you so just do it a favour and keep out of the way. Everyone in London is moving fast because there’s no benefit to be had from standing still, and people would much rather be where they’re headed and out of everyone else’s way – plug in the iPod, read the Metro, head down and balls to all of you, I’m getting home. There are way too many people here, so many it is a miracle that anything works. It almost feels like London is a hair’s breadth away from collapsing from the tension. I’ve been sat in Starbucks for twenty minutes and I’m already expecting someone to tell me to piss off and stop loitering.
But London will happily take your money. Oh will it. I’m still thinking dollars and riel, can’t help it. In some places a can of Coke is $3. A bowl of won ton noodle soup just cost me $14. The return train ticket down today was over $100. The taxi across town, the only way to get to my interview on time, $25. My internet connection, $20. It’s not like my money has been leaking out of my pockets since I got here. It has been gushing, flowing, spouting uncontrollably. I’m alarmed.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t also difficult to be here just because you can spend a day here and not say a word to a soul that is based outside conducting a transaction. After a year in Cambodia and daily, frequent exchanges of pleasantries and piss-taking with shop workers, waiters, bar staff, friends, moto drivers and random people, to suddenly have to adopt the London attitude that everyone is in a bubble and polite conversation is the exclusive reserve of Big Issue sellers is hard work.
At the moment, I don’t want to be here. Take me back to Cambodia, sorry I whinged, I promise I won’t ever get in a bad mood about a tuk-tuk driver with no sense of direction or a $160 flight to Bangkok ever again.
Hello and welcome back.
August just isn’t a good time to try to assimilate yourself back into London. It’s full of tourists and those of us who work there are even more miserable ‘cos we aren’t on leave.
Re “I’ve been sat in Starbucks for twenty minutes and I’m already expecting someone to tell me to piss off and stop loitering”. There’s a challenge in there. How long could you sit before being thrown out or asked to buy another vastly over-priced cup of nasty brown liquid? The students pounding their laptops in the Borders branch in Cambridge seem to live there.
Thanks – think I was having a bit of a weird day when I wrote that.
I ended up finding a Starbucks where I could hide quite successfully – but my favourite place to camp out with a laptop would have to be the British Library.