I recently found out that an old friend of mine is traveling from Australia to London this week. Hopefully I will be in London the same time that she is there as it is part of her around the world trip. I look back at the days that I lived in London, and though it seems like a lifetime ago now they were both the best and worst days of my life.
London is a entirely different place these days. When I moved to Sweden, and I looked for a place to rent the most influential factors that came into mind were location, how many rooms, what the local transport is like and finally what are the neighbors like.
Put this in contrast to when I moved to London. The most influential factors were, how much was the rent, how many people shared the bathroom and did the house have any mice. Ah how delightful those days were!
I find London different as this was before the arrival of the many Eastern Europeans that arrived. I have nothing against this at all. I have many incredible friends from Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia and Russia. The reason I say it’s changed is that there were certain parts of London that had a predominant antipodean majority.
If you moved to a place like Hammersmith or Acton, then even an English accent would have been out of place at times. Walking into clubs like The Redback, Backpackers or The Church held many crazy but fond memories. These days as I walk past these places they may retain the same name, but the feeling seems to have gone, or they are just not the same.
London is not the city it was a decade ago, it’s a cosmopolitan core of life that created many memories for those of us who lived there and will continue creating those memories for those who are yet to arrive.
As Jo comes over this week, I certainly hope we can catch up and talk about old times. That is the one true beauty about London; the memories never fade regardless of where we go.
