16 Things I Learned in 7 Months in London

1. There are 7.4 million people living in London, and some of these people are even from London. In seven months I've only met six people who were born and raised in London, and still live here. One of them, a co-worker in fact, established his London credentials by telling me that his great-great-grandfather was George Hutchinson, the witness who provided the most detailed description of Jack the Ripper. Hutchinson's description is a little too detailed for some Ripper investigators, which is why he's number twelve on the list of favoured Jack the Ripper suspects.
   
   
2. There are 60 million people living in the United Kingdom, and at least 20 million are stuck in a queue, somewhere, at any given moment in time. Queuing is a national past-time, like hunting, polo, and whingeing. There might be five cash machines at the major intersection of Cambridge Circus (where Shaftesbury Avenue meets Charing Cross Road), but you will still always see at least three people queueing for each machine. I suspect that I spent one of my first seven months in a queue.
   
   
3. Customer service does not exist in England, at least not at the levels we are accustomed to in Australia. It took me 6.5 weeks to get the internet connected. When I call the HSBC telephone number - there is only one nation-wide - I speak with a customer service agent in India, with a strong Indian accent, who is adamant his name is Steve... And yet he doesn't know how to spell Fenchurch or St Paul's.
   
   
4. London teaches you to be selfish. If you see something you want in London - and I mean anything, let the mind run wild here - you must get it then and there. Come back a day later, you'll find it's gone, and you'll never see it ever again. Come back a few days later and it'll still be gone, but at least there'll be something else you want anyway.
   
   
5. London is seriously expensive, easily beating New York and Tokyo for the "most-expensive" crown. One litre of home-brand orange juice costs £1.19. That's actually (but only just) more expensive than petrol. Want to ride the tube one-way in zone 1 without an Oyster card? That'll be £3, sir.
   
   
6. There are two types of Britons: the chavs and the chav-nots. The chavs are gaudy, bling-loving, ASBO-collecting individuals who aspire to be the next reality TV sensation. They're fond of wearing labelled clothing, especially Burberry tartan. In Australian terms, they're aspirational Westies. And for whatever reason, anyone from Essex is assumed to be a chav. Apart from the dreadful Essex accent, I don't buy into it. Frankly, it all smells a little too much like ye-olde-worlde English class war, in a new century.
   
   
7. There is serious wealth in London. I don't mean the DINK couples with a flat in Hampstead, two cars, and weekends on the continent. I mean Kashoggi levels of 80s wealth that would trump Trump. Every time I balk at an outrageous price tag, it sticks at the back of the mind that they can charge that price, because there are plenty of willing people, with the cash, to pay for it.
   
   
8. London is a city of contrasts. It's not unusual to see a homeless person camped out on Fleet Street, sleeping off the night before, in view of the Royal Courts of Justice. At least I fall into the category of people who acknowledge the homeless, and politely decline their requests for money. Most Londoners just ignore them and walk on by as if they don't exist. The homeless numbers exceed Australia, but aren't anything like I found in New York. Some homeless people are on the streets for stupid reasons, like when the government closed the mental institutions and forced the patients to look after themselves. The irony of course, is that England is the original welfare state.
   
   
9. London is mostly, even these days, a city of manners. I travelled through Japan, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and New York City, and not once did a single stranger offer to help me carry two oversized bags up or down stairs. (I didn't expect it either, but that's not my point). That's why I was so pleasantly surprised in London, on my first tube trip, when two separate strangers offered to help me cart the bags up and down stairs. And a few other people helped me to avoid being trapped, or my bags trapped, in the automatic doors. Even in the horrendous queues, people (mostly) say excuse me, and please, and thank you. We may live like rats, but life is civil in England, and arguably how it should be, just like the tube seating. Name one other major city that shuns hard plastic benches on its mass transit system, in favour of comfortable sprung and upholstered seating.
   
   
10. The thing I equally love and hate about London is that there are so many options for things to do. It's not unusal for me to spend three hours on a Saturday or Sunday just deciding what I want to do that day. And by the time I decide what to do, it takes a half-day battle on tube and on foot to get there. In winter, I'm left with two hours to actually do something before the sun sets at 3:50pm.
    
    
11. London gets a (really) bad rap about the weather. It's never quite as cold as the forecast suggests, especially where I live in central London. The density of the population, buildings, machinery, and exhausts all conspire to raise the temperature a few degrees, and keep at bay the extremities that produce sleet and snow. Mostly it's cool, dark, and drizzly, like living in a defrosting refrigerator.
    
    
12. You can do whatever you want in London. Wear what you want, be who you want, and do what you want. There are few rules, and few exceptions. People still smoke in restaurants, for God's sake, although this, like many things, is changing. And yet despite the freedom, and the occasional suicide bomber, it's a remarkably safe city. According to Liberty, there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. On average, each Londoner appears on 300 CCTV cameras every single day.
    
    
13. London is a city of of tolerance. When Australia was recently embroiled in a stupid debate over RU486, England was questioning whether to introduce home abortion kits. Things may not be quite as tolerant elsewhere in the UK, but London determines the direction. And that direction suggests there are more important issues than stressing over gay marriage, kerbing free speech, or determining the moral standards for people's lives.
    
    
14. London is divided into the dawdlers and the determined. Under no circumstances should two or more people walk single file, especially when walking in a narrow Victorian lane,especially in the West End, and especially when I'm fully laden with groceries travelling in the opposite direction. Once I used to make way for the dawdling crowd. Now I stand firm like Gibraltar and let the sea wash around me. Still, this is one of my pet hates about London life, and I won't let up on it until Mayor Ken introduces a Pedestrian C-Charge.
    
    
15. It took me a long time to learn many of the above-mentioned things, and even longer to decipher the theme that runs through many of these points. That is, London is a densely-built, over-populated, and under-serviced city. It offers everything you want, and anything you can imagine, at the expense of living like a rat clamouring for resources. This predicament is manageable, but barely tarnishes the wondrous experience of living in London. Madonna may sing about loving New York, but she lives in London, and for good reason, I'd argue. As Dr Samuel Johnson wrote, "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
    
    
16. Lastly, but not without significance, I learned in London that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. At least it did in my case.
    

EDIT: I've since posted a follow-up to this post.