Seven years ago, London spat me out. This was not something I had ever imagined possible — until it happened. London was in my blood; people with my surname — and we’re all related — have been in London for centuries.
I had no intention of leaving the place. In fact, I failed to see what the point of other places was. When married, the family would visit my in-laws once a month or so. They lived in Harpenden. Why, I asked myself, would anyone live there? Come to think of it, I would ask myself as we drove through the town to get there, why does anyone live in St Albans? What is the point of it? I mean, I could just about understand it if you’d moved there from somewhere even worse, but to leave London for somewhere so provincial — how could you live with yourself?
This, I am afraid, is a pretty typical attitude from a Londoner born and bred. I would accept the existence of other cities in other countries — New York was pretty neat, and Paris (well, not counting the suburbs) is gorgeous, ditto Venice; but anywhere that wasn’t London was demonstrably inferior. I remember being taught the acronym FILTH by someone who had returned to her native city from the East: Failed in London? Try Hong (Kong). But it was the first three words that told you all you needed to know. Anyone who willingly moved away from London had, in some way, failed. As I got older, I started to meet people who weren’t from London. This was an eye-opener. Then I started to meet people who didn’t even want to live in London. My eyes became as big as saucers.
Brighton, I thought, was for people who couldn’t handle the pressure
I remember when the first of my colleagues moved from London to Brighton. It’s brilliant! she said, and kept on saying, and it sounded to me as if she was protesting too much. Brighton, I thought, was for people who couldn’t handle the pressure. I’m a writer, and I thought it was very important to go to as many book launches and parties as I could, so that people didn’t forget about you and you could drink your fill of very mediocre wine. (This is very important for writers.) You couldn’t live there, granted, but for the final 10 years of my life in London I got as close to the dream as possible: a dodgily-sublet shared maisonette just off Baker Street for an absurdly low £650 a month.
That went up to about £900 by the time I was obliged to leave — but still astonishingly good value. The landlords found out I was subletting against the terms of the lease and threw me — and the other writer who shared the place — out into the streets. And then I started looking around for somewhere to live in London for something around the same price.
I can hear your derisive laughter as I write. To find somewhere in London that cheap, you’d have to go to Croydon, and although it’s part of the metropolitan sprawl, you’re never going to convince me that it’s actually in London. I could find somewhere cheaper in, say, Havering, but where and indeed what is Havering? I thought it was a Scottish verb.
Being a writer is precarious enough without having to find somewhere affordable to live
So began the years of exile. It didn’t help that I lost one of my regular gigs; and being a writer is precarious enough without having to find somewhere affordable to live. (Even the barber who lived opposite me in Marylebone complained that there were too many rich people in the city now.) One night, staying in a spare room in a house in that dismal no-man’s-land between Neasden and Dollis Hill I thought: maybe London isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So
I left London as far behind as I could go, and lived for a year in a freezing cottage on a Scottish estate at the foot of the Cairngorms.
This actually helped me get over London.
I found I liked Scotland; and I liked living in the middle of nowhere a lot more than I thought I would. After a while the owners asked for their house back and I rolled all the way down to Brighton, where I have now been for six years. And you know what? It’s brilliant.
I kid myself that I can still see my London friends and family as easily as I did when I lived in town: think of the train journey as like a longer journey on the Overground. (Well, it isn’t.) Something London-shaped within me has either died or gone into deep hibernation, and when I do go back I notice the changes all the more keenly. Often these centre on public transport, and I enjoy moments of mild bafflement when I see signs bearing the new names for the Overground. Lioness? Mildmay? Come on.
When a painting is finished, that’s a good thing. When a city is finished, it’s not
Then again, I rolled my eyes when the Elizabeth Line was named, and I bet I’d have done the same in 1906 when the Bakerloo Line opened. (“Bakerloo? That’s not even a word!”) Cities are not works of art in the way sentimentalists like me would like them to be. When a painting is finished, that’s a good thing. When a city is finished, it’s not. But to see the changes in jumps, not as a continuous movement, is unsettling. There’s now an exit right into Dean Street from the Elizabeth Line, which is wonderful; on the other hand, half of Soho has been demolished, which is not. To be as lost as a tourist in my old stamping grounds was a horrible, disconcerting experience.
So can I really call myself a Londoner any more? “Well, I was born in London …” is not a great conversation starter; it has that taint of failure. I used to take my children to the top of Parliament Hill and show them the mighty spread of the city and tell them that it was all theirs. But is it really, if they get priced out?
Nicholas Lezard is a journalist, author and literary critic
