#2: A short guide to London, and why I want to leave - A Year and ...

With the exception of three years at university and about a total of nine months living outside the UK, I've spent my whole life in London. It's often been a difficult relationship, with frequent fallings out and disappointments, however neither of us have seemed able to end it. There have certainly been good times: I love visiting London's theatres and museums, I love getting incredibly, incredibly drunk out in the West End, there are great restaurants in the city, and I've been lucky to have some great friendships here too.

But London is a hard city to live in. It is very expensive, while frequently delivering very little in return. It is crowded, grey, often unfriendly, and sometimes dangerous. That said, there have been moments of surprising tenderness from London, times when the city shocks me by showing a serene, beautiful side I had would have never guessed at. I think the problem with our relationship is that neither of us can accept the other as we are: I keep wanting London to calm down and be less of a struggle; London keeps wanting me to have more money.

However, in a few days I am finally leaving London behind, to see other countries' cities and towns for a while. This short guide gives some of the reasons why I want to get out, and offers some tips for those still interested in giving the city a chance.

Part 1: A grinding wall of ugliness

London is frequently a fantastically ugly city. Ugly in its dirtiness - litter on the streets and on public transport, St Paul's cathedral blackened by the years and smog, the rusting nature of a lot of its infrastructure, the rats, mice and pigeons. Ugly in its crowdedness - a wall of people each attempting to guard a tiny personal space around them, each individually lovely I'm sure, but en masse simply a wave that makes shopping, getting into bars and restaurants, and getting around the city often a real struggle. And ugly in the behaviours of so many of its inhabitants: the people who happily leave the litter, the officials that make the web of pointless rules, the unfortunates that wander Soho and through the tube each night asking for money (and occasionally demanding it), the restaurateurs and bar owners who charge ever increasing amounts of money for the chance to visit their establishments, the "guest list only" nightclubs that make a spontaneous night out on the town so likely to end in disappointment.

I'm not going to say much about the Tube - we all know it's sweaty, overcrowded, ramshackle and closes for the night far too early. For people reading this who aren't from London, please be understanding of Londoners on the Tube: we're just trying to preserve what scraps of dignity we can while we use it, and if no one causes a too much of a fuss we'll only have another thirty years of using it before we retire.

What I want to talk about is the thing which London should excel at: going out drinking on the town. Despite the amazing variety of bars and clubs to get pissed in, this often turns into a frustrating struggle. When British laws mean that all pubs close at 11 pm, drinking is more like a race than a relaxation from a week's work. So many nightclubs in the centre require pre-booking, refuse to let in male only groups (and I'm talking "groups" of three or four guys here) and/or have obscure dress codes. Plus the tube finishes soon after midnight, as do many of the overland trains out of London.

This is all fine if you plan everything in advance, but a spontaneous night out is a roll of the dice. Worse is if the place you planned to go to turns out to be rubbish - then there is the awful feeling of "I hate it here, but if we leave, we will just wander the cold streets until we go home".

"London creep" is awful to watch, a party of friends slowly disintegrating as one by one each thinks "the pub closes in twenty minutes, I'll go home now", or "ten pounds to get in there? I'll go home now" or "the tube stops running in half an hour... I'll go home now". Suddenly there is nothing left of a night out that a few hours previously was promising so much, and the remnants of the group stand frustrated, looking all around at stylish clubs you never even got into. The contrast with going out drinking in a continental European city like Barcelona is just too painful.

The rudeness of London's bars is often shocking. Pubs close at eleven, that's the law, but I would imagine no where else in the world would the staff wander the club glaring at customers and shouting "finish your drinks!" It often seems like bars are hacked off that customers ever came in, and although are happy to charge £3 for a beer or £6.50 for a cocktail, they are all the time itching for kicking out time (what a phrase!) to finish the night off as soon as possible.

Also a bone in the wind pipe of a fun night out in London are the drunken idiots, who either start the night looking for a fight, or are just happy to begin one once they are a bit pissed. The worst examples of these people end up just swaying on the dance floor, pushing slowly into your space so you push them back or tell them to back off, so they can start hitting you. In practice, a lack of response is like kryptonite to these blokes: I've never understood why, but just ignoring them or walking away always seems to prevent them from doing anything aggressive. Aside from that, there is simply nothing you can do if this kind of situation develops. Although sometimes I stand there wishing I could summon some awesome street fighting ability, I'm well aware that even if I could take these guys on, as soon as trouble started the bouncers would wade in and throw both groups out, thus ruining the night anyway.

Something that sums up why London has got drinking so utterly wrong: I once went into a bar in Ferrara, a town in northern Italy, which was empty except for two other people having a quiet drink. My friend and I ordered a glass of wine each, and spent over an hour nursing the wine down and putting the world to rights. I eventually went to the bar for the next round, but the bar tender apologised and said that they were closing. We got up to leave, as did the other two drinkers. I suddenly realised that the other two customers weren't customers at all; they were staff in the bar. Everyone had been politely waiting, probably for over an hour, for the two foreigners to finish their drinks so the place could close for the night. This will never happen in London.

Part 2: Finding a solution to London

Ok, I hate the public transport, the crowds, the prices, the attitudes. I don't think I am alone: London has a wearying effect on many of the people I know who live here. Unless you happen to be very well off, the grime and envy of London are unavoidable.

Going away from London on holidays is one way to recharge, but doesn't address the underlying issue. One thing I do to replenish the intangible things that London takes from me is to seek out beauty and calm in the city. I spend a reasonable amount of time walking the city by myself, trying to locate these kinds of places and moments, as well as looking for unique aspects of London, particularly out of the way restaurants, that I can try to claim as my own. Here are some of the things I search for in London to try and make the city liveable, even at times beautiful.

The in-between places
When travelling in London, I try to use the Tube as little as possible outside of my journey to work - buses, while slower and with perplexingly irregular appearances, allow to me to feel like I have actually travelled somewhere, rather than switching off my mind for twenty-five minutes. I love looking onto the streets and at the so varied people of London as the bus winds its lazy way towards my destination. I don't drive, having never really felt the urge to learn, or the need of a car.

My favourite areas to walk in are the in-between places, the areas, although very much functional in some way, are not really destinations in themselves unless you work or live there. The area between Oxford Street and Regents Park, for example, is to me quite beautiful to walk through in the early evening - the broad roads with very few people after the working day ends, the large official buildings in an array of architectural styles and the green of Regents Park approaching as you walk north. Seeing the sky turn red at sunset when walking down Weymouth Street is a real antidote for the travails of city life. Equally, I love walking through Primrose Hill/Chalk Farm as night falls, particularly Chalcot Road, the quiet white houses, the neighbourhood bars, little green squares in the centre of a circle of houses. Shoreditch and Farringdon during the day have a refreshing and lively feeling. I really enjoyed living near to Old Street tube for a while; which is in the middle of these areas. It's great to wander past the relaxed pubs and meander in local food stores, and the venues in East London are often far less stressed about keeping out drunken idiots with Byzantine guest list rules than those in the centre.

Hampstead Heath
For a very grey city, London does have great assortment of parks and other natural sites. The walk along the canal from Camden Lock to Little Venice is a lovely experience on a sunny day, as are some spots on the River Thames. Regents Park and Primrose Hill are great (particularly hiring a rowing boat on Regents Park lake in the summer), but for me the place where I go to recharge is mainly Hampstead Heath. Unlike most of the parks in London, the heath is large enough that parts of it are quite dishevelled, and it is very possible to lose yourself unless you know the place well. The Heath has different sections: the open grass of Parliament Hill with its wide angle views of London and children's playgrounds and running track, the well tended area around Ken Wood House with its open air concerts, and the wooded heath proper, growing more freely. I especially enjoy cycling through Hampstead Heath, often starting from Hampstead Heath train station and riding through towards Ken Wood. It is a route which takes me through the best areas of the park, and is inundated at almost every junction by signs announcing "no cycling". The Heath, like the rest of London, is beset by a multitude of rules banning all kinds of activities, without any explanation of why such interdicts are needed. I've never understood why cycling on the stone/concrete paths of the Heath could be a problem, and like most of the users of the park it is a rule I have ignored on a regular basis.

Finding the unique London
It seems a little pointless to live in a city like London and spend all your time in ubiquitous places like All Bar One or Pizza Express. One of the great pleasures I get from London is wandering the streets and coming across a restaurant, bar or shop with a bit of uniqueness. Finding such a place is so enjoyable because it feels like breaking through London's grey, rough carapace to something more liveable.

One idiosyncratic establishment, for example, is a quiet Italian wine bar in central London. It has about four or five wooden tables, often near empty, and is a great place to come and talk with a friend. The wine is really good and the atmosphere is usually very relaxed. The owner is a talkative, middle-aged southern Italian who has been living in London for years. He has, however, some strong opinions on quite a wide range of topics, not all of them fit to print, and in particular will suddenly veer off into some astonishing diatribes against Australians. The man hates Australians and Australia and everything the country has produced with a rare passion - as far as I can tell it stems from him living in Earls Court years ago and feeling forced to leave in order to escape the hard partying Aussie backpackers that started to live there in increasing numbers.... This comes up in the most unrelated conversations with him, so don't go if you think that would upset you. The bar is also often shut for no discernable reason.

Looking for new restaurants
I love eating, both in quantity and quality, and love finding restaurants that are a little bit more satisfying than the average. I also love to find somewhere excellent that isn't too expensive and then take friends to it, to share the experience of what London can offer if you look hard enough. Although wandering the streets by yourself, peering at restaurant menus is something of an odd hobby I suppose, it gives me a lot of pleasure in London, so here follows some things I find helpful to finding interesting places to eat.

The first key is to get used to eating on your own. With a companion the urge to play it safe is sometimes strong, walking for an hour before choosing somewhere is not very popular, and if something looks good to you from outside there's no need to reach a committee decision. Bring a book with you if you feel awkward, but it isn't really necessary once you've got used to it. Ignore those voices telling you are a lonely loser - think of all those people at home doing nothing in the evening because their friends are busy that night. And in many good small restaurants, the manager will wander over and talk with you - a Greek restaurant "New Rodos" near Charing Cross road is a good example of this, and even better is the Vietnamese "Thanh Binh" on Chalk Farm road.

I find the atmosphere in a restaurant to be a sure indicator of how good the food will taste. Any place that feels soulless and impersonal, or small restaurants who feel like the founding family stopped working there years ago, or bigger restaurants that feel as though they have been put together without any sense of how the whole effect will come across, will rarely surprise you with excellent food. This is different if you pay a fortune, I understand: the food probably will be at least pretty good whatever happens. But at a more moderate price range, my feeling if the staff who you can see don't feel motivated enough to treat you well, the staff in the kitchen probably feel the same way about the food they are preparing.

Reading restaurant reviews in newspapers is often useful I think, and helps you to get a sense of good qualities to look for, but equally I try not to read them too much, for fear of starting to think that the only place to eat is The Ivy. Also, the sad thing about London is that if you read about somewhere in a popular review and are thinking of trying it, go immediately, before it becomes clogged up with a horde of well meaning people like yourself.

Build up your trust in your own judgement and intuition on places you come across, and be willing to try different types of food, to refine your self knowledge of what your tastes are. Try to read through the menu outside the restaurant slowly enough that you can form a mental picture of how the dishes will taste and whether you'd like them. Intuition on this kind of thing does feel like a mental muscle that strengthens with use.

Conclusion: Leaving London

If there is so much good in London, why do I want to leave? Because the very effort in tracking down the good in the city eventually reminds me of how difficult the place is to live in, and because these are in truth simple pleasures, that should not have to be sought with such effort. I leave tomorrow for somewhere in the world more congenial.

Best wishes for surviving London.

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