welcome to nw3

fine food in the east end, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

So, what do you think of London so far? How can I think of London, when my room, my job and the path between these things are different enough that I haven’t even had a though about which city I am in.

Gone is my spacious room in a small apartment, exchanged for a tiny room in an enormous apartment. Farwell my empty nights, now re-immersed in house share and long bottles of wine. My groceries must fit into one shelf in the fridge and one shelf in the cupboard, I should probably not play music at full blast at 3 am, and I probably shouldn’t let that dirty dish sit there over night.

Goodbye the piling of bodies upon bodies, of lives against lives that is the Parisian apartment house, the Parisian street, the Parisian world. Hello long empty streets, half hour tube rides, listening to my ipod in the dark and the rain, bars being closed at 11, supermarkets open on Sundays.

I jumped from years of three to five people firms to a firm that has over one hundred in London alone, and has another three offices worldwide. In Paris coats went up on the rickety coat rack, the toilet had been leaking for months, there was no cleaner or secretary, I went out to buy a kettle, coffee machine and desk light for the office and on certain days I needed to work on a computer brought from home. Hell, I didn’t have a contract for months on end. Hello fully equipped kitchens with dining rooms where everyone eats in canteen style, hello a thirty person admin team, a sixty page office manual, projects in every country on earth, project teams twice the size of my former firms. Oh, the joys of time sheets.

As to London? How do we experience a city? Is it what it looks like, how we can go out, how we shop, who we meet, how we move around, the parks, the galleries, the bars? I think London is not a city that reveals itself quickly. Here, with the sun setting at four and constant rain, it is hard to find it pretty. And Soho on a Friday night, with its mix of overcrowding (it’s like Chatelet on a Friday night, and why would I go there?) and bars closing really early is a frustrating wonder. I am waiting for the sun to set later, to be able to walk and walk, or maybe buy a bike. This city is rough and raw and not at all easy, but already I love the difference between where I live (West Hampstead) and where I work (Waterloo). I like that in my firm only 10 people are British and 90 are foreigners and that every European language can be heard. I don’t like that the 10 British members include most of the directors, but that’s another story.

I am still in that horrible moment where I can’t help but constantly compare things to Paris. I will need to give London a chance to show me a different way of living, just as Paris showed me an entirely different way of living to Sydney.

Now, if you will leave me, Ken gave me a copy of Down and out in Paris and London and I might just be reading it with a smile on my face.