This article first appeared in Chris Dixons one off 'zine "Well, I Guess This Is Growing Up." I wrote it a few months after moving to London permanently so probably some time in summer 2011.
Last summer I received a phone call from an ex work colleague asking if I was in work at the moment, I had to concede that no, I wasn't. Since being made redundant a couple of months before I'd decided to take a break and was pottering about Leeds, tending to my allotment, reading books and wasting my time and redundancy money drinking early morning pints in a Wetherspoons pub just because I could. But my ex work colleague was about to make me an offer that would change my life pretty significantly. Like most things in life the significance would take a while to take hold and the prettiness was not overtly apparent but the wheels were set in motion.
“Do you want a job for three months working for our old company in Enfield?”
“Enfield!?”
“Yeah, they'll pay for a hotel, your travel to and from Leeds for the weekends, and all evening meals”
“Erm, I'll come back to you. I've got to think about it.”
I didn't have to think about it, I just thought I could get a pay rise on my previous pay if I made him sweat a bit, I got a bit too excited though after posting the question on Facebook whether I should take a job in Enfield and received replies from some of my London friends outlining the apparent ease of commuting between Camden, where most of them resided and Enfield and phoned back in five minutes telling him I'd take it. And I still got a bit of a pay rise.
And so started the Alan Partridge period of my life. By the week I lived in a hotel in Chalk Farm that most people thought was a haven for prostitutes and ne'er do wells and on most weekends I'd get the train or a lift back to my flat in Leeds. I spent all my redundancy money exploring London, in which I mean I took in the various public houses that I found in a book called 'The Rough Pub Guide to Britain', pubs I knew from novels by Patrick Hamilton and partook in various Nicholsons' pub chain pub trails where you get a free t-shirt for drinking five pints in five different pubs (I still maintain this is the best way of seeing most of central London’s historical landmarks in a fun and informative way). My wardrobe got heftier, my belly bigger, my work worse; there wasn't a day I worked in Enfield that I wasn't hungover to some degree.
Three months became six but then my company didn't win a contract they were expecting to and I was out of a job again. Before leaving I decided I'd go for an interview with the company for another job that would be on offer in a few months time based in Croydon. I could always turn it down when it came to it, it would mean moving down to London; no free hotel (with or without big plates), no free food, no free travel, no Leeds, but I had to admit my head was already being turned by my capital city. I was still an outsider, I only stayed one weekend a month at most. Though I'd experienced bits of London there was still much more to see, there was a different life to live. I'd have to sleep on it for a couple of months so I went back to Leeds and spent my time tending my allotment, reading books and wasting my time and dole money on early morning pints in a Wetherspoons pub just because I could.
Then I got the phone call.
Then I made the decision.
Two months later I was moving my possessions into a studio flat in New Cross which cost almost twice as much as the one bed flat I rented in one of Leeds' more affluent suburbs. I'm still not sure if the decision was made because I was running away from something or someone or if I was running toward something or someone. I do know I was struggling to find work in Leeds and a decision had to be made one way or the other, the little big things that certainly tipped the balance were factored in but I left my home city with a heavy heart. I love Leeds, I always will, and I hope to return one day soon but my life was stagnating, a change was needed. The confusion in my head of running away from something or someone certainly abated and turned into a former clarity which lasted all but a few weeks when I realised the someone or something I was running towards would confuse me even more. There's so many people in London and that at times, makes it seem the loneliest place I've ever been, even when surrounded by friends in the pub or at a gig.
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| how the garden was |
It turned out when I went to start work that my company hadn't yet built the new offices that I would be working from so I would be getting paid for 'working' from home, fully paid, for the first month or so of my contract. Working consisted of staying out of the way and letting the managers get on with whatever it was they were trying to do so I had the best part of two months to myself. One of the main things I knew I'd miss about leaving Leeds was leaving my allotment; a place where I could be by myself, grow vast quantities of fruit and vegetables and think about everything life outside the confines of that silly wooden fence that surrounded the Roundhay allotment grounds would throw at me next. With an amazing stroke of luck that I put down to karma for being a generally okay person (at least when sober) when I was viewing flats in New Cross I came across a flat which overlooked a back yard that could easily be described as waste land. Tangled in the sea of five foot high weeds were various discarded garments and litter strewn from god knows where. There was a double bed deposited by the next door neighbours and an old washing machine stuck into one corner of the 'garden'. Most people would have thought 'shit-hole', I thought 'heaven'. I even offered to pay extra. So I spent the next month or so turning the shit-hole into something that may represent heaven (at least to me) if such a place existed.
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| and what I did with it |
I won't bore you with the details but now, three months on I have a small herb garden flourishing, flowers doing what they do, carrots, peas, beetroot, radishes, spring onions, purple sprouting broccoli and various lettuces all in the ground or on my plate and some white roses planted to remind me of home. It's my own little bit of my kind of Yorkshire in a back yard in New Cross.
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| the white roses of Yorkshire and some other crap |
As I spent most of my Alan Partridge days in London in and out of various public houses and only seeing central and a bit of north London when I first moved down permanently I wanted to understand exactly how big London was and needed to know there was a beauty akin to what you'd find in the Yorkshire countryside so I hatched a plan to walk the whole of the Thames within the London boundary; from Hampton Court Palace to Erith Marshes. I walked around 70 miles on four Saturdays and found exactly what I'd hoped to find; a place so diverse in its various stages of prettiness and ugliness that I could hardly get bored of the place. I know I'll get sick of it, but at least I'll never be bored.
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| a bit of London on one of my walks |
I'm quite settled now; work's started properly and is keeping me out of too much alcohol related trouble, I'm weeding the garden constantly and enjoying some of the fruits of my labour, I plan on starting the 80 mile capital ring walk soon, I’ve found a local non league football team to support (it warms me that I’ll always be able to find the banality of going to the football enjoyable and inclusive wherever I go, except if I go to a Premiership ground) and though I do still wish that Rancid's Tim Armstrong would be the voice heard on London buses instead of that electronic woman's voice (why I always imagine an American with a faux London accent whilst strumming a guitar and singing out London street names on London buses will always make me smile and make little sense to me(especially as it doesn't seem to fit on tubes)) I can't really complain about that much. The solitude of London living has enamoured me to her, I won't be staying forever but I'm certainly going to enjoy it whilst I do.
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| super Dulwich Hamlet |
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