A northerner’s seven major gripes with London
Mark E Smith, one of the most ideologically northern men in history, boldly claimed that London “isn’t a city”.
Smith talked an awful lot of shite in his time, but on this occasion, he has David Byrne backing him up, describing the nation’s capital as just a collection of “small villages”. As a resident of Newcastle, I never wanted to become one of the clichéd northerners who throw platitudinous hatchets at the cluster of “small villages” in the south, but increasingly, visits to the Big Smoke have made it a tricky spot to continue championing.
This has nothing to do with the egregious lies extolled by GB News or the fact that pints might be 80p more expensive than most places. The irked malaise of my mindset when it comes to the capital more generally relates to the tedious maladies of the sprawling city, and how they increasingly misalign with my greying disposition. Once you’re 30, London is done. Too much hassle, too little reward.
Whether I’ve got older and wiser or London is simply in bad form, there just seems to be an increasing stench of bullshit about the Big Smoke. Perhaps I’ve just grown too cynical and overlooked its glimmering charms, but recent train rides home have felt like a lengthy sigh of relief… and I happen to know that I’m far from alone.
There were days when I would gaze out of a northbound window, seeing the greenery return, and reflect with a degree of ambivalence, buoyed by London’s rich offerings in the days before.
But the more I visit, the more I come to reconcile that a) it is simply nightmarish, and b) it’s just quite a shit place, really. Often, Londoners will acknowledge point a), but they’ll swiftly follow that up with, ‘But it is an amazing city’. Now, I wonder how you can maintain the latter claim as you trudge up an Islington high street with its mangled array of dry cleaners, vape shops, and American candy stores, in a world where places like Seville, Bruges, and Rome exist.
So, the list below looks to take the various bullshit claims of London-dwellers to task. And this is coming from a northerner who actually quite likes the place! But with constant nefarious propaganda being levelled against it, it’s important that the rightful defence of the city isn’t littered with these little falsehoods either.
The seven worst things about London:
“You’ve got everything on your doorstep”
It’s the biggest draw London has to offer, according to its ten million residents: “You’ve got everything on your doorstep,” they say. So why is it that I’m forever visiting friends in the capital, enquiring about the itinerary for the day, only to find I have to board two tubes and a bus in a torturous 90-minute excursion, just for a pint and a game of darts at a branch of Flight Club.
That’s a pretty fucking long doorstep.
It takes just under three hours to reach King’s Cross, the mythical centre of London, from Newcastle – in a logical city, all the travelling should be done and dusted once you arrive. But in this sprawling utopia for transport link enthusiasts, you have at the very least another 20-minute slalom to embark upon before you get to somewhere where anyone lives, dines, or drinks. Unless, of course, you simply love buying Harry Potter tat.
Here’s the things that aren’t on your doorstep: the countryside, the coast, other cities, rural villages, fresh air, and basically anything that isn’t more bloody, stifling London.
“The Tube is just so handy”
“Handy” and “fit for purpose” are two very different things. Huel, for instance, is ‘handy’, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also entirely fucking inhuman. Sure, the Tube gets you from A to B, but it’s like travelling in the centre of a McDonald’s apple pie, kicked down a dusty and disease-riddled tunnel by the left boot of Jonny Wilkinson, with no scenery on offer but the scuffed shoes of the equally terrified passenger sitting opposite.
The Tube’s speed and efficiency, however, is rather remarkable… when it comes to inducing a panic attack. Trapped in a dirty, sweltering, labyrinth, praying that you’re hurtling in the right direction (but never entirely sure), it seems that they are purposefully designed to induce a fit of justified anxiety. With doors that close like a guillotine, bleeps that bleat like a failing heart monitor, and the ominous air of an impending thunderstorm, the Tube is a hellhole for the uninitiated, and you suspect even the ‘initiated’ have simply learned to lie to themselves.
Yet, somehow, the only thing worse than a Tube is when its functioning grinds to a halt (which seems to be roughly bi-weekly).
“There are just so many different places to explore”
There are 32 different boroughs in London, and barring the interesting ones where all the oligarchs live, the others are, quite frankly, much of a muchness. From Islington to Ealing, each of these little satellite suburbs is akin to the likes of Jesmond, Kelham, and Headingley that linger on the outskirts of northern cities… just with more shops self-evidently involved in money laundering.
The street where The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ video was filmed could be any one of about 19 of the interchangeable towns that make up the sprawling metropolis (it was filmed on Hoxton Street, for anyone who was interested).
Not to dismiss the idiosyncrasies of these dwellings, but venturing from Brixton to Peckham hardly provides the architectural transition of going from Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter to El Raval. And not many people do ‘venture’, as David Byrne put it, “[London] is made up of lots of small villages, and people sometimes never ventured out of their little village.”
“You can’t beat a proper London pub”
The brilliant bars, pubs, and assorted boozers in London are undeniable. Some of them are class. But the issue is, there are too many of them. There are roughly 7,500 of them, in fact. And with that sort of abundance, quality control goes out of the window. In Newcastle, for instance, a watering hole lives and dies on its reputation. If it’s serving dishwater at an exorbitant rate, then it won’t last long.
But in London, people pile out of stations, drift down whatever street looks lively, and end up in the nearest place with a free table and a functioning tap. And that means even the most middling, paint-by-numbers boozer can keep the lights on. It doesn’t have to be great, or even particularly good; it just has to be there.
So, the general night out in London often looks like this: the host leads you to a smashing pub, then when it’s time to move on, their knowledge of the local area ceases, and you have to wander aimlessly to whatever average joint is nearby. And thus, thirsty and frustrated, the overwhelming potential for excellence leads to an underwhelming acceptance of mediocrity.
Of course, every city has its share of shoddy pubs, bars, and restaurants, but they label them far more clearly than the cunning disguises of the capital.
“It’s just so exciting”
Ask any LNER ticket inspector, and they’ll tell you: The faces on the train down to London are full of excitement, hope, and promise. The faces on the train back from London are a bedraggled mess of woe, anxiety, and exhaustion. Inspectors even have a policy not to expect passengers to look like their railcard image on the return leg.
Londoners often proclaim that it’s the best city in the world, and I’d agree that it’s the best city you can ever leave.
“It’s just so exciting,” they say, and it is, in the same way that go-karting is exciting, insofar as it is a deafening circuit of unending noise and movement favoured by folks who require constant high-octane stimulation. If New York is the city that never sleeps, then London is the city that you can’t get to sleep in.
You can’t just stroll around London invigorated by this fabled ‘excitement’ and see where the night takes you. Socially, financially, and logistically, it requires a level of constant alertness.
“The social life is amazing”
There’s no such thing as a quick, quiet pint in London. Meeting anyone for any reason generally requires military-level precision planning, involving three WhatsApp groups, an hour-long assault course for a commute, postcode swapping, pin dropping, and a 45-minute delay because the Northern Line has gone for a lie down. All for a headless £8 beer before embarking on the arduous return journey.
This administrative ball-ache lingers over every endeavour. Just as you start enjoying yourself, you become acutely aware that a tedious hour of travel awaits you, and if you miss the 11:30, then you’re absolutely doomed. There’s undoubtedly plenty to do in London, but marred by hassle and timetables, residents are practically paralysed by the effort that it takes to do any of it. So, they remain in their local suburb with the other people who live there, visiting the same old safe pub, haunted by the spectre of supposed opportunities, teasingly and taxingly out of any practical reach.
“It’s so great for networking and full of opportunities”
“It’s great for networking” is another way of saying that every single interaction has a faint whiff of opportunism. Lingering over every idle chat is the glaring statistical elephant that there are 999,999,999 other people you could be talking to, so is it worth wasting breath on this chump? Even watching the match with a pint can feel like a low-stakes job interview as some new stranger your friend has brought along secretly assesses whether you’re worth knowing.
This competitive spirit is fuelled by the staunch capitalism that forms the bedrock of London. The city runs on ambition, and while that certainly gives it a sharp vitality, the hamster wheel never slows enough for a clear-headed reckoning of whether the tiresome pursuit of ‘potential’ ever actually leads to contented satisfaction.
Do you really need 12,000 quirky cafes, 800 gigs, and the hairline-obliterating headaches that go along with it all just to feel the mass London mushuga that you’ve made ‘it’ and you’re living where ‘it’ all happens. Whatever ‘it’ actually is.
Even in places that supposedly shun its capitalism, like Camden, there’s still something deeply performative about life in London.
…And this is coming from a northerner who actually quite likes the place!
