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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: London
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
The City is the oldest and the original part of London, though. It may have been extensively rebuilt over the centuries but it still has a lot of layers and resonances of the past that the other parts don't have.
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I turned down a job in the City some years ago which would have paid considerably more than I'm currently on...The answer was, hardly any shops, tall grey buildings and a gritty wind. All the seasons would look the same.
While some of the City is absolutely awful (I thinking largely of anything build in the 1960s - 70s) there are also some stunningly beautiful buildings there. Wren's churches spring to mind as an obvious example.
quote:
No green spaces, no birds to be seen or heard, no creatures other than fellow commuters; a feeling of being completely divorced from the natural world, and 20 minutes walk before you could find one single tiny green square which was crowded with office workers on their lunchbreak, before returning to artificial light and no view from the window except other office buildings.
To be fair, you could probably get a similar experience in Milton Keynes, or Doncaster, or Leicester or any many other provincial cities.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Angloid
Shipmate
# 159
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Posted
My point was though that the grey 'unreal' City as described by Eliot is not so much the architecture or the environment, as what Blake called the 'mind-forged manacles'; the oppression of 'the City' as shorthand for its financial oppression of the people. All of which of course is expressed in the architecture.
But for a really warm and human (and warts and all) appreciation of London as a whole, you could do much worse than read the late Ian Nairn's 'Nairn's London', recently reissued by Penguin.
[ 01. November 2014, 21:41: Message edited by: Angloid ]
Posts: 12927 | From: The Pool of Life | Registered: May 2001
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Philip Charles
Ship's cutler
# 618
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Posted
Being an expert on London, I spent a week there 50 years ago, I support the suggestion that the UK capital be moved to Huddersfield. Moving the commercial centre to Bristol could also be considered.
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There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
But for a really warm and human (and warts and all) appreciation of London as a whole, you could do much worse than read the late Ian Nairn's 'Nairn's London', recently reissued by Penguin.
Thanks for the tip. I've only seen a clip of Nairn on the internet, talking about Northampton, I think, but he was fascinating. I'll look this up.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
You could also do worse than get hold of a copy of Peter Ackroyd's fascinating "Biography of London" for an alternative view on the city's history.
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
Nairn's Britain is regularly on iPlayer and is wonderful, especially for his melancholy persona. I must read his London book.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
Has anyone quoted William Dunbar yet?
LONDON, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis, in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all....
...and so on ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
By Stanza 7 he's clearly having a prophetic vision of Boris Johnson.
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
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justlooking
Shipmate
# 12079
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
...... I'm craving a sight of some Rastas, Orthodox Jews, Muslim women in headscarves, and so on.
Come to Leeds.
Leeds has lots of London-type things with the added bonus of proper countryside around. I'm talking Ilkley Moor, Otley Chevin, Hardcastle Craggs. What's around London? - a forty minute drive to a bit of Forestry Commission land?
Posts: 2319 | From: thither and yon | Registered: Nov 2006
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
No green spaces, no birds to be seen or heard, no creatures other than fellow commuters; a feeling of being completely divorced from the natural world, and 20 minutes walk before you could find one single tiny green square which was crowded with office workers on their lunchbreak, before returning to artificial light and no view from the window except other office buildings. This was not my world, and I didn't want it to be.
Very few office workers are in the midst of a natural wood when they exit the building in any part of the UK, I would imagine.
There are lots of very large green spaces in London - Regent's Park, Hyde Park, Green Park, Greenwich Park, Victoria Park, Richmond Park, St James' Park, Clapham Common, Blackheath...
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
I'm clear on the difference between a city park and the countryside but "no green spaces, no creatures other than commuters" is categorically false. Or else I'm imagining that I live next to a park that's home to herons and geese.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I used to live in Leeds and yes, it's great for that ... you've got lots of 'London-like' things but in half an hour you can be in the Dales.
These days I live near Stoke-on-Trent. You can be on the Staffordshire Moorlands or lovely parts of Shropshire within 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't have the stuff that Leeds has ... but it has lots of interesting ceramics ...
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
On the green spaces thing, to be fair to London it does have a surprising amount. It's true that you have to go a fair way to find some real countryside but Surrey's pretty bosky, the Chilterns are fabulous and there are even some surprisingly good pockets out in Essex.
Ok, so you have to look harder and it's not dramatic scenery as you find 'oop north' ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Having come back home from a weekend in Finchley, I am definitely missing the range of ethnicities in London, and just the range of things to do. And you know, the Iranian sweet shop on my friend's local high street. There are plenty of free or cheap things to do in London, much more than in other places and certainly more than in the countryside.
I did just have the best curry of my life in Finchley too (Rani, a veggie Indian buffet, packed full of Indian families too and selling Diwali sweets), and I've had curries in Bradford, Birmingham and Manchester. To die for. Also a lamb doner kebab made with slices of meat rather than mince! I think it may be worth moving to north London just for the food.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Very few office workers are in the midst of a natural wood when they exit the building in any part of the UK, I would imagine.
It doesn't have to be a wood. You might be surprised how rural some offices are. Out-of-town developments do sometimes give you a view of fields and farms or open countryside.
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Very few office workers are in the midst of a natural wood when they exit the building in any part of the UK, I would imagine.
It doesn't have to be a wood. You might be surprised how rural some offices are. Out-of-town developments do sometimes give you a view of fields and farms or open countryside.
Sure, but your previous post was based on presumably the most congested most central part of London. Obviously if you put a very rural office against Centre Point, the former is going to be much more green and peaceful.
If you couldn't find more than a small green patch of grass in a 20 minute walk in London, you either walk quite slowly or you weren't looking very hard! I grew up outside of New York City and London is practically rural in comparison, when it comes to green and natural spaces.
Seems you are simply not a city person, London isn't really to blame for that.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
If you couldn't find more than a small green patch of grass in a 20 minute walk in London, you either walk quite slowly or you weren't looking very hard!
How well do you know Moorgate/Guildhall? I located the office where I was to have the interview and went for a short walk (without a map of the area) to fill in the time beforehand. I speak as I find and that was what I found.
I've lived in three capital cities and enjoyed each one. I always used to prefer city life, but now I'm a lot older, and my preferences have changed.
[ 03. November 2014, 14:36: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
You could have been at Gray's Inn Fields in about 20 minutes walking from Guildhall. Finsbury Square is at Moorgate and it is small. Although it's worth remembering that the City of London is literally the first part of London that was urbanized, so has been built up and over for more than a thousand years.
If you get out of central London it's very easy to find open spaces.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I've stayed in Lancaster Gate, from where it's possible to walk into parts of Hyde Park from which you can see no building. Nothing but old trees, weedy riverbank and grassland. And rats. That was how you knew that, contrary to appearances, you were in an intensely populated space.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Having come back home from a weekend in Finchley, I am definitely missing the range of ethnicities in London, and just the range of things to do. And you know, the Iranian sweet shop on my friend's local high street. There are plenty of free or cheap things to do in London, much more than in other places and certainly more than in the countryside.
Over the weekend, we went to the fireworks display at the Midland Railway Centre; on Sunday morning I did a 40 mile ride with the Bolsover and District Cycle Club. I spent a good hour or so trying to puzzle out Room of Roots on guitar; this evening after Boy #2's piano practice we'll be setting his telescope up to try to find the Andromeda nebula. I have quite enough to do as it is, plenty of things I'd like to do that I can't fit in (it's been far too long since I last did a good long walk in the Peak) and the last thing I need is yet more things to do! I don't know where you Londoners get your elastic time from.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Having come back home from a weekend in Finchley, I am definitely missing the range of ethnicities in London, and just the range of things to do. And you know, the Iranian sweet shop on my friend's local high street. There are plenty of free or cheap things to do in London, much more than in other places and certainly more than in the countryside.
Over the weekend, we went to the fireworks display at the Midland Railway Centre; on Sunday morning I did a 40 mile ride with the Bolsover and District Cycle Club. I spent a good hour or so trying to puzzle out Room of Roots on guitar; this evening after Boy #2's piano practice we'll be setting his telescope up to try to find the Andromeda nebula. I have quite enough to do as it is, plenty of things I'd like to do that I can't fit in (it's been far too long since I last did a good long walk in the Peak) and the last thing I need is yet more things to do! I don't know where you Londoners get your elastic time from.
I'm not a Londoner so I'm not sure why I'm being included here, but certainly not having children frees up a lot of time. Young unmarried people and retired empty-nesters are probably the ones doing the most things. Also I wouldn't be doing any of the things you listed, I would be doing different things so I'm not sure it's about doing more, just doing other things.
Also my emphasis was on the amount of things that are free or cheap to do. I mean I realise walking and cycling aren't expensive but they're not really accessible for everyone. I do find that cities are more disabled-friendly and better for those with chronic illness.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Also a lamb doner kebab made with slices of meat rather than mince! I think it may be worth moving to north London just for the food.
Oi! The kebab shop round the corner from our church here in Suffolk does them!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Also a lamb doner kebab made with slices of meat rather than mince! I think it may be worth moving to north London just for the food.
Oi! The kebab shop round the corner from our church here in Suffolk does them!
Suffolk is not really known for being a hub of the Turkish community, in my defence - and north London is! But that's great to know if I do ever visit Suffolk (nearest encounter has been camping with the Norfolk and Suffolk District Association).
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
You could have been at Gray's Inn Fields in about 20 minutes walking from Guildhall.
Precisely my point. In practice most people don't really want to spend 40 minutes of their lunch hour walking to and from somewhere to eat their sandwiches, assuming they haven't also had to queue up in a shop somewhere along the way to buy them. It's not as if you could just pop out at lunchtime and sit on the grass in front of the office on a summer's day, or even, failing that, a bench where you could stare at the passing traffic.
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Precisely my point. In practice most people don't really want to spend 40 minutes of their lunch hour walking to and from somewhere to eat their sandwiches, assuming they haven't also had to queue up in a shop somewhere along the way to buy them. It's not as if you could just pop out at lunchtime and sit on the grass in front of the office on a summer's day, or even, failing that, a bench where you could stare at the passing traffic.
Your point is that you were in the most urbanized built up part of London, and complaining that it's a concrete jungle. I don't need a park that close to my office because I live next to a park. Most people who work in central London live outside of it and likely see green spaces in their own neighborhoods.
Anyway Hyde, Regent's, Green, and St James' Park are all in central London as well. Lots and lots of people work within 10 min or less walk of those places.
[ 04. November 2014, 07:58: Message edited by: seekingsister ]
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Most people who work in central London live outside of it and likely see green spaces in their own neighborhoods.
Mebbe. Mebbe no. It's equally possible to spend your life leaving your gardenless flat in Hammersmith, say, spend your 40 minutes on the Tube (from which little in the way of burgeoning greenery is visible) go to your City workplace, spend your hurried lunch break in shops or the office, after work go to a pub with colleagues, Tube home, in and put the telly on. And do that day in, day out. And weekends, go the shopping centre and the cinema complex or a restaurant. Don't tell me millions don't live this life.
No one is saying London has absolutely no greenery - but you have to track it down, and really work at deriving from a few fume, noise, litter and rat encroached acres the kind of peace and beauty that real countryside just flings at you in armfuls.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Funny you should mention litter, Firenze. Because it's one of the first things that comes into my mind with the word "city". Grime and litter. Parks, well, better than sitting on the central reservation of Prince of Wales Road, obviously, but we've been known to visit a park and go scrambling in the Peak on the same day, because visiting the countryside and visiting a park are different in kind, not just in degree. Less dogshit and more sheepshit in the real countryside, for starters.
it's wonderful that there's a spot in Hyde Park where you can't see any buildings or traffic, but it's a bit like the X marked on the floor of a hi-fi fanatic's house where you get the perfect stereophonic effect. By comparison, I know places I can walk for miles without seeing traffic or any buildings bar the odd barn.
[ 04. November 2014, 08:41: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
Again - people are complaining that London doesn't have green spaces as if this is unique to London. Cities are by their nature built up and have fewer open spaces. London is greener than many other large global cities in its peer group.
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
It's equally possible to spend your life leaving your gardenless flat in Hammersmith, say, spend your 40 minutes on the Tube (from which little in the way of burgeoning greenery is visible) go to your City workplace, spend your hurried lunch break in shops or the office, after work go to a pub with colleagues, Tube home, in and put the telly on. And do that day in, day out. And weekends, go the shopping centre and the cinema complex or a restaurant. Don't tell me millions don't live this life.
That's their choice though. There are enough parks in Hammersmith and Fulham that if someone lives a life like this, it's because they prefer to spend their time indoors.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I don't need a park that close to my office because I live next to a park.
Obviously we're arguing from different perspectives. Living next door to a park doesn't have much of an impact when you have to spend 8-9 hours a day elsewhere where it's just built-up greyness. That may not matter much to you, but it's the kind of lack that makes me feel stifled and, for want of a better word, un-grounded.
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
That's their choice though. There are enough parks in Hammersmith and Fulham that if someone lives a life like this, it's because they prefer to spend their time indoors.
Sometimes it's a choice dictated by financial necessity. I've lived in some horrible places basically because I needed to move quickly within reasonable travelling distance of my job and could not afford to either move further away or else closer.
Parks vary, also. My father used to work near Soho Square, which looked quite pleasant on the face of it but was at the time actually a well-known haunt for drug users.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
By comparison, I know places I can walk for miles without seeing traffic or any buildings bar the odd barn.
quote:
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside....
Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches ]
I lived the first thirteen years of my life in bleak, lonely countryside while my father scratched a living as a farm labourer. No deeds of hellish cruelty to report, but these days I'll stick with the city, thanks very much.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Obviously we're arguing from different perspectives. Living next door to a park doesn't have much of an impact when you have to spend 8-9 hours a day elsewhere where it's just built-up greyness. That may not matter much to you, but it's the kind of lack that makes me feel stifled and, for want of a better word, un-grounded.
Your premise seems to be that, unless there is a park in immediate proximity to one's place of work, then it's too much trouble to find green space in London, therefore London is bad.
The reality is that people who want to or need to live in London, and also prioritize spending time in open spaces, do so.
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Sometimes it's a choice dictated by financial necessity. I've lived in some horrible places basically because I needed to move quickly within reasonable travelling distance of my job and could not afford to either move further away or else closer.
It could be, but now you are talking specifically about someone who works in central London (but not in the West End/Victoria/Marylebone/Mayfair where there are several very large parks) and who lives in another part of London where there are also no parks within walking distance and cannot afford to move and has no free time to ever go to a park.
(And I'll ignore the suggestion that London parks are full of drug users...)
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
No, I think Ariel's premise is that because she couldn't find green space readily she didn't like London. I don't think anyone's saying "London's Bad", but plenty of us are saying "We'd rather eat our own ear wax than live there, and this is why..." - in my case, hundreds of miles from proper hill country and it'd be hard to even ride out of my village and straight into rolling farmland.
For me, the most irritating thing about London, and cities in general, is the way some of their inhabitants cannot apparently understand this. For some of us, cities are an unfortunate necessity. I work in one. I'm terribly glad I don't live in it (would be more expensive, dirtier, and more crime) and can ride home 15 miles, about half of it through countryside. Not a park.
[ 04. November 2014, 11:50: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
By comparison, I know places I can walk for miles without seeing traffic or any buildings bar the odd barn.
quote:
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside....
Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.
[Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches ]
I lived the first thirteen years of my life in bleak, lonely countryside while my father scratched a living as a farm labourer. No deeds of hellish cruelty to report, but these days I'll stick with the city, thanks very much.
It's not about wicked deeds or hellish cruelty though; it's about the fact I'd rather see the Derwent slowly making its way down dale from Curbar Edge than any city buildings, no matter how architecturally significant. I'd rather scramble past Taylorgill Force onto Great Gable than wander around any art gallery.
As I said, it's really not a case of "London Bad. Cities Bad". It's "Cities, and especially London, not for me, and here's why..."
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I am no romanticist about the countryside. It's remote, muddy, and once night falls, bloody boring (and, my dears, absolute death to any decent skincare regime). There's a reason I've stayed in Edinburgh the last 30 odd years, despite the climate. It has a thumping great volcano in the middle for a start: sea to the north, hills to the south and countryside a bus ride away in pretty well any direction.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
When you've got kids, it's boring at night wherever you are, unless you have a waiting queue of babysitters.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
When I lived in Wales, I visited London relatively often. I had friends in Southall, and I usually stayed there. The multiculturality of that area is interesting of course. I like London, but I find it very expensive.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
I often get wakened up by noise while I'm in bed at night sleeping. People speak a lot very loud on the road during the night and also birds sing a lot on the tree opposite me! London also has many noisy ones going to hospital near me and they are very noisy too.
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
There are lots of things about the countryside that make it difficult to live in for particular groups of people. I'm thinking particularly of those with disabilities or chronic illness. If you're too ill to drive, and your bit of the countryside doesn't have a reasonable bus service, then you're screwed. My best friend's happiness and general health (she has CFS/ME) has improved tenfold since she moved from the countryside to a largeish town. Being able to walk a short distance to the local shop when before your village didn't even have a shop makes a huge difference to people who can't drive for whatever reason.
Edited to add that yes, cities are noisy. I live in a semi-rural area though, and am frequently woken up by an owl that sits in the tree outside my bedroom window...
[ 04. November 2014, 14:21: Message edited by: Pomona ]
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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seekingsister
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# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Edited to add that yes, cities are noisy. I live in a semi-rural area though, and am frequently woken up by an owl that sits in the tree outside my bedroom window...
I grew up in what we in America call the suburbs, but I suppose is the country in Anglo-speak. We had deer, chipmunks, and beavers wandering through the backyard and a farm down the road. And there was a woodpecker whose favorite spot was outside of my bedroom window early in the morning.
It's quieter where I live now!
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
It could be, but now you are talking specifically about someone who works in central London (but not in the West End/Victoria/Marylebone/Mayfair where there are several very large parks) and who lives in another part of London where there are also no parks within walking distance and cannot afford to move and has no free time to ever go to a park.
No, I wasn't. I was thinking about my own experiences of living in some dismal places in Oxford. I don't think cities are bad, but I do think that life in them is sometimes removed from what is natural, and has a more artificial quality to it, and I don't think that long-term with little or no break from it that's healthy.
quote:
(And I'll ignore the suggestion that London parks are full of drug users...)
Good, because I didn't make it and I don't believe it to be true. I used one example of a specific place, and I'm aware that time passes and things change. However, it does still happen in some public spaces across the world, and I daresay there are probably still some parks and gardens in London where this happens.
FWIW my first experience of life in the countryside bored me senseless. I hated it, and couldn't wait to move back to the city, away from the rain and the isolation. Of course some villages don't have much to offer - just houses, not always attractive ones, and the nearest shops are a car journey or bus ride away, and the surroundings may be flat, featureless fields of grain. It's not always ideal. But sometimes it's different. You know when you've found the place that's right for you. It resonates at more than one level, and it feels like home. If you get that from a city, fine; I used to get that from London but I think those days are over for me.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
Perhaps I'm an outlier. Give me an isolated cottage in Eskdale or the Duddon Valley, put a town with shops an hour's journey away, put a real ale pub within a mile walk along the riverbank, then all I need is a reasonable internet connection and I'm sorted. Boredom is art galleries (sorry, but most art leaves me cold and what I do like doesn't occupy me for long) and of course bloody work.
If I could wave a magic wand and have the lifestyle I could, that'd be it. I suspect many people would hate it; that's fine because I don't want my dream lifestyle crowded with people so it's no better than the city.
I agree with what Ariel says about a place resonating. I get that a bit where I am at the moment, in a 2000 pop. village a couple of miles from a market town. I get it a lot more in Borrowdale, more still in Duddon. Yeah, it rains, but you can't beat listening to it beating on the roof in front of an open fire with a pint of Riggwelter.
In a city, by contrast, I'm like a nervous cat in a room full of other cats.
[ 05. November 2014, 07:03: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It's very much an individual thing. I had a friend who used to live for going camping on the Brecon Beacons. She showed me some photos once: the magic of her experience completely failed to come across. Wild horses couldn't pay me enough to spend the night in a tent on a bleak rocky outcrop with nothing to look at in the morning but more barren, stony heights and the prospect of having to trudge across this for miles yet before you could get down to anywhere more habitable. Yet there are people who thrive on this sort of thing.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
You do need a few cans unless you're the sort of person who naturally starts drifting off to sleep at 8pm. I find wild camping a bit of a drag; you have to carry quite a heavy load and if it pisses down you can't really dry out. The payoff, of course, is being amongst what you think of as "bleak rocky outcrops"; you can't readily watch the sunset from the top of Helvellyn if you've got to get back to a hotel room in Patterdale while it's still light unless you're a very fast walker. But you know I'm the sort of weirdo who commutes to work on a bike, 15 hilly miles each way.
I have to say that when I read: "nothing to look at in the morning but more barren, stony heights " my first thought is "well what would you want to look at that would be better?" - the problem is only if it's turned manky overnight and you can't see the barren stony heights
[ 05. November 2014, 12:07: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Perhaps I'm an outlier. Give me an isolated cottage in Eskdale or the Duddon Valley, put a town with shops an hour's journey away, put a real ale pub within a mile walk along the riverbank, then all I need is a reasonable internet connection and I'm sorted. Boredom is art galleries (sorry, but most art leaves me cold and what I do like doesn't occupy me for long) and of course bloody work.
You're not an outlier. I didn't grow up in a city. In the long-term if I could live anywhere I wanted, I'd choose a smaller city than London but a city nonetheless. Partly because I'm an ethnic minority and so if I live in the US or Europe, a village means me and my family would be among the only people with dark faces. And the attendant inconveniences that come with this - where to get one's hair done, buy skin-tone appropriate make-up, ingredients to cook traditional cuisine.
In a broader sense, I love trying new restaurants and food trends, and this is difficult to do in the countryside as well. I'd read about Venezuelan arepas (a type of flatbread sandwich) and went to a food market in London that had three separate vendors offering them.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Perhaps I'm an outlier. Give me an isolated cottage in Eskdale or the Duddon Valley, put a town with shops an hour's journey away, put a real ale pub within a mile walk along the riverbank, then all I need is a reasonable internet connection and I'm sorted. Boredom is art galleries (sorry, but most art leaves me cold and what I do like doesn't occupy me for long) and of course bloody work.
If I could wave a magic wand and have the lifestyle I could, that'd be it. I suspect many people would hate it; that's fine because I don't want my dream lifestyle crowded with people so it's no better than the city.
I agree with what Ariel says about a place resonating. I get that a bit where I am at the moment, in a 2000 pop. village a couple of miles from a market town. I get it a lot more in Borrowdale, more still in Duddon. Yeah, it rains, but you can't beat listening to it beating on the roof in front of an open fire with a pint of Riggwelter.
In a city, by contrast, I'm like a nervous cat in a room full of other cats.
I don't think you're an outlier but you are lucky to be healthy enough to be able to cope with that. My best friend would love to live in such a place, but her illness means she would end up being miserable.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
The distant rural life is grand, for a certain period in your life. But you age out. When your hip goes south, the mountains are inaccessible. When you have to see a doctor twice a month, when you need specialized surgery to save your eyesight (and a specialized doctor to diagnose the condition in the first place) -- then, suddenly cities are great.
And if your ageing parents live out in the boondocks! Then guess who has to drive out into the mountains to fetch them to that surgeon, that knee doctor...
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Aye, I know. And I'm also painfully aware that the problems of living in the sticks (It's hardly the sticks really, 10 miles from Sheffield and 2 from Chesterfield, nothing like as remote as I'd like it to be) won't make me like cities any more even if I have to live in one one day.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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