London State of Mind
Jul. 10th, 2013 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katieastropheI've been thinking this week, about being a Londoner.
I wasn’t born there, and I no longer live there, but I experienced a weird feeling of being home when I stepped off my coach at Victoria on Saturday. I first declared that city my second home half a decade ago, and it feels like nothing and everything has changed.
I was so engrossed in my book that I hadn't noticed our pace slow as we left the motorway, and I looked up and out of the window somewhere near Finsbury Park, and seeing a familiar red bus, and roundels everywhere, and I felt this sense of... happiness, and calm.
And when I think about what people say "makes" a Londoner, it's the daft things.
It's knowing where to stand on the Tube platform, so that when you get off the train again you can make your escape quickly.
It's instinctively knowing where your Oyster is at all times.
It's knowing that if you want to change from the Victoria to Northern line, you should avoid Euston at all costs and go for Warren St instead.
It's looking at the lights lining the Thames after the sun has set, and loving them like you would stars in the country.
It's being defensive about which side of the river is better - south, obviously. Even though there's dragons.
It's the comforting rumble of the Tube trains you profess to hate (and your Twitter app remembering the hashtag #TfaiL, for ease of making your friends in other cities cringe and sigh...)
I'll always be a Manc, but I reckon I'm still a Londoner too, in a small way.
Even if I do make eye contact with people on the bus now and again.
I wasn’t born there, and I no longer live there, but I experienced a weird feeling of being home when I stepped off my coach at Victoria on Saturday. I first declared that city my second home half a decade ago, and it feels like nothing and everything has changed.
I was so engrossed in my book that I hadn't noticed our pace slow as we left the motorway, and I looked up and out of the window somewhere near Finsbury Park, and seeing a familiar red bus, and roundels everywhere, and I felt this sense of... happiness, and calm.
And when I think about what people say "makes" a Londoner, it's the daft things.
It's knowing where to stand on the Tube platform, so that when you get off the train again you can make your escape quickly.
It's instinctively knowing where your Oyster is at all times.
It's knowing that if you want to change from the Victoria to Northern line, you should avoid Euston at all costs and go for Warren St instead.
It's looking at the lights lining the Thames after the sun has set, and loving them like you would stars in the country.
It's being defensive about which side of the river is better - south, obviously. Even though there's dragons.
It's the comforting rumble of the Tube trains you profess to hate (and your Twitter app remembering the hashtag #TfaiL, for ease of making your friends in other cities cringe and sigh...)
I'll always be a Manc, but I reckon I'm still a Londoner too, in a small way.
Even if I do make eye contact with people on the bus now and again.
