Living in London

Interviewer: Hi, Luke. Thanks for talking to me today.

Luke: Hi, Jo. Nice to meet you.

Interviewer: Erm, what would you like to talk about?

Luke: I'm going to talk about living in London, erm, and the kind of love–hate relationship I have with it – and I assume most people do. I've been living in London for about 15 years, maybe a bit longer. And I've lived kind of mostly in kind of north and east London. So I moved to Camden originally and now I live in Hackney, which is probably the kind of trendiest area of London, and that's not necessarily why I live there, but it's a nice area of London. And most people that come to London, visit London, think that central London is London. And, but, where – generally people don't live in central London. Erm, people don't spend too much time in central London. They might work there, but they don't visit there. So, you might come to London as a tourist and go to somewhere like Leicester Square, er, Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street, Regent Street, that kind of area. And I'm very rarely in that area. Erm, so, I live, erm, slightly on the outskirts but it's not really on the outskirts 'cause it's kind of Zone 2, Zone 3, which for most people that live in London, that's quite close to the centre. So, it takes me about half an hour to get into town. And when you live in London you say 'town' as in 'central London'. And things I love about London is that I've got two children that live in London. Well, my oldest is nine and there's so many things to do, constantly, and so many events every weekend. Erm, you go somewhere like the South Bank and there's always something happening throughout the year. You can always go to the theatre, go to the cinema, there's amazing restaurants and cafés. Erm, there's lots of things to experience but there's also … the downside is it's, there's a kind of lack of stillness and quietness that you might get if you live outside the city. But of course you can always go to Royal Parks which are amazing. Erm, I think my favourite thing about living in London is, erm, the kind of, well, where I live particularly there's a bit of a local community, it's kind of like a small village. It's called Stoke Newington, which everyone that lives in London has heard of but tourists haven't necessarily heard of and it's actually quite a nice place to visit. 

Interviewer: What's the worst thing about living in London for you?

Luke: Erm, the Underground's pretty horrific, erm, and what I find is, I used to come up to London when my dad worked in London when I was a kid, sort of 20, 30 years ago. Maybe even longer. And there was, there was rush hour, and rush hour was the morning and the evening or the early afternoon, and now London is just one constant rush hour. Doesn't matter what time you get on the Tube or what time you get a bus, it's packed. It's always packed, and if you drive in London as well it's the same thing. It just takes forever to get anywhere. Erm, so, I, my worst thing is how busy it is. It's hectic.

Interviewer: OK. Thanks so much for talking to me.

Luke: Pleasure!