10 things I love about life in London
“The man who is tired of London,” said Samuel Johnson, ” is tired of life.” I am, I have to admit, tired of London. What does that mean? Well, of course Johnson was writing at a time when London symbolised all there was of excitement and cosmopolitanism. The alternative was to live in a hovel somewhere in the English countryside. The alternatives are a bit different today. The person who is tired of London just might get a real kick out of New York, or Shanghai.
Anyway, there are some things I’ll dearly miss about our life in London. These are the top ten:
- our house, although it never got finished and always was too small and full of toys everywhere.
- shopping on Green Lanes, Harringay. Especially Baldwin’s, the world’s best butcher, and Yasar Halim, with its amazingly juicy carrots.
- South Harringay Infant School — which provided a warm, welcoming and endlessly encouraging educational environment for our four Swedish-American children and the children of 53 other ethnic groups.
- my students at the LSE.
- CBBC — the last bastion of intelligent television.
- stodgy puddings with custard.
- Ed, our electrician. The only practicing Menonite electrician in London who also is a drop-out from Peterhouse College, Cambridge.
- Jeremy Hardy on the News Quiz. Linda Smith too.
- sitting on the top of dubble-decker buses. It’s still fun, ten years later.
- listening to Radio 4 while making coffee in the morning.