I have really enjoyed being back in London. I have enjoyed it a whole lot more than I imagined I would. Like most northern Scots, I have an almost instinctive dislike of "down south". Having spent the three most miserable years of my life in Swindon in Wiltshire in the mid 1990's, the antipathy only got worse.
However, now I am a trainee Californian, I am beginning to see London with new eyes. London is so vast, that I always thought of it as a different thing from England as a whole anyway. There are eight million people in London, compared with only five million in the whole of Scotland, so it's big enough to be a country in it's own right.
The weather was beautiful when I was there. The congestion charge introduced by my hero from Schooldays Ken Livingstone (I used to wear a badge at school that read, "keep the GLC working for London", that meant bugger all to most to my fellow school pupils in southern Fife, but in a struggle between Margaret Thatcher and the GLC, I knew who's side I was on), has made walking round the city centre MUCH more pleasant, and the currently very poor exchange rate with the US dollar (don't I know it) is keeping transatlantic tourism to a minimum, which is a shame for London, but is meaning that all the tourist attractions are pretty quiet.
However, I think it's more of a mind set thing with me. In my 41st year, I think I'm finally over some of the more negative feelings I generated within myself about London in my miserable years in Swindon. One of my professional dilemmas is that there are only, I would say, 20ish jobs in my profession available in Scotland, that would pay me anything like what I make in the US. So, if I was to come back to the UK one day, unless I was very lucky, I could only find an equivalent job in Southern England. I'm beginning to think I may give London another try one day. I was interviewed here for Direct Line Insurance back in 2000, but walked away from that, having changed my mind yet again about my life and career strategy. Maybe that was a wrong direction, who knows now, not good to look back I suppose. But if I am deciding that it might not be too bad a thing to live in London one day, this maybe gives me more flexibility. Also, I'm now used to the Bay Area's glorious ethnic mix - I think that London is the only part of the UK that feels similar.
So I have had fun being a tourist, in this city I mainly know from business meetings and changing planes. My favourite by far was the Tate Modern. Great artworks, great location. I did Westminster Abbey for the first time as well. Being a huge Dicken's fan, it was weird to see his grave. The quote above, came from a gravestone in the really atmospheric cloisters around the abbey. I also did Madame Tussauds (biggest rip off in London, please avoid), the Churchill Wartime Bunker (very interesting) and the British Museum (bit of a misnomer to call it the British Museum, it was really loads and loads of stuff we nicked from other countries in the days of empire. There was an interesting section explaining Islam, I don't suppose the tabloid reading masses who only ever hear about the negatives, will read this kind of thing though).
Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland - April 19 2007
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