September Sunshine Student

It's been the hottest days of the year so far this past week. England as a whole has such strange weather, but London is a particularly strange weather. In Manchester, you can rely on it to be raining... usually. Down by the coast you can rely on it to be a bit breezier and therefore slightly colder. But London is just completely infrequent. It was wet and dull for long periods of July and August, and now we're enjoying a heatwave?! It is so inconvenient for my winter wardrobe - I was all ready to embrace autumnal fashion, and now I'm in t shirts and Havaianas again! Still, I shan't complain about it, and to talk about it constantly would be rather quintessentially English, wouldn't it?

I have been enjoying myself in the city these past few days, beginning my life as a student in London. I have lived in London and explored London my whole life, but I have previously been a student only in Manchester and Boston, USA. Boston was a bit different, but Manchester offers a definite point of comparison. Whilst studying there for 3 years, I really felt the city was totally student friendly. The universities had pride of place along one of the main veins into the city centre, and so many of the buses had "Universities" marked on them - student life felt like a focal point for the whole city. Manchester isn't as big as London either; you could walk from the universities to the main shopping area really easily, and all the shops were geared up for student shoppers. The cinema (and the alcohol!) was cheaper, and there were literally hundreds of student nights out at clubs, sometimes even for specific universities.

I don't think London is going to be like that. London is such a large metropolis; you can't really say that any one group really dominates or characterises the city. Students are just one part of that, and the university buildings reflect that. There are so many education institutions in central London alone, not including once you start moving a bit further out. It would be ridiculous if they all had a really distinctive campus or hundreds of exclusive buildings - they would completely take over the city, and there's not the space for it. My new university is concealed within what looks like just a normal office block, albeit close to some other university buildings belong to King's. There's a sign outside but apart from that it's not marked out from everything else, and the area definitely isn't a student area - it's right on the River Thams and a stone's throw away from London landmarks like the London Eye. Brilliant location! This probably means that not everywhere is going to be geared up for students like it was in Manchester, because in London the students aren't a defining feature, they are just part of the vast swathes of different types of people that inhabit or come into the centre every single day. I'm just going to be like any normal commuter - I just won't be wearing a suit! I think it's going to be really exciting to be a student in London, there will be so many more swish bars (though they'll probably be too expensive for me, the downside to London) or little coffee shops where we can all hang out, and I'll meet so many more different types of people, I think. It will definitely be a very different experience, probably a more mature one as well since I'm a postgraduate now... hope it isn't too different though! I still get the student discounts in all the shops (thank god).

London looks really beautiful in this autumnal sunshine. The sky is so clear at this time of year - the sunlight almost seems brighter and more penetrating, less hazy and humid than summertime. Getting the train from Charing Cross, you go over the railway bridge and to your right you can see the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye, London Aquarium, and to the left just about round the bend the spire of St Paul's peeps out and imperious buildings like the Savoy line the river bank opposite Royal Festival Hall. It's one of my favourite sites in London; you can see so much character and diversity pinned by the constance and fluidity of the Thames as it winds through the city, and in the sunshine the brown water becomes sparkling, almost inviting (not enough though!) Such a beautiful city, and there is so much more to see and explore. I wonder where my new student credentials will take me.

Zone 6

So, I think the title of this blog actually could cause me to be accused of being misleading. See, I do live in London (I spent most of my university life telling people that I lived in London, within the M25, in Zone 6, therefore IN LONDON... despite my address being Kent).

But, being in Zone 6, I live about as far out of London, as far into Greater London, as far away from Central London, as you can be and yet still get away with calling yourself a Londoner. But I don't necessarily think it's about where you live... obviously you couldn't live in like Hastings and call yourself a Londoner, but I live close enough to brandish the label. But I FEEL like I'm from London. I've spent so much of my life there. I love it there. Granted I haven't seen many of the great cities in the world, and the ones I have seen - New York, Boston, Miami, Palma (Majorca) - I have LOVED! I'd like to live in New York for a while at some point in my life, although that is a farfetched dream. And there's so many places I want to visit - Los Angeles and all the beauty of Italy being at the VERY top of my list. But London will always be my home.

I'm 21 years old, got a lot of living and working ahead of me, and this is a little personal blog about my life in London and the things I see and the things I do and the things I like. It may not be interesting to everyone, but I have an undeniable need to document my life, and I don't think it's going to be very scandalous but it might be vaguely amusing and engaging sometimes. Plus, London is a great city, and anything about London is bound to be exciting and vibrant and interesting....... or so I hope!

I feel that a great adventure lies ahead of me. So here it is, from me to you, my blog about (frankly) a suburban girl who loves the city.


You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford - Samuel Johnson