Tuesday, October 11, 2005

How to Tell if you are a Londoner

1. You say "the City" and expect everyone to know which one.

2. You have never been to The Tower of London or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton

3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Dorset on a map.

4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.

5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.

6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

7. You've considered stabbing someone.

8. Your door has more than three locks.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

10. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a garden.

11. You consider Essex the "countryside".

12. You think Hyde Park is "nature".

13. You're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain".

14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.

15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.

16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.

17. You actually take fashion seriously.

18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.

19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.

20. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.

22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.

23. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.

24. You don't hear sirens anymore.

25. You've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides.

26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.

27. Your cleaner is Portuguese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is Halal, your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Filipino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner i s Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.

28. You wouldn't want to live anywhere else until you get married.

29. You roll your eyes and say 'tsk' at the news that someone has thrown themselves under a tube train.

30. Your day is ruined if you don't get a copy of Metro on the way to work.

3 comments:

BeeNuts said...

Haha, I agree with most of them. I am gonna copy and forward this to my Mum in London and see how much she agrees (or disagrees)!

Rambling Alcoholic said...

PS. Copyright is not mine.

Oh, London, how I miss it. Heh.

BeeNuts said...

U miss London? Darn, my parents have been breathing down my neck to get me over and I refuse flat!

We should switch places.