I've lived for ~8 years in London, and ~8 years in Bangkok, a few years in Oxford, and a bit of time in some other random places.
The striking thing about London is that EVERYWHERE is an hour away, and that impacts your social life. Unless you live or work next to your friends, prepare to see them rarely. In both Bangkok and Oxford, social life was effortless - someone would SMS you in the afternoon, and you'd swing by some restaurant or bar on your way home to see them. Oxford, everywhere was trivially walkable, Bangkok taxis are virtually free, but London? It's an hour on the tube. Because of this, everyone is BUSY. Busy all the time. If I want to see my friends, I book 6 weeks in advance - and I live relatively central (Zone 2, Camden).
Summer in London is amazing - the parks are fantastic, there are some good bars ... winter is cold, rainy, and grey, and bluntly we're moving from London because we can't take another winter here.
Last winter wasn't. We barely had the heating on at all. Year before wasn't that bad.
I always find the people who care a lot about the weather to be rather idle-minded. Unless your main intellectual past time is playing golf i'm not sure how it can affect you. If you are busy doing something awesome the last thing you are going to care about is the rain.
What a pejorative statement. If those awesome things involve being outdoors, then you care a lot about the weather. If you grew up in a country with an outdoors lifestyle, expect that to be severely curtailed when you come to London (or the UK for that matter). If you have kids, expect them to be playing indoors for a disproportionate amount of time.
For someone who grew up in a much sunnier climate (South Africa), it can be crushingly oppressive at times.
I grew up in one of the rainier and colder parts of the British Isles and I don't recall any such issues with playing outside. Sure I had to wear wellies when playing in the fields or local common green areas but I don't recall it restricting whatever it was I was doing. Perhaps it is the modern need to have adults oversee everything a child does which actually causes the restriction. I'd expect most children couldn't care less about the rain and bad weather.
Also I visit South Africa 4-5 times a year and I don't notice my daily routine change much from London apart from driving more. If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.
> If anything I walk less because it is too hot around Dec-Feb. Indeed I'd be pretty worried about letting kids out for long periods in such unrelenting sunshine.
Oh, so then the weather matters after all. Apparently it matters so much that it has affected the whole work-hour traditions of Spain. Huh.
"Weather" can be pointless wringing, and it can also be complaints from people who live in a climate that necessitates both air conditioning in the summer to avoid heat strokes on the worst days, and heating in the winter to avoid freezing (both themselves and their plumbing). It involves people who have to worry about changing tires on their car when the winter comes. It involves people who sometimes wake up and have to shovel 1 meter height of snow to be able to get out of the house. It involves urban inhabitants that have to worry about the level of pollution in the air which varies based on how cold the weather is and how much it is raining.
Where I live, the weather is probably mostly a slight inconvenience. For you, who lives in the British Isles? I'm guessing an oceanic climate, which even if it is pretty cold in the winter it is probably not frigid, no? And in turn, perhaps overall cool summers. So overall a pretty even distribution of temperatures over the year; seldom cold, mostly cool to slightly warm. Yeah, you're probably not inconvenienced by the weather, compared to a lot of people elsewhere.
To be fair about the weather: the M25 - one of the most important motorways in England (goes around London) was closed for over 24 hours by less than an inch of snow.
Public transport in London is often thrown into chaos by 2 or 3 inches of snow.
Perhaps they detest building snowmen, cuddling up in bed when it's cold, drying off in front of an open fire after walking through the rain, that awesome thunderstorm with cool rain after a boiling hot day, the neighbourly camaraderie assessing the damage after a storm etc etc
I've never understood people who don't like the variety of weather and seasons. It must be so so boring to not experience, or enjoy weather.
A lot of people can't stand him, but I found Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes' autobiography, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, a big mental change in how i perceived weather as an inconvenience when I was younger. Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.
I think the obsession with "good weather" is very very unhealthy. Just think about the kind of people who move to the south of Spain to live in disgusting British ex-pat filled towns. Largely feeble minded grotesques you couldn't have anything more than a polite conversation with. Look at Florida for an american equivalent.
Further it would be interesting to see how productivity intersects with climate. A historical view on Europe's changing climate would be most interesting from a historical perspective.
I think you can also draw a lot of parallels between weather and emotion also.
It'd be amazingly unhealthy to be in a permanent state of "contentedness" for the rest of your life like some drugged up zombie. We need the bad days, the sadness, the anger, the whole range of emotions, so that we appreciate the other emotions, and feel truly alive.
There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".
Some people prefer seasonal variations in weather; this whole discussion of 'sunny year round' preference is something that people hitched themselves on about 3-4 hierarchies up.
> There's definitely an unhealthy obsession for some with nulling out variable weather and replacing it with whatever they deem as "good weather". Exactly as a mentally ill person might go to their doctor and say "I don't want to feel any emotions any more".
That's a bad comparison. Some people have one kind of preference - sunny. Others both like to go skiing and to go water-skiing.
I don't think it is a bad comparison at all. You could say people have a preference for being happy. But being happy every day would be pretty unwise. After a while it would stop being happy and it'd be relentlessly normal. Then you'd need something to make you "super happy"!
Variation in all aspects of life is what keeps us grounded and gives us reference points.
Some people are both happy going skiing, and going swimming at the beach (maybe even in the span of one day). Since both of these two conditions, made possible by climate/weather, elicit positive emotions, it doesn't really have any analogy to what you are describing.
> Clearly as an adventurer you have to learn to live with whatever weather there is. It is just an inconvenience to experience on the way to your end goal.
As an adventurer? The weather can be much more of an inconvenience to an "adventurer" (which I guess has something to do with being outdoors) than to the average modern, white/blue collar worker, person.
Too cold a weather might mean that you have to be very mindful of what you are wearing and adjust it to your activity level; wear too much while you are active and you get sweaty, which means that you in turn get colder. Wear too little and you start freezing. Even changing attire between activity levels can be difficult, since you sometimes have to undress partially in order to change attires, which might be enough of a room to leave you freezing. Too cold weather might mean that your equipment stops functioning because something froze. Too cold weather might mean that you have a hard time doing anything precise with your hands, because your wooly mittens don't lend themselves to that kind of work.
Then perhaps the weather gets milder; now you have to question whether you are able to cross that river on that ice. Also perhaps beware of snow avalanches.
A lot of rain might mean that you get, you know, wet, perhaps most of the stuff you have. Now you have to carry around wet tents etc. because you didn't have time to dry anything. Perhaps you even have to go to bed in a wet sleeping bag. Good luck trying to sleep.
That is just normal weather - not even going into things like storms.
Obviously preparation is important in extreme weather. That was kind of my point. In moderate weather largely deflected by a parasoled sheet of plastic it isn't the end of societal existence
Britain is a small island in the middle of a shallow sea with a warm current flowing roughly South to North and a cold jet stream flowing West to East at high altitude. Our weather depends on which way the wind is blowing and how wet the air is. Those from continental climates may find the variability refreshing!
PS: I live in the bit of the UK that isn't London. There is quite a lot of that.
Certainly, but, in Britain, as anyone who has tried to organise a picnic or outdoor wedding or similar will know, the variability is on a time scale of hours rather than months.
PS we seem to be keen on silent downvoting again. Parent post makes a perfectly valid point that allowed me to clarify my comment (timescales).
London doesn't get awesome thunderstorms. I used to joke about the annual thunderclap. This year we've surprisingly had a few already. Neighbourly camaraderie? Open fire? Walking in the rain? Walking in puddles of engine oil? You're describing the weather experience of living in the countryside of a tropics country, not London.
I'm talking about UK weather in general. I lived in London for a year, worked there for 4 and remember many thunderstorms. Not so much neighbourly camaraderie though. If you want neighbourly camaraderie live in a village.
Nope, London doesn't have thunderstorms. Maybe they're thunderstorms by UK standards, but not by global standards, not in the 13 years I've lived here. One of the things I miss most about living elsewhere in the world is the stimulating weather. Be it big blue skies, substantial snow, bone rattling thunderstorms, lightning displays, hail storms that bring traffic to a halt. London is wishy washy. Drizzle, enough snow to make a dirty slush, a thunderclap, a single flash of lightning, hail so small that it melts away on contact. Summer in 2004 (2005?) was two weeks long. Literally. Two weeks of sun. Dreary weather. I'm desperate for the European economy to pick up so I can leave.
I love London and lived there for 17 years. But in the end, the combination of most of our friends moving out of town, and the rest being friends by appointment only (sort of like you described) and commercial bankers taking over our neighbourhood and pushing cost of living through the roof, meant that we ended up leaving. Loved living there, not looked back and missed it.
Sure Bangkok taxis are virtually free if you live on a London-salary. And I'm surprised you say Bangkok is a good city to move around in. Bangkok traffic is often a huge pain. As can going on public transport be.
If you're comparing a British winter to a southern hemisphere "winter", sure it's not a great place to be. But for the mostpart, London is actually pretty good for it's winter. Yes you occasionaly get snow which is great for a day or two and then it turns to slush and ice and ends up being annoying, but really London is mild compared to the rest of the UK.
It is a big adjustment going from a southern hemisphere country to northern, so I don't blame you if you can't take it, but really it's not that bad here.
I'm from Norway, but have lived in London for 14 years. I actually prefer the cold and snow to London weather. The problem with London in the winter is that it is grey and wet and dreary. Snow and a clear sky, even with the sun up for fewer hours, still feels far more cheerful to me - the snow reflects whatever light there is.
> It is a big adjustment going from a southern hemisphere country to northern, so I don't blame you if you can't take it, but really it's not that bad here.
Bangkok is not in the Southern Hemisphere. It's in the N. Hemisphere, though relatively close to the equator.
Thanks for this. Currently living in Oxford and my experience has been similar. Have put off a move to London because I was worried that what everyone told me is true: it takes an hour to see anyone. It takes me only just over an hour to get to London from Oxford! (Though granted, there's always onward travel once there.)
Now I find people I hoped to see regularly if I moved to centralish London are moving out anyway. They are moving further away into Kent, Surrey, so on.
Basically, you need to treat London as a large region. "Moving to London" is too imprecise. It's like moving "to the North". Move to the "wrong" part of London vs your friends, and you might as well have moved to a different country. If you want to live near your friends, you need to move to the same borough, or at least along the same public transit corridors, and forget about the idea that London is one city.
Yes it takes about an hour from Oxford to London. But worse, a one-way ticket bought on the day costs something like 23 quid (US $39)! Trains in the UK are lovely, but the average price for a year of rail commuting to London is 3400 pounds (US $5770), which is absurd.
I live in Oxford and the rail costs are why I always get the bus. The "Oxford Tube" and X90 coaches run more frequently than trains, cost £18 return, have power and wifi, are comfortable, and deliver you to the centre of London in 1-1.5hrs (or assorted stop further out, plus stops from the ring-road through to the centre in Oxford). Usually less crowded and more comfortable than the train too!
Completely back this up - they also run frequently enough that a lot of the time you don't need to worry about their timetables (at peak time between both services - which are nearly identical - there are 8 or more scheduled every hour), and offer services at times when trains don't run.
Miss them very much now I've moved away from Oxford and living about the same distance away from London to the North, where trains are my only option.
"Everyone is busy" and "Too much distractions (low signal to noise ratio)" were the two main reasons I've moved away from London (and the UK) having spent 8 years there to a place where people can still enjoy slower pace, appreciate those "little things in life" and do not make the Saturday party over with the last tube train (departing slightly after midnight). (Yeah, I heard the tube will be running until 4am on weekends - it's just a shame many friends grown their families and had to relocate further with rail links. It's easier to have more quality time with them now going together on holidays rather than living in the same city).
I've lived here for 5, and maybe its just that most of my friends live fairly close to me, and that I used to live in Devon when I was growing up (where trying to meet friends without parental support was nigh-on impossible - no buses, couldn't drive, everyone lives miles away from each other), but I've not really encountered those problems at all.
Granted I tend to meet people centrally after work, since its convenient for everyone, but its not been too bad.
Agreed - the time it takes to do anything is very frustrating.
There's an easy solution though: get a bike, and try and pursuade your friends to cycle too. It's rare that it takes me more than 30 minutes to meet up now (which equates to travelling around 7 miles on a bike).
I agree. I went to uni in London for a year - worst decision ever. It's not somewhere you can just meet up with friends who live somewhere else in London.
But then cities are generally like that - very lonely places swarming with strangers.
The striking thing about London is that EVERYWHERE is an hour away, and that impacts your social life. Unless you live or work next to your friends, prepare to see them rarely. In both Bangkok and Oxford, social life was effortless - someone would SMS you in the afternoon, and you'd swing by some restaurant or bar on your way home to see them. Oxford, everywhere was trivially walkable, Bangkok taxis are virtually free, but London? It's an hour on the tube. Because of this, everyone is BUSY. Busy all the time. If I want to see my friends, I book 6 weeks in advance - and I live relatively central (Zone 2, Camden).
Summer in London is amazing - the parks are fantastic, there are some good bars ... winter is cold, rainy, and grey, and bluntly we're moving from London because we can't take another winter here.
Just my 2p.