Annabel HESELTINE
As record numbers flee the capital for rural idylls, Miranda Levy explains why she is going the other way
Back in the mid 1980s, I was travelling on the Tube to go shopping in Oxford Street. I was dressed like every other 17-year-old from Chigwell, Essex, in bleached jeans and a pastel yellow tank-top. Sitting opposite me was a black-clad student, wearing Doc Martens and reading James Joyce. I want to be that person, I thought.
Now I’m in my early 50s, I still want to be that person. Which is why, despite the news that a record number of Londoners are fleeing the capital, I can’t wait to swap my IG7 postcode for one that begins with E or N.
According to Hampton’s estate agents, during the first six months of 2021 Londoners bought an estimated 61,380 homes outside the capital, spending £24.1billion (more than double the 2019 figure). “The pandemic-fuelled outward migration from cities shows no signs of slowing,” said Aneisha Beveridge of Hampton’s. “London’s population is likely to fall this year.”
But if I have anything to do with it, it will be going up by at least one.
I’d been living in London since 1988 when, inspired by my Tube companion, I went to study English at UCL and started reading Plato on the Northern line. But, five years ago, necessity sent me home to suburban Essex. I clung to an 0208 phone number by the tips of my Chigwell-manicured nails, and found comfort in my just-on-thecentral line station – despite its unpredictable shuttle service of three trains an hour.
I have to concede that the suburbs provided me with comfortable respite during a dark period in my life: I moved back at a time of illness and approaching divorce. In this safe, quiet neighbourhood, I have regrouped and recovered.
Essex was also an amazing place to spend lockdown: the fields, the trees and the purr of the wood pigeons in the garden kept me sane. It’s really quite bucolic here. There are even horses at the end of the road. Too bad I’m allergic to them.
So, as soon as I get that decree absolute and my share of the proceeds of the marital home, I’ll be heading back to the Smoke to fill my lungs with diesel-fuelled air. Of course, it’s for the obvious things: the magnificent museums, galleries, theatres – all now coming back to life. That peerless view from Blackfriars Bridge: Parliament to the left, St Paul’s and Tower Bridge to the right. It makes me gasp every time.
But for me, it’s also as much about the subtle day-to-day encounters. Taxi lights in the rain, the different faces, languages and clothing styles. A selection of book shops – not just the understocked one in my current locality. Foods from countries you’ve never heard of. The energy. The history.
Everyone spins out the Samuel Johnson cliché,
“when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”, but the irony is that many
great poets hated the capital. TS Eliot didn’t enjoy London (though he didn’t enjoy much, to be fair.) In “Burnt Norton”, the first of his Four Quartets, Eliot wrote about “the darkness in this twittering world” of the Underground, adding later, in East Coker: “And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen/leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about”. He had clearly been stuck for 10 minutes in that annoying bit between Camden Town and Euston.
Nor was William Blake enamoured. In his poem London he associates it with crying chimney sweeps, hapless soldiers and youthful harlots cursing.
But it’s the ratty-tatty colour of London that speaks to my soul. Yes, life is cheaper in the suburbs; from trains to hairdressers to dinners out. My friends remind me how expensive London is. “Don’t you want space? A garden?” But what on earth for? I find it hard to keep a pot plant alive.
Of course, I’m not blind to the appeal of the rest of the UK, and I do love to visit the dales and hills and rugged coastlines. But the sea air gets a bit sticky in your hair after a while, and the countryside makes me itch.
Most importantly, as much as I need London, London needs me – and more people like me. Walking around the city makes me sad these days: it’s just so empty, with shuttered shops, as Londoners move out and the office workers stay at home. Analysis last summer from Visit Britain showed that London had lost £11billion in tourism, and that commuters spent £1.9billion less in the city than in the previous year.
Come the autumn, I’ll be heading back. So I’ll finish with the lesserknown part of the Johnson quote about our fabulous capital. “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London…” he trumpets. “For there is in London all that life can afford.”
With a season-ticket loan, perhaps.