I moved to London 9 months ago and since then I have learnt a few things which I wish I’d known when I arrived.

The People

London has a lot of people in it. Like, really a lot. Think of all the people in Northern Ireland and Scotland put together and you still don’t get close to the number of people in London. And these Londoners are famous for being a diverse lot, or at least that’s what the media likes to say. Walk down a street in London and you’ll see people of all sorts of shapes and sizes; a varied range of races and cultures. But there’s one group that’s drastically under represented in the London population: Gingers. Sure, you’ll get the odd guy with strawberry blonde hair who claims to be ginger, but a true red head is a rare sight indeed.

The weather

Contrary to popular belief, London doesn’t have any real weather. Sure, there’s the occasional fluctuation in air pressure or humidity, but nothing worth mentioning. On the odd occasion when London experiences an event which resembles actual weather, don’t worry you’ll know about it: it’ll be on all the front pages, tv shows will be interrupted with ‘breaking news’ and twitter will crash with number of peole trying to tweet about it. A few weeks ago there was a bit drizzle, so they made an announcement on the tube warning people to be careful of the “adverse weather conditions”

Local Media

In most cities, if you want to find out what’s happening in your area, you have to wait through half an hour of irellevant stuff until the section called “local news” or “the news where you are”. In London it’s a lot simpler, your section comes first and is called “national news”, or often just “the news”.

Transport

Ask any Londoner about transport and they’ll tell you how terrible it is. But that’s just because they’re a bunch of spoilt whingers. The great thing about London is that when one form of transport inexplicitly stops working, there’s always loads of other to choose from:

Cars

One tip about driving in London: don’t bother. Cars just spend all their time sitting in traffic jams. Anyone I know in London who owns a car doesn’t actually use it for day to day travel.

Buses

In most cities I’ve lived in, there is a clearly defined city centre where all the buses go (or at least pass through). London doesn’t have one of these, instead a map of all the bus routes looks like someone has given a two-year old a bunch of crayons and let them draw some lines. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you can’t make any assumptions about where a bus is going or how it’ll get there.

Buses in London are slow. It’s not their fault, it’s because of all the cars that get in their way. But they are frequent. In fact, they’re so frequent that usually bus stops don’t bother with proper timetables. They just give a rough approximation of the gap between buses at various times in the day.

There’s generally two situations when it’s best to get the bus:

  1. When you’ve missed the last tube at night.
  2. When other forms of transport have broken down.

Boats

There’s lots of boats in the Thames and some will give you a lift if you give them money. The problem with the Thames is that it’s very bendy, so it’s rarely the quickest route. Also, boats are usually more expensive than other forms of transport.

One exception to this is the Woolwich Free Ferry, which is basically there because they couldn’t be bothered to build a bridge at that point in the river. Like its name suggests, you don’t have to pay any money to use it. If you’re ever in East London, I do recommend a ride on it - it’s also got the best view of the Thames Barrier you’re likely to see.

Bikes

Bicycles are the fastest way to get round in London, as demonstrated by Top Gear’s thoroughly unscientific race through London.

Cycling in London can be a bit daunting at first, but once you learn to be assertive it’s fine. Cycling in the middle of the lane is a good idea as cars are less likely to attempt dangerous overtaking manoeuvres and you’ll avoid being hit by a parked car’s door opening.

One thing to be careful of is roads which randomly turn into motorways. Well, technically they’re not motorways, which means there’s no sign telling you not to cycle on them. But they look and feel just like a motorway, so they’re not the most pleasant place to cycle.

London Underground (aka the Tube)

Getting on the tube is so much fun. You’ve got trains, tunnels, history, strategy and hidden shortcuts. The key to enjoying the tube is simple: don’t use it to commute. Lots of Londoners make this mistake and as a result they hate the tube. There’s also lots of popular misconceptions about the tube, the biggest one being the time of the last tube. You’ll often hear “About half twelve, but later at the weekends.” In fact, most lines have the same last tube timetable Monday through Saturday and stop earlier on a Sunday.

Talking of last tube trains: these are even more fun than normal because you get to see the men with green torches. Each platform has a person standing on it with a walkie talkie and a green torch. When the last tube arrives, they check with the people upstairs to make sure that noone is running to catch it. When they get the all clear, they shine the green torch at the driver who then knows they’re good to go. Isn’t that so cool?

Another thing to watch out for on the tube is the pink oyster card readers. Normally you tap the yellow oyster card readers on the way in and out. But the pink ones are special: you get to tap them in the middle of your journey. Basically, they let you tell the TFL super-computer that you didn’t go through zone 1 and that therefore you should get a cheaper fare.

Trams

Apparently London has trams. Not Edinburgh-style trams, these ones actually move. I’ve never actually been on one yet, because they’re in South London and I’ve no reason to go there.

Trains

Lots of trains go to London, yet it’s one of the few cities not to have a central train station. Instead it has a big ring of stations which are connected by the tube. This is because Parliament in the 19th century didn’t want trains coming into central London.

Sunday Trading Hours

Growing up in Belfast, I always found it absurd that shops had to close at 6 on a Sunday. But then, Northern Ireland is a bit backward and it’s only to be expected. When I moved to Scotland, I found they didn’t have this silly rule and I assumed that it was just a Northern Irish thing (like Tayto crisps and segregated education). So on moving to London, I was shocked to find that not only did they have the silly rule, but their shops close at 5 - an hour earlier than Northern Ireland!

London also appears to extend the silly rule to bank holidays too. But, of course no-one bothers to tell you - they just assume you know.

The sky at night

I had heard that London has a lot of light pollution, so when I moved I was expecting a slight reduction in the number of visible stars. But, it turns out there’s hardly any at all. In fact, there’s often more planes visible in the night sky than stars.

The Water

London water isn’t very nice. Growing up, I always wondered why anyone would buy bottled water when the stuff out of the tap tastes nicer. I’ve now discovered that bottled water is aimed at Londoners.

Also, London water isn’t very good for cleaning stuff with. Anything you wash gets covered in a cloudy residue. And of course, you can’t wash the residue off, because the water you’re using contains the same stuff.

Parks

London has some massive parks. You should definitely go check them out, they’re generally free in (like most parks). One exception to this is Kew Gardens - they want you pay to look at their plants. If you find yourself in Kew but don’t want to pay to look at plants, don’t worry, there’s a nice path which goes round the outside of the gardens. On one side of the path is the Thames, on the other the moat of Kew Gardens (yes, they actually have a moat to stop you getting in). On this path, you get to see the Kew Meridian - it’s a bit like the Greenwich Meridian, except it’s in West London and free to look.

Markets

London has lots of actual markets. And I’m not talking about those pretentious “Farmers’ markets” that they have in every other city. London has real-life cockney markets like you see in films and on the Apprentice. You can get your fruit and veg from them cheaper than in the supermarket.

One thing that might seem odd at first is the stalls which have all their fruit and veg in plastic bowls, but no prices to be seen anywhere. In fact, the pricing is simple: the contents of each bowl cost a pound. Doesn’t matter how big the bowl is, or what’s inside it - they’re all a quid. Of course, like lots of other things in London, no-one actually tells you this; they just look at you as if you’re stupid if you don’t know.

Bumping into people you know

If you’ve lived in a normal sized city (such as Belfast or Edinburgh), you’ll find that you often bump into people you know when you’re out and about. In fact, there’s times when you can walk into a pub and be confident that there’ll be someone there you know. This doesn’t work in London. As I might have mentioned before, London is big. The chances of you seeing someone you know are slim (unless you know a lot of people). If you want to be social, you need to arrange to meet people in advance or be prepared to socialise with absolute strangers (there’s always loads of them hanging around).

Money

Money in London isn’t worth as much as the rest of the country. No one is really sure why, but most employers accept it and pay people more to compensate. As a result, you will find that when you visit people back in the rest of the country, you are comparatively rich. Try not to rub their noses in it (unless they used to do the same to you back when you lived there and they had more money than, in which case, it’s fine.)

Dodgy areas

Growing up in Belfast, I learnt the tell-tale signs of a dodgy area: flags, murals, bunting, painted kerbstones, burnt-out cars etc. So far, I’ve only found one area in London with any such indicators; it’s known to Londoners as “The Mall”. It has a Union Jack on every lamppost, a high army presence, regularly has police road blocks and most of its residents are reliant on state handouts (though some of them are clearly “doing the double” as it’s know in Belfast).

The cities of London

London is often said to be a city, but there’s actually more than one in here. There’s the one known as “The City” where all the bankers work. This city has its own police force and is England’s smallest county.

Next to it is the City of Westminster. You can tell it’s a city because it has its own cathedral (not to be confused with its Palace or its Abbey). This is the area where we keep all the politicians, royalty and other posh people.

The two cities are joined by Fleet Street, where we used to keep all the journalists. Recently, it was felt that having all the politicians, bankers and journalists in such close proximity was a bad idea - a single nuclear bomb could destroy much of the country’s supply of hated professions. To prevent this, the journalists have been distributed across London and some of the politicians have been moved to Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.

You may some people refer to “London Town” - it turns out this just means the same as “London”. Some other useful geographical definitions used by Londoners are:

  • Greater London - anywhere within the boundaries of the M25.
  • South of the River - anywhere in London on the southern side of the Thames.
  • The Regions - anywhere where your Oyster card doesn’t work.

Postcodes

There is a tendency of some people in London to refer to areas by the first half of postcodes, rather than using their real names. If you’re from a normal place, then London postcodes may confuse you. Instead of just using LN to mean London, they decided that they needed 8 different postcode areas. These are generally named after the direction from the centre of London you need to go to get there. For example N for North, W for West, NW for North-West. Of course there are plenty of exceptions to this (There’s no S, but there is a WC), but I won’t go into them here - check Wikipedia if you want a list.

Conclusion

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to London, but just a few helpful hints. I hope it’s a bit helpful to atleast someone. If you are moving to London, hope you have a good time.