The honest, not entirely rational reasoning behind staying in London anyway

Every so often someone who does not live in London asks me, with genuine confusion, why anyone would choose to live somewhere this expensive when they could apparently have a considerably larger flat for the same money almost anywhere else in the country, and I never quite manage to give an answer that properly captures the actual reasoning, because the actual reasoning is not, strictly speaking, entirely rational.

The size of the flat is not really the point

My current flat is, by any reasonable measure, small. I could list the specific ways it is small, but the list would take a while and would not really explain why I have stayed here for three years despite knowing, with total certainty, that the same money would get me somewhere considerably larger almost anywhere else.

What I have slowly come to understand is that the flat itself was never really the point. The flat is simply the base of operations from which the actual point, the city itself, becomes accessible, and I have made a genuine, if not always financially wise, peace with paying a premium for that access.

What you actually get for the money

What you get, properly, for the genuinely absurd rent is not square footage. It is the ability to leave your flat on any given evening and be somewhere entirely different, culturally and socially, within twenty minutes, a kind of density of possibility that I have not found replicated anywhere else I have lived or visited.

I can walk out my door on a random Tuesday and end up somewhere I have never been before, surrounded by people having an entirely different kind of evening than the one I was expecting to have, and there is something about that unpredictability that I have genuinely come to need, in a way I did not fully understand until I tried living somewhere without it.

The friends who left, and what they say now

Several friends have left over the years, moved somewhere cheaper, somewhere with more space, somewhere that made more obvious financial sense, and I have watched their reasoning with genuine interest, because I understand every single point they make and cannot really argue with any of it.

What is interesting is what they say when they come back to visit. There is usually a specific moment, walking somewhere together, where they go quiet in a way that suggests they are remembering something about this specific kind of aliveness that they have not quite found an equivalent for wherever they ended up.

An admission

I do not know if this is a good enough reason to keep paying what I pay for what I have. Financially, it is probably not. But I have stopped pretending the decision is purely financial, because it clearly is not, and I think being honest about that is more useful than continuing to justify it in terms that were never really the actual reason in the first place.

More London life writing at Lowri Griffiths’ page, Bohiney.

The moment it clicked

There was a specific evening, walking home along a stretch of river I have walked past probably a hundred times without really noticing it, when the whole justification suddenly made sense to me in a way it had not quite managed to before, despite years of trying to explain it to myself in more practical terms.

I do not think I can fully reconstruct what was different about that particular evening. But something about it clarified, briefly and completely, exactly why I keep choosing this over the objectively more sensible alternative, and I have held onto that clarity ever since, even on the considerably less romantic evenings.

One more thing

I still cannot fully explain it to my family back home, who remain politely baffled by the whole arrangement, and I have mostly stopped trying.

What my parents think

My parents, when I try to explain this, generally respond with a specific kind of loving confusion, the sort reserved for a choice they respect without remotely understanding, which I have decided is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

Closing thought

Maybe next year I will finally have a better answer for the people who ask. I doubt it, but maybe.

Another small thing

I have also started noticing which specific streets catch the evening light best, a small private map of the city that has nothing to do with money at all.

More on this soon, I am sure.

Last thought, honestly

I suspect I will still be having this same conversation with myself a decade from now, and I have made a specific, deliberate peace with that too.

A final image

I still think about that particular stretch of river most weeks now, and I have started deliberately walking that way home even when it is not strictly the fastest route.

More soon.

Until next time.

End.

What I would tell someone just moving here

If you are trying to decide whether to stay somewhere small and expensive or leave for somewhere larger and cheaper, I genuinely cannot tell you which is right, only that the decision is worth making honestly rather than purely on paper.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/