As I was saying my goodbyes to my good friend at the coach station, I said to him, upon joining the hoard, ‘now it’s time to go to the dog-eat-dog city.’ It didn’t exactly get off to a good start. On a strangely warm September day National Express had hired a coach from another company. There were no windows, the air conditioning didn’t work, but strangely enough, the heating was on full blast. The full coach heard the usual British non-genuine, robotic repetition: ‘I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused,’ before continuing in the same blasé manner, ‘I know the coach is overheated, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll get you to London as soon as I can.’ So, if the traffic allows, passengers may not reach severe dehydration or people passing out as it could, in essence, take only three hours. Three hours of closed in, high level heating on a sunny day. Luckily, people did a non-British thing – they kicked up a fuss. We parked at the side of a motorway and waited for another coach when, miraculously, after a short phone call and the flick of a switch, the air conditioning started working. ‘I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused, but we will now be behind schedule.’
Perhaps if the coach had only air conditioning in the bleak depths of grey winter, passengers new to London would have been better acclimatised to the reception that would await them. We won’t look too closely at transport services at this point, but rather the experiences of new beginnings; those gruelling first few weeks, months, or sometimes years of life in London.
What makes London particularly tough for the newcomer? Aside from the great vastness and sensory bludgeoning of any large city, London’s prices are particularly high with average ‘working’ salaries failing to compare. Two immediate challenges facing the poundless beginner are finding affordable accommodation and securing a job. With increasing cuts, fewer jobs, and minimum wage at just £5.93 per hour (albeit with a few meagre pennies extra in London Weighting Allowance), alongside rising prices and crippling transport expenses, London reveals itself as a greedy, stressful, survival dystopia.
Still, with a good honours degree and international work experience, I arrived at Victoria coach station with optimistic hope. I was about to embark on what I saw as an exciting Masters degree, I had managed to find a room and had a couple of interviews on the horizon. I had saved up for two years to pay my fees, a deposit on a room, and one month’s worth of rent, basic food and travel costs. I now had several weeks to concentrate on job hunting.
My first interview was with a language school. Only hours after my National Express experience, I was taken to what can only be described as a wardrobe. The Director of Studies then asked me a few quick questions before enquiring whether she had emailed me the interview test paper. No! To my surprise, I was asked to immediately plan a lesson delivering definitive and non-definitive relative clauses to an upper intermediate class, then phonetically transcribe a list of words, then define another list of words – noun, adjective, adverb etc...All followed by a list of cultural questions regarding literature and geography. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ she said, before leaving me in the wardrobe with a few pencils and the acidic taste of stress.
The bitter blood of London’s burden tempted my veins several days later. I had an interview for an after-school tutoring position with a family. The ‘mother’, Melissa, had asked me to meet her at Liverpool Street station. At the appointed hour, I was greeted with perfectly manicured eyes that openly surveyed me from head to toe with a look of disdain. ‘Shall we go to a coffee shop?’ she asked in a monotone and no facial expression. She ordered two teas for us, and, as we waited by the till, it occurred to me I felt powerless, edgy, inferiorly nervous. I did not like this woman. Was it too late to simply walk away? Civility got the better of me so I silently ordered myself to conjure up some self-respect. Still civility should not always be obeyed.
At the table, Melissa, a Texan, gave me an epic on the barbarity of leaving a teabag in a cup and the inadequacy of life outside Texas. She then told me of her life story – all in monotone – how she met her husband, a successful artist and the Jerwood Prize winner in 2002, how she had been writing a book but had to take a break because of health reasons (aha...), how she got married at 28 because that’s about the right age, and how getting into university in the UK is just not as rigorous as in the US. ‘Where is your daughter?’ I asked. That was definitely NOT the right question. ‘With my husband,’ murmured the murderous monotone, marching heavily beside the eyes of disdain.
Finally, her attention turned to my CV. She asked a few questions, got irritated with my responses, and then interrupted my smiles and fond recounting of my experiences teaching English to the Italian military. ‘Yes, is there anything you want to add it that? What I’m trying to get you to do is open up and tell me something interesting. Your CV is fantastic but I don’t see any of that in front of me.’ She looked agitated. ‘You are too calm, and, quite frankly, confused. Also, you are so unwashed.’ Unwashed? ‘Yes, you haven’t washed your face, you haven’t shampooed, you don’t take care of your clothes. I don’t want my daughter exposed to it.’ My heart was pounding hard. It wasn’t the kind of heat that makes it to the surface of your skin. I was shocked, not shamed. My facade became calmer. ‘Well, this is me and I’m clearly not the person you are looking for’, was all I could utter as I began to gather my things. Though it was a busy coffee shop in the middle of Liverpool Street station, I wasn’t aware of another soul. Melissa became increasingly fidgety. ‘Is there nothing you want to say to convince me you are as good as this CV?’ ‘No, I’m not the person you are looking for.’ Her face twisted, her breathing become irregular. ‘Oh...well....I guess I’ll have to keep looking...’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ready to leave the table, ‘good luck with that’ (with intonation). ‘Oh, I’m ALWAYS alright’ she added, disgusted.
I travelled home, shaken but composed, and ran a hot bath. As Sylvia Plath once told us, ‘there must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.’ This soul saving ritual was accompanied with shampoo and wine. It is times like this I miss living with my family or house sharing with people I can talk openly with. This is London, and London is not always kind to the newcomer.
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