Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello
I will move to that big infestation of buildings that people call "London" "soon". I have a job slightly north of a Watford, so I might go live around there. Question is: What's that bit like? Infact, which bits of London are shit and which aren't? I don't have a clue! Am I likely to get stabbed in Watford? Westminister? Hammersmith? Saaafh of the river? Etc. Do tell, Beteo. Be my eyes and ears for stabs.

Thnx,
POD!!1

Fuck me - Watford is only just London. Why not come to the Shunt meet tomorrow and get the hang of the place?

And, of course, you're not likely to get stabbed at all. 15 this year in a city of 6,000,000 probably means Myoptika is statistically more likely to get a knifing.
Just avoid Brixton.

NORF OF WATFNORD GAP != LONDONS

Watford Gap is nowhere near Watford.

Also, 6million, Grim...? I thought it was closer to 10.

That is a pity.

Also, Grim probably only counting Gentlemans of Quality.

I have no idea what you'd have to do to get stabbed in Hammersmith but it is unlikely you will.

Also, Watford is London in the same way "Cyprus" is "Moving to Greece"

you may not get killed to death there, but London is noisy, smelly and horrible, don't do it!

Yes, I'm afraid if you thought you're spangly new 'slightly north of Watford' job would involve the hustle and bustle of the big city, you're going to be in for a bit of a dissappointment.

I live slightly north of Watford myself, in Hemel Hempstead. I've only ever described it as 'London' to particularly slow American types, simply to save myself a lot of bother.

On the plus side, it's cheaper to live in Hertfordshire than London (but still really fucking expensive).

Wales is sure pretty! How far is that from Buck-ing-haaaaam Palace?

The bit I live in isn't shit.
The area around it is, but my own little bit is rather nice, if a bit on the pokey side.

I have no idea what a Shunt meet is, but it's about a 3hour, £65 train ride away. I've done enough of those lately....





I don't think Watford is in London - meerly that living IN London and training-it there every day is easily dooable. (Especially the place that I will work - it's across the road from a station). I thought about Hemel Hempstead. It had a funny sounding name. Isn't Wales pretty?

Seriously though: What's old Hemel Hempstead like as a place? Inform me.

Posh.

Sorry mate, but that's cobbler's. I love living in London, it's great (bet I get bum raped on the way home now). As others have said, you're very unlikely to get stabbed, but the majority of stabbings seem to happen in South East London. Quite why anyone would want to stray south of the river I have no idea anyway...

Oi, shut it, you. Come to Shunt, etc.

Arf! Is it true the bog water swirls in the opposite direction when you flush south of the river?

No, neither is it true of the equator, silly norther.

Trick question anyway, we all know you don't have flushing toilets down there yet

Personally I wouldn't live in London, purely from an expense point of view. You'd be better to live somewhere like Watford or Hemel and train in to London whenever you want to see the pretty-but-smelly sights.

Also, I have no love for Hemel at all, but then I've lived here all my life and seen it deteriorate, blah blah, remember when this was all fields, blah blah...

Seriously though, there's nothing here to do really, other than a very run down lesiure centre with bowling/cinema/ice skating etc - but it's a shithole. Only 1 half decent pub (though we do also have a Wetherspoons if you're poor/desperate). No decent restaurants. Piss-poor town centre. Lots of chavs. Permanent pikey campsite on the outskirts. But St. Albans is only 7 miles away, and that place has more pubs than actual people. Berkhamsted is just down the road, and they have the utterly wonderful and amazing Rex cinema. Whipsnade Zoo is about a 10 minute drive away and there's lots of lovely scenery outside of the town. Also, excellent transport links as we've got access to the M1, M10 and M25, plus a mainline train station that can get you into Euston in 30 mins.

Watford itself is alright and I'd never rule out living there - though avoid South Oxhey/Carpender's Park like the proverbial plague.

There's a flat free for the taking one down from Mimi, Pod. You'd just have to stab the occupants and stack the corpses out the back for the rats to eat first.
Hey, it's a dograt eat dog world in south east londern

Is that just because he's Myoptika though?

perhaps I was being a little harsh on london, I should have said any city, but picked on london, as it was biggest

Much better to be in the countryside with a great local pub, and lots of small (and not so small) animals to kill for fun

I think there are rough areas in pretty much all of the boroughs of London, including Kensington & Chelsea. Certain areas of Brixton are worth avoiding, and the same could be said of Tottenham, Ladbroke Grove and Hackney, where I live. The thing is, although there is violence and crime it usually involves people who are part of that world. It also seems to happen mainly in the wee small hours of the morning - particularly in Hackney, at least - so unless you have a habit of loitering around undesirable areas at 3am you'll likely see nothing other than yellow Police tape and flowers the following day.

Also, bear in mind that London is vast but curiously insular. Being a couple of streets away from trouble can feel like a world.

I live just between Brixton and Camberwell and go through Brixton to get to/from work. I've yet to be stabbed to death, but I'll let you know if that happens.

I used to work there, in the street behind the Ritzy. Brixton is full of fucking horrible people. Turning the corner to find a woman holding her skirt up and having a piss in the middle of the pavement is not nice.

Come to Shunt.

Southeast London is fine, if you're not a 15 year old black kid.

Details?

I work in Watford, and live in Finchley, and I haven't been stabbed yet.

Where abouts are you working? You say there is a station, so I am guessing Radlett or Abbots/Kings Langley. Depending on how you want to get there, decides where you live, really. If you are planning on catching the train, then you ideally want to be on the correct train line. There are only a few transverse connections for public transport and youy really don't want to have to go tube, train, bus, train to get to work (surely?)

Personally, I drive, it only takes 20-30 mins up the M1 in the morning.

This really sounds like it ought to be a spoonerism.

I agree with andyb, sadly. London is nice to visit (although not in the summer, urgh), but horrid to live in. I'd never move back there, it's just not my sort of place at all.

It is, however, far safer than the meeja and their ridiculous KNIFING EPIDEMIC would like you to think. I lived in a pretty shitty area for most of my life, and there's no more trouble there if you don't look for it than anywhere else, and certainly no crowds of knife-wielding yoofs stabbing random people because of STABBING CULTURE.

There are few places you should expressly avoid, to be honest, and, like anywhere, you can often tell them within minutes of arriving. Although it's possible that this is an instinct you kind of pick up after living in a city for a while - a place can look rough without actually being dangerous. Just avoid the notoriously shit places and you'll be fine until you get the hang of it. It won't be an issue unless you do loads of travelling anyway - chances are you'll have no reason to go to most of the dodgy parts. Although there are pockets of nastiness in any town, obv.

Watford's alright. Me mum has been talking about moving there for about fifteen years. I'll let you know if she ever does, since you might want to think about getting away before she arrives.

Mimi lives in North West London tho!

Malc

you have to pass a country with 80 million asians to get there? actually, that might not be that far from the truth...

I agree with Sinister and andyb, I'm afraid. I was at university in London, and then went back to live and work there after a one year break at Law School in Bristol, so have spent a good 8 or 9 years living there. And it sucks big hairy fat ones on all scores.

The straw that broke the metaphorical camel's back was that having kids meant you were no longer able to take advantage of any of the positives of living in London (mainly relating to social lives), so we were just left with the (very large amount of) shitty aspects of it. Woo.

Bucolic splendour is where it's at, man.

I had to walk through Whitechapel at around midnight last summer and was worried about it. I expected hooded youths on street corners, starving dogs stalking me and people fearfully peeking out from behind barred and shuttered windows. When I actually did it, though, it was fine. Saw people out jogging, walking their dogs, etc.

I felt a bit silly for being worried.

Oooh! I forgot to mention Hemel Hempstead's most famous feature earlier - the Magic Roundabout!. All my friends and family tell me it's not too bad, but having been driving for over a year now and having to navigate the thing several times a week it still provokes murderous rage in me each time. I'd be sad to see it go though, it's much more frightening than the one in High Wycombe (which I also have to navigate a lot, being as I work effectively down the road from it), so it gives Hemel a certain charm that Wycombe simply can't muster.

I'm really selling the place to you now, eh?

Stroud has one of those. It's a mite confusing.

Sort of. It's actually just three mini roundabouts very close to reach other. But is a RELIC OF SATAN.

EDIT - here we go:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=stroud&ie=UTF8&ll=51.744597,-2.221467&spn=0.001466,0.003197&t=h&z=19&iwloc=addr

I despise roundabouts. I always ask friends to yell at me because invariably I'll miscount the number of exits, or misread signs, or muck up lanes (scaring undertaking motorcyclists)

I got really confused at the top of Oxford last night. Whilst my impromptu tour of Wolvecote and Wytham was not unpleasent, turning back then taking the exit to Witney was.

That roundabout is an absolute bastard. I try to avoid it as much as possible.

I live right near Whitechapel and let me assure you that it's an absolute shithole during the day. Totally squalid. But maybe during the night, when the market's cleared away it isn't too bad. You don't see a lot of hoodies around that area really, it seems to comprise mainly of immigrants and increasingly, professional people drawn there because it's so close to the city and relatively cheap to live in.

Swindon's is worse:

Fucking hell - did they get Escher to design that? That's lunacy.

Apparently it's quite intuitive and safe once you get on it, and get your head around the idea. It's the same old rule of giving way to the right, over and over again.

It looks daunting as hell to non-Swindonians though.

I was going to post that Swindon one. The first time I came up to that I thought the sign was taking the piss.

Surely one junction and a simple set of traffic lights would have done the job?

For 7 different roads?

Reading up, they used to have something like that, but with 5 exits, it couldn't handle the volume of traffic. It's marvellous really, but utterly bonkers.

It's just nested roundabouts. You can still go round the outside clockwise if you want, but it's quicker to go through the centre if you don't want to leave at the first exit.

I like the way most of the arrows just point forwards, but at a slight angle.
If you were on the main roundabout coming up to the mini-roundabout on the right, which of those 4 lanes should you be in to go on to the mini-roundabout and which should you be in to carry on going round the main roundabout? From the arrows, it looks like the left hand lane to stay on the roundabout (where there are 3 lanes of traffic) and the other 3 lanes to go onto the mini-roundabout (which looks wide enough for 2 cars at the most).