A London Primer For The Curious

To be honest, I wrote this more for my fiancée than anything. I wanted to make a list of the things people should know about London but never really get written down anywhere. Of course, if this helps the curious, from people who want to move or visit here to a writer looking for more information, then I'm happy to help (and if you have any more questions, please let me know below!)

View of the City of London at Dusk - Amelia Springett (2011)

The Newspapers 'City AM', 'Metro', 'Evening Standard' and the magazines 'The Stylist', 'TimeOut', 'The ES' and 'ShortList' are all free and distributed outside most Tube stations. The magazines are a really good way of keeping up to date on new events and fun things to do in the city. Feel free to take these when offered, or help yourself to one from the pile that usually lurks outside if there isn't a person to hand them out.

Be wary about accepting anything else a person is handing out on the street. This can be anything from religious dogma to a begging tactic (people will hand you an item like a flower and then try and get you to pay for it).

Supermarkets are where most local people buy food. From cheapest to most expensive, generally speaking, these are:

• Aldi/Lidl
• Asda/Morrison
• Tesco
• Sainsburys
• Marks & Spencer
• Waitrose

Eating out is really easy – virtually anywhere where there are people, there are restaurants and cafés of various cultures. It's also really expensive – even 'cheap' fast food is comparatively more expensive than some other countries. In many restaurants, service is not included on the bill, and it's considered impolite to tip under 15%. In most cafés, change is greatly appreciated as a tip.

Travel can be really expensive in London. From most expensive to least, generally speaking, your options are:

• Owning your own car/vehicle
• Taxis
• Mainline trains
• The underground/Tube/Overground network
• Buses
• Cycling
• Walking

Public transport is generally quite reliable in London, with most Tube services running a train every 3 minutes and most bus routes operating a daytime service of 5-10 minutes, with some offering 24 hour service. The exception to this is travelling on weekends, where planned engineering works are reasonably common, though they limit disruptions as much as possible.

Always use an oyster card in London. They can be bought at all ticket windows and some machines, and it's a card you preload with money to pay for tube and bus travel. Given that buses have recently stopped taking cash, your options are oyster or contactless credit/debit card or paper tickets. Paper tickets are ridiculously expensive and totally unneeded - if you are doing a lot of travelling in a day, and oyster card will cap off at the equivalent day roamer price, and every journey after that is effectively free. (For example, a single paper ticket for zone 1 is £4.80. On an oyster card, it cost £2.30 - under half! And if you make journeys after spending £6.40 on journeys that day, your oyster card will not be charged any more money, and you travel for free until midnight that day.) In theory, a contactless credit/debit card should work in exactly the same way as an oyster, except you don't need to preload it. I haven't tried it out for myself, yet.

Generally speaking, within central London, if a place is only one or two stops on the tube, then it will be faster to walk than get public transport.

Buses can't be hailed from any point on the route and they can't stop at any point on the route except at designated bus stop, unless in exceptional circumstances. Luckily, bus stops are quite distinctive and very common, as below. They always have a list of the buses that will stop there, the rough direction they're travelling in and the name of the stop itself. There is occasionally, but not always, a shelter along with the stop, which often has a map of local bus routes and what nearby stop they can be found at, and a map of night buses. They've recently added codes that can be texted to find out when the next bus will be, if there isn't an electronic display built into the shelter.

Picture sourced from here

Buses are a little more confusing than the tube, and I'd always recommend asking the driver before you pay, if you are unsure about the route and the area.

There is also the option of taking a boat up/down river. Of course, both locations would have to be near the river, but theoretically you could commute from North Greenwich to Blackfriars or Westminster. For infrequent journeys, it's about 4 times more expensive than the tube, but if you were to make that journey every day for a month, it's very similarly priced to the zone 1-2 travelcard for a month. Of course, the tube services more stops and a wider area, so it's unlikely to be better value, but in exceptional circumstances, perhaps!

A smartphone is a great tool to have in London. Lost? You have maps. Want to know if there's a bus route going where you want? There are many free apps available, usually with a tube map in there, too. Want to know if there's a branch of your favourite store nearby? Search for it. That being said, if you are lost in central London, there are helpful little posts with maps and directions to local landmarks quite commonly dotted around.

Most people live outside of central London and commute in to work. Generally speaking, if you can afford to live in zone 1, you are making quite a bit of money. However, there are little pockets of local council houses dotted around central London which are cheaper to live in, but are difficult to get and are becoming rarer.

Generally speaking, west and north London are more affluent areas than east and south London. There are exceptions - Brixton was formally seen as quite a rough area, but lately it's been revitalised as an art/culture/food hub. Similarly, Old Street was run down and shabby, but it becoming quite trendy.

Camden Lock is a great place to visit if you like alternative culture, street markets, music...even just fancy a canalside walk. Places of note include Cyberdog - a cyberpunk clothing/accessories store with the atmosphere of a nightclub; and the Horse Market - named for all the metal horse statues and the fact it once was a stables, you can find vintage clothing, intricate leather work, unique hand made gifts...and a fair bit of tourist-y garbage, too, to be fair. I would recommend taking a canal boat from Little Venice into Camden on a nice day - it's a relaxing journey that takes you through London Zoo and gives you a chance to see an entirely different side of London.

Camden Lock - By Amelia Springett (2011)

Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus aren't actually circuses in the sense of clowns and animals and acrobatics... It comes from the latin word for circle, in this context being a round open space. It's a posh way of saying junction or crossroads, essentially.

So, hopefully this is a helpful short guide for you. If you have any questions, or tips of your own to add, please don't hesitate to comment below!

The Philosophy of Gift Giving

Given that Christmas has come and gone, along with Valentine's Day, and I endured retail hell on both those occasions, I've been thinking a lot about what makes the perfect gift. A good gift says something about the giver as well as the recipient, as does a bad or selfish one!

My main concern when buying a gift for someone, whether it's my lovely fiancée, my closest friends, my family or even a distant relative is it has to be something that they would like and appreciate. Of course, the difficulty is that you know what things they like based on things they already have...so, how to avoid getting them something they already have?

1. Buy them something they wouldn't normally think to get themselves. My mother, for example, likes dark chocolate and nice tea, but tends to buy both inexpensively for everyday use. For mum, getting a small box of 'posh' chocolates with unusual flavours, or a local specialty blend of good loose leaf tea goes down well, and I know it will be something she likes and will use. (a tip on 'consumable' gifts: since they eventually get used up and/or eaten, you can buy similar products in the future, and you'll know they like them, without worrying that they have that already!) Or her boyfriend - he's into his technology and gadgets, so previous Christmas gifts have included touchscreen compatible gloves.
2. Make them something unique. Money isn't always available, and if they don't appreciate a handmade gift from you, they probably don't deserve a gift from you at all. Play to your strengths. You could make them an artistic masterpiece, a collage of their favourite things, a well-thought poem or story, a playlist or mixtape, a little sculpture, knitware...the possibilities are endless. Free yourself from the 'macaroni and glue' idea of 'homemade' gifts, and you might come up with the best thing they ever receive! (I know the best gift I got this Christmas was a beautiful playlist of love songs chosen by my fiancée...I can listen to it anywhere and it never fails to brighten up my day, because all I can think about is her!)
3. Work within your means. Don't get something expensive for people you barely know if you can't afford to (hell, even if you can - it sets up the wrong impression about you to those people). It helps you after Christmas not to get those January blues, and it stops the recipient from getting that awkward 'what if my gift isn't as good?' moments. Gifts are special because they come from you, not because they had a big price tag. Again, if people don't appreciate that, they probably aren't worth the gift you're giving them.
4. Your gift should make them feel special. It should be a gift that you couldn't just give to anyone in the room, because only they would fully appreciate it. It should also be a bit of an indulgence, whether it's a book they always wanted to read but could never find, a food based treat, a perfume that seemed a little too extravagant to buy for themselves...it's about making them feel worth the time, effort and money.

Okay, that's all the positives. I do have some negatives of things I see every day/have experienced myself:

1. Don't assume that because the recipient is 'x' they will appreciate 'stereotype associated with x'. I have been asked what chocolate guys like, what chocolate is best for girls, what chocolates I would buy for a gay couple...it really irritates me! And I'm sure other retail workers over just about every area have similar questions. Just don't. I live with a gal who loves just about all spy/thriller/horror genres, plays first person shooter games...why would you give her something stereotypically girly? Know your recipient.
2. Don't give people toiletries. We know what bodywash we like and where to buy it, and we aren't fooled by a 'giftset' box. (The exception to this - you get them the brand they want that is usually too expensive for 'everyday' use) This also goes for basic cosmetic items for females - you get me a moisturiser or foundation for any occasion, my estimation of you will go way down. It's simultaneously an insult (you're saying I looked bad?) and usually totally unusable for my skin type, complexion, skin sensitivities...trust us, we can buy our own makeup if we want to.
3. Giftcards are a double edged sword. It's slightly more personal than money, but it does reek of 'I have no idea what to get you'. Save for only the most desperate cases and hard to buy for people/people you don't know too well. Also be aware that stores love selling giftcards close to Christmas - it gets your money off you and becomes instant profit, without needing to actually give you a product or service in return. And they know that by limiting the person's spending options to their store, they will get another customer, who will likely spend over the amount of the giftcard to get the product they want, so it guarantees a sale and more money in the future for them.

And a little advice: if you are in a physical store, and a little out of your depth, ask around and pick the brains of the employees. I know I like to be asked interesting questions about the products I'm selling, if it results in a purchase the customer is happy with. Be polite, and try not to do it when you can clearly see that they are busy. It's not only basic human decency, but you will get better advice from it. And if you do leave everything to the last minute before a big holiday, more fool you, and you deserve the resulting headache.

Okay, that's all from me. Want to add to the advice, or agree/disagree with anything I said? Post a comment below!