half a year on
six lessons I've learned in six months living in London
Hello and welcome to clipboard, a weekly newsletter with occasional hiatuses about doing your best. This Sunday, I'm reflecting on six months of living in London, and a few things I've learnt since moving across the world.
This week marked six months since my wife and I moved from Auckland, New Zealand to London. It's a milestone, because before we moved, everyone told us that it would take about six months until we felt truly settled. At least financially speaking, that has borne out for us - this is the first month we've started to feel like we can go out for dinner or buy a new pair of shoes without eating dal for a week to make up for it.
In other ways, though, I still feel somewhat like a visitor here. I haven't spent any time here in winter, for example, which feels like a crucial part of building a London patina on your soul. My social circle is still mostly people I knew in New Zealand (meeting new people is hard!), and outside of my morning coffee stop, I'm not quite a regular anywhere yet.
Six months is a long time, though, and I've learned some things along the way. Here are six lessons from six months.
moving countries is way harder than people say
Moving overseas is an integral part of the upper-middle-class New Zealander experience. My parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles all to a person spent years of their lives living in places other than those they were born or grew up in. At the moment, New Zealand is seeing record numbers of emigrants as my peers look around at the direction of travel and wonder if the grass might be greener, whether in terms of career progression, social opportunities or cultural experiences. All that said - it is so hard to do this! It's incredibly expensive, isolating (thank god for my wife and friends who are here too), and complex to settle in a new place. This has been a very rewarding experience, but one filled with a lot more anxiety, struggle and emotion than I expected.
there is good coffee here
One of the biggest lies people say about the UK is that the coffee here is no good. Of course, there is bad coffee around, but if you go to Costa or Pret expecting a banger brew, that is on you! London and the UK has a great specialty coffee scene, and I have had some of the best coffees of my life here.
don't trust people's advice if they don't live here now
Similar to the experience of getting married, people have a lot of tips when they find out you're going to move here. My note on this is: if people don't live in London now, don't rely on their tips about specifics, like which neighbourhood to live in or where is cool to hang out. This is a city in flux, with cycles of gentrification and development taking place all the time, so if your aunty lived here twenty years ago, her notes on which areas are a bit dodgy might not quite align with the reality on the ground nowadays. The most relevant advice I got was general in nature, and mostly along the lines of "it really does get better," which it does.
leave the house
My workplace has been undergoing a back and forth about returning to the office over the past year or so, and while I acknowledge that my colleagues with kids, real responsibilities or access needs have reasons to upweight their work from home time, for me the point of this move was to experience the outside world. Leaving the house can be the hardest thing in the world to do, but it's the only way to experience something you never have before.
go people watching
The magic of this place is in the people. Every single day I spot someone who is a completely new genre of person I had never seen before. People watching is a great way to spend a weekend morning, whether to judge other people's decisions, get style inspiration or broaden your understanding of the impact of online trends on people IRL. My favourite spot to do this is London fields, by the outdoor gym where shirtless guys in jeans do pull ups while the weirdest and wildest East London folks wander with their normal parents from Sydney and Surrey.
have a go to pint order
I love UK pub culture. It's an easy solution for something social to do, and there are good pubs all over the place. In order to navigate the regular pub visits, though, you need a go to order of something that comes from a tap or a soda gun to minimise time spent thinking at the bar. Mine is generally a Guinness, but soft drinks, cider, one spirit and a simple mixer are all acceptable. Just don't be the person who orders a Hugo Spritz at the local boozer. Save it for the quirky wine bar.
clips
🎶 I wrote this newsletter listening to two musical collections: the latest edition of Foster Kamer's Summer Friday radio on Substack, a cool if somewhat inconvenient use of the platform, and Blood Orange's new album Essex Honey, a lovely return for one of the coolest musicians in my opinion. Both great soundtracks for your lazy late summer vibes!
👟 Speaking of late summer, this week saw the first prolonged spell of rain I've experienced since moving here, and now I need to acquire some wet-weather appropriate clothing. Top of the list is footwear, and because the Salomon XT-6 has been torched to all hell, I am tossing up between Gore-Tex Mojitos from Scarpa or a classic Blundstone boot. Next up will be some outerwear, a vintage Barbour is definitely on the list and also thinking about something a bit warmer for when the temperature dips.
🎬 We went to see the Thursday Murder Club movie in its limited cinema run, and can certainly recommend now that it has hit Netflix - perfect fun for the whole family if you have a spare evening. Although I wish Pierce Brosnan would stop trying to do accents - you're not that guy, Pierce!
📰 A few great fashiony things I've read online recently: The Bengal Stripe on style authority and why the coolest people are those who wear the same clothes all the time, Magasin Men's on how to "style" your clothes, not just wear them, and HTSI's final interview with Giorgio Armani.
👕 I took a trip into the tourist warzone of Notting Hill to take a look at the new Autumn Winter stock at The Garbstore, perhaps my favourite menswear boutique in London despite the annoying location. A few favourites: Beams Plus bringing stripy long sleeves back, TDR's excellent cotton knitwear (I own two jumpers in this cut and love them both), and buzzy knits from Howlin'. Also, if you want to see what £649 dirty jeans look like in person, you can find those too.
🔋 I got my phone battery replaced at the Apple Store this week and it has been a life changing move - my phone is three years old but feels notably snappier and the battery lasts as if it's brand new. A reminder to those of you (myself included) who will lose your minds over the new iPhone this week even though you have a perfectly good one at home already!
That's all for clipboard this time around, thanks for reading! As always, if you enjoy clipboard, share it with a friend, and if you'd like to get in touch, go old school and drop me an email or reach out to grab coffee! See you next time.