The number one reason people in villages give for not wanting to move in London is that it’s “too busy”.
I don’t agree. Sure, there’s a lot to do: restaurants wafting out scents from around the globe, venues for bands playing everything from heavy metal to folk and galleries open all hours, not to mention some of the most exciting landmarks in Europe. But London isn’t all that fast. Slow cooking, slow dancing and slow thinking are all here as well.
The people in my home village who think the over 80s shuffling through the twitten are slow have clearly never been behind a family of foreign tourists trying to fathom the London Underground network, while traversing the heart of King’s Cross tube station.
I have never seen healthy people move as slow as when groups of young girls come within four metres of the Topshop entrance.
In the village I grew up in, two of our cats were hit by cars that were speeding right outside our house. A boy my brother’s age flipped his car 180̊ because he was going so fast through a narrow pinch point in the village. In London you are lucky if you ever reach 40 miles per hour before stopping for a traffic light, speed bump, pelican crossing or bus.
To drive two miles in the countryside takes about six minutes, or 10 if you’re on a very busy bus. In London, two miles can easily take 20 minutes, only slightly quicker than walking it.
London may be a lot of things; too big to know in a short time, too congested and too rude at times, but it is not too busy.
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