So Much Further To Go

London is intimidating. It’s a large wary mass, hurriedly trying to go about its business before it starts raining. It has its own set of unwritten rules, that for the uninitiated can make any trip to the city a baffling ordeal. So, after almost six years of learning my way around life in the capital, I’ve taken a stab at pulling together my guide to moving to London. Over the next few posts, I’ll dispense invaluable (aka free) wisdom on whether you should move to London, where you should live, what there is to do, and many other vitally important questions. If you’re already here, then you can see whether you should have bothered. Ever since Dick Whittington and his cat travelled down the A1 in search of streets of gold, people have moved to London. Be it in search of fame, fortune or fun; there are a multitude of reasons why people flock here. But is it really a good idea? Let’s review why exactly you want to move. For a job. It is a sad reality that for certain careers, you wil...

 Almost a decade ago, I went to watch a football match. Nothing too surprising about that, I was a season ticket holder at Nottingham Forest at the time. Before kick-off, I’d got chatting to the bloke sat in front of me. He seemed fairly polite and mild-mannered; a Sunday at the garden centre personified. We were mid-discussion about the wisdom of the team selection, before he excused himself, and turned to face the pitch. Casper Ankergren, the Brighton & Hove keeper, was kneeling in front of their fans, sorting out his boots. “OI ANKERGREN, I BET YOUR FANS FUCKING LOVE YOU SHOWING YOUR ARSE”, and in case there was any doubt, he added “COS THEY’RE ALL BENT”. He then turned back, and calmly continued discussing the form of Lewis McGugan. That was nine years ago, but it’s also still now. With this as a backdrop, the recent news that Jake Daniels is the first professional footballer in England to come out in 32 years is an incredible act of personal bravery. The reaction and sup...

It’s 27 th December 1 . The grandiosity of Christmas is starting to fade, but the lustre of the new year is still in the distance. You’re bored. Your family are bored. Yet tradition dictates you need to collectively vegetate as a family, like Joseph, Mary and all those interlopers two thousand years back. You all despise board games by now. The pubs are all a little weird. It’s raining. Luckily, TV will help, filling the grey silence with technicolour chatter. And inevitably, there’s a 27 th December film showing. You know a 27th December film. These films can’t be too taxing – 3 days of turkey, Quality Street and alcohol have rotted your cerebral cortex too much to follow anything with a plot. They need to be bright, animated, and feature overly loud actors from American sitcoms. It’s Shrek 3, Madagascar, Kung-Fu Panda, the one with Bruce Willis as an animal, Bee Seinfeld. But the most 27 th December film ever is Despicable Me. If you’ve not seen Despicable Me, Steve Carrell ...

I am a Netflix sceptic. Every few months, as I begin to exhaust how much one person can rewatch the good series of Arrested Development, I consider cancelling it. And every time I get to that stage; something comes along that stops me from doing so. Last year, the promise of Gillian Anderson portraying Thatcher as the pantomime villain of the eighties kept the direct debit flowing. This year, it was glimpses of Heartstopper, the coming-out-of-age show based on Alice Oseman’s comics. I was expecting a sweet, mild, and innocent way to while away a few evenings. What I was not prepared for was a two-part binge to leave me feeling hollow and a wistful longing for what could’ve been. I mean, the show was brilliant. An adorable tale of a group of friends navigating their way through secondary school, centring around the anxious and ever-so-slightly-nerdy-in-a-TV-way 1 Charlie (Joe Locke) and his crush on Nick (Kit O'Connor), the star of the rugby team 2 . Beyond Nick and Charlie’s...