Shedding Pounds

Right then, let's look at one of the things about London which ain't so fabulous and which I glossed over while I was there.

Cost of Living
Now, you don't move to the world's second most expensive city (Moscow took the lead, fancy that!) and expect it not to be...you know...costly and if you did, well then you shouldn't have been allowed outside your polyurethane bubble-diaper.

This is something which a few naysayers and honest-meaning worriers brought up during my last few weeks before departure. My response was usually along the lines of "Well, the seven million people living there seem to manage somehow. I'll just have to figure out how they do it". Now, of course, it's not worth getting into how every class and strata of those seven million survive seeing as how I myself don't fit into every demographic - I'm not every man or even every woman.

So the question is, how does some twat who is on the other end of a degree but not working at a highly professional level get by (while pursuing the arts in one form or another)? Well the answers seemed to boil down to...

1) Be a Trustafarian
2) Live with those who begot you
3) Live well outside of the parts of London which generally entice young, idealistic folk to move there (essentially zones one and two).
4) Live with a reasonably large number of house mates (as I did).
5) Squat (for reasons unknown to man or beast, VICE UK repeatedly pushes this option).

The thing I learned over time was that contract work, like what I did at Network Rail and in Barbican, generally pays a decent amount more than entry level work in anything which could lead to a career. The average starting pay in non-temp work is fifteen thousand pounds annual and honestly, (within option four) you have to live incredibly frugally without ever getting sick...unless you are comfortable with contributing to the epic personal debt phenomena England is experiencing. It's not as bad as the housing crisis etc going on in the U.S. but it certainly struck me as a genuine problem, unlike the battalion of pedophiles which news outlets liked to convince the public were inhabiting every corner of England which a parent isn't actively observing.

Giving this, I'm not surprised that property investments are unto a national sport - despite estate agents generally being viewed in the same camp as used car salesmen, lawyers and street corner DVD salesmen. As with just about everything in London, the difference between being a renter and an owner is magnified to extremes that would be comedic if they weren't painfully real.

All this made it very, very difficult to save money and it seemed my options were to work dead end temp jobs that allowed me to save a bit while living in a humble ensuite or I had to look into living in such a manner that I wouldn't be taking advantage of London at all, while working an entry level job. Add on that the vast majority of entry level film work was non-paying and, well...

I appreciate that Toronto isn't a cheap town, but given that Toronto isn't Moscow then by default it has to be more affordable to live in. In fact, so long as I manage to avoid heading to Russia's capital - SOMEHOW - then I shall be living in a more affordable city.

As I've said, I'm not crossing London off my list of places to live forever - but if I return, it will be after I've made myself either a fat wedge or employable at a much higher level.

Addendum: The rest of the Emma Clarke farcical tube announcements. She was fired after London Transport found out about these, which is kind of fair, but I'm not too worried for her as this was but one of several freelance jobs and not her sole bread n' butter. I just wonder what the tube will sound like as they make the transition from her voice to someone else...or if they'll just go on the hunt for an Emma Clarke impersonator!