Signs of being a Londoner

How to tell if you are a Londoner

We've had a discussion on this blog about whether the 7 Million Londoners, One London campaign is good or bad. Whether it excludes people who aren't Londoners, or unites people? Whether the Everyone's London campaign which followed was a way of addressing these general feelings or just a way to attract tourists and out of towners back into London?

Last night I was watching a repeat episode of Dead Ringers on TV and one of the guys (Mark Perry I think) did an absolutely brilliant impression of Mayor Ken Livingstone being interviewed by Newsnight's Kirsty Wark.

He had that smug, always right, nasal sounding twang, of Ken's down to perfection. One of things that he kept repeating to counter Kirsty's more difficult questions was "Well clearly you're not from London are you?" - which I also always find a top thing to say when you're losing any argument about London.

Now this reminded me of a cool quiz that I blogged about some time ago (Feb 2004) about "Signs to tell that you had been living in London too long" - or rather ways to show that you were now actually a Londoner regardless of where you came from in the first place. I thought it would be interesting to do the quiz again to see how much (if anything) had changed due to the recent attacks on London, my responses are in the comments below. It's quite fun and I'd quite like to see your responses too.

1. You say "the City" and expect everyone to know which one.

2. You have never been to The Tower of London or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton

3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Dorset on a map.

4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.

5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.

6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

7. You've considered stabbing someone.

8. Your door has more than three locks.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

10. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a garden.

11. You consider Essex the "countryside".

12. You think Hyde Park is "nature".

13. You're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain".

14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.

15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.

16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.

17. You actually take fashion seriously.

18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.

19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.

20. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.

22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.

23. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.

24. You don't hear sirens anymore.

25. You've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides.

26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.

27. Your cleaner is Portugese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is Halal, your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Philippino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.

28. You wouldn't want to live anywhere else until you get married.

29. You roll your eyes and say 'tsk' at the news that someone has thrown themselves under a tube train.

30. Your day is ruined if you don't get a copy of Metro on the way to work.

If you do the quiz and you have a blog, you might want to blog your response and just link to it in the comments. If you haven't got a blog - it's worth answering in Word and then cutting and pasting as the comments box might time out!

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Saturday, September 03, 2005 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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