then and now

london 2.21pm 6.1C cloudy (lowest temp was 0.5C this morning). tuesday 2016

first day of the new year back to work for those who are not on holiday. and as expected delays on the tube lines. and increased train prices. these happenings should not be a surprise. it occurs every year around this time, without fail.

what people should bend their mind to doing is to seek a way to get rid of that problem, the problem of getting to work and to do so as cheaply as possible.

my solution, which i have done in all the years i worked in london is to find a bedsit, then when that gets scarce(because as their houses rise in value, they all sold up) to find a shared flat, and rent a room in one close to work. it is a very easy solution to all this angst about rising transport costs and delays and disruptions to the tube service. now with the bikes for hire service it makes it even easier to reduce the cost of getting to work.

it was a easy life then. surely it must be the same for any single guy living and working in london now. to be young and gay and in london is great, then, and i am sure just as great now.

i dont recall we hear of high train prices and expensive accommodation. so perhaps these problems did not surface for us in those days. i am talking of the mid 80s to mid 90s. no one i know complain of it or even mentioned it. i myself was able to get bedsits costing £80 a week and that is at the high end, i got a huge bedsit to myself. it was in balham.  my friend got a single bedsit for £40 a week. this was 1990. then we had to leave when the landlord said he has sold the house to a housing association. and that was how i ended up buying my flat. so i went from living in a bedsit in balham to having my own 2bedroom flat in westminster. those were the days when we could do that. haha. 

 in fact, we enjoy eating out and going to the clubs. it was all very affordable.  and i kept a car too. so even that was affordable. this was the days before the internet. i consider those the golden years. i dont know anyone young now so dont know really whether and how life has changed for them. is there anyone below 30 who keeps  a blog about their gay life in london, i wonder? and how different would his life be from mine when i was that age? perhaps like me, he too did not bother to think about the future. i just lived for the present, and never planned ahead. it just never occurred to me to plan the future. it was exciting enough to be in london and young and live the gay life here.

truly what they say about the past being another country is true. that london was really another country from now.

ah well, i am really glad i lived through those years.