Author: elizabethnash1991

Leaving London for Sweden

| elizabethnash1991

 

Screen-Shot-2017-11-25-at-11.48.45-1400x600I might not have been certain of what I wanted to do post-graduation, but I knew I wanted to do it in London. That was my one goal – get to London. Everyone was moving there, everyone had jobs, or internships, or post-grad study, and I wanted to get in on it. And, after umpteen applications to every low-paid gig from Harrow to Kingston, at the end of the summer of 2014, a miracle occurred. I was offered an internship at a fashion label, with a view to it becoming my fulltime job.

 

And become my fulltime job it did, and some. I was scraping a living, firstly with a trying 2.5 hour commute each way whilst I tried to gather the coin for a rental deposit, and then in a dodgy flatshare in north London, which resulted in me losing a lot of money to a nefarious faux-landlord. Things started looking up slightly when I moved west with some friends from uni, into a charming, dilapidated pile near Maida Vale, but the job wasn’t getting any better. ‘Everyone eats shit at the first job,’ I reasoned with myself, sinking yet another weekday bottle of Blossom Hill that was completely out of budget. ‘We’re all pinching pennies and constantly on the piss.’ This was true, and I was in the industry I’d always hoped to be in, at a reputable label, with a 9-5 – if a poorly paid one. But I was miserable, stretching the limit of my overdraft, and making increasingly worse choices in my professional and personal life. My self-esteem was rock bottom, and so was my bank account. I was crying more frequently than a teething toddler, and laughing like a banshee mere minutes later. It was a time of intense upswings and soul-flattening lows. So far, so familiar to a lot of readers, undoubtedly.

 

In the summer of 2016, I decided to bite the bullet and pack in my horrible job. It was a tricky, tricky decision, and as I hadn’t had the time or energy to apply to much else, I didn’t have another position lined up. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to stay in fashion, let alone what roles I should be looking for. I got myself blacklisted from a lot of couture houses for my clumsy cover letters and inadequate experience, and thought about going back to uni. Then came a fateful holiday.

 

Not long after leaving my job, I went on a trip to Stockholm and Barcelona with friends, ostensibly for a bit of breathing room and relaxation time, but it ended up being pretty reflective, too. Arriving in Stockholm was extraordinary – a punch in the gut. I hadn’t really considered anywhere but London (and perhaps New York – cheers Gossip Girl) to develop a career and carve a life, but there was something about this clean, compact city situated on the edge of the Baltic that turned my head. I spent four days there, trying to understand these ‘I’m home’ feelings that were permeating my body. I put it down to feeling a bit lost and frightened with my newfound unemployment and mounting debts, and a desperation to root myself somewhere. But the following week, in Barcelona, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sweden. I was completely enamoured with the city, the people, the lifestyle – all of which I’d only got a split-second taste of.

 

Only weeks later, a friend texted saying that her boyfriend was looking to hire a copywriter on his Stockholm-based e-commerce team, at another fashion label. I was floored – the coincidence was too much to believe. Fashion. Copywriting (I’m an English Lit graduate). STOCKHOLM. The stars were truly aligning. I interviewed via Skype, expressed genuine desire to give Swedish life a crack, and was hired within a few days.

 

And then came the complicated part – the logistics of moving my whole life abroad, alone. Finding a flat, making friends, establishing some sort of routine; it all had to be done. And yet, thinking back, I don’t recall any real difficulty. Things seemed to slot into place, one after the other, like it was all meant. It was summer in Stockholm, the best time of year. Swedes, unfairly labelled as being reticent and difficult, were at their sunny best, making me feel welcome wherever I went. The Pride parade took place the weekend I arrived, and it felt like a welcome party, thrown just for me. I was finally home.

 

Of course, it wasn’t as seamless an operation as I’m implying, but I work for a fantastic company with a great relocation package, I had the privilege of working for the most caring, understanding and brilliant boss in the game (since moved onwards and upwards, missed daily), and I had the benefit of knowing a few people here prior to moving. But more than anything, in hindsight, as much as London is the goal for a lot of British graduates, I have come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t ready for it. There’s nothing wrong with London, and there’s so much I miss: the proximity to everyone I’ve ever known, the late-night runs to the off-licence, The Globe of Notting Hill and its reliably sweaty basement nights, the inescapable presence of people and cultures from all over the world. But I didn’t know how to say ‘no’, and so I lived an excessive kind of lifestyle that I couldn’t maintain. It’s right for a lot of people, but not for my freshly graduated self. Maybe I’ll be back there one day, with more will-power and a salary that allows me to stay out of the black. We’ll see.

 

It was a risk, but I’ve just celebrated my second birthday since moving here (ugh, 26. Gross), and I have never been happier. An international move might not work for everyone, but, then, nothing does, does it? What does work, though, is blind faith and an unwillingness to let yourself slide back to where you were at your most wretched. Don’t wait. Just leap.

This article originally appeared on www.twentymileclub.com

MANDEM FM

| elizabethnash1991

The usual chaos with one sombre moment of Wes Anderson discussion – playing music only from the Pre 2000 era, we journey to the VengaRoom, to pondering cart-wheel changing conundrums.

Mandem FM

| elizabethnash1991

This one’s a goodie – more serious than usual, a festival themed show hijacked by the world’s tallest music aficionado, Joe Stone of world famous Joechella.

London: Mega Metropolis and Homey Village?

| elizabethnash1991

London-MegapolisCast your minds back to when you were forced, kicking and screaming (or in my case – consumed voraciously), to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If you recall, Mrs Bennett’s exclusive life goal was to set her daughters up with landowners; the more land the better, and if he had an income to match – well, it was a done deal. Apart from sprawling pads, what did Bingley and Darcy have in common? It certainly wasn’t temperament – no, it was that neither lived in London. Pastoral idyll and eye-watering wealth was enough for the ultimate Regency heartthrobs, without the hustle and bustle of city dwelling. One might pop down to settle one’s accounts, watch some bare-knuckle boxing, but generally one didn’t stay for more than a few days at a time. Vulgar things happened in London.

Fast forward 100 years or so. The wealthiest still owned their various swathes of British countryside, but did they live there all year round? Perish the thought! London was the place to be, the cultural Mecca of the empire, the envy of all the colonies. In typical imperial fashion, it was considered the go-to for intellectual debate and expansive thought. Their estates were left in the capable (if slightly grubby) hands of their land managers, while the owners swanned around at society galas, reaping the material rewards of the farmers’ expertise.

In the present day, we find ourselves in some sort of aesthetic limbo. London, is one of the world capitals for creativity and design, as well as finance and business. Each September, the suburbs and home counties are abandoned by bright-eyed and bushy tailed school-leavers looking to find their fortunes in the Big Smoke. However, with transport links being as they are, and London house prices being as they are, more and more people are choosing to live outside of the city and brave an hour-plus commute each day.

The ‘it crowd’ can’t make their minds up, they like to have their cake and eat it. Although typically in possession of a rambling brick number in leafy Ladbroke Grove some such trendy spot (looking at you, Laura Bailey), the elite of the fash-pack also tend to have a getaway ‘cottage’ (read: manor) in Somerset or North Yorkshire. Ah, to be amongst those privileged few! BFC cultural ambassador and Vogue contributing editor Bailey allowed the Vogue photographers into her bucolic paradise in 2012 and it ticked every box, from grazing livestock to obligatory kitchen AGA.

As well as property, it is arguably seen as classier to have social events and parties outside of the city. Tatler goes wild for screaming reels in the Highlands, and London weddings have started to seem a little tacky. Look at the likes of Mossy, London’s favourite hell-raiser, who chose to hold her 2011 marriage ceremony to Jamie Hince in a village church in the Cotswolds. More recently, although there was a London wedding, Poppy Delevingne’s city nuptials to Benedict Cumberbatch-alike James Cook seemed like more of a precursor to the main event in Morocco later that year (in custom Pucci, obviously).

If an actual departure from London is just too much to handle (emotionally and financially), fear not – there are now a raft of London boroughs that claim to have that village appeal within 20 minutes from Oxford Circus. Highgate Village remains one of the most expensive place to live in the capital, closely followed by Notting Hill, Primrose Hill, Wimbledon and Putney. A whole crowd of trendies, from Nick Grimshaw to Daisy Lowe, have taken refuge in these mock-suburban spots.

The question remains: why do people seek a quiet life within one of the world’s most populous cities? There are arguments for a community a feel, a world that harks back to that camaraderie of pre-war Britain, when the air was slightly cleaner and nobody locked their back door at night. Babysitters were ten-a-penny, and you only had to mutter that you were out of Hovis under your breath for thirty slices to come flying through your window, pre-toasted and with a selection of preserves shortly behind, courtesy of your much beloved neighbours. But why then, don’t people simply up sticks and go to the real countryside forever more?

Personally I think it is our millennial need to ‘have it all’; wanting to be able to put infants to sleep without fear of them being woken up by sirens at all hours – but equally being able to nip to the off-licence for a 2009 bottle of Malbec at 3am if the fancy strikes you. We are, seemingly, unwilling to compromise. We like the option to be able to live fast or slow, as we see fit day by day. So does London’s unfolding future as a mega-metropolis intimidate us, and make us create fake communities to comfort us? Or are we just spoilt for choice in our thrilling capital and greedily want to have all the options? All in all it seems as usual the conclusion is; there’s nothing London can’t give us.

This article originally appeared on LONDNR