You know what also happens in just ONE DAY? London Relocation Services will find your perfect London apartment.

Author:  Colleen

If you’re making an international relocation to London, you’re likely (hopefully) researching as much about your new home as you can. London Relocation agents, for one, will play a big part in making the unfamiliar familiar to you so your relocation to London is fast and seamless. And they can speak to not just the London property market, but the local lifestyle and culture that will become as much a part of your everyday as your new London apartment. So that takes a lot of pressure off you, giving you more time to just kick and read something for pleasure.

And that’s where I come in. If you’ve read any of my previous “London Literacy” posts, you’ll know that my English teacher/reader/writer self loves any poetry or prose set in this fine literary city, and I often encounter it whether I want to or not! The UK’s just a hub like that, as you’ll find for yourself when you move to London…it’s an interesting intersection of the world. So then, while your London Relocation agent will show you 18-25 properties in just one day, I’m going to tell you about my most recent read, One Day. This has been a Kindle bestseller and is now also known for its new film version starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. It seems to be the usual case where the book is better than the movie where reviews go. I haven’t yet seen the film, but I loooved the book.

As the title would imply, One Day by David Nicholls is about one day…but not just one year. It follows its two main characters, Dexter and Emma, over the course of two decades on the anniversary of the same day they first become friends and initiate some major sexual tension. This tension ensues as life takes them on separate paths that converge and diverge while the two friends tread the fine line of platonic and romantic love. The characterization is so well developed; Em and Dex feel very real with all their flaws and virtues and the way their different personalities and intellects bounce off each other. To hate a character like Dexter most of the way through and still have him endear himself in the end is really saying something. And dialogue and narration both are tremendously witty; I don’t think I’ve ever laughed out loud so much reading a novel, so I wasn’t prepared for how much it would then move me as well. Just when it seemed like a light read, it became something very human and touching, and it’s one of those stories that lingered with me long after I’d finished.

And it’s largely set in London. (There it is! This post does have some relevance to this blog!) In addition to being a very fun read, I as a London expat of course got a kick out of recognizing the locations of its settings. Though it starts out in Edinburgh, Scotland, the book eventually features London neighborhoods like Soho, Hampstead, Highgate, Earls Court, Hackney, Richmond and…shoot, I can’t remember them all, but you’ll find out when you read it! It gives more a sense of the real London where people really live versus the big sites where the tourists frolic. And also makes you question: does the NHS still provide hideous, standard-issue eyeglasses like that? You see London from the middle-to-lower class day-to-day, just-gotta-pay-the-bills perspective to the affluent, city-is-your-playground one—and even then, all that glitters is not gold. All around, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it, particularly if you’re making the London move yourself one day!

The weather is SO gorgeous outside, my recommended day-touring on a day like this would be to head North.  Catch the Northern Line to either Archway or Highgate tube stations and catch the afternoon tour at Highgate Cemetery.  You can tour the East cemetery on your own for £3, seeing notable graves such as that of Karl Marx, then partake in the guided tour of the cemetery’s atmospherically overgrown West cemetery, also the resting place of reputable people such as the Rossetti family.  Under the shade of the immense trees (a few of which are Redwoods from America’s West coast), you’ll meander through the lush vegetation and look on the chipped and eroded outcroppings of Victorian-style gravestones; perhaps the most unexpected part of this tour is the “Egyptian Avenue,” crypts fashioned after ancient Egyptian burials, which was the vogue thing to do in 19th-century England, evidently.

From Highgate Cemetery, you are in walking distance of the nearly 800 green acres of Hampstead Heath.  Tour this immense park at your leisure, hiking the hills, sitting by the duck ponds, or even swimming in the designated human ponds   A great pub located just outside the Northwest edge of the heath is the Spaniards Inn, where you don’t yet have to forego the outdoors when you seat yourself in the sunshine of their beergarden.  Otherwise, make your way to the high street for any assortment of sidewalk cafes and boutiques.  From here, you can hop the tube at either Hampstead or Belsize Park stations.

Depending on how your day is progressing, you can close it out here or perhaps take advantage of the extended summer daylight hours and make your way to the darling village of Primrose Hill (via tube to Chalk Farm or walking) for dinner and to watch the sunset from Primrose Hill itself, which, like Hampstead Heath, offers an outstanding city view.

This is a trek that not many tourists make, but when you actually move to London, make a point to explore these serene, residential Northern villages.