The Patreon Letters - 23rd September, 2017

Hey friends,

This week I have been busy as hell, and not in the usual way of getting a bunch recorded and edited for the site, but the regular kind where you go outside and talk to people. All the work I do, and the vast majority of my friendships, are online, so this summer it's been extremely rare to talk face-to-face with people other than my family. This means I'm really lonely, and I know this is a common problem in a world where so many of us have forged connections and explored our identities in online spaces and aren't lucky enough to have similar opportunities offline. Think of it as the curse of being just too queer and cool, because it softens the blow.

So it was nice to live life the other way this week; I took a coach across the country (that is about 120 miles, for the Americans reading) and stayed with friends in Bath for a few days. I had a really good time, and did not spend any of it playing video games, so instead of the usual writing about A Media Thing you're going to get a little musing about the trip. It's a little different, but it's still good.

Let's go.

I live in London, which can charitably be described as "not San Francisco." It is a hell city that is impossible to live in, the still beating heart of a long dead empire that likes to act like it's a multicultural and liberal metropolis. I got to watch popular belief in that claim dissipate in real time, as the last twenty years have been ones of intense gentrification, the costs of housing, transport and literally everything now so far above the average wage that anyone who isn't working in a corporate job can afford that everyone I still talk to is getting the fuck out of here as soon as possible.

I hate it in the way that someone who lives in it can, but it's a city that I am used to. The train into the city centre costs fifteen pounds but it also takes fifteen minutes. I never have to wait more than five minutes for a bus. My local town is a short walk away, and honestly so is the next one. This immediacy is something that my brain has grown used to and almost dependent on; I walk into town every day and I feel wrong if I don't fit it in my routine. My family is moving soon to a house in the middle of nowhere, a thirty minute drive to the nearest town, which is also in the middle of nowhere. Barring suddenly being able to afford my own place - which, come on - I'm going to be moving with them and I'm fucking terrified.

So as you can imagine, I'm conflicted about London. It's an awful city that I hate, but I know I'm going to miss it. It's too big, too expensive, and actively hostile to live in. But it kinda pretends to be something else, something inclusive, something more than a bunch of stockbrokers, really old buildings, and infinite suburbs.

The first thing you see when you get off the bus in Bath is a TARDIS model which, instead of saying 'police box,' says 'polite box.' It is easily the most insufferably British thing I have ever seen in my life. Bath does not pretend. Bath is extremely fucking old and extremely fucking English and will not allow you a second to think otherwise. Pedestrians and cars alike seemingly obeyed the traffic laws. It's nothing like London.

I don't travel much (read: ever), so it was really nice to spend a few days outside of London and remember that it's not in anyway representative of anywhere else in the country. I'm both too poor and too busy to afford to see other places regularly, not to mention that I hate pretty much every tourist attraction. But I would like to stay with friends more, and not just spend all my time in the same room on the same road in the same awful, awful city.

This isn't something I think is actually going to happen, but it would be nice. I like seeing people face to face occasionally.