please empty your brain below
Renter June 1983 to 25 May 1985. Owner until 13 June 2019. 33 years, but never a Londoner, merely lived there.

scrumpy | 25.08.21 - 7:27 a.m. | #

I've only done 38 years but my wife is a born and bred Londonder and is now 55

kerspatula | 25.08.21 - 7:40 a.m. | #

I was technically born in London, because I was born in Beckenham in *July* 1965, and, technically lived in the borough of Croydon until I was five. But I only realised this very recently. As a child it was made very clear that we lived in Thornton Heath, *Surrey*, and when that became too London for my parents they shipped out to Haywards Heath, and although I worked there for five years 2006-11, I've never lived in London again. Now I live in Yorkshire I feel more of a Londoner than I ever did when I lived in the south east; I notice London accents on the telly, which I would never have done before. But one thing's for sure - I'll NEVER be a Yorkshireperson.

Sarah | Homepage | 25.08.21 - 7:51 a.m. | #

Interesting. I’ve been in London for 7 years and feel totally adapted. I never thought of myself as a Londoner though, but throw in a different nationality and it feels like I never will just because there’s no history and so many things that I’ll never properly know or understand. I do feel like an outsider when I’m out of London though. In some places people do a double take when they hear me speaking a different language. I wonder how harder it would be to blend in in one of those places.

Renata | 25.08.21 - 8:23 a.m. | #

11th of August 1998, I turned up with all my belongings in a van from Brussels and moved in to a dingy flat near Tower Bridge…

Definitely a Londoner!

Southern Heights (Light Railway) | 25.08.21 - 8:46 a.m. | #

23 years - 20 July 1998, moving from the midlands to Finsbury Park.

I love London and couldn’t live anywhere else but feel a bit of a fraud calling myself a Londoner, as much as I’d like to. I have lived here for more than half my life, and all my life since I’ve been able to choose where I live, but when I meet parents at the school gate who went to the same school as their offspring I feel like an interloper.

One of the many wonderful things about our city is that nobody seems to care where you grew up or what you define as - it’s welcoming to all.

Mike on a bike | 25.08.21 - 8:52 a.m. | #

Ok, I confess to never have been a Londoner. In fact I think the only time I ever had an overnight stay was in a dingy hotel near Paddington in 1967. But I have visited loads of it on day trips.

davews | 25.08.21 - 9:00 a.m. | #

Perhaps it would be more accurate to truncate one sentence to read "Indeed he can hardly walk up to the shop".

DGD | 25.08.21 - 9:06 a.m. | #

DG, welcome to London, newbie!😉

Jo W | 25.08.21 - 9:06 a.m. | #

When we were house hunting in a rural area 17 years ago, we saw a house that had a nice bit of land behind it. We asked the elderly owner if he'd ever considered buying it. He said he had, but the owners wouldn't sell it to him because he wasn't a local.

"Oh really? How long have you lived here?"

"Forty years," came the reply.

Ian | 25.08.21 - 9:20 a.m. | #

The question I now ask, especially to myself is why am I still a Londoner, having lived here since 1989 - I will shortly have absolutely no ties with the place.

Surbitonian | 25.08.21 - 9:29 a.m. | #

I want to know the story of the flat inventory.

SM | 25.08.21 - 9:42 a.m. | #

I was born in London (Woolwich) but like you DG grew up just outside it.

Moved permanently to London in 1991 so coming up to my 30th anniversary!

Mikey C | 25.08.21 - 10:11 a.m. | #

Now have "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner" floating round my head!!

Born & bred in London & even stayed in London for uni but about the time you became a Londoner my unbroken record was marred by a work-related move abroad for a few years!
Back in London I live just 5 miles from where I grew up, so I fully identify with being a Londoner.

Though also being half Cornish and spending a significant proportion of my childhood there with family every year I fully identify with that side too, Hence my moniker!

I also want to hear the story about the inventory!

Cornish Cockney | 25.08.21 - 10:18 a.m. | #

I too want to know about the inventory :-)

Joho | Homepage | 25.08.21 - 10:50 a.m. | #

Now I've retired and visit central London less often (only once since lockdown started) I feel less of a Londoner and identify more with my outer London borough and with the city where I grew up.

My mother was born and brought up in SE London (except for a few years with family in Devon during the war) and my father spent his childhood in what was then Surrey, Kent and Middlesex. They moved away from London (with me!) at the age of 30, and by the ends of their lives I think they both felt fully integrated into their adopted city..

timbo | 25.08.21 - 11:12 a.m. | #

I moved with my mother from Basingstoke to London seeking a job after leaving school in July 1967. My father was born in Rotherhithe (though he always said it was Bermondsey) and it was only thanks to Mr Hitler that I was not born a Londoner: my parents evacuated to my mother's home county of Devon soon after my sister was born in October 1940, supposedly in the middle of an air raid.

JohnC | 25.08.21 - 11:14 a.m. | #

Lived in London from birth until 2019, so 47 years. Then did the opposite to you, and moved to Hertfordshire.

Rich C | 25.08.21 - 11:19 a.m. | #

Fact is most 'Londoners' came from somewhere else. That's what makes it such an interesting and exciting place. A city of the World that's outward looking and welcomes people from all over. But now we're called 'the metropolitan elite' and blamed for sucking in investment and creating about a quarter of the country's economic activity. Maybe if Stoke-on-Trent had offered more for a 20 year-old physics student I might have stayed there, but it never could.

ActonMan | 25.08.21 - 12:03 p.m. | #

Have now lived in London continuously since 1997 and prior to that from 1978 to 1985. I was born in the part of Manchester called Old Trafford. I am still an immigrant!

Mike Roberts | 25.08.21 - 12:09 p.m. | #

My dad moved from Pakistan to London in 1947 at the age of 7, and then left at 19 to join the RAF. My Mum's parents (pub landlords) moved to London in 1962 but she left again when she met my dad in 1969 and they moved to Yorkshire (first of many moves). They finally arrived back in London in 1984, when I was 10, but then left again for Berlin in 1989 when I was 15.

I finally moved permanently to London to start University in 1993, and after a life of many moves (and the same for both parents, and indeed all four grandparents), I had grown up never considering anywhere as a hometown. I quickly felt at home here for the first time in my life, and soon identified as a Londoner. Coming up to 28 continuous years now and no plan to leave.

lockedintheattic | 25.08.21 - 12:18 p.m. | #

Seems strange that a tenant pay the council anything. Here in Australia that is the landlord's responsibility.

My city is around 5 million, but we still have our local areas where we are known by sight and at times acknowledged.

I craved the anonymity of a big city when I was young. Not so much now, although I still love our big city.

"Maybe its because I'm a Londoner that I love London Town".

Andrew | Homepage | 25.08.21 - 12:57 p.m. | #

Funny, I *live* in Bristol, and have done for some years but still consider myself a Londoner. I have settled in here very well but still consider it, if it a real term 'a bit of an alien'. Anti London sentiment can be rife in the neighbouring countryside, largely from those that have never, or rarely, visited and I feel a strong duty to counteract it. Ironically, a disproportionate number of friends and colleagues are also from London, drawn here by the cosmopolitan nature of the city with (slightly) more affordable housing.

TomH | 25.08.21 - 12:58 p.m. | #

I've relocated lots of comments today.
The other box is for Londoners who've lived here over 40 years.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 25.08.21 - 2:07 p.m. | #

I, too, became a Londoner in the same year, from March 2001. Stayed with family until I could afford to rent from August. First started off with two part-time jobs, off Tuesday, the most memorable being September 11, when the news interrupted my viewing of Crossroads on TV. Always been an East Londoner, from Manor Park to Wanstead to Leytonstone to Walthamstow to Goodmayes (all rented) and now Barking (owner). Very happy here so far.

EL | 25.08.21 - 4:21 p.m. | #

Lived in London from birth in June 1957 till April this year. Still within 2 miles of Met Line, but the bit that was closed in the ‘30s.

G Lumley | 25.08.21 - 5:06 p.m. | #

I always recall talking to a farmer in Cornwall who had left Cornwall once -- to go to Plymouth. Which he didn't like. So when I said that he had obviously never been to London then, he said, "Why on earth would I want to go there?"

A very fair point.

Me? Londoner in his 60s, with a 10 year gap (the 1990s) working in various places around the world.

Chris | 25.08.21 - 6:45 p.m. | #

Like you I was born in Hertfordshire but only because I was evacuated in the womb. It was sometime in June 1941 that I first slept in the family home in Barking, Essex. So when the GLC was founded in 1965 I automatically became a Londoner without a actually moving.

Ray Purdy | 25.08.21 - 9:46 p.m. | #

You moved to London within a couple of weeks of me. Started university (UCL) in Sept 2001 and moved out in summer 2018. Most of my family (6 of 8 great grandparents) were from London and while I wasn’t born (surrey) or lived (Hertfordshire) there I still felt a Londoner.

David | 25.08.21 - 10:28 p.m. | #

I did not open my 20 year-old bottle of champagne today, but I did have a celebratory bottle of Becks.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 25.08.21 - 11:53 p.m. | #

I was born in the County Borough of West Ham, immediately moved to Leytonstone and soon to Barkingside (both then still administratively part of Essex). When I was five, Barkingside became part of Greater London. Later years saw me working in Colchester, and then living in Leytonstone again. Throughout this time, my parents remained at Barkingside, and after their deaths I moved there once more. Based on an area’s administrative status at the time, I’ve spent six years living in Essex and 55 years in London (split across several periods).

Alan S | 26.08.21 - 9:04 a.m. | #

After some consideration: I may rank as an Orbital Londoner - circling all my conscious life in its gravity, never more than 25 miles from Zone 1 - being sucked in, then spun out again. Certainly all my working life has been in central London, and my children were born just off Tottenham Court Road. I Started south, then Kingston poly, migrated to the very centre, to Soho, via Pimlico and Belgravia, stayed there for a while, then drifted out to Bow, then accelerated out once again to just beyond the M25, this time to the west. Currently contemplating the Asteroid belt..
Am I a Londoner? "Well Yes, But Actually No."

jpmac | 26.08.21 - 11:03 a.m. | #

Moved here after graduation in 1987. Barking, Leyton, Rotherhithe - then the big jump west to the borough of Richmond, where I'm in my third residence. Broken only by three years living in Lausanne. Londoner? Yes, now, though part of me still in rural North Yorkshire where I was schooled.

David | 26.08.21 - 3:50 p.m. | #

Feels like I've been here all me life but then I wrecked my memory by doing too much clubbing in nineties warehouses. What irks me is that anonymity right down to not greeting your immediate neighbour if you don't want to and no eyelids being batted.
Coming from a countryside childhood, I was lucky enough to land in a community of houseboats where everyone said hello and you knew how many sugars they had in their tea and even which cupboard the tea was in. Sublime to the ridiculous.

JP minimus | 26.08.21 - 10:58 p.m. | #

Lived in a rent controlled flat in Bayswater from 78 to 95 having moved there from "Oop North." It still grieves me that i gave that flat up to move to Australia.

Milo | 27.08.21 - 4:37 a.m. | #

I was born in the London Borough of Bromley and have lived here all my life. So 27 years of being a Londoner!

Emma | 28.08.21 - 3:28 p.m. | #











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