I love London town. Born in the West Ham, like many of my ancestors. Lived here 1956-60, 1978-81, 199192, and I've now been here since 2001. I've lived all over the city at various times, but now I'm reduced to a two-bedroom flat in Hither Green, Lewisham.
London is a wonderful, exasperating, contradictory place in which to live. It's ridiculously expensive (except for the things like museums which are free, it's polluted (but full of parks and trees), and the transport system seems to be falling apart (although my local train service has got much better recently). There's a great since of being in the political, economic and cultural centre of the UK, or at least England, as well as in a truly international metropolis, in that sense perhaps only matched by New York. England without London would be like coffee without caffeine.
It's also where I feel I have roots, even though I was brought up in Kent, and spent much of my adult life in Sheffield. There isn't a part of it which doesn't have personally memories for me or my family, not to mention reverberant historical associations. I'm readumg quite a few historical books at the moment, and every corner of London illustrates the text. For example, I'm reading a life of Henry VIII at the moment and his greater and lesser houses are all over Greater London, including nearby Eltham and Greenwich.
Anyway, I hope to develop this page soon, and include some recent photos. If you want more photos and are a Mac user, you can get them on my iDisk public folder, username "andrew_milton". In the meantime, here are a couple of pics from the New Year Day Parade. More available on request.
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This material is copyrighted by Andrew Milton but may be reproduced without formal permission or charge for personal or in-house use only. (c) Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001