Tube/Train - London commuting

Please don't begin to think I'm trying to be in any way critical here, I'm really not. But out of mild curiousity only, why would it feel so wrong for him to live and mix in a more diverse community for a while?

I've always really enjoyed experiencing other cultures and really getting to know those from them. I think it's socially healthy in fact. The more people choose to stay within their own tribes, the less they understand the others and the less the others understand them.

That's not to suggest that by doing so it needs to undermine or restrict, in any way, one's chosen path in life or the beliefs and practices that may or may not go with it.

Just my view, not trying to influence or lecture here I promise, and I'm more than conscious that it's none of my business! 😉

Fair enough, it's a view, and I can see how the temptation to include easy access to a ready made support function could be compelling on a personal basis. But, on the "bigger picture" points, I've always seen integration as the best antidote to persecution, and indeed any form of encouraged cultural "eugenics" as at least discomforting.

However, I'm very much aware that this is all getting a bit too unnecessarily deep on a discussion about London travel arrangements. 😉

Wishing your son well in his new job and home. It's clear you have his best interests at heart.

Thank you both. I fully agree about integration but sometimes the assimilation is too strong and pepole lose the identity they were trying to hold on to, whilst still wishing to be fully active members of the wider community. It is hard to explain to someone who is not really a minority. Strangely, if I were to emigrate to Israel, I would be losing one sense of minority and gaining another - that of an 'Anglo', so I will never gain the benefit of being fully integrated into society.

A few years ago we had a 10pm Monday night meet up in our local pub each week, all wearing skullcaps but otherwise looking fairly 'local'. One week a bloke came up to us and told that 'it disgusting you sitting here - it's not right!' Astonished at his antisemitic outburst another local came up to us and explained that this bloke was Jewish but had married out and was now upset that having given up what he saw as a life of restriction for one of freedom, he discovered that whatever restrictions we abide by, going to the pub and generally enjoying ourselves are not included in them...


The job search has not been as successful as we had hoped and I suspect that the pandemic has a lot to answer for that. He got a 1st in his degree so should be on the radar of some of the larger quality firms but many of them recruit within the pool the existing trainees come from. One firm is known for pretty taking anyone with a double-barrelled name irrespective of quality of candidate.

It won't be forever and one day he may return to take over the family 'empire'...

Since I started in Surveying 32 years ago, my shortest commute was under three miles and my longest now is about 7.5 miles. The shorter one took longer in time than the longer one does now.

I only moved to Reading to be near a job in the mod-90s, I had been living in Kingston-upon-Thames and the commute was such torture that I upped and moved. Had no idea it would be for the rest of my working life (as it now appears). I would never have chosen to live here I don't think, but for that job. After that job I took one in Maidstone which was a shift work job, so the commute, although long and involving the M25, wasn't too horrendous as I mainly avoided peak times, but it did get tiring after 2 years and I found "any old job" nearer to home again. All subsequent jobs have been within a few miles of home, and now my current has has moved to my spare bedroom. I never moved to be near the job in Kent because by then I had bought a flat and it wasn't so easy to up sticks, and also Mrs A had come into the equation so we had 2 work locaitons to consider. In about 2003/4 we had bought a proper house, but then decided we wanted to be in/nearer London, and so put it on the market and had an offer accepted in Teddington - and then the bomb expoloded. There was a child on the way. Quickly deceided we didn't want the hassle of baby and house move, and perhaps a child would be better off growing up here anyway.

So it's all been random and coincidental where I've laid may hat. Having graduated in languages I'd always envisioned a life abroad - but it turned out that it was my spouse who was the one living life abroad and I've ended up living within a stone's throw of my birth place even though I had no plans to do so, in fact quite the opposite.

Events, dear boy, events.

I can't imagine restricting myself to a certain area however just because of my culture or ethnicity or (lack of) religion. I suppose that's a factor of my sepcific backgrounds and that fact that most of my family either moved away from my hometown or are such utter pains in the behind that I'm glad to have nothing to do with them now.

Interesting to hear the persepctives of you EIII and your family, totally alien concepts to me.