Leaving London

After 15 years in London, I'm finally leaving the city for greener pastures. While I have never been busier with sessions as I have been in the last year, the increasing crime, wealth disparity and sub-standard living conditions in London is no longer worth living in such a hostile place.

The fear of getting my car broken into for the 3rd time in a year, being violently attacked and robbed at 20mph for my phone that it badly fractured my leg, watching landlords pay off their 2nd mortgage as I spend 18 months nearly dying due to their extreme negligence and criminal behaviour has made me realise all of that just isn't worth living in London anymore. It has become a miserable place where even above-average earners can't even enjoy everything the city has to offer because the cost of living has become some extreme that I could have 3 seperate mortgages on 3 seperate whole ass houses and still go on holiday twice a year with what it costs to just put a (very badly maintained) roof over my head.

I never even thought owning a home was possible because having grown up in the largest city in Canada, living on-and-off in New York City for a few years before moving to the UK in 2011, living in an absurdly expensive international city full of the joys of city-life is all I have known my entire life.

While I am grateful for the necessary life skills it has instilled in me, I have also realised it is no way to live long-term... especially when your muscles are so tense that a back massage feels like you're being stuck in a hydraulic press.

I would like to own a house that is shitty because I made it shitty myself. Not because a greedy landlord doesn't want to spend a couple hundred pounds to fix something that he is legally required to. I would like to have my own proper large industrial studio space and dungeon where I can session from, film and work on my myriad of leather/3d printed/metalwork projects. I would like to wake up and not think about how my 15 years of hard work has given me nothing to show for it. I want to give back to the community and have a space where I can be as creative as I want. People come to London to make music/art/fashion/etc... and network like their life depends on it but what is the point of living like you are a burden in an unwelcoming city if you can't even find spare time to do the art you came here to do?

I am moving to Sheffield on 1st July and will be sessioning from there and surrounding cities. It is a short drive between Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham and York so every so often I will do little trips to the aformentioned cities as I know many of you have begged me to come up north for over a decade because the thought of coming into the M25 fills you with an overwhelming sense of dread.