Why London gloom beats LA glitz

Acclaimed novelist Simon Stephenson left Hackney for Hollywood, only to find a dose of regret

IT WAS Samuel Johnson who wrote, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life". Still, he penned those words in 1777, long himself stuck between stations on the Northern line, returned to his bicycle to find somebody had stolen the saddle, or had to try to get home from the 02 after a concert. When I left London a decade ago I had been confident that the most famous regular at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese had got it wrong. It was not life that I was tired of. It was London.

A decade before, I'd arrived from Glasgow to work as a doctor, and had found myself a flat to share in Hackney. The pride I had felt at becoming a Londoner was only mildly tempered by the realisation that my new flatmates had all provided inarguable reasons why their names could not appear on the lease. Our estate agent had reassured me it meant I could be "in charge". And so I learned my first London lesson: never trust anyone who drives a Mini with the name of the company they work for emblazoned all over it.