London - Week 1
Sunday, 9th June 2019 - Deptford Bridge, London, UK
We left New Zealand last Sunday evening. It felt somewhat surreal then, and it still seems somewhat surreal now. I’ve done my fair share of travelling in the past but it’s been a while and I’ve never lived overseas before now. It feels like a big change - address changes, new banks, new insurance, new travel apps. With all of our furniture sold or left behind, and some stuff in storage, Rosie and I were down to three suitcases between us - all clocking in at 22.9 kg (out of a maximum of 23.0). We said our goodbyes and stuffed them into the taxi to get to the airport.
It’s been a busy few months - we only just got married at the end of March. We’ve been doing other wedding celebrations with good friends as well, leaving our jobs, packing, sorting, short honeymoon in Golden Bay, catching up with friends before leaving, and also trying to do all the things we hadn’t already done in Wellington (so much amazing food!). Suffice to say, it’s been busy.
The flights themselves were moderately un-eventful, apart from a more-than-usually trying time in cattle-class, with people who kept their seat back during meals and totally insufficient leg room. We travelled pretty much direct, through AKL and LAX. LAX was a bit of a palaver - transit passengers have to leave the plane, get given a transit pass, go through customs, get short-cutted back into the check-in area, go through security screening, before heading to the gate - it was busy and we only made it with a few minutes to spare. All of the queuing was a surprisingly manual affair - with lots of staff actively managing the queues (rather than being actual customs officers).
When we arrived in London, the lovely Tara was there to meet us and drove us home to their place which they had kindly allowed us to crash at until we find a place of our own. Since then it’s been a week with a lot of life admin. I’ll tell you a little bit about a couple of them in detail, because they provide good examples of the UK bureaucracy.
Getting a bank account in the UK
There are a few major banks in the UK and lots of smaller ones. Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest, and HSBC are big ones. In general you need a UK bank account to avoid fees, but also, realistically to get a flat and all the other insundry of life. Before we left, we did our research and concluded that most of the features offered by the big banks were fairly similar, but Barclays had possibly a little better online experience - not entirely sure how accurate this is but, this seemed to be the case. People in general also seemed more inclined to recommend Barclay’s over the others. Though, that said, none of them have a great reputation.
To get a bank account you need to have proof of identity and proof of address in the UK. The first is easily sorted with a passport, the second is a little trickier. Before we left we changed our accounts to our UK address, got printed statements (signed by the bank), even had a letter sent to the address by the bank. This all turned out to be unacceptable.
We also knew that there were other new banks that primarily operate online and are easier to sign up for and don’t require proof of address (at least, none so onerous). Rosie and I signed up for accounts with Monzo and Revolut respectively. This was super easy (at least in comparison).
So, after an abortive attempt to start the process by visiting a branch directly, we eventually filled in the forms for starting a new account and booked an appointment. I went first and when my bank statements proved insufficient, we seemed at a quandary, the wonderful lady asked if I had an account with Monzo or Revolut. On the affirmative, she said that if one printed off a statement from one of these, that would be an acceptable proof of address. So that’s what we did and it all went fine.
The banks do accept statements from overseas banks but it’s only under a very specific set of circumstances:
- The letter must show your UK address
- The letter must be a statement showing transactions
- And the kicker, you must, somehow, be able to prove that the letter was posted to you at that address, not merely printed
But a printed statement from a UK based bank of any type is just fine. Basically, and this seems to apply to all UK institutions, everything is fine as long as what you are doing ticks a box in the existing process - if it’s outside that, your task will be impossible.
In general, other than this, the services seem fine, but there is a bunch of unnecessary complexity in the system over here - lots of different types of transactions that you can make for different reasons - standard transactions can take days to clear, CHAPS payments will clear the same day but cost heaps to make, faster payments are only online and clear quickly but aren’t guarenteed to be the same day. * my head hurts *
Getting a National Insurance Number
In order to work in the UK, one needs a National Insurance Number (NIN). The process for getting this is somewhat beaurocratic. Here’s how it works, at least in my case:
- You call them up from a UK number (it MUST be a UK number) and request an interview to get a number
- The interview is scheduled and you are given an address and time to turn up to. A letter will be sent to you confirming these details, in my case the interview was only three days later so the letter didn’t arrive until the next day, but this was fine
- When you arrive, you are asked to wait outside until people in your appointment time are called
- When you’re called in, you fill in a form detailing the details for the interview that you are their for - time, date, reference number
- You give this to another desk and are asked to take a seat
- Once they’ve processed this, they’ll give you a order number and a floor to go to
- You go to the right floor, find a seat, and wait until your number is called
- Once they get to you, you go to the interview where they go through your basic details, your right to work in the UK, details about family members, and occupation.
- Then they take your identity document, go and scan it
- You are returned to your seat to wait for 15 minutes while someone else reviews your application
- Then, your identity document is returned
- You leave and they inform you that they’ll make a decision as to whether you can have a NIN sometime in the next eight weeks
So, I’m now waiting on their determination.
So, what else happened this week?
We’ve been staying with Ollie and Tara and we’re incredibly grateful to them. They’re two awesome people - only slightly Harry Potter obsessed, so we’ve been playing a Dominion-esque deck building board game called Hogwarts Battle. Watched Trooping the Colour on TV, seeing all the pomp and ceremony of the monarchy. An excellent dinner out at a local Italian place just around the corner from them.
We’ve started our flat hunting and my job hunting. Wandering around suburbs, contacting estate agents, a few interviews. I’ve also been rambling a bit around town, I even ran into Amber yesterday who I haven’t seen in four and a half years down the back streets of Soho. We grabbed orange juice at a cafe and caught up. Earlier in the week, we also had lunch with Liam at a little pub in Notting Hill.
A few early observations of London
London is a city packed with variance and surprises, it positively teems with history. We’ve spent a lot of time this week in quite modern parts of the city - Canary Wharf, Stratford Mall which is all pretty modern. But around The City, Soho, Oxford Street, the variance between the old and new is quite impressive - bright shiny chrome buildings right next to glorious medieval stone buildings.
Another interesting point of note is the variance in economic inequality. In most cities in New Zealand and cities elsewhere there are parts of a city that are poor and others that are wealthy. While at a high level this is true in London, it’s actually more accurate to say that it’s on a street by street basis. You can turn the corner and the pretty, gorgeously maintained, street of buildings with cute painted doors and immaculately painted doors is replaced with rundown flats, grime, and rubbish.
The multicultural nature of London society is great, but there does seem that a lot of inequality is split along racial lines. Different areas seem to have a slight preponderance of particular ethnic groups, but, in general they are well integrated. The most depressing issue in London, after spending some time walking through areas that are not socially advantaged - and even the very middle of the city, is the prevalence of betting shops - Coral, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, Betfred, William Hill… You often see them in a group of three or four right next to each other. Interestingly, the closer you get to higher socio-economic areas you get the same types of groups of pre-made food restaurants - Pret, Eat, Costa, Starbucks, Cafe Nero. Sometimes just those five, repeated. In the middle of London you can literally buy a sandwich at Pret and walk past four other Prets in the amount of time it takes to eat it.
This is not meant to be doom and gloom, London is a ridiculously exciting place to be. We’ll be adventuring for some time! Next week, were going to spend time in France, so expect more updates then.