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1. ‘Of course it’s London’
The north Londoner is always saying silly things about how south London isn’t really London. Obviously it is. The clue is in the name. But it is different. ‘Open your mind beyond the tube map,’ says the south Londoner. ‘There is a magical place where trains go to stations above the ground, and those trains have windows that you can see blue sky out of. Well, grey sky. They come at least every ten minutes. And they’re usually running absolutely fine. Except out of London Bridge – in which case, good luck.’
2. ‘South London is sooooooo green’
Maybe because they’re constantly being disparaged for having no tube and therefore no fun, south Londoners love nothing more than being smug about their rolling green acres. North may have the famous parks – with their Dutch tulip gardens, statue of Peter Pan and free-roaming peacocks – they argue, but south wins on sheer quantity and general awesomeness. After all, when was the last time you saw a lumpy iguanodon in Hyde Park?
3. ‘Come to my birthday drinks – it’s really not that far’
As every south Londoner knows, there’s one day of the year when they can make all their friends travel anywhere south of the river to buy them a bunch of drinks, no questions asked. Naturally, they make the most of it. So this year, it’s a few cheeky pints in Penge followed by dancing to shit R&B in a dingy club that’s a £35 Uber trip away from anywhere. Just because they can.
4. ‘The fun stuff is there. You just have to look harder for it’
There aren’t artisanal bread stalls at every turn in south London (yet), so it sometimes looks like the streets are just full of chicken shops and nail bars. In north London the thwacking stick of gentrification has made cool places easy to find. Not in south London. Oh no. Here you have to search for the fun bits. But, says the south Londoner, that just makes them all the more fun when you find them. If you find them.
5. ‘If you hate high rent so much, why don’t you move south?’
Everyone knows rent is generally lower south of the river, making it a sensible choice to offset the haemorrhaging of money known as ‘leaving the house’. But the north Londoner doesn’t want to hear that. ‘The reason we live in London is to be among the cool stuff,’ replies the north Londoner. ‘It’s totally worth paying three-quarters of your income to be next to the good bits, so we don’t have to spend an hour and 16 minutes on transport just to pop to the Barbican on a Saturday. Live south and you might as well be commuting in from Slough.’
Illustrations: Nathan James Page
Now read the top five things north Londoners say to south Londoners.