How to fit in when you move to London, as defined by your area

We’re all ruining London. This goes without saying. We’re all coming here after our overpriced university experiences, getting our grubby little hands on more and more sprawling parts of the city, eliminating the local shops and the communities and stamping out anything which differentiates boroughs from each other.

Look, we’re all part of it. And it’s fun! But the way you ruin London, that’s what varies. You might move West. Buy a pastel coloured shirt, become a bottom-dwelling financial monstrosity with a drug problem and a Coutts card and a lack of moral fibre (but some bloody great connections). You might move South, with all the bloody lads, with all the bloody rugby lads, and spend your twenties just like uni, hiding from life behind pints of Tennents, unironic nights at Infernos and pretending you’re not too basic for Peckham, actually, mum, because all the cool girls are moving there now!

You might move East. Of course you’ll move East, you idiot. You read VICE, you want to go to Berlin, you wear round rimmed glasses, you will fight to the death anyone who might reveal the slightest inkling that behind the beard and the RA app and the mate who sells you really good coke and the totally ironic nights at Superstore and the vibesy shirts you’re actually – whisper it – chronically uncool. You might move North. Because… because you’re 30? Because you’re 35? Because you’re old, or you’re a goth. Look, I dunno why you’d move North to be honest.

But the point is no matter where you go, no matter how hard you try, you’re going to change yourself to fit in just as much as you did in Fresher’s Week, when you started dropping your cut-glass accent and never telling anyone you cried when you didn’t get prefect. You will change. Here’s what you’ll become.