How I hobbies’d + fun’d quickly in LDN

Moving to a new(ish) city and not being at home every night moping

The ask: to be busy, amused, and not alone, thus to distract self from grief (to be experienced, of course, as is healthy, but not constantly) and ongoing daily missing place where child(ren) should be

also: to have FUN because wisdom gained by baby loss is that only way to combat mad pain is mad joy; find reasons to survive and be here that aren’t to do with loving a partner or children (as don’t have either, and neither is guaranteed for anybody)

also: to find out who I am after 5 years away from living for myself due to baby loss/pandemic

The approach: to do everything that my present whims would lead me to, without wondering how regularly or not I’ll go in future, to find out what Abby likes now, at 36, rather than guess based solely on past whims. To spend money like I’m a baller, without being one, and “clot” pouring wound of bank account at later date (thanks, Arts Council England funding). To stick to local events and activities, in order to a) make local community, and b) find more easily sustainable activities. Despite the above note about money, to look for activities that are free or low cost; again, because that would be more sustainable for me, as I’m self-employed and my income can vary wildly

How it went…

Things I’ve wanted to do for a long time

There were certain things I really wanted to do when I got to London. I’ve had this list running in my mind since forever, maybe you have too. It’s everything I want to be or do. It has included the following things that are now crossed off: learn a language (French/Canto); proficient in a martial art (kickboxing/KungFu); crochet a double bed blanket; paddle board (in UK, Vietnam, India, Finland, Miami, Malibu, Maine, NYC, Toronto, and counting…); become proficient wild swimmer; ride a motorbike not as a passenger; shoot a short film; direct a music video; write a book; sing in a band. See how it’s been very helpful? I usually stick it on my wall and miraculously things get ticked off without my consciously thinking about it, but now it’s instead scribbled on some poster in my mind. Other things have not been crossed off and seem unlikely now, eg, do a backflip.

Due to its inclusion on this list, even before I found my flat in London, I signed up to a Rounders league. That’s Tuesday evenings taken care of for the summer, and something ticked off that I’ve wanted to do for life. I also wanted to do a poetry workshop, as I thought having a hobby to do with writing might be good, because I love writing and I never think that I might enjoy doing it outside work however, I couldn’t find one.

So this is my first tip: dig out your bucket list and see what you can tick off.

Sports

many of you will know the extremely sport-literate fact that many sports are played in teams. I wrote about this in my friends post a few weeks ago. In London, lots of people play this sport called football, a sport in which feet connect many times with the ball. I learnt that training for beginners happens on a Saturday morning in my local and so that’s what I’m doing right now, apart from all the Saturdays we are on holiday and then those that rain. I’m doing this now so when rounders stop, in autumn, or never, given the amount of games they’re having to tack onto the season on account of games rained off by (you guessed it) rain, I will have something else to do early in the week. I like to get my exercise early in the week because then I don’t have to get it later in the week.

some of you may also know that sports can be watched. Many claim this is more enjoyable than playing, but it requires a different skill set. Wimbledon is where a small amount of people play tennis and a much larger amount of people participate in the sport by watching with Pimms. I enjoy both, but this year I went to watch.

I also invited my rounders team to watch football in this watching-football tournament called The Euros. At first, you can watch the players play the sport, but then as you get more and more disappointed in them, one can enjoy burgers put on for the match at places like Hackney Fan Zone, a new venue we enjoyed trying out, dance on tables, drink beverages, or chat with your back to the TV.

Don’t be afraid to invite lots of people to watch sports. Lots of people enjoy it, and even more enjoy the snacks and vibes that go with it.

Also, there’s a pool almost anywhere. I’ve only been to the Lido once, but I can imagine going again. Maybe with friends.

Craft clubs

Another thing I like to do is craft. Basically, I’ll do any kind of craft. The first craft workshop I found was a Leftist Crochet Club—PERFECT, I thought, and it kinda was, although sadly it’s once a month and I was away for the last one. I then went to a craft class I found on an app that was advertised to help wellbeing. This was organised by a charity, so it was free. I really enjoyed the workshop, where we made mosaic coasters and the great thing about it being wellbeing based was that I felt like there was a little more support and I didn’t need to lead conversation… I could just be quiet and make a coaster. For me, most of the time I function as a normal human being but sometimes it’s just such a fucking relief to be allowed to be a grieving mum. I didn’t tell anyone I was, but since it was a wellbeing workshop, I think it’s assumed people can be there for a relax or for mental health reasons, and I noticed another woman who chose to craft in quiet, and who actually sat on her own—I think she was just totally knackered, in a very crucial and mentally stressful care job. The organiser told me about a regular crafting session, which is also free, and I have since attended that.

With my new pal S from Bumble, I attended a poetry night I found on Instagram—I’ve found by liking local bars the algorithm suggests more bars and some of them do cool events now, since Gen Z are mostly at home sober knitting and with higher rents and lower turn out for night life it must be harder to stay in business. At the poetry open mic night I met many poets who recommended other open mic nights, and one who ran a workshop… the poetry workshop I had been looking for!!! Turns out I just hadn’t looked on the right app… I now regularly attend that workshop and love it. It’s really fun to have REGULAR things to go to, not only as you see the same people but because it creates a sense of stability in life. The Danes appreciate a regular event…

I also found a website making three hour course from Maya Man locally. I booked it immediately—it looked so cool. I know nothing about coding. Well? I KNEW nothing about coding. But now I’ve coded a whole website, which was buttloads of fun.

Politicsing + charity

You may or may not have noticed, but I care about stuff. It’s actually the thing I most notice about myself (PASSION!) and the thing I find most attractive in other people (ENTHUSIASM!). Politics, to my mind, is about caring. The more you care, the more you politics.

There are many different types of politics one can be interested in: parliamentary politics, electoral politics, gender politics, green politics, party politics, international politics, housing politics, etc. The ways one can get involved can suit wildly different skill sets, and include demonstrations, campaigning for electoral candidates, being on the policy development committee for a political party, getting together with a group to blog about specific topics, volunteering to be a rapporteur at a party conference. Maybe it’ll even be legal to march again now the Tories are out. The below photo is me at a discussion group with

Janos Abel

and a friend.

I particularly enjoy electoral politics and listen to lots of podcasts about elections. I have a hobby of running an electoral podcast but it wasn’t so much fun this cycle because I didn’t have much time and I want to do things with other people. I did go out to Diss to campaign with the Green Party for Adrian Ramsay, however, and it was so much fun, involved meeting lovely people, and it felt good to be involved in an historic Green win.

When it comes to charity, I’m interested in becoming involved with one (although I do think there are many things that are similar and even more effective than volunteering, such as working in social or housing policy, or supporting progressive politics—to me volunteering with a charity would be more for my benefit, as a nice hobby) but at the moment I’m more in need of being a charity user than I am capable of interacting with people in need or committing to additional work. My own, self-employed, work, is conspicuously free of deadlines, thank goodness. These essays, I actually only write when I feel okay, and then sometimes I schedule them ahead, knowing I won’t feel capable of doing them every week. I’m also in the situation that a lot of people are in, and which you’d think in your mid 30s you’d be out of, but anyway, where I’m still figuring out how to keep my earnings up. I work as full time as I can, and any additional work I can manage needs at the moment to be helpful to my income or wellbeing, given where I’m at with grief, and not to add stress or a duty to someone else. I absolutely feel like I could break all my promises right now to protect myself from poor mental health, and that’s currently appropriate and what I need to do. I do run an organisation related to my losses, and that takes as much energy as I have at the moment for charitable endeavours. Still, I’ve looked up some bits and bobs and have things I might like to be involved in that I’m keeping an eye on—but these are crafting projects, like knitting presents for care leavers for Xmas. If you also are in grief or struggling with overwork or mental health, but want to do something, I’d suggest sticking to something that is enjoyable for you and supports you into socialising or involves a meditative, peaceful hobby like crafting.

Fangirling

I listen to Pod Save The UK. Because of this, and me noodling around on an app for gigs, I found out one of the co-hosts, Nish Kumar, was DJing locally. I went to see him. Because of the leftist crochet club I went to, I was added to a leftist WhatsApp where people invite each other to events, and somebody on that invited us all to a gig for Nish’s developing stand up work. So I went to two Nish events within a week.

The other week, I went to see Sashi Perera do stand up at the Bill Murray. I booked this in February or March. Seriously. I love her and follow her on Instagram. I knew I’d enjoy it. I bought two tickets at £10 each, thinking I’d find somebody to go with. I’m sure multiple people would have gone with me, but I chose to ask a friend I was hoping to get to know better from my rounders team, who was delighted. Now get this: Sashi’s event sold out. THREE TIMES. Another date was added at our venue but her two other dates in London are at a larger venue. We get to cram into a little room with her. Woohoo!!

So this is my suggestion: think about who you love, hunt them down, and go watch all their stuff.

Music and dancing

This was pretty frustrating for me, because it was the thing I wanted to do that I couldn’t find people to go with to. Lots of people like craft, plenty will come for a beer in front of whatever sport is on, much fewer want to go out all night long and get home in the morning hours. These also tend to be the type of people that are both booked up for ages and also weirdly seem to do everything last minute, and they’re all like, “oh, I’ll just get a ticket on the night at 2 AM, sauntering up to the venue—oh no, yeah, I’ll definitely be sauntering” (my flatmate M has a very chill saunter; he recently calmly did some laundry and then sauntered off to Glasto, he also recently appeared in a photograph on Instagram in Brussels and it felt like one hour since I’d seen him casually smiling, crossing the road near our apartment as if drifting through a large bath).

The other annoying thing is you often have to book ahead to go to the best gigs, and the prices go up nearer to the time. I booked Boiler Room in February or March, because the music sounded good and there was only one date in London this year. I tried the trick of asking a friend who followed the event on Instagram whether they wanted to go, but they were having a sober month after being drunk out dancing the whole month before and couldn’t think about it just then. Happily, my Bumble Friends adventure pal, S, loves crafts AND going out all night (actually it’s a day event, but you get the idea). So we are going both to Boiler Room and to a music festival in east London called All Points East. So, in August, I’ll get a proper dance in. I also recently went to a boat party M’s football team were hosting. He sauntered up a minute before we set off, asking if he had time to get a coffee. Classic M.

Smart people stuff

So, I like book events. I find if I search, “books”, on event apps, I find events I want to go to. But there are also groups with particular interests on the app Meet Up, and university departments, that run public lectures on particular topics. For instance, I’m signed up to a local university politics’ departments events. I haven’t yet gone this time round, but I have previously been to lectures at Kings College London (my one month alma mater before I dropped out) and am looking forward to attending lectures from my local Humanist group. I found the Epilogue series, run by Jo.readsalot on Instagram, by looking up “book events” on an app, and was delighted to be able to attend their first event with Megan Nolan.

Friends’ events

One of my best friends from my earlier London days still lives here. I’ve gone to two bookish events she was going to, and I’ve let her know I’d like to go to anything she’d like to go to. Similarly, S recently sent me posters they’d seen for some life drawing classes, which we’ll attend together. My flatmate M has invited me to several events his football community have put on, which has been great, and with another flatmate, MC, I went to see our flatmate S play football, and accepted an invite from her teammates to go to the park, which was loads of fun, if not strictly a hobby… although actually park life IS kind of a hobby here.

My mum also gave me a tip when I got here. I’m a very independent kind of dude and I’m able to do everything on my own. This means Ive often ended up going to and leaving events alone in the past. But mum pointed out that lots of people never do that, and suggested maybe I should invite friends to go to things I’m doing. This has been a really great way to solidify friendships and it may sound weird, but I hadn’t thought of it before. I usually assume people won’t want to go with me—this is something I’m working on in therapy, because I was bullied a lot in school and so got used to taking myself off alone, before I found friends in sixth form, so it’s how I learned to be a grown up, get on with stuff yourself, go to stuff yourself; sort of a pattern I didn’t even think about before I started talking about my life in therapy this year, ruminating on why it’s quite isolated when I love being around people. But it’s so much fun to go with people, and actually helps to meet other people at times, because your friends ALSO chat to other people and your friendship group can cross-pollinate.

A more general note on how to find stuff

It’s frustrating that there isn’t one centralised information service providing a calendar of events in each area so we can all easily not be lonely and bored, as I really think this would make fewer people vote Reform. But there isn’t. I used several apps to find the activities and events listed above, entering key words into the search functions like “craft” “art” “workshop”. These apps included: Dice, OutSavvy, Meet Up, Eventbrite, and Resident Advisor for music. // For football in London, it’s easy to find via Google or Instagram women’s teams—the Goal Posts league should be your first port of call. For other sports in London there’s Go Mammoth, but I really wouldn’t recommend them as I found them to be disorganised at best, incompetent at worst, cancelling games as we were walking onto the field with some players having travelled 1hr+. // Whenever you go somewhere for a cool workshop or course, find out what else the venue does. The crochet club, wellbeing art event, website building event, and poetry course ALL took place at venues with other really cool events lined up, and led me on to other things. Churches are venues that also do a lot of organising within urban communities particularly. Check out your local one. // Word of mouth is still the best way to find any kind of event. From word of mouth, I attended the poetry workshop, football training, wellbeing craft sessions, Nish’s stand up, boat party, a summer party, and more.

I hope that helps anyone looking to set up hobbies in a new area. The main thing is, take your fun and happiness seriously. Book anything you fancy as soon as you see it. Over time, certain things rise to the top. I now see my life here will involve lots of craft workshops, with two charities in particular; a couple of regular team sports; book events, and occasional all-night-long dancing.

***If this essay helped you, it would be so fun to hear from you in the comments. Liking or commenting specifically on this post (as opposed to DMing me) reaches me just as quickly and boosts this post in Substack, so more people can find me. This helps me earn a living and pay for all these f***ing hobbies, as some people subscribe to this substack for about £3 a month, supporting me to keep writing. To those who do, thank you very much!***