Introduction

It’s Monday morning. It’s cold and dark and I’m standing on a railway station platform in South East London. I’m surrounded by commuters who, like me, are standing in a spot where the train doors will be. Two minutes go by. I look to the right and catch a glimpse of some lights; the train is approaching.

I start to strip off. My gloves, hat and scarf all go into my bag. I take off my jacket, carefully putting my headphones into my inside pocket, quickly remove my jumper and put that in my bag too, and then put my jacket back on again. I stuff earphones in my ears, press a few buttons and find a track that is vaguely relaxing. The train doors open. The train is packed. Two people get off, but fifteen try to get on.

“Move along the carriage please…” I shout; my voice offering more of a hopeful encouragement than a positive instruction. Smart people wearing suits look around. There is some sighing. Some bags and cases are picked up and some shuffling begins. I step onto the carriage and find a space for myself between the door and a hand rail. My glasses start to steam up, so I move them down my nose, making the world blurry and softer. Strong cologne emanates from the tall man next to me who staring intently into his phone. There is the acrid scent of cheap deodorant, which could be coming from anywhere. I become increasingly familiar with the location of my body; an elbow could end up in someone’s ribs or back. I’m conscious of my breath touching a stranger’s cheek.

I remember when I started this journey; my first experience of the rush hour. There were so many people that I couldn’t see the door, but I needed to. A fellow passenger, tired from a day’s work sensed my panic and saw that I was getting ready to get up, to try to find an impossible place by the exit.

“Don’t bother, mate. You’re not coming over here”

His expression said: sit down, calm down, and stop it. I knew he was right. I pulled my laptop bag to my chest and looked out of the window, and wondered whether I had made a huge mistake moving to Lewisham.

My work situation is now very different; my contract has changed. I don’t have to live in Lewisham anymore since the office where I used to work has now closed due to cost cutting and restructuring. I’m now a ‘designated home worker’. In fact, I could live just about anywhere in Britain providing that the senior management agree; all I need is a high speed internet connection. The only condition is that I need to be able to visit the head office which is in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. I have colleagues who travel from the West Country, the Isle of Wight and even Northern Ireland.

Lewisham to Milton Keynes is a bit of a trek. It takes around two and a half hours door to door. I begin with a train to London Bridge or Charing Cross, a tube to Euston, a train from Euston to Milton Keynes, and a bus to the office. It’s draining. If you miss one connection, you can get into a transport tangle of unfamiliar times. The worst part of the journey is always the first train journey, especially in rush hour. In summer, you sweat. In winter you freeze, and then you sweat.

Two months after my office had closed, I stood on a packed train from London Bridge and asked myself a simple question: ‘should I move?’ Even though I have lived in a number of different places, I couldn’t answer this question because I didn’t know where I might want to move to.

Even though a rush hour commute was hot, crowded and stressful, I loved my new neighbourhood. I loved that there was a park just around the corner from my flat and that I’m on nodding terms with the chap who runs the Malaysian and Thai takeaway, and that I’m a short distance away from all the hustle and bustle that London has to offer.

One evening, I said to my girlfriend, Sarah, that I sometimes wondered whether I should move out of the city. Was there somewhere else to live that could be better?

“Where would you go?” asked Sarah.

“I have no idea… I really like where I am, but sometimes I wonder whether there is somewhere better.”

In some respects, Sarah and I were opposites. I was born in the East Midlands and had come to London as a child because of my parents’ search for work. Sarah, on the other hand, had been born in London, but her parents had moved to Manchester.

“Better than Lewisham?” she asked, gently teasing. Sarah lived in North London.

“I know! Its crazy talk, isn’t it?”

I’ve lived in Brighton, Norfolk, West Sussex, Cambridgeshire, Manchester, different parts of Essex and three entirely different parts of London. Sarah, on the other hand had lived in Leeds, Paris, Berlin, Prague and Guatemala City.

“I don’t really know this country as well as I feel I should.”

We had two reasons to begin to explore: I wanted to find out whether there was somewhere that was better, and Sarah wanted to explore Britain.

“Perhaps we could do, like, an A to Z… You know, go through the alphabet, going to different places that begins with that letter, like you suggested with restaurants?”

I had told Sarah about a friend of mine who had done a culinary tour of London. It was a great and simple idea: go through the letters of the alphabet. For each letter, you choose a name of a country. You then visit a restaurant serving the cuisine of that country. Sarah and I got as far as Argentina.

I stopped for a moment to think.

“So, how do you choose a place? And…, do we just choose town, or cities, or what?”

“I don’t know. There’s got to be a list somewhere.”

We soon figured out a methodology. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia had a list of UK place names. We would then take that list and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. I then figured out how to write a very simple formula to choose one place name out of all of the place names for a particular letter. We also decided on a number of rules: the place had to be a distinct town, city or village, but couldn’t be a district or a place that isn’t a defined settlement.

One we had chosen a place, we had to go there to get a feel for what it was all about; we should do our best to speak to locals to find out what there is to do there and what it might be like to live there. I should ask the question: could I live here?

There was another reason why we wanted to do this; a joint reason: a sense of being alienated from our own country. The referendum about the UK’s membership of the European Union and the accompanying debates have offended my liberal sensibilities; I am a remainer, and I’m struck by how the UK has been divided and how the country has voted.

London is a remain city, but the town where I am originally from sits within a leave constituency. A key question is: how different are places within the UK? Also, what is the extent of that difference? Randomness is a way to sample that difference and a simple way to begin to understand more about the country in which I inhabit.

“Okay, so that’s all the A’s in the spreadsheet. I think this formula should work now. Do you want to press the return button?”

Sarah hit return.

We got a number which represented the row number of the place that we were going to visit. I scrolled up.

“Adlington. We’re going to Adlington.”

“Where’s that?”

“I have no idea”.