Sure, I've been on the Tube...I caught it to Eastbourne once.
If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries.
I ride a bicycle daily in London and have done for many years.
I used to sit on the Circle Line and go 'round and 'round and write.
A bicycle has transformed my experience of London.
If you live in central London, that's probably fine for you, but in places like Edmonton, where you're almost out of sight of London, you've got to pay more and more to get into central London. How does that work?
I left school on a wet Thursday afternoon, found a room in a shared house in North London, and started my first job on the following Monday as a courier for an advertising agency.
When I sold my flat in Glasgow, I bought a little cottage on the North Yorkshire coast. Whenever we go up from London to stay there, I'm just like, 'I'm home! I'm home in Bronte-land!'
I grew up in Gillingham in Kent, and my dad commuted to Victoria Station every day. I remember travelling in with him one day and the noise, the people, and the heat leaving me wide-eyed and grinning.
When you travel across London, it can take two hours to get from one end of London to the other, when it actually takes me two hours to get up to Leicester.
Well, I suppose I've never really had a lifestyle that needs upkeep. I don't get cabs; I'm on the Tube with my Oyster card.
As a relatively young woman - I'm 33 - I hope to one day have a family and already have commitments. If and when I'm elected as an MP, I would face a choice: take my family with me to London each week or be apart for four, maybe five, nights a week.
