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Original poster

Talk to me about real life outside London

760 replies

Herewegoagain84 · 25/02/2022 13:36

We’re considering the big move out. I’ve been a Londoner all my life and always considered I would stay, but I’ve got a third child cooking and I think it’s time. I know it sounds mad but I’d love to hear what your life outside London is like - especially with children at the weekend. We have everything so accessible to us here and always plenty to do. Can you talk me through how we might be spending our time and what activities you do / how weekends are spent? If you lived in London previously was it a good decision to move? Thanks!

OP posts:
x2boys · 27/02/2022 13:09

What is so special about the Summer ,s in London 🤔

crispsinasandwich · 27/02/2022 13:09

I'll leave you all to carry on trying to show how clever you think you are - and deliberately misinterpreting what people are saying. Enjoy yourselves

1952VincentBlackLightning · 27/02/2022 13:12

So many of these threads! I’ve posted similar on another one - I’m a Londoner by birth, absolutely hated it as a kid, family moved away in early teens and then I returned in my late teens and adored it then and through my 20s, but was increasingly exhausted by it in my 30s with small children, so left again. It doesn’t have to be the polarised love/hate London position. E.g. the summer comments - for me at different periods in my life London was both a joy and a nightmare, depending on lots of factors - available outside space, work commute, access to fresh air and swimming, location of home (5th floor flat pretty much under the west way - not nice; house with garden near to parks - lovely). There are pluses and minuses to both - it’s stating the bleedin’ obvious, but you need to work out what is most important to you and your family. Seriously worth investing some time in thinking through your priorities properly so you can work out where's best for you. What do you need/want to do every day; every week; monthly; less often? What do you most enjoy? What would you be prepared to travel for, and what would probably slip by the wayside if it wasn't easily accessible to you?

ColourMeExhausted · 27/02/2022 13:27

Doubtless saying what others have already posted. I like to visit London (although it's been a long time). It's an interesting city, it has a buzz, there's some decent museums and street life. But to live there?? No way! I visited a friend once who lived in Stoke Newington. To go to a 'local' friend for drinks, we had to take two buses, a tube and 20 minute walk. It was exhausting and tedious! And the nightlife is hard to define. You've either got the touristy hot spots which are naff and over priced, the edgier East London scene (not as hip as it likes to think compared to other cities or even towns) or other parts. Never had a brilliant night out there.

I live in a large city in Scotland. We have brilliant shopping, excellent museums, vibrant nightlife, exciting cultural, wealthy leafy suburbs, outstanding schools.. need I go on? Oh and it's affordable. And we recognise there are other cities out there too that are worth living in, it's amazing! No 'cultural claustrophobia' here fgs.

namechangeanonymous · 27/02/2022 13:29

Well there's family bath night in front of the fire on a Sunday, occasionally on a Saturday night we might have some electricity I hear we're getting the new fangled tinterweb soon.

PriamFarrl · 27/02/2022 13:40

@crispsinasandwich

I'll leave you all to carry on trying to show how clever you think you are - and deliberately misinterpreting what people are saying. Enjoy yourselves
I’ll stop that when people stop posting utter nonsense like not being able to buy tahini.
Pmen · 27/02/2022 13:40

Maybe just a matter of opinion but i thought it was a reasonable question. Doesn't hurt to be kind

ThymePoultice · 27/02/2022 13:48

@namechangeanonymous

Well there's family bath night in front of the fire on a Sunday, occasionally on a Saturday night we might have some electricity I hear we're getting the new fangled tinterweb soon.
😏
merrymouse · 27/02/2022 13:48

@x2boys

What is so special about the Summer ,s in London 🤔
You just have to visit the New Malden Tesco car park to experience it.

I mean people talk about the mahonia in the car park in the Tesco in New Milton, but unfortunately they are just culturally claustrophobic.

Maireas · 27/02/2022 14:27

Ahhh, summers in London.
It's permanently winter up here in the North.
Doesn't stop lasses going out in crop tops and hotpants, though. Tough!

mangosaredelish · 27/02/2022 14:37

"I’ll stop that when people stop posting utter nonsense like not being able to buy tahini."

Didn't notice OP mentioning tahini - but don't let a small detail like that stop you

mangosaredelish · 27/02/2022 14:38

@Pmen

Maybe just a matter of opinion but i thought it was a reasonable question. Doesn't hurt to be kind
Agreed - but this is mumsnet innit! Never be kind when you pile on to a poster!
mangosaredelish · 27/02/2022 14:39

When you can!

TatianaBis · 27/02/2022 14:42

Yup, we love to visit Paris and New York and London and enjoy the buzz and then return to our human-scale towns and cities and breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have to spend our lives on buses and tubes and stuck in traffic on the North Circular or dealing with the latest Hackney stabbing.

Presumably you’re aware that Londoners don’t spend their lives doing these things either.

Not even sure what ‘dealing with the latest Hackney stabbing’ is supposed to mean unless you think we’re all in the police.

You'd be amazed, by the way, by the number of Mumsnetters who visit Paris and New York and hate them.

No I wouldn’t. MN is full of women who avoid answering their front doors and going to weddings. I well can imagine what Paris or NY would do.

merrymouse · 27/02/2022 14:46

@Maireas

Ahhh, summers in London. It's permanently winter up here in the North. Doesn't stop lasses going out in crop tops and hotpants, though. Tough!
Yes, they covered that on a documentary I saw called ‘Game of Thrones’.
PrimroseTheSmooth · 27/02/2022 14:51

breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have to spend our lives ... dealing with the latest Hackney stabbing

What a disgraceful thing to write. People light-heartedly comparing areas is one thing, being smug about kids dying is quite another (and fwiw knife crime is problem in all cities, not just London).

5thnonblonde · 27/02/2022 14:58

I’m in Cornwall near the coast so we slum it every weekend going stuff you guys probably only do on holiday 😁

TatianaBis · 27/02/2022 14:59

@Pmen

Maybe just a matter of opinion but i thought it was a reasonable question. Doesn't hurt to be kind
But why let the chance to be an arsehole go to waste. This is AIBU after all. (Aka Am I Bullying Unreasonably).

OP posted a reasonable question in a rather naive ditsy way. Apart from a few helpful posters, it’s just a passive-aggressive, resentful, clichéd anti-London pile on.

We’re told that outside London people are really friendly, but this thread rather contradicts this.

SpikeySmooth · 27/02/2022 14:59

I empathise with OP here...DH is a die-hard city boy and regards any pkace outside the south circular as a foreign and undiscovered land. I mean, we've been on holiday in the UK, but it's coloured what he wants if we ever leave the capital. He thinks, apart from "The North", which is grey, industrial and unintelligible (his view) he thinks life beyond Watford should be all green with tumbledown cottages and only a pub for entertainment. It's beyond parody.

I come from the East Midlands and know it's far more complex than that. I'm bored of London. It's not all that. But I want to move back to my (not market, not many tumbledown cottage, no duck ponds) industrial home town. It has everything I need. Pubs, cafes leisure centre shops...but DH is horrified because it's not the piece of paradise he thinks he's entitled to. Thing is, he'd freak out in the countryside. No takeaway delivery apps, for a start.

TatianaBis · 27/02/2022 14:59

@PrimroseTheSmooth

breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have to spend our lives ... dealing with the latest Hackney stabbing

What a disgraceful thing to write. People light-heartedly comparing areas is one thing, being smug about kids dying is quite another (and fwiw knife crime is problem in all cities, not just London).

Quite.
merrymouse · 27/02/2022 15:11

OP posted a reasonable question in a rather naive ditsy way.

The thread has kept going because of all the other unintentionally humorous posts.

Maireas · 27/02/2022 15:23

@merrymouse - you've seen the documentary! Last weekend, Storm Whatever in full throttle, I saw two young women going to a pub in the city centre wearing hotpants, halter tops and stiletto heels. I was dressed like Sir Ernest Shackleton. I wanted to cheer them!
Too true about the other posts - not so much the OP, but other subsequent silly posts.

PriamFarrl · 27/02/2022 15:25

@mangosaredelish

"I’ll stop that when people stop posting utter nonsense like not being able to buy tahini."

Didn't notice OP mentioning tahini - but don't let a small detail like that stop you

No. But another poster said that she couldn’t buy it outside London. But don’t let a detail like that stop you either.
TatianaBis · 27/02/2022 15:27

@merrymouse

OP posted a reasonable question in a rather naive ditsy way.

The thread has kept going because of all the other unintentionally humorous posts.

It’s been kept going by the kind of snide bitchiness - resentment billed as faux humour - that this post neatly illustrates.
5thnonblonde · 27/02/2022 15:30

@SpikeySmooth really? We have just eat etc?! Admittedly fewer options but we have the apps. No Uber but off brand equivalents…