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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think living in a small town is a bad thing

40 replies

Emmielu · 24/05/2012 16:47

I used to think living in this small town I'm in was great! Friends, shops, doctors, dentists, schools all within walking distance! However as I've grown up & made a variety of friends from mums to people I went to school with, I've realised it's not as nice & great as I thought it was 8 years ago in my early teens.

Everyone knows you even if you don't know them, they know your business. Even if you're new to the area you have to be careful with becoming close to someone incase they disobey your trust. I think it's quite sad cause I love this area & the fact my friends & family are here but I just wish I hadn't grown up here. Anyone else get that feeling sometimes?

OP posts:

monkeymoma · 24/05/2012 20:21

small town sucks, everyone has lots of aquaintances but never know who their real friends are till the shit hits the fan (then are usually bitterly disseappointed!)

In cities, your friends are your friends, it takes more effort to catch up with friends in a city because you wont just bump into each other every other day, so once people bother with you, you can trust them more than your 200 aquaintance friends in a small town!

OAM2009 · 24/05/2012 20:30

HeathRobinson, don't know, is the small town in South Wales?

HeathRobinson · 24/05/2012 20:35

Well, mine isn't. I was just wondering what people generally thought a small town was, population wise.

ThatsDope · 24/05/2012 20:40

Brought up in tiny place (pop 2000) in Scotland could never return and lose my anominity. It is the 'right' of the locals to unashamedly disect your business. When I am sitting in my Mums now as an expat I kinow it is not the place for me. Now live in small town - nice balance of recognising faces, knowing some of them to talk to but not knowing most (pop 35,000).

exoticfruits · 24/05/2012 20:41

I prefer a village.

sadsac · 24/05/2012 20:55

I grew up in a big city and now live in a small town.

I find it very dull on the whole - just the lack of choice with things to do. And if you do them, like decide to embark on a belly dancing class or something - you'll know or recognise half the people in the class, who'll report back to other people you know that they saw you at the class.

I prefer anonymity myself.

OAM2009 · 24/05/2012 21:28

Ah, Heath, I know of a very famous Welsh town with about 59,000 people and wondered if it was the same one!

aldiwhore · 24/05/2012 21:41

I think if you go get a life outside said small town/village at some point in your existence then its idyllic, the people who I think are the harbingers of village doom, and its saddest residents, are the ones who've never been anywhere else. They're VERY easy to play with though.

I'll always live in a small town or village, I'll never much care for the gossipy twatty nature of some of the inhabitants... just enjoy it, giggle about it, seek out the good people and have fun with it.

CremeEggThief · 24/05/2012 21:51

I think small towns that you haven't grown up in can be okay.

I loved city living when I moved away from my small town at 18, and I sometimes think it would be fantastic to live in a harbourside apartment in a city once DS has left home. For now, a village that's more or less a suburb of a small city is where we are, and as we're outsiders, nobody gossips about us. Ideally, a market town surrounded by countryside and within 45 minutes of a biggish city is where I'd most like to be at this stage in my life though..

HeathRobinson · 24/05/2012 21:59

Ha ha, no. It's just a boring non-Welsh town.

Sometimes I've fancied moving to Wales, but not got around to it yet!

5Foot5 · 24/05/2012 23:32

I agree with CremeEggThief that it probably makes a difference if you were brought up somewhere or just moved there later.

I was brought up in a very small village. (Approx 400 people.) Everyone knew everyone else and, because virtually nothing ever happened, each little incident or piece of gossip was stored up and discussed and never forgotten. If someone had had a bit too much to drink at a village disco and sworn at the caretaker you coud bet that there would be people who would still remember it 20 years later and recall that "She was no better than she ought to be!" I was able to leave at 18 to got to Uni and do all my disreputable growing up a long way away so it was easy to be the model daughter when I came home for holidays. I think it would have been stifling to have had to stay there.

Now I live in a small to medium town (approx 50,000.) I like it but I think that some of the people who have always lived here have very insular attitudes. Most of the people I know well have moved here as adults. Wonder what that means for how DD thinks of the place when she is older....

exoticfruits · 25/05/2012 07:12

I think it makes a huge difference whether you were born there or chose it. I have lived in about 9 different places and so love a small town or village but then people only know what I choose to tell them.

Whatmeworry · 25/05/2012 07:15

To think living in a small town is a bad thing

Not bad, just dull after a while

ErikNorseman · 25/05/2012 08:12

I live in a small town but I only know my neighbours so I'm fine.

Scholes34 · 25/05/2012 09:21

Moved from London to a small university town. Relatively high turnover of people in some areas (school, work), lovely people, lots of interesting things going on and no black bogeys.

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