Utterly bored and frustrated by living in a small town

[saltnpepa]

We live in a small town and I am so bored and frustrated by the mundaneness of it. I'm from inner London and here I am in the middle of effing nowhere and all the families are white and middle class and wear Boden. There is no crime and no bad behaviour from anyone at anytime. Nobody swears or cracks jokes, there's no vibrancy or creativity, everyone is the bloody same. The mothers are polite and very decent and the husbands are all doing the right things and I only know of one single mum. I stick out like a sore thumb and am sick of rubbing people up the wrong way unintentionally just because I'm different. My kids love it here as does my rather conservative husband, I feel like running down the street naked covered in talcum powder and jam just to cause a stir. It is a 'nice' life but unstimulating and I worry that my kids will grow up to be just like the locals.

I sympathise OP, but I do wonder why people leave London without taking into account where they are moving to. I live near Hackney and when I travel to places like Hampstead or Highgate Village, I've traveled to a very different place, socially and culturally, never mind going outside London.

I guess because sometimes you have to experience something, do what you thought you'd need to to feel settled (make friends, get involved as OP describes) and then realise that it still just doesn't feel right.

Same sort of thing as other people on the thread have described when they've moved into a city and realised that it's not for them.

OP AYBU? Maybe, for a number of reasons that people on this thread have said.

BUT - I do get it. It is possible not to have an affinity with the area you have chosen, to realise too late, and then to be bricking it because the property prices have moved on in London to the extent you actually can't get back in. Is this driving part of your stress do you think? Feeling like the option of moving back is gone as much as taking a while to settle in the new area?

I am wondering where you are because it sounds very, very like a place DH lived in when we were first dating and I LOATHED it. I was anti-consensus on this too. The trouble was probably not so much the place as the people I was accessing - he didn't know anyone who wasn't also a teacher, many people had grown up there or otherwise been to college together, or BOTH, I was forrin and very much the odd one out in terms of experience/interests/plans for the future. Throw in many of them going to the same church as well and you have some idea of how welcoming to outsiders the place FELT even if this wasn't what the people themselves intended. I admit I was probably a bit oversensitive.

Whereas we now spend a lot of time in a rural area that has many of the features described above that people complain about - and I adore it. Absolutely love it. But then..I'm partial to the North, it can do no wrong. Not at all logical, it's just how it is.

We are considering relocating permanently and I am worried that one day I'll wake up though and wonder WTF have I done...

Oh dear Lucy, obviously I was being completely serious in my comment (as indicated by the wink at the end). It's satire don't you know, we have that in Derbyshire.

Just trying to give op a bit of perspective.

@bunbaker - I'm a regular theatre-goer - on average once a week, it was more before I had children. I also enjoy galleries and can't wait to introduce my children to them. To be fair, I did go to the theatre, concerts and galleries as a teenager, but it necessitated several buses and trains going to various towns within a 50 mile radius. Plus, I didn't know anyone else with these interests and it was a bit isolating, whereas in London, lots of people keep up with art and theatre.

In my old hometown there was one small theatre that mainly just featured touring comedians, and if I lived there now I certainly wouldn't at my time of life have the time to make the trips I used to go on as a teenager, so I would miss out on culture. I don't vilify small-town life, but there is no comparison between it and London in terms of "high culture."

London is an incredibly easy place to 'be cultured' in. The whole city is designed to make it easy for people to travel around, to see plays and exhbitions, to buy stuff. Every exhibition is advertised far and wide in huge letters and getting there is cheap and easy (tube).

When you move out you have to work harder at it. Personally I've met the most creative people I know where I live now (very rural, 4 hours from London and and hour and a half from the nearest city).

I agree with all of this. There are so many threads where people from London go on about how dreadful everywhere else is with its lack of museums, theatre and culture. Stay in London then don't come and live in the rest of the country where we are all quite happy being polite and not killing each other.

Indeed, and where we would be a LOT happier, and the place would be much LESS of a wasteland, if our kids didn't have to live miles and miles away because people who "just hate the place darling" snap up every house for half a million quid and price them out, or buy the village pub and use it as a holiday home.

Oh dear. You sound rather snobbish. People won't be friendly as they will have seen a million people move down from London for the good schools and be exactly the same - standoffish and sneering.

Offers of help are the best way to get to know people if you are at all interested. Its horrible being lonely.

The mothers are polite and very decent and the husbands are all doing the right things

They are very odd things to be dismissive about. You do sound rather depressed.

there are small "boden wearing" type towns within reach of London, where you lot are dismissively known as 'DFLs', one that springs to mind is famous for its bonfire?

DFL = down from London

Sympathies, OP. I'm only an adopted/honorary Londoner but am filled with horror every time I have to leave it and go somewhere small, insular, overwhelmingly homogenous and dull.

Could you move to another city, if not the Smoke?

How do you know they're wearing Boden? Anything Boden I wear looks like any other clothes, today I'm wearing a pair of cropped trousers and a cardi from Boden but I don't think anyone would know unless they were on inside out.

If I didn't like where I lived I'd move. I like my small market town, it's friendly and there is plenty going on culturally. I love being able to access the countryside easily, and that the dcs can walk themselves to any activities easily.

I think this thread shows just how insular living in London can make you. Very far from culturally open minded - frightened to be anywhere else!

to be honest the most insular and narrow minded people I have ever met have been from London.....as exemplified by this thread!

Sunny, I think you could argue that back and forth all day. It depends on who you know/meet, but that is categorically not my own experience. The opposite, actually.

oh yes I know people in London THINK they are all cultured and open minded, but they are very dismissive of all others, and very "lofty" about living in London, . Yes it does depend who you know / meet but that is my experience...

There are 7 million people living in London sunny!

Of course they don't all think they're cultured. Don't be daft .

I don't know about most of it, but see people in London wearing more boden etc than in the sticks.

People who live in the countryside proper seem to wear sensible well worn clothes day to day imo.

lol oh just let me be daft 'wordfactory'!
I admit I am basing my findings on about three people

Actually I've been thinking aobut this - and when I was in my early twenties and living in London I DID know a very varied selection of people and went out a lot

Now in my forties - all the people I know still in London are obsessed with schools, work absurd hours and only have friends from the school gate. I guess it happens to the best of us!

oooh no guidlines, Boden is what Londoners buy when they grace the sticks with their presence, along with Kath Kidston wellies and pink dungarees, then they hang around at farm shops in Sussex looking vaguely dissatisfied....

Actually, I find the OP's attitude towards cultural diversity rather cringe-worthy. You do realise that "a woman in a burka" is a human being, not just a bit of scenery.

I would feel frumpy wearing Boden and I am 40+ living in the sticks

My friends all seem to wear very cool clothes, nice jeans, uniqlo stuff etc.

I agree, pitythepontipines, if you are talking about those London types who get all excited about the cultural diversity in their kids's schools as though it was some kind of background frieze. I mean they wouldnt want all those 'culturally diverse' types round their house, they just want an international groceer's shop.