AIBU to ask is there life after London?

[poppingshop1]

I know there is, but is it a good one?

DH & I are true Londoners & live in a lovely part of SW London that I grew up in. We have a lovely life, mum around the corner, excellent school which DC1 attends around the other corner, lovely neighbours, etc. BUT we are starting to think we should leave. 90% of our childhood friends have moved out to either zone 5/6 or the home counties. 3 of my close friends (met through NCT) who live nearby have all decided to leave & told me this week.

We want more space (property is 1300 sq ft) which we can’t afford unless we move to other parts of London (don’t really see the point) & husband is finding the tube more & more stressful. Plus the general hustle & bustle is starting to grate.

However the idea of moving to the suburbs terrify me (don’t mean to offend), worried I will be bored/lonely & DH might struggle with the commute as he’s used to 30 mins door to door. I’d prefer to live in a 3/4 bed terrace close to amenities than a 6 bed detached in the middle of nowhere.

My 3 NCT friends are moving to other cities (Bristol, Edinburgh & Bath) & I’m starting to think that moving to another city could be a great option.

I’m lucky that I freelance so 90% of my work is wfh. DH would obviously earn less working in another city but still plenty of finance jobs around at the 70k mark and as we have at least 500k equity our cost of living would ideally be lower, I feel we might have a better quality of life. My mum is likely to move to be closer to us (she’s an immigrant, so no other family here).

Has anyone moved from London to other cities? Did you regret it? How hard did you find it settle? Where would you go?

Where I live it is ten minutes on a metrolink which come every five to ten minutes into the city centre. You can then get a train to absolutely anywhere, being in London in 2hrs5 mins. I am creasing at "memorise the bus timetable" and "there is no overground". Have people REALLY never been anywhere else??!!

I think with transport, it’s definitely worth looking at moving to another city. I managed fine without a car in Edinburgh, Paris, Bath and some other cities. Since we’ve moved to the Home Counties I’ve found it a lot harder and finally cracked and got a car this summer after 5.5 years of poor bus services and not being able to go even short distances on foot due to there being no pavement. It’s annoying as I only use the car once or twice a week.

Community is really important to me so defo need to think carefully.

I loved our 10 years of London living. Loved loved loved it. Similar area to you OP, I do believe, SW12/SW11.

Love love love living out of London more.

We are only Home Counties, but wish we had been braver and moved further afield. Very happy here so maybe that would have been a mistake.

Would never move back to London now. So many other lovely towns and cities in the U.K.

And I didn't say there is no culture outside London. My nearest city is Bristol there is one main museum and a couple of theatres. Not even comparable to what's available in London and I won't pretend it is to be pc or polite.

when you've grown up in London, after a while everywhere else starts to feel somehow limited. Same places, same faces

Birmingham and Manchester have populations of over 2.5 million. Same faces? Do you people hear yourselves?

OP I think the point here is that London is your home and where you grew up.

I lived in London for much of my 20s and 30s, it was great. But I am from rural cumbria and in the end exciting as London was it never felt like "home" to me so we moved back here once the children arrived.

If you moved here you would probably enjoy the countryside, the low crime levels, the lack of traffic, but I am not sure it would feel like home to you?

grimeofthecentury careful you don’t break your back with that humongous chip on your shoulder.

You sound like a real grime of the century

genever It’s so hard & I think I understand what you mean by fitting in. DH family are from the East End & his granny actually came back to London after being evacuated as she missed it.

If the OP will excuse my joining the off-target theatre discussion, can I just agree with Laurie, that theatre in London is so much more than the big West End productions. It's where an awful lot of the country's actors and directors train, it's where an awful lot of them try out new ideas. And no, they don't all come from middle-class London backgrounds. Those West End productions don't spring fully fledged out of nowhere like Athena out of the head of Zeus. There is a LOT of fringe theatre in London.

Which is not to say that there isn't plenty in the provinces. Just that there's more, of every kind, in London.

Not getting my point Laurie, I know what off west end means. You seem determined though so I'll let you have it - yes London is the bestest you win woopieee!! Have a sticker.

I moved to Birmingham after about ten years in London. I loved London but couldn’t see my long term future there and made the heart wrenching decision to go.

For the first few months I hated Birmingham and missed everything about London. After a year I was more ambivalent. Two years after moving to Birmingham I’m incredibly happy here and don’t miss London at all - I would never consider moving back.

Someone mentioned that there’s a different culture ‘up north’. I would say that’s true (well in the Midlands in my case).

If you move to another city expecting it to be a smaller version of London you’ll be disappointed wherever you move to. But if you go in with an open mind and are prepared to adapt your lifestyle, try new hobbies, do different kinds of weekend activities etc you’ll be much more likely to make a good move.

I’ve finally stopped being an annoying ex-Londoner (“when I lived in East London we used to have.../there was a....” etc)!!!

IsaSchmisa The overground is a separate rail network run by TFL, think of it as a cross between the tube and normal rail service, parts of it will shortly be running 24 x 7.

Going back to the OP, from what you're saying, it sounds like one of the larger northern cities might actually do you very well. Public transport shouldn't be a problem, same old faces shouldn't be a problem, entertainment should be fine.

Zones 5 and 6 on the central line are not a long commute from the city, especially if you could afford property near the station. Definitely a more suburban feel though.

I know it's awful up here, I see the same people serving in my local CoOp every single day. In London there is a constant flow of people working so you have a fresh one every day. So vibrant, so amazing

You are worrying about moving not because it is London, but because it is your home, but with an added dash of "oh the horror, no where is good as London" coming at you from certain sides.

I live in Birmingham, I moved from a small city in the NE. And I love to visit my home town, and still call it home. But it regularly comes up on lists of the worst places to live. But as my childhood city, I think I see it through rose tinted glasses.

However, I still left and would never move back.

Loads of people say they hate Birmingham. I love it. I am never short of things to take the kids to. The summer we spent the entire time going from free event to free event. The Jewellery Quarter festival, the Dragon Boat races to name a couple. We went to various Museums so many times for different things they had on. The Science Garden at the Think Tank which is free in the afternoon and the kids love it. We spent the summer having great fun doing The Big Sleuth. We live a short train ride from the most beautiful park, which is one of the largest urban parks in Europe. For me, it is a great life for my children and they have opportunities here they would never have in my home city. I think moving from a big city to a big city is much of a muchness when it comes to your every day life. Moving from a city to a country town/village is a huge culture shock, and I see why people would run back to where they moved from quite quickly.

I do like to visit London, but I could not live there, although when you visit you visit the centre and do all the tourist stuff, the exciting stuff, how often do you do that when you live there. I found it too noisy, too busy, too crowded. But I do love to visit.

Threads like this always go one way though, not because of what you necessarily posted OP, but you always get the odd one or two coming on acting like London is the centre of everything and the rest of the country still has coal fires and outside toilets, and it just gets peoples backs up. And those of us from the rest of the country who find the whole London centric view the Govt. has tiring and actually to the detriment of the rest of the country. The view of those who live outside London is that London is over represented in interests in Government, and it can feel like the needs of London are put ahead of the needs of the rest of the UK. Data from 2014 (so not massively up to data but still) showed London gets 24 times as much spent on infrastructure per resident than north-east England. It does breed resentment.

I remember coming back home from trip to a larger city having experienced interesting and exciting things, a wonderful cultural experience. I bumped into a local lady I know, told her what I'd done. She then said she couldn't wait to show me her latest knitting project! Be prepared for this.

^^No one's saying that. The difference is scale. How many shows are currently running in London versus running in Leeds (just to pick an example at random)? I don't know the answer, but it's many multiples.

This is a matter of southerner perception. You count number in 'place'. I would consider for an evening out number within x minutes of home. One hour by train from Leeds would get you to Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield, York. If Londoners were all walking to their theatre it would be a more reasoned point. I live in a market town and shock horror we have theatre too, which is like you counting your Ealing/Brixham/Hendon options.

Love op's innocent little me act, when she's the one who started off suggesting there is literally nothing outside the one area she has ever been I believe she was employing a little bit of self-deprecating humour, something that apparently does not exist outside London.

Who seriously has time to go to a load of art and culture stuff with kids though? Well, we always have. If it’s a 20 minute tube ride to get there it doesn’t matter if they’re only interested for half an hour, or only want to see the Egyptian gallery. Also, children get bigger and sometimes take themselves off to do these things without parents, because they’re interested in them.

ThroughThickAndThin01 Can I ask where you are?

ohchill I have to confess I was surprised by the lack of pavement in some of the countryside I have visited. I wanted to go walking & enjoy the beautiful scenery.

IsaSchmisa The overground is a separate rail network run by TFL, think of it as a cross between the tube and normal rail service, parts of it will shortly be running 24 x 7.

No it isn't.

Overground trains are national. TfL have only got involved in London overground very recently. It's just branding 🙄