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?

A 30 minute commute is pretty damn good for anywhere! If your housing is good and local schools good I’d stay put!

I left London for home counties under duress, and like where we live but hate commuting! Main benefit is less pollution.

I'm biased because I have no interest in leaving London but I have had friends move to Godalming from Northcote Road area and have really regretted it. They said it's quiet, the commute takes over an hour just to get to Waterloo, everyone knows everyone else's business etc.

Anyway, they have now priced themselves out and can't move back.

That said, other friends recently moved to Guildford; big detatched pile, football pitch for a garden and absolutely love it.

Horses for courses and all that.

London is great, by the way BUT the ignorance of some of its inhabitants and their faux surprise that other places are actually pretty great, also, is hugely annoying

Yep. As I've said upthread, I've lived in London, DH has spend a lot of his life there, loads of family there, etc. but people being so wilfully one-eyed about anything is irritating, and add the 'Ohhh...London is everything ' wankiness and it gets swiftly annoying.

Both DH and me have turned down well paid jobs in London as nothing would make us live there again. Because we found that life's better elsewhere!

I left London 5 years ago. Since then I have lived 1.5 years in another European country, 1 year in the countryside, 6 months in a city up north, and 1 year in N. America. And I am still pining for London. There are so many things that I took for granted there that just don't exist in other places. Having said that, though, I would never go back, partly because I can't afford to now, and partly because I know we do have a better quality of life - albeit less varied, a bit duller - away from there. But it still hurts!

Absolutely, there have been far more offensive things said on this thread about London than anywhere else

not even slightly.

These topics always end up becoming a bit tribal!

I really think that the town or city matters less than the circumstances you find yourself in with friends, family, jobs etc. and it’s really hard to know if a move will work out well. I grew up in Hertfordshire and lived in London after university for almost a decade, except for a year living abroad. I really struggled to imagine living anywhere else in the UK.

Then we moved to Birmingham a few years ago. It was a fairly short notice and unplanned move - DH was offered a good job and so off we went 8 weeks later having given up our flat. I’d been there maybe 4-5 times ever, and it was not on my dream destination list! I was pretty reluctant to go but we’d gone abroad for my career together, and I felt I owed it to DH to support him this time.

I missed London like crazy to start with, but we probably made the move a bit earlier than was ideal, before everyone around us started having kids and leaving too. Also, we rented for the first 18 months whilst we figured out where we wanted to live and then it took a while to buy a house, so didn't get the feeling of being settled straight away.

In the intervening time, all but a handful of our friends have moved away too and now I’m very glad to be established somewhere I’m happy. We do have family near-ish to us and that makes a difference.

Now, after a few years, I absolutely love where we live. Our house is beautiful, our neighbourhood is amazing - a conservation area and lots of excellent local businesses within walking distance on our high street, good schools, community spirited and friendly. We’re a 10 minute drive into the city centre and can easily go to London for the day for work or fun. Our quality of life is great. It certainly isn’t London in terms of the variety of things to do, but there is lots to discover and enjoy, we go to the theatre often and loads of gigs too - much easier to get tickets to pretty much anything that you’re interested in that tours here. Easy access to beautiful countryside is also a bonus, and the cost of living is so much lower. I feel like we’re able to live the best life we can.

I will always love London, some of my best and most exciting years were spent there, but I’m happy to enjoy regular visits.

The main compromises for me are the job market, which is much less fluid with fewer opportunities, having to drive more, and the distance from my own family and where I grew up, but we can cope with those things.

You just have to work out where you can compromise and go from there.

We moved to Zone 5 and DH loves the commute - he gets a direct train and always gets a seat. The train takes about 15min longer than before. He hated commuting from zone 2 - couldn't get on trains/tubes and even when he did, he was squashed and it was a nightmare.

OP, you could go and visit your friends in other cities when they've moved and see what you think. Alternatively, I think you might as well stay in London. You're not fussed about garden size, not fussed about a lot of space, peace and quiet etc. I reckon you could be best off moving to a cheaper part of zone 2 or 3, e.g. somewhere in SE London - you'd get that bigger house but otherwise keep the lifestyle you love.

@ShottaSheriff
but there is lots to discover and enjoy, we go to the theatre often and loads of gigs too - much easier to get tickets to pretty much anything that you’re interested in that tours here.

Good idea. I could travel to Birmingham for a day out. It would probably take me the same time to travel there than to London. I have never visited Birmingham in my life.

I don’t think it’s London that’s necessarily keeping you there - it the fact that it’s your home town and your support neckwork is there. But as you say your friends are living out and your Mum would move with you!
My advice would be to yes - move out of London for all the reasons you have stated. However make sure you move first to a city with lots going on - shops to walk to etc (Brighton, Bristol etc) because if you go from what you have - to the suburbs where you have to drive to get even a pint of milk then you will almost certainly miss the “buzz” of London.
Another good option is a village but a big village with a good school - good community - nice pubs etc but that can be good to save for once you’re used to being out of London!!!

There's nowhere quite like London. I've lived and worked in a lot of cities around the world (including London), and the buzz that London has is just something different.

But that doesn't mean I want to live in London, it doesn't mean that people living in London are somehow having a much better life than me.

If you are looking for somewhere just like London, that special big-city buzz, I think you would struggle to find it anywhere else in Europe, not just in the UK. There's no point trying to replicate the atmosphere of central London somewhere else.

But you can think about what specific things you would like about a place to live, and you will find those things elsewhere, of course. They will have their own atmosphere, because they aren't London, they are a different place in their own right.

You will prize my Oyster card from my cold dead hands personally. I’m one of the people who MNers are sceptical about, who visits the hell out of all the galleries, monuments, museums, science exhibitions and theatres on a weekly basis, and the nice thing about London is that I can always find things which fit in the centre of the Venn diagram of my interests and my DCs’ at any particular age and phase. And from the hordes of parents I rub shoulders with at the Royal Institute, Royal Society, RFH or whatever, I’m clearly not in that much of a minority.

However, that said, Birmingham is lovely, has lots to do, and has by far the best curries. Glasgow and Edinburgh are beautiful and inspiring, if cold. Bristol is fun, if a bit wet. I reckon you should spend your next year doing weekend trips all around the UK, whilst thinking very hard about what you actually need from a city. Stay in the outskirts and look at it with a “what would it be like” perpspective. Visit any relatives or friends you can cajole into offering a spare room for the night. It’ll be an adventure - even if you end up deciding that you’d rather eat your own leg than move outside the M25 you’ll still have learned a lot.

"Birmingham ... has by far the best curries"

Can I just put a word in for the curry houses of Tooting?

Tooting has a lot of amazing curry houses.

Yeah, I was about to say Tooting! I'm moving out of London on 3 weeks and I am going to miss Jaffna House desperately. Best Sri Lankan food in London.

I'm wondering who you are, Leia.

Jaffna house is, indeed, great.

love my Tooting curries! Leia where are you going?

thecatfromjapan, it's the best, better than Apollo Banana Leaf I reckon! And never hard to get a table unlike there.

poppingshop, I'm moving back to Belfast, where I'm from. Shitting it quite frankly!

Have a wonderful move, Leia. May it bring you love, prosperity and joy.

Funnily enough I ventured out to the wilds of Tooting just the other week (to use one of their excellent selection of reasonably priced alteration tailors and grab some stocking fillers from a Primark that’s actually less crowded than a rush hour tube unlike the central ones) and I was thinking that I really wanted to try some of the curry houses but wasn’t sure where to start. Jaffna House and Apollo Banana Leaf you say? Anywhere else?

Karahi Tandoori is an institution. Vijaya Krishna is amazing. Pretty much all of them, to be honest.

This is a topic that gets very, very heated, you know. Not on MN, necessarily - but people get incredibly territorial about their favourite!

Thank you catfromjapan! I hope it's a good move for us. I love London but it's simply too expensive for us now.

Evilringahbitch, what kind of curry do you like? I like Dosa Chennai too for their gigantic dosas!

The OP lives south of the river. So many other places will be an improvement. Just need to think about moving from somewhere you have existed all your life and the loss of a day to day social network- is it a good idea?

And also OP fwiw, I think if you can afford to live in London, stay! You could move to a different part of it and it'd feel different enough.

Oh good luck Leia.

I would love just a bit more living space. Before I do anything I’m going to see if my mum will sell to me at a heavily discounted price (unlikely) or object to me erecting a wall in the middle of her house with her on one side & my family on the other (also unlikely).

Re curry I like Dosa n chutney & Jaffna. Gurkhas diner in Balham also v.good.

Getting hungry now!

I haven't tried Ghurka's Diner.