To hate the town in which I live?

[CuckooLuckoo]

I've name changed as it might make me identifiable .

I live in quite a rough town in an area of the UK that is commonly thought of and joked about as being full of unintelligent, inbred people. I absolutely hate it here.

I grew up in a really lovely place with friendly people and then when I was 15 my parents decided to move to this area because of my father's work. I started at school here and absolutely hated it. I ended up leaving school at 16 and getting a job and for some reason just never moved away. DH is not from here but also moved here as a child like I did.

Reasons I hate it here:

Its very very rough. Especially the town centre. It's like being on the Jeremy Kyle show when you walk through town.

People who are from the area are extremely rude and unfriendly. You are not considered a local unless you are someone's cousin and someone has known you since birth. If you chat to someone, for example, who is serving you in a shop, they look at you like you're absolute crap. Every single friend that I have is not from the area originally.

There is nothing to do here at all; if it's a rainy day the only place to take kids is a smelly, dirty soft play place that has drug addicts in the door way. We have no decent shopping centre, no decent cinema, no ice skating/roller skating/trampolining places for kids, no decent restaurants or pubs (stabbing is a problem in pubs here it seems). There is literally nothing to do!

The general 'rough-ness' of the area worries me for my DC growing up.

It's in the middle of nowhere! You can't just pop to another town for the day without driving for an hour!

I really want to move away from the area but DH won't. We both have businesses, mine I could run from anywhere but DH's is more local. We do have a really nice house in a nice village on the outskirts of the town, but this doesn't override all of the negatives of the town for me. DH hates it here and hates the local people too but won't move.

I actually feel constantly down and depressed living here. If we go out for the day away from the town and to another area I perk up a lot and feel so much happier.

AIBU to hate where I live? Is anyone else in the same position?

Come to Croydon 🥰

Same interested to know. Hope she got out! Personally am mystified as to the waxing lyrical about Norwich its a very small myopic city. Its’s where we all used to go for “big nights out” from KL, in 80’s but now I have family there & visited the university with my son a few years ago I was not impressed at all. Small, insular, not a huge amount of choice or things to do. If comparing it to the rest of Norfolk obviously hands down Norwich is best and great, but compared to other UK creative cultural cities then it’s really uninspiring. My advice is get out of Norfolk quickly & don’t look back I never did!

I feel like I need to start an online support group for King's Lynn survivors here! We need each other!

Thats hilarious KL survivors are us 😂

Oh for gods sake . It's just an average bloody town , no better or worse than anywhere else . I work in London, in actual shitholes where people flock to and pay ridiculous amounts of cash and call it 'vibrant' and its considerably better than that. Personally I think Norwich is a dump . Come to that , Cambridge is just as bad . Drug addicts are everywhere. Crime is certainly no worse than anywhere else- and you see that by the police's reaction to actual crime. Things that my force treat as bread and butter get a much more enhanced response in Norfolk . Is the education fabulous ? Not much worse than anywhere else . It's got all of my 5 kids into decent universities . Are people narrow minded ? No worse than those who slate a population of 50,000 as all being a) racist b) stupid and c) right wing .

I moved here in 2005 . It is what you choose to make it . You can turn up , bitch about everything not being like the lovely Home Counties , and then sell up in 3 years time complaining bitterly about how unfriendly / nosy everyone is , or you can find the good in the place , of which there is plenty .

It's slightly worse than an average bloody town, @plominoagain. My sibling used to be racially abused walking to school, in class, on the way home, at work etc etc. I myself had to grow up around people making ignorant racist and homophobic comments like they were not an issue at all. I taught English as a second language there for a while between graduate and post grad degree and the stories my students would tell of the prejudice they faced every day were heartbreaking.

I've lived in KL and I've lived in Whitechapel and I can tell you I'd choose the latter over and over again.

There are barely any jobs in KL or surrounding areas for people in the creative industry and West Norfolk has some of the lowest adult literacy rates in the entire country.

Obviously entitled to your opinion but having had a much more extensive experience of Kings Lynn over 53 years and my family dad sister aunts uncles cousins old school friends still living there, having grown up and been educated at school there and Wisbech, best friend and mum live in Cambridge Nephews & Nieces in Norwich, I know all of those places VERY VERY well, and since then having lived in some of the roughest most deprived parts parts of Newcastle and London and in a south coast vibrant city with the poorest housing estate in Europe, NONE of my criticisms of Kings Lynn was just about the prolific drug and violence problems, BTW my mother worked for social services there so we certainly heard about it at a deep level, for me it’s also about how bloody boring and dreary and lacking in opportunities it is, young people who are both bored and deprived of opportunity are often disruptive! I have taught at a LOT of schools & universities the past 30 years and few places were as dire as KES school it was the most miserable experience there, so I went to school in Wisbech instead. Good that you seem to appreciate it so much because you and yours have had a good experience, every single person in my family who got a higher education left and never went back, the ones still there are those who never went beyond school. Its not an aspirational place on the whole. Because some kids do well and leave for university like yours doesn’t mean its a great place for everyone. Not a single member of the younger generation in my family has gone back, there’s a reason for that, no jobs, boring low aspirant and a lot of drugs and violence. I live in a city with the highest number of drug addicts per capita outside of London and yet I have never ever felt as vulnerable and affected by it as I was living in KL. I couldn’t wait to get out saved my life !

KES was the 'good' school too! Should've been at mine, the things I saw!

That’s what people said in 1982 -85 when I was there but the bullying drugs violence 12 year olds etc having sex was shocking, I absolutely hated it! I know Gaywood Park was even worse. A lot of my extended family went to Spring Wood which became a much better school than KES. I couldn’t handle it became very volatile and a school refuser where once was high achiever. Mother was on the breadline single parent and I managed to get a full scholarship to an independent grammar school in Wisbech otherwise as the delightfully vile year head of KES said to me I would be lucky to scrape a pass in any o level, instead I have Masters degree and spent many years as an academic, because I got out of that school and KL the place where hope dreams & aspirations go to die! My mother was calling it a carbunkle on the world from the 70’s, it’s a total shit hole.

Wisbech is a weird place, 90% of the town is hideous but that bit along the North Brink looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel.