AIBU to insist we stay in London?

[londonlass33]

DH wants to leave London and I desperately don’t. We’ve visited numerous places in the south-east where we could viably live (due to commuting distance mainly) to house hunt and I’ve just not felt at home anywhere.

For me London has it all - culture, diversity, fabulous parks, restaurants, excellent public transport, nightlife, sports and myriad educational and job opportunities for the DC when they get older. Nowhere we’ve visited has come even close to my mind.

We also live in a lovely quiet street with a wonderful sense of community and are good friends with our fabulous neighbours. We have many friends in the area through the DC’s nursery too.

DH is adamant he wants to leave as whilst he acknowledges all of the above, he’s got his heart set on a change of scenery after the last 18 months. I’m very reluctant to give it a go for the aforementioned reasons and because it will be nigh on impossible to come back if we leave and regret it.

WWYD?

Omg I could have written this post! Your dh sounds like my dh.

Since lockdown etc he has been desperate to leave London and go and live in the countryside somewhere. Realistically all our family live in London, we've both never lived or experienced outside London, London is just home for us. He runs his own company from his office so believes he can work from anywhere and travel to London when he needs to however I don't even drive and rely on public transport so leaving will have me confined to my home.

How about moving somewhere in London that is sort of countryside looking? I'm not sure what part of London you live in but Barnet, Oakley, Richmond, Barnes etc are all London but are spacious, green etc. How about meeting in the middle of what you both want?

Name change because this is very outing!

We moved from London in search of country access but in a town. We now live in Maidenhead and have a very easy commute to London in fact sometimes it's quicker getting to work now than when we lived there! We are 5 min walk from countryside with fields and woodland an easy walk and lovely for a jog and the river a 20 min walk. We have an excellent senior school and a choice of 4 primary schools on our doorstep which is all fabulous. The private schools in the area aren't great but there is access to grammar schools if your children are able to pass the 11+ and happy to travel a couple of miles on a coach.

BUT we don't know our neighbors they are absolutely not interested on becoming friends and it's hard to meet people here. The school mums are too busy in their little coffee morning cliques to want to get to know their kids new friends families and even joining the PTA hasn't helped with covid no one was mingling. The senior that I have a child at I don't know any other parents at because you don't get to meet them when they are bigger. I have found it very lonely here even in my much larger house with decent garden and off-road parking.

I'm genuinely considering ether moving back to london or having another baby to try and get some friends through the NCT and baby massage groups. It seems like a great place to live but people are pretty cold here not having a friendly neighbour to have a cuppa with or leave a key with or to feed the rabbit when we go away is quite hard.

I think it's best to move when dc are babies or primary school as moving to any area with secondary aged dc mean it's harder to make friends.

@Berkshiremom. That was my experience too and I’ve lived in lots of places. Commuter towns were both partners work to pay the mortgage and you didn’t grow up there are hard I found the places that were easier to make friends were London and Bath. Some villages are good too on the edge of bigger places but I don’t drive so want facilities.

Same situation - we were in London & ex DH wanted to move out before kids started school. Queue big move to Surrey when kids were 1 & 3 and spent next few years creating / renovating our forever home. 6 years after the move, he decides he's tired of commuting to London so ups and leaves! Didn't know at the time he'd started an affair with someone at work and guess what...they now live back in London now while I'm stuck in Surrey where he grew up.

I've always found making friends very easy in London. No idea why people say it's an unfriendly city.

@Goldbar

I've always found making friends very easy in London. No idea why people say it's an unfriendly city.

That's also been my experience. People in London will happily leave you to live your life without interference or enquiry if that's what you want. That's sometimes interpreted as unfriendly. I'd call it un-nosey

But if you're willing it's very easy to make friends, partly I think because it's such a city of migrants (both overseas and domestic) who have quite dynamic social groups. Places where everyone has been settled their whole life, and sometimes for generations, are harder to break into (I've only tried this once to be fair).

Yeh much more of a "join us!" attitude in london. I was so lucky, knew nobody when i arrived but flatmates and colleagues asked along to things they were doing. Nobody had a friendship group carved in stone.

@Puffykins thanks!

@babouchette, @DarlingFell and @MrsKoala where do you live too? DH and I are thinking of leaving north London (where we can only afford to rent) and relocating.

Most of the people I know who happily moved from London have ended up in other UK cities though that's very possibley because having grown up more rually DH and I have lived in cities and few towns and won't go smaller or more rural.

Most of the cities we lived in have had easy access to counrtyside - so I'd be looking at any commutable cities rather than "countryside".

I also agree with PP don't underestaimate how tiring communiing into work can be or how much additionl time gettingto stations and waiting round would be needed.

But if you don't want to go - don't point out it's been an odd 18 months and thus it's an odd time to be making this choice - though renting would at least keep your options open.

@felicity877 we live in Tonbridge now, but originally moved out to Sevenoaks. We’ve found it easy to make friends in Tonbridge (not in snobby Sevenoaks, which is very ‘rich retirement’ and the schools are shit unless you pay or pray) because almost all the parents at the school are also London leavers.

It’s a bit more diverse too, not all posh and white. T.Wells is about 15 min drive for shopping and eating out although Tonbridge has a few decent restaurants and general high street shops (and a billion charity shops) too. It’s great for our lifestyle at the moment and the kids are very lucky to have a brilliant life here.

Stay where you are in London. The house next to us (we're not in London) is for sale and the words "someone from London has put an offer in on it" is filling the lovely neighbourhood with dread!

@Hillarious

Stay where you are in London. The house next to us (we're not in London) is for sale and the words "someone from London has put an offer in on it" is filling the lovely neighbourhood with dread!

You've done a typo. Need to replace 'lovely' with 'insular, prejudiced, ignorant'.

Welcome to the world of Londoners for the past 30 or 40 years. Someone from somewhere else in the UK has been putting in offers on London homes for decades. Just one of the reasons why London is the capital of homelessness. 165,000 homeless in London. More than the entire population of many 'lovely' neighbourhood towns.

@Hillarious

Stay where you are in London. The house next to us (we're not in London) is for sale and the words "someone from London has put an offer in on it" is filling the lovely neighbourhood with dread!

I know just what you mean. This place has been an upsizing Londoner magnet for the last couple of years. Fortunately ours are integrating well now they’ve got used to having friendly neighbours.

@Hillarious

Stay where you are in London. The house next to us (we're not in London) is for sale and the words "someone from London has put an offer in on it" is filling the lovely neighbourhood with dread!

And yet these are probably the same people who will say Londoners are the unfriendly, snobby ones.

This is why I prefer London over small towns - a lot more inclusive and open-minded people.

Surely some of those "londoners" are just moving home i.e to be closer to family?

@countrytown

Surely some of those "londoners" are just moving home i.e to be closer to family?

Yes. Lots aren't Londoners. They're those oh so friendly 'locals' from the non London 'lovely' insular neighbourhoods - who moved to London and are now moving back out.

Don't leave London.
It's grim up here.
At least we have one person in the village that can read, and a few shoes between us in the street. So not all bad.

I remember the covid Christmas threads about "Londoners" invading the north. Clearly the majority were not randoms on a jolly but going to be with family 😁

I think most people don't hate Londoners like they do on Mumsnet. I was talking to a friend in the North about being worried about visiting home after lockdown because people would hate us and she didn't know what the hell I was talking about. 'I think people have felt sorry for Londoners during lockdown' is what she said.

I also think there's a bit of London-centric ridiculousness (along with some small-minded villageyness which makes me glad I'm not moving home) on this thread but, really, uprooting yourself from anywhere you've settled is going to be a big deal, whether it's London or elsewhere. It's easy to paint that as London being better than anywhere else but really it's because it's home.

Fortunately ours are integrating well now they’ve got used to having friendly neighbours.

@Blossomtoes I’m not sure what you’re talking about - I’m a Londoner and have wonderful neighbours. We all know each other, take in parcels, feed each other’s cats when people are away, help each other with gardening, get together regularly for drinks and people babysit each other’s DC. You and @Hillarious sound like the opposite of my friendly neighbours.

@lllllllllll

Fortunately ours are integrating well now they’ve got used to having friendly neighbours.

@Blossomtoes I’m not sure what you’re talking about - I’m a Londoner and have wonderful neighbours. We all know each other, take in parcels, feed each other’s cats when people are away, help each other with gardening, get together regularly for drinks and people babysit each other’s DC. You and @Hillarious sound like the opposite of my friendly neighbours.

I’m not sure why you’d think I’m not a good neighbour 😔

I’ve got both my next door neighbours’ keys, we take in parcels, water each others’ gardens when we go on holiday, exchange birthday cards, take each others’ bins in and feed each others’ animals. We’ve prepared food in illness and my bloke made bread for both of them when flour was short in lockdown because we had plenty. Hell, we even shared a 16 pack of loo rolls!

Lcachu Wed 18-Aug-21 18:11:57
Hillarious

Stay where you are in London. The house next to us (we're not in London) is for sale and the words "someone from London has put an offer in on it" is filling the lovely neighbourhood with dread!

And yet these are probably the same people who will say Londoners are the unfriendly, snobby ones.

This is why I prefer London over small towns - a lot more inclusive and open-minded people.

This was said somewhat tongue in cheek. We moved out of London over 20 years ago as we'd outgrown our two bed flat and couldn't afford anything any bigger And you know what? There is life outside the M25. We're as friendly and helpful here as we were in London, but with bells on. I work locally, so my commute has gone down from 75 minutes on tube and train to 12 minutes on a bike (or one episode of The Archers on catchup). We're in a university town, so plenty going on. We're close enough to London to do a day trip or go to the theatre in the evening. Lovely to visit but great to get back home.

I think you should stay put.

My parents live 300 miles away from me - they love it - it suits them. We live in London & it is not all dirty and dangerous - some places are nice. No having to sluice out your nose here.

I think people have different preferences and it is hard if a couple want very different things.

We looked at out of London / countryside houses - much bigger and better than ours - the first time DH had to reverse down a single track country lane he said "sod this for a game of soldiers. "

I agree with previous posters not necessarily the whole Swallows and Amazons thingsbut a bigger garden / house and a decent transport link into London ( if that is what you like )

It doesn't always feel like it but when DCs want a job etc - sometimes ( not always ) being within easy commuting distance of London can help. Although also Manchester Leeds Liverpool Glasgow etc etc etc. Just saying many of eldest Ds's friends have gravitated toward London for jobs. ( Other will have very different experiences - I get that )