Make me feel better about staying in London please!

[Sudbury]

Partner and I are going to move out of our London flat as we want more space / garden for the toddler and baby.

I’m desperate to use this as a way to leave London and head for a smaller city, think: a Cathedral city so somewhere with culture, history and an identity - basically York or Norwich, but probably York. Somewhere we can get a slightly bigger cheaper house, have a calmer pace of life, make new friends, grow our own veg and not raise children who may be entitled London brats.

Reasons being I find London life annoying is I’ve been here 13 years and it’s increasingly fast paced, crowded, polluted and competitive. Don’t like being so far away from the countryside, living in the same city as friends but it taking an hour and a half to get to them because it’s so bloody big, no real sense of community, the general feeling of stress and busyness that seems to scent the London air.

Partner is not keen to leave, at least not now and gives very sensible reasons. We’d have to find new jobs / retrain as we both have London centric careers and while we do want to retrain now is probably too soon. We don’t have friends of family outside London in the places we’d like to move and raising young kids with no friends or family close by (which would be the case if we moved) is bloody hard. Other places may be less open / accepting of people who don’t 100% fit the straight, white, Christian mould.

I know in my heart that partner is right, and if they also wanted to leave I’d be voicing some of their reasons for staying. But I still get a horrible pang of longing whenever we leave London, or conversely view a house In London that costs double what a bigger house would cost elsewhere.

Help! Convince me that London is worth staying in and that the dream life doesn’t lie in York

London brats 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

Your problem is not London itself but the bit of London you're in if there's no sense of community or green space around you and it all feels stressful and too busy.

I live in a down-at-heel part of Z3, but we have a great community feel, know and chat to our neighbours, have a ton of amenities and parks and great transport links, and importantly for me, can get out to beautiful green spaces that feel like proper countryside (albeit not the Yorkshire Moors, Dartmoor or Snowdon...) in a 15-min drive. Last night, I sat with a friend outside a restaurant on a side road not too far from Oxford Circus in the sunshine and enjoyed our meal and watching people wander by, who were also enjoying the sunshine/end of working day - no stress or fuss.

It's really a bit about 'what you make it', wherever you live, and I agree that your post exhibits a pretty poor attitude to both London and those other areas, OP.

As for 'bratty London kids' – I really don't know where to start with that.

Any children that are brats are that way due to how they are raised. So maybe look a bit closer to home on that front

Also if you think that moving to a new area and having no job to go to and potentially having to retrain during a cost of living crisis soon to be recession then go for it. I think you will soon regret it

Cambridge to Kings Cross is about 45 minutes by train. Even Bristol to Paddington is less than 2 hours. Are your jobs really completely London-based? Especially since the pandemic, would hybrid working not be an option (eg commuting one day a week)?

Sounds like it.
They're either yet another lazy journalist getting copy, or someone with very little self awareness.

What's with all the London bashing threads lately?

Weird.

You lost me at entitled London brats. I stopped reading after that.

I grew up in London but really wanted to be in the countryside. I got my wish and I'm happy where I am however:

I'm happier because my close family moved locally and I still have family support. It took a number of years to really feel part of the community as many families grow up here and stay local. I find public transport expensive and hard work to work around so needed a car and so did my young adult children so it has cost us more than living in London. I love the walks and views but agriculture means you don't have the freedom to go where you'd like.

Think carefully about the pro and cons of a move. Having family support is valuable and I didn't realise how much until I moved here.

Oi! I live in the borough of Bromley and I bloody love London thank you very much. I moved over 300 miles to live in London. Don't tar us all with that brush!😂

They refused to serve you in a pub, yeah right

Entitled London brats? I find that children often take after their parents.

Why would kids in London be any more entitled or bratty than anywhere else? Might be your friends who are the problem not your city.

I'm really surprised at the number of posters who seem to think that being not white is not an issue outside London or other big cities.
I've spent quite a bit of time recently in Norwich, and was in York recently too. There were very few people of colour in either place OP, and I think it is an issue in terms of how people see you and treat you. I'm white myself, so have not experienced it first hand, but have seen it with friends who've moved out of London, and they felt they stood out, that they were perceived as different, even though there was no actual racist abuse. For example, their child not fitting in at school, being followed round shops, having people querying what they eat, touching their hair. If you are asian, you can add in comments about food and cooking smells.
I think if you are going to move, you should spend some time visiting potential towns first, and maybe go on the Black Mumsnetters board to see if there are some areas which might be more comfortable than others. I really hate that it makes a difference, but sadly I think it does.

What?! Very few people of colour in York?
Where were you, and how long did you stay?

Entitled London brats??!! My DC are born and raised in London, (I grew up in Norwich as it goes), neither they, nor their friends, are entitled or brats.

We moved south to North last year, to a city neither of us knew previously. In our experience, people in the North are far more friendly, welcoming and less judgmental than anyone we ever met in the South. Also, it takes 1.5 hours on the train to central London if the urge for southern-Ness should take us!!

I don’t recognise your description of London or of the kids that grow up in it. London is like a series of hundreds of villages and it sounds like you’ve picked the wrong one that doesn’t suit you.

Have you spent much time in York? The weather is dreadful and it’s full of hen and stag dos which means the city centre is filthy and busy every weekend.

You complain about your London friends being 1.5 hours away because London is so big so why not make friends that live in your own neighbourhood? You would have to make new friends if you relocated anyway.

Hi from Norwich, where my son's primary school has an official count of 53 different nationalities. I also work at UEA and can vouch for the fact that the city is NOT a place full of only white people.

Moved here from London too 3 years ago. Love it so much, my kids can walk into the city on their own with friends on the weekend (ages 10 and 13). They have so much more freedom of movement than their old friends back in London.

ps: DH works in Canary Wharf 1 day a week, the rest from home. Less than 2 hours from Norwich station to his desk now the Elizabeth Line is open.

Can you afford Clifton in Bristol? If so, that's where I would head to

All the true Northerners on the thread thinking nowhere ‘in the North’ is 1.5 hours from central London 😀

Exactly!

Ooh the professional northerners have turned up!

Op, you clearly don’t like London even if some of your reasons are a bit

Nobody should live somewhere they feel unhappy if they don’t have to. But maybe somewhere commutable outside London would be a more realistic goal. Bath? Winchester? Salisbury?

I didn’t say all London kids were entitled London brats. I said if we moved out of London we’d have less chance of raising kids who “may” be entitled London brats.

”May be” aka there are some entitled bratty kids in London. I’m sure there are some elsewhere too, and York and Norwich have plenty of their own brats too.

And yes I’ve left London, I grew up in and went to uni in different Northern and midlands cities, then moved to London after graduation. Have also lived in Nairobi, Mumbai and Djibouti for all that it matters.

So. What's made you decide on York or Norwich, and are there any other cities that we can help you with?