To be sick of people looking down on the town I live in?

[Beboopbadoopie]

I'm 40 and have lived here for 10 years, before I had kids and after (I have 2 under 5) and recently we've randomly bumped into several old school friends in different places and when we say where we live they say something like, 'oh really?' and one person even said 'why!?' and another told me its a dive! It's happened lots in the past too. Where we live is not terrible, it's just the worst looking town locally (live in a very pretty area) and the high street is pretty much dead. I think people think it's rough but I've noticed a lot of posts about crime in other 'nicer' local towns so feel it's kind of a similar level (I have never felt unsafe here but there's the odd shop break in or smashed shop windows but nothing major and I've noticed these incidents in nicer towns nearby too)

We bought here because it's a lot cheaper than everywhere else (for a reason it seems!)We renovated our house so we are in a good position financially now which means I only have to work part time and am around more with the kids which I want. We have a lovely house, amazing neighbours, a great park and leisure centre around the corner, 3 good cafes (not loads but better than nothing), a great library for the kids, several supermarkets, a train station to that goes directly to major cities.

I'm getting pretty fed up with the negativity from other people because it makes me feel a bit shit, and I'm bringing my kids up here and that's what people are going to think when they say where they live and I don't want people to look down on them. I have thought of moving but feel it's an extreme reaction and also we'd have to double our mortgage. How can I stop it from bothering me? It's so annoying!

A certain town is best known for a train crash, and because of its elderly population, has been nicknamed "God's waiting room".

The thing is we are happy here but those comments do make me question our choice to live here, even though we are happy! We have looked for other houses in other areas and could actually afford to live elsewhere but when it comes to actually properly thinking about moving I just keep coming back to his convenient it is and how my son loves the local park etc (and also our low mortgage 😂) but the comments make me wobble and I don't want my sons to be looked down on.

The town isn't dangerous, people are friendly and say hello when they walk past. There are slightly rough areas and definitely drugs about but I think there are drugs everywhere (even in the very naice postcard pretty town I grew up in!)

Unfortunately no place is perfect. I think you just have to pick the problems you can live with

Burford is full of tourists and Marlow suffers from the planes bringing them here.

I can definitely think of places where the biggest drug problem is the number of OAPs using up all the NHS resources on their statins & antibiotics, etc.

I come from a real s**thole down South so would never judge🤣
The only good point some would say is you can get whatever you want there 😬

Is it a town between Christchurch and Lymington??

People are suggesting towns that are too big.

Bordon in Hampshire is more like it. People are snobby about it because surrounding towns are some if the most desirable in the SE. It’s got some if the best open countryside and the new housing has been done really well. It’s got no train line so doesn’t attract thd commuters ( apparently this is a bad thing 😂)

@Beboopbadoopie If it's any consolation OP my town made it into this piece of illustrious literature. Although it does remain a source of local pride to us!

😂 Good insight. Thanks for this.

Millbrook

Well I've had quite the weekend!

Ignore them.
The bloody cheek.
Working class areas have a great community spirit, people care for the neighbours, crime happens everywhere.
I love living in a wc area.

Haha. So do I.

We all want to know where you live!

This sounds very much like my home town, where i was brought up, but don't live there now. Because its within reach of where I now live, sometimes I hear people almost groaning when someone mentions it or says they are going there for some reason, or say they avoid it.
it hurts a bit because to me its a really warm-hearted place where the people are mostly absolutely lovely. True the place won't win any architectural awards and has been badly carved up in the past with a crazy road system, bad council decisions, closed shops, etc. But it will always be my home-town and there is something about it that I love.💗

Jaywick?

This thread is so frustrating, like the baby name ones ‘should I change my babies name, I now hate it’ where you never find out what the baby is called.

I agree OP, I don't live somewhere with a negative reputation, but it always pisses me off when people feel it's ok to slag off a place without thought that they are also insulting the people who are from there or those that move there by choice.

I really think it’s New Milton 😂 it ticks all the boxes!

Bradford is a City not a Town.

We have this. We live in a new town that’s in the middle of lots of much prettier towns. We can get to these towns in ten minutes or so in any direction. However we get more house for our money, a faster train link to London, and all our kids friends come to our ‘dive’ of a town to hang out at the leisure park and go to the cinema, or trampoline park, or Primark for that matter.

People are so rude about it, it’s actually shocking. I’ve a mind when they do it to point out that they are being mugged off by paying 300k more to live in a ‘Market town’ (where the market is laughable) just to be able to judge others that don’t.
Our town isn’t pretty at all. But it has decent amenities and weirdly a sense of community lacking in the nearby desirable towns that are populated by move out of Londoners.

I have to win this one. I live in Staines. I think the only thing really wrong with Staines upon Thames is the name. I have a friend in Mold who says the same.

It’s a thriving Surrey town on the river, not some dystopian hell hole. I am very happy here. The only real downside is the tedium of people’s reactions completely with tiresome Ali G quotes.

People are so boring aren’t they. Just parrot what everyone else says… Slough is shit. Betjeman blah blah. Birmingham, Liverpool, London you’ll be stabbed before the week is out…

And yes some people in the North seem obsessed with the idea that all people in the South have a backward idea about the North. I don’t hear any negative comments about Northerners. Southerners aren’t ‘stuck up’ by default. It’s another tedious cliche that needs to fade away.

yabu for not telling where you live!

And yes some people in the North seem obsessed with the idea that all people in the South have a backward idea about the North. I don’t hear any negative comments about Northerners.

Northerners also rate themselves oh so highly for their sense of humour but actually they're just really bloody rude.

Burgess Hill?