Thanks you guys. We were over in Barking for most of yesterday afternoon, early evening, visiting vendor and checked out town, local environs and the fun fair in the park.
The people at park seemed quite chilled, just loads of families out for a bit of fun.
To be honest we had a good walk around whole town, and managed to chat to some folks in the park and cafes too.
Our vendor is lovely, house is immaculate and we have some teachers from Robert clack in the road too though everyone is retiring so obviously will change. There is also the obligatory run down house with young man and a couple of devil dogs but such is London I guess.
She asked us why we wanted to live in Barking, and we said the house, garden, school Barking Abbey is pretty much across the road, I guess we are taking a chance on the other stuff.
Strangely though, i don't feel so jittery anymore, seems to be a bit of a tale of two Barkings, apologies to Dickens.
We had been round Ilford in our search, it seemed to be street upon street of houses, very busy congested road so perhaps we were a bit hasty there, will check out the house sites again.
Lovecat, that's quite scary definations re the schools. We sent ds to the local school here which was predominately Asian but it was small, friendly set up which attracted us, I never heard anyone refer to it like that though.
The BNP etc are abhorrent but they will canvas support just now as infact will any small extreme outfit as the main two or three parties have completely have lost touch with what is actually happening to people, and instead of directing the fight to the poverty gap where it belongs they faff around with Westminister infighting and re arranging deck chairs instead of having any idea what matters to people and how present crisis could be turned around...
oh heck this is a whole other thing..