h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I've alluded to elsewhere, I'm being assailed by doubts about being in Somerset at the moment. I get the feeling part of me is rejecting being transplanted from here from London.

I miss the cosmopolitan-ness of London. The ability to invent your own city just by taking your pick of everything that's out there, rather than being forced to work within the confines of what you've got locally. And socially speaking, Somerset's a strange place to be for a single 31 year-old...

Everyone that doesn't leave and go to University seems to end up mating and/or pairing off before they hit 25. I'm starting to wonder whether I'll ever meet a suitably eligible bachelorette down here, never mind whether she'll like me or not. Yet if I'm here and having these doubts, there must be women out there feeling roughly the same thing.

There are still lots of pluses. But I came down here only seeing the good things about having done so, and now I'm realising what the minuses were. Although to be honest, it feels a lot like my first year at University, when I expected everything to be wonderful from the word 'go' and in fact it was a bit bleak once the initial euphoria started to wear off - but great things did happen in the end there.

London is a difficult place to leave behind, isn't it.

"The ability to invent your own city just by taking your pick of everything that's out there, rather than being forced to work within the confines of what you've got locally."
The is quite one of the best ways I've heard it put. We all make our own life, but it ultimately depends on what's around you. If there's not much going on in the local environment you can feel yourself shrinking. It happened to me when I left Manchester for Accrington in about '79, but I found myself drawn back to London, not Manchester.

I remember having a discussion with BV a few years back. I was ruminating on the fact that during the 80s, London was *the* place to be, and I felt myself to be an integral part of what was going on, but if something similar happened now there wouldn't even be a ripple of it in Austin.

Once you've felt yourself to be a part of a place like London, you always will be. That old cliché is true - you can take the boy out of London but you can't take London out of the boy.

By the way, I know a gorgeous single(ish) woman in Exeter.

By the way, watching old episodes of Minder doesn't help. I don't recommend it.

Sadly Exeter is a another country as far as Somerset is concerned. So that one isn't going to work.

Are you sure that you haven't got a cute female cousin that you could encourage to move into the area, Six? That's the way things are frequently done in that part of the world.

I don't live far away, but I've managed less than six months since leaving my last job before I've accepted some work there again. I miss it too much - and I'm only 20 miles away and have never actually lived there...

I feel for anyone who has left and misses it.

I can't understand why anyone would live in London.

Its dirty, the people are rude, its crowded, and the centre is brimming with people so far up their own backsides only their scrotums are visible.

The theatres are good.

Like most big cities, you either get London or you don't. You either like it or you don't. Some people don't know anything else, some have never been there, some have no inclination ever to do so, some have no choice.

being from up north you should just visit london as the charges that you have to pay must be a good saving also your now posh and people probly talk to you more you cant put a price on that can you also your the first person i spoke to since joining this site so dont fall out with my views

McKay - you're right about the centre of London, it's overpriced and over-rated, and the only people who go out there of an evening are idiots who don't know any better or tourists, who can be forgiven...

But once you know where to go, particularly around the fringes, it can be rather good.

One of the real issues I'm having about being in Somerset is that I've taken a pay cut - not just losing my London allowance, which I was expecting, but I didn't realise the complications of not having an Unpredictable Hours allowance any more. The main upshot of which is that I lost an extra £2,000 a year as well as my London weighting.

This means I'm actually much worse off financially - I've gone from paying £412.50 a month for a quarter of a house in London to paying £465 a month on a flat in Taunton, but I took this flat on without realising how much my monthly income would go down and it's become a millstone around my neck. And it's not even a particularly nice flat. It's just big, and in an interesting building - but Bob, I'm beginning to hate these curtains.

So not to put too fine a point on it, I'm skint, I'm trapped in a flat I don't like and can't afford, and I'm missing me mates. I'm also starting to think that the chances of finding suitably intelligent and interesting people to hang around with are relatively slim. And there's something about somewhere the size of Taunton that makes me a bit trepidatious about going out on my own - it's not like Leeds which was big enough that I could still lose myself a bit.

I really don't know whether to take advantage of cheap book-in-advance railway fares and spend half my weekends back in London, or if that's only going to make things worse in the long term.

There are a few havens of respectability and sensibility in central London but they're few and far between.

The Wigmore Hall for instance. One of my very favourite places in the whole world, not just London. Apart from the fact they book artists who play the sort of music I like to listen to, it has a feel all of its own. I encourage everyone who lives in London to find a concert they think they might like and go there. Just once.

A friend of mine lives in Deepest Darkest Dorset and has just this problem.

All the attractive women left yonks ago, along with a lot of the intelligent blokes. He has some good mates down there, but misses a bit the variety of his city life.

He's a countryside ranger though, so he doesn't have much of a choice.

One possibility is try and benefit from the positives a bit - get out of the city to the Quantocks, or to the local coast. City living will never be as interesting as London, but there are a lot of beautiful parts of the world near there. Dartmoor is the part of the UK I miss the most since expatriating myself, for example...

sprout

It's not the same as there are two of us but we are about to move back to Cambridge for similar reasons.

Came over here so we could be nearer to my job as the commuting was tiring me out (Spouse now commutes to Cambridge instead but he then sits in an office instead of whizzing round to four or five places a day). The market town we live in is nice (and feeling nicer as we start to plan our leaving...)but socially it's very difficult to 'get in' unless you're retired or have children. We have tried. We have met some lovely people but this coupled with the two facts that we never intended this to be the house we settle down in and the general 'argh'ness of my current job means we're off again.

Back to the bright lights and buzz of Cambridge, by no means London but a smaller version maybe - lots going on, anyway.

The only problem is the house hunting, blimey it's pricey there!

But anyway, never mind me, I was empathising with your current feelings is all - not advising you to go back. I hope you feel more settled there soon - maybe you could look for a more affordable place to rent? Would get rid of one of your angsts.

I hope it works out

Its always harder being a visitor, but I'm a pretty footloose sort of guy, and get up peoples' noses equally in most places.

The West country is a pretty closed society I know - my family come from there, but the financial side sounds very depressing, especially when its going to mean nights in alone.

Good luck with it 6.

"Everyone that doesn't leave and go to University seems to end up mating and/or pairing off before they hit 25"

And the idea of a 19-to-24-year-old partner is objectionable why, exactly?

B

I loved London for the 25 years I lived there. The missus hated her 10 years of it. Now we've got Devon, and I can say I'd never leave unless they start building retail parks where the fields of sheep are.

Yes the money is a problem. The South West isn't cheap like it used to be. I'm now doing a 3 hour commute each end of the week (by aeroplane) to earn 'London' money . This time last year I was doing a 6 hour commute by car double-.

Advice then: Get yourself a dog and get out on Exmoor and Dartmoor and up and down some of those trails and footpaths. There's a whole bunch of dog walking people (and bachelorettes) out there you haven't met yet.

Paff

If you do decide on a dog, I've got a foster dog that would love roaming on the moors!

Thanks everyone!

I'm suddenly quite a bit better. I've had a terrible couple of days, and didn't sleep much last night, was lying there in bed most of the night chuntering away to myself. Looking back on it, I started to wobble after I came back from London last time - which also when I'd done my achilles.

And the doctor put me on anti-inflammatories for them. In the middle of the night I had a moment and went and looked at the possible side-effects. Sure enough, halfway down the list was "sleeplessness, confusion, anxiety and depression".

Didn't take one this morning, and started to feel immeasurably better. Consulted the doc this afternoon - they usually put more or less everything on the 'potential side-effects' list just to cover themselves, and Diclofenac are most known for giving people dodgy stomachs as much as anything else. Them causing depression's quite a rare thing. But as he says, if I stop taking them and feel better, then
that could well be it!

Taking everyone's points in reverse order...

- I like dogs, but I don't even have a spare room or shed, let alone a garden. So that's probably out.

- Taunton is inexplicably expensive, I reckon if I'm to buy somewhere I'm looking at somewhere a bit more hovel-ish, like Bridgwater, Crewkerne or Watchet.

- The idea of a 19-24 year old partner isn't particularly objectionable, it's just that I don't see what they'd see in a short, balding 32 year-old would-be sports reporter with an iffy sense of humour and a love of things retro.

- To be fair, everyone so far has seemed pretty friendly, it's my failure to get out there and socialise anywhere (it's Friday night and here I am at my computer again) as much as anything else.

- A more affordable flat would make things a lot better. I'm looking at possibly buying somewhere, but a cheaper rented place, even if smaller, would also help.

- Yeah, what I miss is the subculture. In London with my mates I never used to feel particularly educated, cultured or sophisticated. That's changed...

- A gorgeous single(ish) woman in Exeter??? Do tell!

Further thoughts:
My Dad reckons I need a project to keep me interested outside work, and buying a flat that needs doing up could be just that. Certainly I haven't put any roots down since I came here, and without them all the 'foliage' that I brought with me from London wilting a bit...

touble with that Six is the whole place is full of "s**t, s**t and more s**t", could you really date a grecian?