I love city life, love the bustle, the hustle, the Tube, love nothing more than going to the buzziest restaurant, the most talked-about exhibition. I have lived in London all of my adult life and have never run out of places to see, things to do. In London, I’m never lonely, I’m never bored and it always feels like excitement, opportunity and fun are forever sparkling on the near-horizon.
Which is why I always feel complete bewilderment when at least once a month since the onset of the pandemic, friends tell me they’re giving up, selling up and moving out of town. I have never understood it. How do you make money in the countryside? Won’t you just spend your life on a freezing train platform somewhere trying desperately to come back?
Well, it seems I was right. Everyone is coming back — and I for one couldn’t be happier.
According to property experts there has been a move back to city living following the race for space we have seen over the past few years. Jonathan Rolande of House Buy Fast says: “Now with the move back to the office, city properties are firmly back.”
You cannot get taxis in the countryside! You will at some point convince yourself that you have to drink-drive
This follows findings by Hamptons, which found that the number of Londoners leaving the capital to move elsewhere in Britain dropped significantly in 2023, and research from Savills which shows the trend of rocketing house prices in the countryside during the pandemic has been well and truly reversed as buyers rediscover the joys of city life.
It makes perfect sense. Bosses are increasingly expecting workers to be at their desks at least three or four days a week, and suddenly your bolthole four hours from the action has become highly impractical. But I suspect there’s more to it than that. I grew up in the country and my advice to bolters is always to spend a week in February wherever you’re thinking of going before you definitely decide to leave.
A cold drizzly day in Salisbury? You’ve never known boredom or isolation like it.
I’ve never really understood what people do for leisure in the country. Sure, you’ve been on those four walks you like, eaten in those three passable pubs and gone to the one cinema for miles. But you can’t just keep doing that again and again and again, can you? Style-wise, forget it. You shop at Joules in Petersfield now.
One of my best friends made the leap five years ago and she always says that while in London she always felt like she was racing forward in her life, ever since she moved to the country she feels all progress has gently slid backwards. You cannot get taxis in the countryside! I know this sounds far-fetched but it’s true. You will probably at some point convince yourself that you have no choice but to drink-drive, and to be fair to you, you’ve got a point. You’re not batting off invitations like unwanted mosquitoes in Godalming.
You’ll feel tearful when you remember your old open-minded totally non-judgemental city friends. Now you spend Saturday nights with the couple your partner met at the local golf club.
London isn’t just a city, it’s a state of mind. Living here means choosing the new, the exciting, the ever-evolving. I can’t prove this but Londoners feel and look younger. If there’s anyone out there regretting their decision to leave I say, come back! All is forgiven.
Tory treachery is an appalling look
Is anyone else filled with revulsion at the unedifying spectacle of all these Tory plotters attempting to undermine dear old Rish? These peacocking treacherous non-entities — yes, I’m talking about you Sir Simon Clarke, Will Dry, Danny Kruger — are inconsequential specks of dust one and all. As for Kemi Badenoch, going on TV at the weekend sweetly calling for her party to back Rishi while also supposedly being a member of the “Evil Plotters” WhatsApp Group undermined any credibility she had for being a good egg. Have any of these people ever worked in an office and had colleagues before? Do they not realise what an appalling look this all is to the voting public, and do they not understand that no one normal will ever hire them again? I understand that Rishi griddles while Rome burns, making videos about the dangers of flavoured vapes and giving speeches about re-jigging A-levels while his colleagues panic about losing their jobs over the Rwanda debacle. But treachery and facile plots are never a good look.
