I’m writing this from a cottage in the verdant depths of Dartmoor, on an old sofa with a view of rolling hills and grazing ponies. It’s the kind of view that people paint, or in my case, take hundreds of photos of. After a week and a half here, it has been magic to watch the light change and see the weather rumble in from a distance. Opaque sheets of rain hurtle towards the house, giving us just enough time to rescue the washing from the garden.
My boyfriend and I have been flitting around Devon and Cornwall for three weeks now. A timely opportunity presented itself and we leapt at the chance to escape the city for a contemplative month of make-believe life in towns and villages that we’ve never visited before but could be contenders on our growing list of places we could happily live.
We’ve been debating whether to move out of London for the past three years. More than debating really; agonising feels more fitting. We’ve discussed it for hours, days, months on end. I’ve banged on about it with friends, my parents, and people I met five minutes previous who don’t even know my name. My Instagram followers are probably sick of my regular threats to leave our flat but never actually doing it. The decision feels utterly overwhelming. I know we’re not alone in this mid-thirties journey from city to country (or much smaller city) but it doesn’t make the leap into the unknown any less terrifying.
Interestingly, when I shared a post on this topic back in May, there were a lot of comments from people suggesting that we shouldn’t leave yet because we’re too young and unburdened to adapt to a slower pace without getting bored. Many suggested waiting for a major change such as children because we could feel lonely in a new place without a network of friends or colleagues (we both work from home). Now, I’m all for trying new things but giving birth in the hope of finding an antenatal pal to have coffee with seems like quite the commitment! Concerns about a woeful social life aside; we couldn’t envisage how it might feel to leave London because we rarely go anywhere, so this trip felt like a trial run for the future.
Home is currently a tiny rented flat in London’s iconic Barbican Estate. I’ve rented on the estate for a decade and we’ve lived in this particular flat for four years. Our landlords are angels and I’m well aware that people dream of Barbican for its architectural prowess and dead-central location, so it feels ungrateful to want to pack up and go. I regularly hop out of the shower to find a guided tour pointing their long lenses at my bedroom window, gazing up at our concrete abode with delight, and I’m often introduced to people with “Eleanor lives in the Barbican Estate!”. Sometimes it feels like my address has become one of my key personality traits, or it’s the one interesting thing I have to say about myself when meeting new people. I hope that isn’t true, but I do wonder if I’d find it as easy to make small talk at work events if the building I happen to live in wasn’t a crowd-pleasing topic.
Why would we want to leave when we’re young(ish) and child-free? We have access to the Barbican’s private gardens for sunny mornings listening to the birds, plus the Elizabeth Line is about three minutes from our front door, making Soho a 15-minute dash and meetings a breeze to get to. It’s not one major glaring issue. It’s the little things. The light in our south-facing living room is always the coldest shade of blue-green-grey because we live in the shadow (literally) of other buildings. It impacts my mood and makes me feel low when it’s a beautiful day but our flat still feels like a morgue. Our living room looks directly into the flats and offices on the opposite side of the road. They loom over us like monolithic giants, so I have to stand with my face at the window and peer up to the top corner just to see the colour of the sky. Our galley kitchen has no natural light, half of the things in there are broken, everything seems to be leaking or on its last legs and our neighbours are a group of four noisy twenty-somethings who have crammed themselves into a small flat. I’m hypersensitive to noise and they drive me crazy talking loudly on their balcony a couple of feet from our single-glazed windows. My heart starts pounding with anxiety every time I hear their door begin to slide open.
The reason why we’ve dragged our feet for so long? We have one of London’s few remaining bargains, with monthly rent that is significantly less than the market rate. We’re lucky to have compassionate and fair landlords but because of skyrocketing rent prices, we’ve found ourselves priced out of London entirely. If we move out of this specific flat, we have to leave the city. Ideally we’d move to a quieter, greener neighbourhood but we simply can’t afford to. My boyfriend and I come from working class backgrounds (my double-barrelled surname is a real red herring), so we have no access to financial help from family and no savings for a deposit on our own home. It’s Barbican or bust.
Let’s say we decide to move, then the next question is where to? Our families are in West Yorkshire and North Wales and we don’t want to go back to the areas where we grew up. With all the online research in the world, how do you know where might feel like home before you’ve lived there? We’ve contemplated Rye, Bath, the Cotswolds, Edinburgh, Brighton, North Yorkshire, even Cornwall (we both fell head over heels with the area around Falmouth) but our searches on Rightmove are proving fruitless and to complicate things further, I can’t drive. It’s quite the challenge to choose somewhere to live based on a Google search or a couple of nights in an Airbnb.
On this extended trip away, I’ve narrowed things down at least. I’ve learned that an idyllic village in the middle of the countryside is enchanting and feels like a dream for about four days, then you get sick of reversing down single track lanes and the one bakery in town no longer feels exciting once you’ve tried every cake and realised they’re all just OK. I’ve been reminded that in many places, absolutely nothing opens on Sundays and some shops and restaurants operate solely from Wednesday to Saturday. Or just whenever the owner feels like opening. I’ve realised now that I need more than a picture-postcard view, even if it’s just a low-key creative scene and a handful of good places to eat and get a decent coffee; there has to be something within walking distance. And I have to be able to get to London easily by train. I’ve also been reminded that I’m scared of spiders and loathe wasps, so perhaps the bucolic country life I was picturing was never realistic.
As someone who loves homes and interiors, the thing I’ve been most surprised about is how easily I feel I could live without my ’stuff’. Two rooms full of decorative objects, furniture, artwork and books that I’ve collected at great expense over the years. These are pieces I’ve obsessed over and saved up for, but they’re forgettable now I’m away from them. I don’t miss anything. The emotional connection that I have with my belongings isn’t enough to make the wrong house – or flat – feel like home. There’s no end-of-holiday yearning to be back in London – only looming worry about how loud the neighbours will be now that everyone has their balcony doors open in summer.
I felt more at home this month staying at The Net Loft in Trevone Bay and Packet House in Falmouth than I ever have in our flat. And not because of the interiors – they’re not necessarily reflective of my own taste – but because of the way I felt when I was there. Since we left, I’ve been so comfortable and content. Enjoying the silence and watching clouds pass without needing background TV to muffle the traffic outside. Anyone could have predicted this outcome but it feels clearer than ever that we have to move soon. I want to enjoy being around my things again and rediscover the simple pleasure of staying home on a Sunday morning with a stack of magazines and dippy eggs for breakfast.
Where will we do that? Now that’s the question…
