Three months ago me, my wife and our then 15-month old son left London – my childhood city where I was born, grew up and spent almost the entirety of my adult life to date. For more than thirty-five years it was my home.
It was where I went to school, attended university, started my career, met my wife, bought my first home, got married, and where my wife gave birth to our son. It definitely shaped my identity and formed me into the man I am today. But at some point at least two years ago and before our son was born, my wife and I made the firm decision to leave London for a better pace of life, and a friendlier and more family-friendly community. After considering factors such as commute time into London, walkability, home affordability, safety, local shops and amenities, and family-friendliness – we settled on Rochester, a town we had visited before and loved. After a few more day trips to scope out the place and ask if we could see ourselves there we made the leap.
I love our new home in Rochester and our local area has all the things we wanted and more. And is there anything I miss about London? Surprisingly, no. Like many autistic people, routine and familiarity are important and comforting for me. Major life changes can be uncomfortable, so although I was excited about the move, I expected the transition to be difficult. But outside of accepting that I would need to find a new TTRPG group, it was not. I feel like everything I had in London I can still enjoy either in the area or very nearby – just for a lower cost and with less crowds. And if we need to go back to London for events with my family, seeing friends, or for any other reason, it is easy and quick. Despite there being no regrets and nothing we miss, there was some mental adjustment.
One huge adjustment was realising that many people are just friendlier. Having grown up and spent much of my adult life in London I can say it made me fairly cynical and quick to distrust. London has the irony of being a crowded city with millions of people packed into its built-up areas while also being a very lonely place. Days can go by where the only people you speak to outside your home are colleagues and shop staff. It took me a while to realise my very social neighbours in my new town are simply friendly and want to help us, not because they wanted anything from us, but simply because that’s the sort of community we had moved into. I remember the first time a neighbour knocked on our door simply to introduce themselves on the day we moved in and they asked if we needed anything. My first instinct was suspicion. It took me a moment to realise they were simply being kind.
Although there are far fewer people here than in London, it has been far easier for me to socialise and meet new people with similar interests. I have even joined a local board gaming group at the local board games cafe, and started my own TTRPG group in the area (but that’s a post for another time). I do believe the ease of doing this has been down to living in a smaller community that is just the right size to have a wide variety of people with diverse interests while being small enough to make creating communities easier.
Parenthood made me consider what really matters in life. As a younger man London offered a fantastic nightlife, Tottenham on my doorstep for matchdays, a vibrant and culturally diverse atmosphere, cool restaurants serving food from all corners of the world, museums, and a mass transit system that can go from one side of the city to the other in a relative short time. But as a married man and a father, the things it offered me before were either no longer priorities in my life, and the things that were far more important could be provided by leaving for a new life elsewhere. As my wife and I started thinking about raising a family, I realised I wasn’t asking myself, “What’s the quickest way to get into central London?” I was asking myself, “Where will our son be happiest growing up?” Suddenly, parks and a friendly local pub mattered more than bars, neighbours more than nightlife, and space for my son to grow more than being ten minutes from the Underground. London had not changed but I had.
For a long time I assumed I would always think of London as home. After all, it was where I was born, where I grew up, where I met my wife and where I spent more than three decades of my life. Instead, I have realised that ‘home’ isn’t the place you’ve spent the most years but it is the place where you’re building your future and, when you are a parent, where you are building a future for your family. That’s what Rochester has become for us.
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