Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

It isn't something I'd ever expect myself to say about a place, but the problem with Rickmansworth is that it is too quiet. OK, so that isn't really the right way to put it though. It is rather noisy, as far as noise of retards in cars and drunken idiots go. I mean, I guess, culturally quiet. Is that the right word now? It's really a question of the wrong sort of culture. It's 18:30 on a Sunday and we've had a pretty damn tiring weekend of cleaning, what I want to do right now is relax in a café with an espresso, even a bodgey chain café. But the chain café here closes at 18:00 on a Sunday and that's that, no espresso for me. Getting an espresso machine and making my own at home isn't a solution either, I want to head out and sit down somewhere.

Back in Sydney we'd wander up the road to New Orleans at just about any time of day, any day of the week. In the CBD you'd have your choice of bodgey chains but even a few OK places (like Jet in QVB) to serve you a coffee later in the evening. City Extra doesn't do great coffee, but I could sit there at midnight and sip their non-great coffee (not that I did that very often.) Though I don't really recall how much this applies on Sundays, which weren't exactly brilliant even in Sydney.

So, with a definite move coming up we have to ask ourselves the question: to stay in Ricky or to move away? The problem with staying is that it lacks the sort of living conveniences we'd prefer, like late night café, a good deli, a bit of cultural diversity in shopping (just one asian/oriental shop would be fine, sure Waitrose has various "foreign" sections but it just isn't the same.)

The problem with moving away is that after 2 years we're finally settling into the place. There's a lot of open countryside and great woods for walking and we now know them quite well. We know the best pubs in the area, though unfortunately they're more than a 30 minute walk away. We know a good butcher, though he's shutting down in a few months. We have a pretty good coffee place to go to, though the hours really aren't great. We have at least one friend out here too, and we really have very few friends here in the UK. We've also started getting along to the quaint little Watford-LUG meetings and it'd be a pity to suddenly pull out of that.

This evening we wandered out only to remember, on getting there, that the shitty coffee place closes at 18:00. So we took a wander down High Street and came to the junction with Church Street, Kat said something like "a crossroad, which way shall we go"… Yep, it's another of those little crossroads in life. Where will we live for the next one, two, or more years?

Staying in Ricky is going to be the easiest thing to do, and given a good place on the ground with a backyard it is certainly going to be better than the last two years (which have been pretty good.) I'm sure I'll be very happy with such a move. We could also move to a nearby area, such as Croxley Green or Chorleywood. But they're both quieter, have far less shops (we'd probably cycle into Ricky for shopping if we moved to either of them), and make the already long train ride into London even longer (only 5 minutes though.)

Another option that is still in the area is Watford, but almost everyone we've ever asked about Watford says it is a shithole. That's not really doing a great job to sell the idea of moving there to us. In the end I expect it'd mostly be much the same but bigger. Bigger isn't any use if you still can't get coffee at 18:00 on a Sunday evening. It is a culture thing, if the local coffee place was open at 19:00 on a Sunday we'd be the only people there. Poms spend their evenings in pubs drinking too much beer.

I think the sort of thing we're looking for would be found closer in to central London. It'd require some research to be sure though, and as you get closer in the chances of being able to afford the rent on a place with a back yard diminishes pretty quickly.

We can't have everything though, I guess.

Someone suggested to me recently that it'd be really easy to move to the US. I don't really know if that's true, but they were in a much better position to know than me. Even if it was simple in the paperwork sense it wouldn't be simple in any other sense, one such move per decade is enough for me. We've got at least another eight years to go with the UK.