Misconceptions about where you live

I live in Edinburgh. Auld Reekie.

People seem to get odd misconceptions about it because they only come and visit when it is festival time or christmas or they have heard of the east / west divide. Yes, Edinburgh does have a different vibe to Glasgow - but so so Stirling, Dundee, Aberdeen etc. As for he misconception that is it is 'unfriendly' - I just don't get it. I find it really friendly and chatty and regularly get blethering to people at bus stops/cafes etc. As for it being 'old fashioned' and 'dirty' - well yes - it is a very old city with lots of very old (and beautiful) buildings and it has alleys, closes and wee backroads that gather dirt & rubbish like you wouldn't beleive...but it isn't dirty/smoky like it was 50years ago.

Edinburgh is pretty cosmopolitian rather than metropolitan...very much a village consciousness but with varying cultures. And yes, we have loads of theatres and galleries to enjoy (although if you think we keep all 200+ fringe festival venues open all year round then you are sadly mistaken) and yes, we like cafe culture and good food but we're not all literary geeks or 'fur coat and no knickers'. Ok so we might go to the opera on a weekend but you can get cheap tickets if you queue on the day which makes it cheaper than going to the cinema.

Where I live in the south east of the city is mainly working and middle class families just getting on with life..I don't think it is any different from any other Scottish city (although areas are perhaps more mixed than Glasgow or Dundee). Edinburgh is a brilliant city to live in and I love it and will be sad to leave when we need to move for a bigger home.

magenta x

Merlini - you're following me around ? I was born in Hackney, lived in Stokey (well - Stokey/Hackney borders) for first 10 yrs, then lived in Sawbridgeworth, Herts then finally Stansted Mountfitchet. SM is so beautfiul - we lived in a 200yr old listed cottage - and the train links are fab. Good choice ?

We've been back in Hackney proper for 2 years now - loving it - but ever since we moved here the plan has been to 'upgrade' to Stokey once we can afford it. That's still the aim but more and more I think I'll miss our little place in the middle of the hubbub.

I have more than 25 buses that go to every part of London leave within a 2 minute walk of my front door, and 2 train stations within 5 mins walk - one to Liv St in 8 mins, one runs East-West. We have the Hackney Empire on our doorstep, the Vortex (jazz club) an easy 20 minute walk. We have a 24hr Tesco within 5 mins (though you'd not know it was there from the main road) and a little car-free shopping precinct with loads of small independent shops plus the necessary High St ones. Hackney is great for swimmers: we have the Lido, two indoor pools and a fab 'fun' indoor pool with slide and wave machine. I've never had any hassle and feel happy walking around at any time or day or night. All of the central London stations are within 45 mins maximum for easy visiting of out-of-London friends. There's a fantastic diversity here that I adore.

Yet with all this stuff on my doorstep I still spend more times outdoors than many of my 'countryside' friends. We have a car but rarely, rarely use it. I walk to work in 45 mins (35 of which is through parks and green spaces), stopping off at the Lido for a morning or evening swim. We have 4 gorgeous parks in walking distance (Victoria, London Fields, Hackney Downs and Clissold) and I walk past the gate of a fantastic City Farm on my 'commute' too. I ride at a stables 25 mins bus ride (15 mins drive) away. Epping Forest is not far at all and we often head up there at weekends - 20 mins on the train from the station just over the road.

(I thought as I'd inadvertently started this thread I should stick my bit in!)

ETA I forgot the best bit about Hackney - no Starbucks in the whole borough ?

Magenta, I'm in Edinburgh as well, Broomhouse/Sighthill in fact, you don't get much worse conceptions of the city! We've got our house on the market at the moment, we're hoping to move to East Lothian to be closer to my hsband's job and all anyone can tell me is how we'll never sell our house living where we do, are we selling to get away from the neds, don't we hate it, it must be noisy, the police must always be around, I wouldn't leave my car on your street etc etc etc (one of my friends actually expects us to move our car from our drive so he can park his car there as he doesn't want to leave it on the road)

In reality I live in a very quiet estate, we get no traffic noise despite being near one of the main roads in the city, we haven't had problems with the neighbours since one family from over the road moved out after having the police round once too often, the crime stats are pretty low, we get the usual kids taking the mick and being pains but nothing I wouldn't expect living near other people. We have good access to main roads, bus services, schools, shops etc and I actually really love my house.

I also agree that the city isn't unfriendly, people seem to speak to me wherever I go and yeah, sometimes it's unwelcome but the people are anything but quiet and retiring! I've certainly lived in worse places in Scotland.

Where in Manchester? I'm in Levenshulme. And I do own a terrace house, which is bigger than it looks (not Corrie standard though ?). I don't speak like Terry Chistian though, actually have a southern accent as I grew up in Essex, so everyone thinks I'm posh!

I grew up in Upper Norwood and then West Croydon. I then moved to Barnehurst and worked in the Dartford Harvester with my Chef Boyfriend who turned out to be gay and ran off with the gay barman ?

I then moved back to Thornton Heath and lived just by Selhurst park for 3 years.

I then moved to Sanderstead, just outside of Croydon over 9 years ago now and love it. I hate going shopping in Croydon due to the trouble there and rarely go out there at night anymore for the same reason.

I've heard of Southwick!

I don't think anyone has any misconceptions of Chichester - it's too dull for anyone to be bothered to come up with any. Although it was home to the politest demonstration I have ever been to.

Another Glasgow Hitcher here. I live in Kelvinbridge, nice and leafy. Right next to Kelvingrove Park, which is effectively my garden, as I'm just down the street from a high school and sunbathing (yes we have some sun) with school kids on the other side of my hedge isn't a sensible idea.

I was born here but moved to Essex (Billericay) when I was wee. Billericay didn't really have much to offer a teenager, although Norsey Woods was fun as a kid...Wat Tyler's peasant rebellion in the middle ages ended there - they got slaughtered and their bodies are buried there apparently! The woods also had superb bluebells and brambles (blackberries) that my Dad, my sister and I used to pick and my Mum would make into jam/jelly - oh it was delicious!

I much prefered Chelmsford once I was in my teens. My friends lived in that area and we went shopping, started going to pubs there. Any of you old Essex folk remember Dukes before it went all crap? Ah, the memories! Never really got the whole 'Essex girl' jokes as I've seen far worse elsewhere...but I have been known to joke that I'm a Glasweigan Essex Girl and therefore 'pure class'!

Moved back up in to Glasgow for Uni in 1997 and my pals warned me that I'd be hooked on jellies and whoring myself out within six months!

I love this city. I count myself lucky that I have a 24 hour shop within two minutes walk (it was two 24hr shops until a couple of months ago). It's a three minute walk to the underground and although I work in another city it only takes me an hour door to door. The architecture isn't as obvious as Edinburgh but if you just look above the shop fronts you'll see some fantastic buildings. It's certainly a friendly city, although you could read that as nosey. But as another poster has said, the violence/knife crime really is quite concentrated within certain groups. I know one person who has been jumped for no reason in the 12 years I've been here. I love city life but, if we fancy it and I have the weekend off, we can head up to Rowardennan by Loch Lomond and camp on a beach all to ourselves and just drink in the beautiful scenery (and get pished?).

My Mum went to Canada during a summer holiday when she was at Uni and was asked in all seriousness if they had television in Scotland. She replied, quick as a flash "who do you think invented it?" Nice one Mum!

Oooh, I was in Southwick just the other day, it's so pretty! I found my perfect house for sale on Albert Rd and was dreaming of a life by the sea.

I grew up in Harrow.

When I tell people where I grew up they always expect that it is really posh. Yes, it has a very very posh school, full of rich (and when younger, gorgeous) school boys, but thats on the Hill bit. Where it IS beautiful. And the Hill bit is small, very introverted, and a lot of the houses are owned by (and thus occupied) by the school. Its a shame, in a way. The rest of Harrow is just like any other London outer suburb.

I now live in Didsbury, South Manchester. Again, whenever I tell people that I live here, they say "ooh Didsbury's lovely" Which it is, but it still has the same anti-social behaviour problems like everywhere else. Obviously it is a little safer than, say, Longsight, but it isn't particularly safe to wander around at night. The bit where we live is wonderfully ordinary, but there are some reaaallly nice roads that have houses that I lust after!!

I love Portsmouth and always love going back - went to school there although lived in Chichester. For me, nothing can beat sitting on Portsdown Hill by the forts looking down onto the city at night

I never realised that other people thought Pompey was rough until I moved away, it's where I spent many many hours of my youth!

I'm in Dundee too and pretty much agree with all you've said. Two minute walk and i'm in the country. 20 minute drive and i'm on the beach. The beautiful St Andrews and East Neuk of Fife is a 1/2 hour drive away. Easy commute to Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow.

With the 60s housing estates being mainly bulldozed and the areas regenerated Dundee is certainly looking better than it ever has.

Totally agree that Dundee is a village of a city though - Bet we know each other ?

I've just read through all the posts (great thread!) expecting to have to defend Basingstoke - and no-one has even mentioned it! I lived there for 10 years and the reputation I think is probably that it is boring, soulless and lots of roundabouts. The roundabouts bit is true!

I also lived in Sutton which got a mention on the first page - I agree that anything south of Asda (which was my end, actually) is rough. Tbh, I wouldn't recommend it - there's none of the vibrancy and interesting food places of other south London areas - but it's not as awful as people say.

Currently live in Nottingham/Shottingham - and despite everyone saying 'oh, the gun capital of the UK' have yet to come across one.

Oooh - can we go non-UK? I lived in Paris for 6 months. All those people who say "the French are so good at food, you simply can't get a bad meal in a restaurant there, and it's all such good value". Well, maybe I'm the unluckiest girl in the world, but I thought several restaurants were shite, and many French restaurants over cook the vegetables.

I live in New Jersey which is nicknamed, 'The Armpit of the US'. I'm not even originally from the US and this offends me! People assume that NJ is dirty and like something out of The Sopranos. I live in a lovely town that has fantastic restaurants, shops and parks and we're only 30 mins drive away from NYC. I love it here.

No defence of my used to be hometown. Used to live in Tadley, between Basingstoke, Reading and Newbury.

It has little history but boasts a nuclear weapons facility so we got a fair bit of excitement (and road closures) when the protests happened and the fence was scaled. There is nothing nice to see, no decent shops, disgustingly dirty graffit covered broken glass ridden parks and row after row of MOD housing.

I am from Bradford - popular misconceptions?? Erm....I don't think Bradford has been in the news for anything other than race riots/police murders for the last 10 years.

We lived in a nice leafy suburb though. Although the Yorkshire Ripper lived two doors away from my Grandma......

Now live near the 5 Rise Locks and its stunning!

I live in Barnsley - it is a lot more rural than many people think and has fantastic local farmers markets.

The town centre is pretty dire though, full of theme pubs and poundshops and a new transort interchange that looks like it was built for or by the Teletubbies.

Steady on ! Let's try and keep this good tempered.

South of the river we have Elephant & Castle, Borough, Bermonsey, Greenwich, Walworth, Peckham, Forest Hill, Catford, Lewisham, Nunhead, New Cross, Dulwich, Norwood, Herne Hill, Tulse Hill, Balham, Tooting, Crystal Palace, Oval, Kennington, Stockwell, Brixton, Wandsworth, Clapham (you must have heard of that), Vauxhall. They may not be as well known as your swanky Northside neighbourhoods, but they are every bit as proper. And your side has plenty of "random crappy high street" of its own !

You're right about the driving though.

?

Oh I know, I live just off one of them ? I am only being North London v South London-ist (or, as I always think of it, London v South London-ist ?)

I do find South London more amorphous though- areas don't seem to have individual character in the way they do on the right side of the river. That could just be because I don't know the area so well though (I concede, through gritted teeth ?)

I lived in Archway which everyone seems to think is a black hole in north London but I liked it - fab transport links, good local shops, wedged between Highgate and Finsbury Park and so on so really varied.

Now I live in a village outside Cheltenham and Cheltenham isn't as universally posh as it would like to think - there's an area which when I drive through reminds me of the rougher places in N. London. ?

I'm from Aberdeen originally and suspect the perception is a bit um nothingy - the surrounding areas are gorgeous, the beaches are beautiful but as a city, it's devoid of character except in small isolated pockets and there's a percentage of the locals who look like they need a good wash, some fruit and veg and a life-time ban from pubs. And that includes the 5-year-old I met on the train north to Abdn yesterdy:-(

Wow, I never realised we had 3 Dundee Hitchers! I'm in the Ferry!

I moved here about 3 years ago, although H is a native. I grew up in Glasgow and 12 years ago when I first met H I refused to acknowledge Dundee as a 'proper' city, as in my (horrendously Central-belt-biased view) it didn't have any of the markers of being a real city. This, to my mind, was art galleries, museums with 'cool' stuff, a 24-hour cafe ? and a sushi bar*. To be fair, it still doesn't have a sushi place and McManus Galleries has been shut for the entire time I've lived here, but I love Dundee and I don't want to live anywhere else. I always wanted to live at the seaside, and now I do ?. Oh and the 24 hour bakery is the best ?

Small world! I am liking it so far in SM - altho we're in a characterless box on a new estate. There are a few wannabe hoodies in the village centre at the moment who just look comical when you've been used to the real thing!

I agree with most of what you say about Hackney (except Hackney Downs - always found that a bit bleak). Have you been to Springfield Park in Clapton? I think it might be my favourite park in London - it is really beautiful. And the Waterworks out on the Lea Bridge road is worth a trip as well.

My friend's H is a lawyer based in Brighton and he told me that he and his colleagues were told that if they had to go to Hackney (they had a few clients there) they should not wear a suit, carry a laptop or use a mobile phone, which really made me laugh. It's not Compton FFS! I used to take my toddler out shopping in Mare Street most weeks.

Also agree about the Starbucks. There was a marvellous outbreak of nimbyism in Stokey a couple of years ago (in which I participated wholeheartedly) when some universally loathed developer knocked down the old Vortex on Church St and sold the space to Nandos. Although the campaign failed Nandos on Church St is almost always empty.

I haven't read whole thread, but am sure other channel islanders will have cited the "minted tax dodger" misconception associated with us.

If i had a quid for every innapropriate comment levvied at me for that one i may actually have a reason to dodge tax. ORDINARY people here pay tax, and pretty high tax too to cover the fuckers that don't. (but yeah, I am lucky to live here, it's great!)

When i was THREE years old apparently some twit in a shop in London said to me "oooh, jersey?? You don't pay taxes there do you?" to which i replied, "no, we don't have to, we have a car" (taxis) Which is more than the twerp deserved trying to strike up a fiscal conversation with a toddler. ?

like pregnancy; where you're from / live can suddenly provoke people to say the most stupidly ignorant and often wholly insensitive and offensive stuff to you!!!

I live in Plymouth and have done nearly all my life but getting anywhere takes forever, and the number of people who think Plymouth is in Cornwall would not astound many of you (although it did me to begin with).

South West Water have a lot to answer for as they charge the earth because we're surrounded by water and we get crap wages and high house prices too.

Having whinged about all that there are some great aspects to living down here - accessibility to both the moors and the beaches being my main ones. Also has some great little independent shops too. I've got to be honest I don't really remember living anywhere else and these days I wouldn't swap it for the world.

I live in Bicester. Because it was the fastest growing town in the UK at one stage people think it must be desirable to live here, and that Bicester Village is A Good Thing. Neither of these is true.

Dalston has a growing rep as an up and coming area (listed by Italian Vogue no less) and I believe several designers have based themselves there. I have no idea why this is. Had to travel through most days for work or to get to Islington etc and it is truly and utterly vile. There's a horrible aggressive atmosphere and nothing to recommend it at all (except possibly the Rio cinema). Vile.

I couldn't agree with you more. A kind of nasty/sinister atmosphere too. (Sorry to any Dalston dwellers)!

I think this is alwaythe case with up and coming areas though. Young designers, artists etc go there because it's cheap (because it's a bit grotty), it therefore is seen as a bit cool which attracts young professionals who have more money and would like to be cool and as a result of that it becomes more gentrifed. Look at Hoxton- 30 years ago it was the last place anyone wanted to be, in the early 90s it was associated with YBAs and seemed cool, good bars and clubs opened etc, now it's full of City workers. Shoreditch etc likewise. Dalston just not as far along that track- it's still up and coming rather than already come, IYSWIM.

(I don't live there BTW ?)

That is a good point - guess same could have been said about Notting Hill not so long ago. We've got friends who live right in the middle of Dalston with their toddler and love it. They couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Still reckon it is horrid though. I wonder how long it will take before it has up and come?

My nearest town is Croydon. No misconceptions, it is truly horrible. The shops are great but I hate going as there is such a threatening atmosphere and I've seen trouble kick off in the middle of the day a few times. Haven't been out in Croydon at night for years. Only go to restaurants in South Croydon.

Treacle tart - I'm probably really close to you - I'm on the Warlingham/Sanderstead border.

Office girl - which village? We're thinking of moving to East Grinstead or some villages in the area.

Maxi - if we don't know each other personally, we'll probably know each other through people, it's always the way! I used to laugh when people described Dundee that way, but the longer I live here, the more I realise it's true. Cha-Cha - to be honest you named the one thing I really miss - 24 hour cafe, I loved Glasgow for that! However, 24 hour bakery - heaven. I never knew a city could pies so much!

I totally agree about Croydon town centre. My best friend lives near you on the Limpsfield road. We are just down the hill near the row of shops and the most fantastic curry house Sanderstead tandoori. So good in fact that we are off there this sunday ?

That's me ? and yes, the Oval market is fab

I'm glad you posted about Camberwell P&P as we are thinking about moving there. We need to get a bigger place to live and can't afford to stay in Kennington. Camberwell is just round the corner really, and close to Dulwich (where we would also like to live, but can't affor to!)

I live in Oxfordshire, and I don't really know of many negative misconceptions apart from maybe that we're all posh here...

However, I grew up in Nottingham, and if I tell anyone they always mention the gun crime.... which is such a shame as it is a great place to live and grow up - great shopping, loads of sporting facilities... and it's relatively inexpensive to buy a nice house in a decent area (compared to down here).