Meet Hillingdon Man, Britain’s unhappiest chap

It’s official. I live in the unhappiest place in Britain. Who says so? My neighbours here in Hillingdon, that’s who. They’ve been polled by the property company Rightmove, along with citizens the length and breadth of the country, and Richmond came top(seems money can buy you happiness, after all) while my own London borough, Hillingdon, a few miles away, came rock bottom.

For me, this was a complete surprise. In 2011, my wife and I moved to Hillingdon, from insufferably trendy Chiswick to profoundly unfashionable Ruislip, and we’ve never been happier. We raised our two children here, and even though they’re now both away at university they return home whenever they can.

What’s so good about living here? Well, we could actually afford a house, rather than being cooped up in a flat in Chiswick. Our children loved having a garden to play in, playing fields right on the doorstep and woods and meadows nearby.

Our neighbours seemed to like it too. When my daughter started at the local primary school, just around the corner, we met lots of parents who’d been to the same school themselves, even a few grandparents too. It was the same story when my son and daughter went to local comprehensives. Finally, we’d found a community in London that spanned several generations. Who knew?

We soon got to know our neighbours. It felt strange (and rather nice) knowing virtually everyone on our street, not like the London we used to know. Having good neighbours turned out to be a lifesaver. When my son went down with meningitis, I knew the lady who lived across the street was a nurse. I hammered on her door at dawn. She rushed over the road, gave an instant diagnosis and commanded an ambulance to come immediately.