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.
People used to grow up and get married and raise a family and grow old here.
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