Should I move to London or not?

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I live in a small seaside town near Liverpool in England. I have a housing association flat (the British word for an apartment) and someone in another flat of the same kind in Islington in London has offered me a swap. Housing association is a bit like Section 8 housing in America.

Their flat is about 3 miles from the centre of London which is amazing in terms of how demand something like that is. On the private market this flat would cost around £2200 or $3000 a month to rent because it's in a converted Georgian house on a street that is full of old houses, and it is also quite near Angel underground station, an in demand area. Because it is a housing association home, though, the rent is capped and most of it would be paid for me by the government.

In the town I live in now a 3 bedroom house in a hip area with restaurants and bars costs £1300 or $1700 a month so I feel this flat is like an invitation to a higher social status. If I told people I lived there they would probably think I was "made". That may seem shallow but as someone who has faced lots of being unwanted by people it is tempting.

I have some things im not sure about.

A) can I live so far from my mother? London is hundreds of miles from my current town. My mother is the kindest person I've ever met and she supports me a lot
B) can I live without my support workers? I have two visiting me about twice a week and I would feel more lonely without them and less able to do difficult things like deal with repairs
C) I've read about a motorbike crime wave in London and it is a real thing. Lots of people are getting their phones snatched by motorbike riders and even laptops in coffee shops too. There are also acid attacks happening, hundreds a year where attackers throe acid in a person's face before mugging them. Fortunately these are not currently common in Islington but who knows if this trend will spread?
D) London is one of the world's biggest cities and there are cars everywhere so how will all that pollution affect my health? In the next few years electric cars are going to become popular but they aren't yet and thousands of deaths in London every year are linked to pollution
E) It's on the ground floor. Burglaries are more likely than higher floors
F) What would I get out of London? I'm tired of life in this small town often but would London be any better? I know I could go to the cinema more because they have Odeon cinemas there and you can buy an annual ticket to go as much as you want. I would like that. But otherwise I'm not sure what I would do in London

In this town i've made one kind of friend but overall I don't feel anyone here much cares about me except my mother and (because they're paid to) kind of my support workers. My mother has three daughters who live within 40 miles so she might be fine if I move but I am her only son and her youngest child so I think I might be her favourite.

I've travelled to Boston in America and I like it there, it has a nice atmosphere and also I went to Paris in France and I quite like it there too. But whenever I've gone to London although it has lots of buzz and is exciting and full of new ideas and at the forefront of food trends and innovation and business, it feels a very unrelenting pace there. On the plus side if I ever overcome my terrible anxiety and physical fatigue issues I might be able to work, and work can pay 1/3 more on average in London than the rest of the UK. Also it would make a great bargaining chip for a future trade. A lot of people want to live in London so I could potentially move there as a stepping stone to going somewhere else.

But I really don't know. Any thoughts? The decision is mine but I would appreciate people's opinions.

How long do you have to decide?

I made a slight error. The apartment actally isn't a Georgian conversion, I don't think. But it is near lots of Georgian houses. It does appear to be way above the average standard for a housing association home though.

Wouldn't you be able to get support workers in London? I agree with you that London would be a good position to trade from in the future if you decided you really didn't like it.

Visit it first, and take a good look around the place and the local area to really get a feel for it. The usual way for mutual exchanges is to visit each others’ place twice. I would do it once in the day and once in the evening around 7-8pm, so all the neighbours are at home and there will be an increased likelihood of finding out whether they are noisy or not.

Bear in mind older buildings may be more likely to have problems of noise transference. They’re supposed to be soundproofed now, at least in London. Even so, they might not be quiet places. It depends entirely on the building.

I think you’re more likely to get specialist services in London, so if you can, and you don’t mind the crowds, I’d say definitely go for it. Just make sure you get a feel of the area first, you don’t want to move to somewhere rough, it could be just around the corner from somewhere nice. It’s highly recommended you check out the area by visiting it in person, so you can be absolutely sure. Google images don’t always show the nice and bad areas. Places change, and photos can be old and misrepresent the area.

I would stay in the seaside town. What's making you want to move to London?

I couldn't really say, I mean it is kind of possible me and my boyfriend may look into Alaska, or California, he is doing tree work and I mean after all these fires there will likely be a pretty big demand for tree work. So if his job ends up having any opportunities out there that may be where we go. I mean I would not mind california, I'd just hope I could meet another sea lion if we did something like that, they are just really cool animals.


LOL it didn't even attack the stupid invasive teens that sat on it and kept flashing pictures with their flash on. I mean these poor sea creatures probably aren't used to light right in their eyes let alone people just disregarding them and sitting on them. I mean seriously while me, my cousin, sister and brother approached it we were more respectful and it stuck around for a while. It only went back to the water when those other people showed up and tried sitting on it and flashing a bunch of pictures with the bright flash lights.

I did want to yell at them to leave the poor animal alone, but he/she just went back into the water and swam away, to not deal with those as*holes.

I just don't get why people would do that....sea lion was just trying to sun-bathe and people had to mess with it when me, my brother, sister and cousin were able to approach it with respect and not scare it off. Like we were all careful and approached slowly which is probably why he/she interacted with us and not those other a**holes.

I will say their hair is interestingly soft, I always figured their fur would be more rough than it was...but no it was actually pretty soft.

I would stay in your lovely seaside town too.

I was born in London and lived there for years.

It is not as glamorous as you would like to think.

Not sure it would help your anxiety either.