was even more striking: 416,000 people planned to move out of the city in the following 12 months. There were many causes: lower international migration thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, fewer graduates moving to the capital, and the increased possibility of home working meaning the once office-bound could be pretty much anywhere.
I didn’t suddenly fall out of love with coastal life this year; it had been fading for some while. But this was the year I realised I absolutely had to get out. Before I vandalised my neighbours’ tulips, or walked out into the sea. Everywhere hung the air of self-congratulation. It was cliquish, and gossipy, and parochial – I don’t think I’ve felt so excluded, or so sneered-at, since I was at secondary school. Meanwhile, the newcomers navigated endless squabbles, affairs, sourdough rivalries. “It has become The Archers,” a friend who still lives there told me recently.
Nobody cares.
London is on the coast in any map I have looked at...