I also prefer failing pubs, because they are almost completely deserted.  Lovely.

They are also usually cheaper. This is also good.

Yes. This is also an argument for living in large apartment blocs where people don’t know their neighbors. It’s a feature, not a bug. Of course, people who prefer to be left alone are invisible to planners, bureaucrats, politicians and all of the other modern busybodies.

"Non-Londoners often complain that most people in London are unfriendly.” I moved back to London a year ago and have found the place so friendly compared with SE England that I begin to wonder if these non-Londoners aren’t simply meeting other non-Londoners in London. Theory based on observing visitors’ atrocious behaviour at London rail terminals etc. and the way they then go and throng the West End..

Maybe you’ve been to the wrong small places before.... I live in one and all my neighbours are ex-Londoners. I don’t know them. They are all away during the day and at night they lock themselves indoors because they are afraid someone might talk to them… LOL!

I know a few of my neighbours in Pimlico. One of them recently applied for planning permission to extend a part of their building in such a way as to severely damage the value of my property. I have to deal with this person very occasionally - it would be nice not to do so.

I am sure, Brian, you recall all those leftist nitwits in the mid-1980s banging on about the alleged joys of living in “close-knit” mining communities. They looked pretty unpleasant places to live, if you ask me, with lots of folk gossiping about you, etc.

As a former country dweller, I can vouch 100 per cent of the truth of this article. Very astute.

I can see your point regarding being around with so many people makes you a kind of nobody - in a smaller place everyone knows or seems to know or wants to know everyone’s business!!

I can sign under every word.

Dammit, Brian, you are right!  I live in a very successful neighbourhood.  It even has a residents’ association.  A lot of them are UKGov- and self-described “key workers” with just the mindset you might associate with users of that phrase.  They have tedious meetings and all, discussing the emptying of the bins and the parking permit scheme.  Just try suggesting some poor plumber be allowed to park his commercial vehicle in our ample car park and get the frosty glares and the oh-no-rules-are-rules small-mindedness.

Give me a dysfunctional neighbourhood where everyone ignores you any day.

On London and unfriendliness: I agree.  The people here ignore you and it is good.  But they are also courteous and helpful when you need them to be.  This is also good.

Rob: Practice this sentence. “I despise the middle class”. I find it very useful.

I agree about the niceness of the anonymity you get in a city, but the problem with it isn’t how nice it is for yourself; it’s how nice and useful it is for criminals and other flavours of utter bastard, who also prefer it if no-one interferes with them.  I like being left to my own devices, but so do people who prefer not to leave me to my own devices but rather to make my life a pain in the arse in significant ways.

But, even given the advantages of living in a city, please, God, not bloody London.  I love Glasgow to bits, even though it is significantly more dangerous than London and contains a lot of insanely violent bastards who can make your life very bad.  There’s still something essentially fun about the place.

I loved London right up till a couple of years after leaving the place.  Then, one day, I visited and realised I hated it with a vengeance.  I always say that I can take about five minutes on the tube before I want to kill people, and I think I’m sort of joking, and then I visit again and no, turns out I’m not.

> Non-Londoners often complain that most people in London are unfriendly.

The problem isn’t unfriendliness; unfriendliness is no problem at all.  The problem is outright hostility.  And I say that as a Londoner myself.  I think there’s a certain level of barstadity that you just get used to when you live there and so don’t notice.  If you once stay away for long enough for that to wear off, it’s tricky to go back.

There are people from lots of different places in Northern Ireland, many of whom enjoy visiting home.  The one thing that every single ex-Londoner I meet has in common is that none of them miss the place or ever want to go back.  Is there any other city that breeds so many people so keen to be rid of it?

"Is there any other city that breeds so many people so keen to be rid of it?”

Though technically not a city, South Africa would certainly give London a run for its money in this regard.

Michael: practicing.

Squander Two: Maybe I haven’t lived here long enough.  Or maybe it’s to do with the particular bits of it I go to.  But I still like it here.