City Limits

I have a love/hate relationship with the town that I live in. This is probably true for quite a lot of people, but seems especially relevant for me because I live in Norwich, a city that seems to provide everything I need.

Norwich is a sunny slice of nowhere that’s far out into the east of East Anglia, far enough that it takes two hours to get to London and at least three hours to get anywhere else in the world. It’s got no urban crime rate to speak of and when you smile at people in the street they often smile back, always a solid barometer of the locals’ mental state. It’s a lovely place to live, really it is. But it’s not exactly a happening town.

Unless you’re a student, in which case: Norwich is tupping mint. The entire city sometimes feels dedicated to higher education, so many places are there to better yourself through learning. Norwich is a small city with a tiny population base but it has a top 20 university, a university college of arts, and a couple of city colleges, all of which are prestigious in their own fields and specialities and all of which attract a thoroughly talented bunch of people.

Norwich also has as many pubs as there are days of the year, and some half decent clubs. It has some frighteningly awful ones too, but the drinks are always cheap and the girls’ skirts are short, and there is the aforementioned lack of street crime. If you are a writer, Norwich is also a fantastic place to reside. Notwithstanding the famous and talented authors who have come out of the city’s creative writing programs, there are myriad organisation promoting and publishing good writing in the city itself. Norwich and the Norfolk surrounds tend to turn up in the writing of any author who has spent any significant amount of time there.

So what’s my problem? Why aren’t I happy here? The first answer of course is: I am happy, I just like having something to moan about. Norwich has always, always been good to me. It has provided a safe, creative environment within which to grow, both as a writer and a person, over four (mostly pleasant) years. If that sounds a bit happy-clappy then good: I firmly believe that people deserve a chance for some happy-clappy personal development in their lives, and I have been lucky to find mine here.

I suppose part of my problem is that it is so safe, and so cosy. Nothing exciting ever happens here. The population is mostly white middle class, there are not that many people, and the music scene is developing quickly but can’t match that of larger urban areas. While I watched my friends move to exciting, vibrant cities, full of sex and drugs and waterfronts and skyscrapers and illegal street racing (possibly), I have spent the last four years living in a city that is the municipal equivalent of a nice hot bath and a hug.

Finally, it’s because my feet are itching. In four years a lot had changed. I have changed, perhaps majorly. Some of the things I considered to be a huge part of my life are over, some are just beginning. It’s time to look elsewhere for my adventures. It’s time to leave behind the person I was when I arrived, and only take with me the person I am now. I can’t sit on my heels forever.

In the meantime though, I give you this: my thoughts on living in a less-than-exciting metropolis, compiled over four years.

What to do if you live somewhere a bit boring:

1. Moan about it. Clearly. There’s no need to focus on the good parts, just complain to anyone that’ll listen about how boring the place you live is. It’ll help you cultivate that sense of existential ennui and detachment you’ve read so much about.

2. Leave. Obviously not for good (although if you do decide to leave, you don’t need to read to the end of this list if you don’t want to). Find what it is that’s missing in your city and go and do it somewhere else. Most people who complain about their town being boring are therefore looking for excitement, so the simplest thing to do is go and have an exciting time elsewhere. Again, for most people, an exciting time is directly linked to absorbing large quantities of alcohol and dancing like an idiot, and there are plenty of places that provide great opportunities to do so. The best thing about it is, you can leave all the consequences on someone else’s doorstep! Try and visit your friends in other cities regularly, wreck their place, and escape back to yours before the dust settles. Bring them a bottle of something (then drink it yourself) and leave them some vomit in their bath in exchange. Everybody wins! Well, everybody important wins!

3. Find yourself a filter. You can be louche and interesting anywhere, you know. You don’t need to be somewhere interesting first. Of course, if you were louche and interesting already you wouldn’t need this list, so we’ll have to find a stopgap measure. Drink and drugs can make everything seem a bit special, and will make you feel like Byron or Withnail or some other class-A fuckwit. It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, so long as you are having a jolly old time, so feel free to make a narcotic-fuelled nuisance of yourself until the wee smalls. One advantage of living somewhere boring is that the cold old world™ is less likely to start banging on your door the next morning (especially if you combine this option with the previous one, and leave your mates to sort through the detritus of the night out and their own hangovers, while you disappear to have your comedown privately in your nice clean house).

4. Become boring yourself. Try limiting your options in any given situation. Cultivating a taste for microwaveable food will remove the need for restaurants, saving you both money and the hassle of ordering. Watch what the people around you are talking about and then limit you conversations (and if you can manage it, your thoughts) to those subjects. Only watch telly between the hours of 12pm and 7pm. Only read publications with one-word, noun-related titles like Chat or Heat.


5. Become more interested. The human condition, en masse, is so stupendously vibrant and interesting that anyone with a working brain and a definite drive should be able to find endless amusement in even the most mundane situation. Unfortunately to do so requires quite a lot of thought, and thinking is pretty time consuming, especially with all the drink and drugs and whatnot. Actually, forget I mentioned this one, it’s rubbish. Go back to moaning instead.