Fish n Chips 56

Your Chester link is awesome, its got York and other Fab places.

islandwoman120

Help needed to make a decision: Since moving from Frome, Somerset, I have been asked by almost every friend I left behind to move back there. Yesterday I got an unexpected surprise when 2 friends from there dropped in to visit me, having been vacationing in the area. Then today I got an unexpected phone call from an elderly lady friend in Frome, who lives in my old building, and she said how much I am missed etc.

The Trustees of the building have asked me a few times if I would consider moving back, but I have said no - and I mean no! But I miss the friends I made when I lived there, and am planning a visit in the next week or two, staying in a B & B. It has been such a lovely summer that I am loathe to move away from the seaside, but what is the equation: sea and sun solo v friends.... I had the same quandary when I lived up on Lake Superior - solo and an awesome place to live in v family and friends in Florida. Florida finally won.

Help!

dunroving

It's nice to know that we are missed, but you have to live wherever makes you happiest.

cheers

I would stay where you are.

Cheers

islandwoman120

Thanks, Cheers and dunroving. I think I will stay here, and visit Frome more frequently - my friends are a diverse lot, some are quite elderly, and it is those people I need to see more often. Just checked into train times and costs, and it is doable from Dawlish to Frome with 3 changes, or direct to Bath. So look for more photos to come. Next Monday: Penzance and Newlyn.

trottytrue

Islandwoman120....I think its time to sit down and write a pro's and con's list of staying where you are or moving back to Frome. One questions I have for you are these people really friends or are they acquaintances. There is a big difference. Friends as we get older and when we move to another country are really hard to come by and should be treasured. I know quite a few people on this forum would love to have made friends when they returned home but is is very hard to do. There is nothing more lonely than walking on a beach all alone. The views are lovely but its nice to share them with someone else.

When you go back for a visit could you look at different areas to rent in that might help you from what I saw of Frome it looks really nice. You need to really think about it. But I would love to have friends who I could share a cup of tea with or go out with. Loneliness can be so depressing.

I do think men are more likely to go for the sea and sun I dont think they need friends like women do they are more solitary. I just know when I have been on the phone to friends in England and we have a laugh it is so uplifting.

islandwoman120

Trotty - the people I write about in Frome are friends. Two sets come down to stay here from time to time in our guest room. The others are single elderly who I speak to on the phone or who email me now and then, and they are people I used to have outings with, go for meals together, and drop in to see on a daily basis and vice versa - and despite the age differences, we are on the same wave length.
I used to run the Residents Association where I lived and am still involved in their lives from a distance. I am going back for a few days next week, and will 'see how the land lies' but I am not ready to up sticks and run just yet - this place I live in, though lonely, IS beautiful and I love the outdoor living. Frome is the cutest place I have ever lived in, but has a lot of anti-social behaviour in the town center, which is where the historic district is and where I too lived. I used to get upset by the graffiti and made a big song and dance about it to the Town Hall, but last week I had to laugh because, here in little sleepy Dawlish, someone has painted the peace symbol in places around town and it has made headline news in the local paper!!! Well, they also wrote a swear word on the school premises, which was removed before classes started, but the difference in care given here v Frome is remarkable to me - simply because I have lived in places where property destruction and wall painting on ancient buildings seems to be acceptable. Frome Town Hall could not have given a tinkers damn (great phrase) and told me so in not so many words, until I sent them some photos. Then i was told that graffiti on private buildings is the responsibility of the building owner, and on a public building it was the responsibility of the Town. I guess then, using that logic, that the Town does not own the lamp posts, sidewalks, public footpaths, road signage, etc. However, the worst thing to my mind was the pigeon poo in public areas - at times you seem to swim through it - the cafe owners have awnings installed to prevent the high flying birds from adding to your coffee and tea, and still they find a way around them. They ignore the spikes fixed to the tops of buildings and even nest amongst them! So if you have read all the way down to this sentence, you will see that I have a few reasons for NOT moving back to Frome, because those reasons are still there. But so are my friends... Here is the link to the graffiti in Frome http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandw...7625977003614/ Check out the blue chair with the excrement on it! and here is the link to Dawlish etc. http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandwoman/sets/

See my problem?

jasper123

So islandwoman for you the choice is staying where you are now in little sleepy Dawlish with very few friends, or moving back to Frome with all the problems of the local louts and drunks and graffiti -------- but you have all your treasured friends there,
Yes you could stay where you are and travel up to frome whenever you get a little holiday I suppose to visit your friends, but then that would not be the same as having all your friends close by on a daily basis if you were living there would it?
Its an awkward dilemma that you are in really, and there is never a yes or no easy answer to choices like this,
Its interesting what trotty said at the end of her post about men are more like solitude and can survive without too many friends, ----- unlike women who really do need friends, well there is a lot of truth in that I think, but everyone is different in there need for friends in both Sexes,
If it were me that had your decision to make I would probably choose Frome where all my very good friends are, because even though Im a man, Im lonely,
as trotty said too that its great to be able to walk on a lovely clean beach, but -------------
it would be a lot nicer if you were walking on that beach with a friend where you can share the experience with each other,
Take care and think carefully, its not an easy choice to have to make,
Rodney.
PS if you did choose to move back to Frome, I would think as long as you this time around try to find a nicer area of town to live in, certainly nicer then where you were living before where there was a noisy pub right below your window as I recall, and at closing time the noise from all the rif raf was just too much,
Like I live in Portsmouth as you know, its the most densely populated city in the whole of the UK and Europe they say, but the area is really not that big, but the differences between the areas where people live are amazingly so good or bad, I live in a nice neighbourhood, its clean and safe and the people are lovely, but within a 20 minute brisk walk to one of the many less desirable parts of town ------- its like another world, crime and public drunkenness just oh so awful, and I certainly would not feel at all safe walking along the street in those areas of town at night,

between two worlds

Yes, the photos illustrate the problem--or one aspect of it. Looking at them, it seems a no-brainer--the scruffy graffiti of Frome vs pretty Dawlish, the sea at Dawlish, the way the town cares so much more abt problems like graffiti and wants to nip them in the bud. I also seem to recall your saying the antisocial behaviour in Frome included lots of public drunkenness in the centre, and all that goes along with that--brawling, vomiting, etc! And as you say, these problems that pushed you out of Frome are still there.

What the photos don't show, of course, is your Frome friends and how important they are to you.

And yet it's clear that you are a person very affected by your visual surroundings, that this is a big part of your personal happiness. After all you left Frome despite having these good friends there.

So, on balance, seems to me it might make sense to stay where you are, maybe make a more concentrated effort to make new friends in Dawlish, while keeping up with your Frome friends as best you can.

But in the end, only you can tell how important these friendships are and whether they are important enough to outweigh all those things that upset you so in Frome. Perhaps the few days there will help you sort it out.

cheers

Where I live now graffiti is not tolerated and there isn't any.

I just thought of a solution in Frome. Since you are good at organising people, could you get the older folk together to do volunteer work and one thing you could do is go around and paint over the graffiti. The town, powers to be, seem to be part of the problem. Start doing some graffiti on some of their premisses and see if they start taking an interest. (not really, just a thought)

Seagulls are becoming more aggressive according to the news and one cafe has issued squirt guns to fire at the gulls. We were warned by one chippy to be ware of the attacking gulls.

I think you have better train service in Dawlish ++++++

Cheers

scot47

It is possible to live without access 24/7 to your own vehicle. Like others here, I get my shopping delivered thanks to the Coop. I get around using buses, ferries and trains and look down on the Oiks who consider a car to be an essential !

And I live in what townies would consider an isolated and rural area !

Fish n Chips 56

Rosie, I think real friends are hard to come by and invaluable, they will help you and you will help them when times are tough, being lonely is a serious issue.

I suppose I would evaluate wether these freinds are just being nice or that they really would love to see you go back to the Frome area, would you spend lots of quality time together is the issue, Having them around is one thing, doing things together is another.

islandwoman120

Interesting viewpoints from so many people about my quandary. Now that I know the town well - Frome, that is, I know which areas have problems and which don't, and have set one of my lady friends to look at some of the places I chose to view - from the outside and the neighbourhood point of view. I will look more closely when I get there next week.

I have friends who spend a lot of time with their families, and my weekends always tended to be down, lonesome times. Just like they are here in Dawlish. It was during the week that I came alive, and had barely time to myself. I left for more than one reason as you all know, anti-social behaviour being a precipitating factor. (But I was straight from the wild woods of Northern Minnesota, so people in general scared me! I was at home in the tall trees and wild animals - even had a black bear living in my garden.) I was also living in a community house with House Managers who treated the residents - all renters, all paying their own way - as though it were a workhouse. It is the mindset of the House Prefect and Head Girl/Boy and Matron all wrapped up together. So I moved on to a place without that attitude, which this is, but exchanged friends for silence and solitude.

I am not doing anything in a hurry this time, as I have a long checklist to go through for another move.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, everyone. Rosie

bluenose123

Methinks this say's more about yourself than us who actually have the audacity
to prefer our own wheels.
Must say I would rather be referred to as a fruitcake rather than an Oik.
Sticks and stones etc.

Fish n Chips 56

I think anything is possible, of course that coop service wasnt always available, still I think thats progress and its a great service...

I love the freedom that driving gives me, its an absolute pleasure that I take for granted...

What is an Oik?????? Ive never heard that term before...