Are You Moving Towards A Better Life Or Just Away From A Problem

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When do you know it's time to move?
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And how do you know you've made the right decision?
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I'm Sharon from Straight Up Talk, and this is Pete Johnson, who happens to have a lot of experience in this particular area.
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One of his names actually is Moverman.
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Moverman, sir.
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So we've been talking about this quite a bit recently.
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We live where we do at the minute, probably the longest, well, not probably, the longest that you and I have lived anywhere together.
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We've been here, it'll be, is it eight years next year?
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Eight and a half years already, so nine years next.
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Nine years next year next year, which is really long time for us.
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But you having been in the moving business, I want to ask you the question specifically about people who've moved and then perhaps changed their minds.
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Tell me that.
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Oh wow.
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Well, I've got plenty of stories, but one particular story which comes to mind is we had a we had a lady, she was a single lady, widowed, I believe, and she lived in Crystal Palace, and she went to holiday, went for a holiday in South Wales one year, and she fell in love with a little area called Kidwelly, which is kind of like just past Swansea in South Wales.
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And anyway, we packed, we we we got the job, we packed her stuff, moved her down there, and we moved her in December time, so kind of like in the UK it's the weather's pretty bad, yeah.
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And anyway, so she she regretted it as soon as she moved there.
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In actual fact, she was so displeased with her choice of place that she asked, How much would you charge me to move me back to Crystal Palace on the day of the move?
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And this was like Were you actually where were you when she asked you this?
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We was at we were at her house in South Wales, and she said, Before you offload, how much would you charge me to just move the stuff back?
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I said, and I thought she was joking.
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But anyway, the story is that that she she uh visited the place in summer and she saw all the kids on the beach and the beautiful weather, and she fell in love with the area.
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But she what she didn't realise was that half of South Wales is off the grid.
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Once you get out into the rural areas, there's no electricity, you're on generators and stuff like that.
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Wow.
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And uh I'm not I'm not so sure if it's half, but there's a there's large areas of probably not any more, I would have thought.
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Yeah, well, you know, but at the time, this was I'm going, this is going back 25, maybe 30 years ago, maybe.
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And she anyway, she you know, we arrived and it was four o'clock in the evening, it was already dark, so we s we agreed that we'd just go and have a beer in the local pub, and then we'd offload in the morning.
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And that's when she said to me, I really hate it here, I can't live here.
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So it was the next morning?
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No, it was the same, it was uh the day we arrived.
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Oh, so how long had she actually had you been there?
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You drove all the way from Crystal Palace.
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Yeah, we'd packed packed all her stuff up in London and five-hour drive down to Swansea area.
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And she'd been there a few days already.
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Ah, okay.
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And she was just like, Oh my god, I can't stay here.
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What have I done?
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What have I done?
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Yeah, I made a big, big mistake here.
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And you took her back to Crystal Palace?
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No, we didn't, no, we just we we unloaded it all.
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She's you know, she said, Well, you you you've bought the place, you've got to stay here and give it a go, you know.
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So you talked her into it?
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Well, kind of, yeah.
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I mean.
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Do you know what happened to her in the end?
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I don't actually, I lost touch with her.
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I mean, she never booked me to move her back, so I reckon she's probably stayed there, but people move for all sorts of reasons.
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Uh okay, so give me some examples of good reasons to move.
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Good reasons is and and actually the most popular reason for people moving is they don't get on with their neighbours.
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Right.
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In my experience.
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Because I used to ask people, because I I'd move some people f from great places and they'd move into a really terrible little house on you.
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What are they doing?
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They'd move from a lovely area, you know, good schools, good, you know, good town.
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And then you take them somewhere and you think, why would you go here?
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From where you've just come from.
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So do you think they're going from the frying pan into the fire?
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Frying pan into the fire, but a lot of people panic.
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They get a bad neighbour moving either side of them, and they just panic and decide, pack up, let's go.
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You know, and that and that's the that's very, very common.
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And well, it's unfortunate we talk about that too here, because where we are, we've got we've got one neighbour who's a bit of a pain sometimes.
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Yeah, you've made a friend of him, so he's as he's gotten older, he's less of a pain.
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It used to be loud music all the time, and it always start with the first song, would always be Money for Nothing and the Chicken for Nothing, Dorotes.
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So it ends like a crap.
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Here we go again.
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And I mean, we're surrounded by pretty okay people, yeah.
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But if the guy next door, the on the other side of us, if he left and in came a family, a rowdy family, yeah, and you can't reason with them and they don't want to know, no, you you got two choices, you put up or shut up.
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And I I always the advice I always give to people is if if if they're having problems with a neighbour, if they can afford to, you know, pack everything and move, do it because you can spend years and years, and some people do, they spend ten years trying to in feuds, yeah, yeah, and they yeah, they they end up in courts.
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Some sometimes I remember I was living in a flat in Alderley Edge, and it was a three-story flat.
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I was on the top floor.
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I was woken rudely at about eight o'clock.
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Oh, I think it was seven o'clock one Sunday morning.
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One neighbour downstairs had on a talk show, put it on really, really, really loud, a radio talk show.
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It was blaring.
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So I didn't say anything, but later on that night I decided to put my music on really loud when I was playing Japan or something, and she she came up and knocked on the door and said, Would you mind turning that down?
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So I said, Absolutely, and I won't play it this loud again as long as you do the same for me on Sunday mornings.
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Sometimes that works, and it did work there, but sometimes it doesn't.
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It's always best to try and get on with your neighbours.
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That's the another I was only in my twenties then.
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I was young.
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The advice I always give to people is don't fall out with your neighbours.
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And you do you do.
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I mean, you the guy who it is considered a bit of a nuisance by a lot of people, you've made a friend of him.
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Yeah, I mean, most people around here don't even talk to him.
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So, but he he's helped us out, hasn't he?
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Yeah, he's he's helped us out.
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He's he he he's actually not a bad fella, but he's he's he kind of like hasn't grown up.
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He's he's he's Peter Pan.
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Peter Pan, we call him, yeah, because he's he still he's he still does stuff that you'd expect a teenager to do, but he's doing it and he's in his mid-40s.
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But anyway, getting back to the moving thing, that is the number one reason why people move is they get the they fall out by their neighbours, so they just go, you know what, let's just get out of here.
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What are other good reasons to move then, besides that?
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Well, sometimes you can people move to get their kids into a better school.
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Right.
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That was quite common in London because they had some really rough schools in London, but they also had some very good schools.
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And it did and it's catchment area.
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When you bought Wellhouse Road, yeah, was that with the view?
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Because you ended up with your daughter going to a very good school.
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Yeah, well, we actually lived in Beckingham when she was born.
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So we we stayed in the same area, but yeah, it was in the catchment area of a very good school, which is why we bought the house.
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It's one of the reasons why we bought the house.
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Yeah.
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And what are bad reasons to move?
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Bad reasons to move are if you've got a good friend who lives too far away and you want to move to be closer to them, and then they upstick and move themselves, or if you move to be close to a sporting venue that you go to, like a like a barn, for example.
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Or a football stadium.
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Or a football stadium, yeah.
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And you you you know, you move there just to be closer to it, and then they decide to close down and or move off or whatever.
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Yeah, I mean there's tons of bad reasons.
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I mean, sometimes I mean but people people move for so many different reasons, but like I said earlier, most of the time, 50% I would say it's for bad neighbours.
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So that's a good reason to move.
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And then the rest of it is people just trying to get their kids get themselves up the ladder into a better area, into a better school, their kids into a better school.
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Some people move closer to the town so they don't have so far to go.
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That might not be a bad reason.
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Yeah, as they get older, they don't want to do too much travelling.
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I just realized that my parents did two bad moves.
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The first bad move was when I was a kid, when uh you know, I was in I had to sleep downstairs for for a a year because I had my legs in in plaster, and they they gave me the option.
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They felt guilty about the fact that long, boring story won't go into, but they gave me the option, and yeah, I want to sleep in my own bed because I was a kid, and then my dad had to carry me up and down the stairs, and he ended up breaking breaking his rib.
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Single story.
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So they panicked and bought a place, bought a bungalow, bought a bungalow in the middle of nowhere.
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My mum couldn't drive.
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So that was a bad move.
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And then years later, they made another bad move.
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We were living in Heel Green, which was walkable to the shops for my mum, etc.
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A couple of her friends moved away, one moved to Sandbatch, and they just they moved to Sandbatch, but they didn't keep in touch with the friend.
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Yeah.
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So they made a couple of bad choices, yeah, in my opinion.
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Yeah.
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We we actually um our moving company that I had up to our removals, we got we got filmed one time, it was about 25 years ago.
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ITN did a did did a special on people moving and stuff and reasons for moving.
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Wow.
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And anyway, we we we we got this inquiry from this woman who she she was a single mum, she had one daughter, and she wanted this daughter to go to a very good school, but the local school wasn't good, so she decided to move.
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And anyway, we didn't know anything of what was going to happen this day, but we turned up and she said, Oh, you don't mind today, you got there's a film crew who'll be following you around.
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And I was like, What's what's all this about?
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And then so and then she told me, she said, Oh, uh, ITM cont contacted me and just said, We'd like to put a film crew with you for the day just to highlight the difficulties people face in the London area to to um and what sacrifices they'll make to get their kids into a better school.
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So she she she actually moved from a it was it was a lovely house, like an old Victorian house, like beautiful garden and everything.
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But she moved to a which I would call a much worse place.
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But she did that for the.
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But she did that just to be in the catchment area of a good school.
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So yeah, they followed us around all day, and uh at the end I they they interviewed me, and I'm actually on I was on the uh I was on the IT ITN six o'clock news.
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Not wanted, yeah.
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Wanted this man.
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They just yeah, I mean I only spoke for about I mean that they edited it anyway, but I I spoke for about a minute, but they edited it down to 20 seconds.
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Remember that episode of Gavin and Stacy when Mick was on the table.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It was similar to that actually, yeah.
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I ended up saying, oh, well, you know, this is that this is what people have prepared to do.
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She just left a beautiful home to come to a place like this, and all you know, and the only reason she's done it, she's lost she lost a few quid as well.
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She she she ended up selling cheaply just to get in just to get out and get in and get this place that was close to a very good school.
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Well, school with a good reputation.
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Well, I hope it was worth it for anyway.
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That's about time.
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Yeah, brutally honest takeaway of the week.
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For me, it's it's when you're gonna make a move, make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons and not just for oh, because my friends are moving there.
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Make sure it's a place that that you really would like to spend some time at.
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Because stock gap moves tend to last longer than you think they will.
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Yeah.
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But think about it very carefully and don't don't go from the frying pan into the fire.
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Yeah.
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Your brutally honest takeaway.
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I'll keep it short and sweet, and I'll say if you're thinking of moving, do it.
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Book and removal firm, get a local company, and do it, and then you'll keep all the guys that I used to work with in business.
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Thank you.
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Very good message there.
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Well, it is good night from me.
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And it's good night from me.
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Good night.
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Good night.