Why we live where we do

So interesting to hear everyone's stories. And so varied!

I was born in Sheffield and raised in a village on the outskirts in the house my parents still live in (they even have the same neighbours who were there when they moved in).

I headed down south (Oxford) for university and spent three years between there and home. Moved home briefly afterwards while I tried to work out what I was going to do next. Ended up moving to Liverpool to take a healthcare assistant at one of the hospitals in the city. After that, it was back to Sheffield to study Medicine. I moved back in with my parents for the first year, then to a studenty suburb with a friend and her husband for two years. They then moved to another city so I went back to my parents' house but was on placement a lot so would stay in hospital accommodation most of the time.

I moved out to a terraced house in a nearby suburb for three years after I graduated. After that, I had to move out of the city for my next job and headed to north Derbyshire. It was only supposed to be a year, but I stepped off the training path for a while so it actually became home for four years. That was where I got into gardening properly. Only in containers though as my landlord was a professional gardener at a stately home and I didn't want to mess anything up!

After that, back into training which means moving posts every year. Spent a year in a terrace in Grimsby with my gardening endeavours there supported by Sarriss who brought me much-needed compost. I then struggled to move back to South Yorkshire during early Covid and ended up in hospital accommodation for almost two years while trying to buy a house. I missed my garden though, and ended up buying lots of houseplants and growing herbs and micro tomatoes (thanks to TMTT!) on every available windowsill.

Eventually bought my house and have been there 17 months, though I'm having to rent rooms elsewhere in the region at times for work. The house is a bit of a disaster (no bed, still using my vendor's left-behind furniture, barely-functional kitchen, etc) but I'm making decent progress on the garden at least! It's not the forever house and the garden is smaller than I'd ideally like so I'll eventually sell and move closer to the hospital where I end up as a consultant (around 15 months left of my training, but I won't move right away). That means I'm not just deciding which hospital I want to work in but also where I want to live, potentially for the next few decades of my life. Big decision!