What do you like about where you live?

For as long as we’ll be living in the states, we’ll be living in Philly - I love this city. It's laid out like a piece of graph paper – impossible to get lost, but the architecture keeps it from being boring. I don’t need a car, which has me laughing at the gas prices, and I’m never far from a bookstore or café or restaurant or bar. We also have our share of museums. And if I ever need a change of scenery, NYC is only a two hour train ride away. And it reminds me of New Orleans. Also, 82% of Philly voted for Kerry.

I love where we live. It's quiet and green. The roads aren't too busy. There are country pubs to go to. But it takes a lot to get me out of the house to tell you the truth. There's nowhere else I want to see. If you want to buy my book, visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

I live in a little village called Dedham. It's half way between Colchester and Ipswich by road and half way between Norwich and London by train. I've lived here on and off (what with University and all) for practically my entire life, my Grandpa used to be the vicar here and it's impossible to walk down the road without meeting someone whose known me since I was little. I am a teaching assistant at the village primary school, where the headmistress is the woman who taught me to read. This morning I walked into the Deli on the high street and served myself because my friend Kate, who owns the shop, was busy on the phone. I know that for some people, this must sound like some version of hell. The ladies at the Post Office know everything about what goes on in the village, you can't so much as change your curtains or get a new car without someone knowing about it. Villages can be very gossipy, cliquey places and career-wise, I know that I'll probably have to move on sometime soon. There's just something lovely about having had 23 years with the same place to come home to, and with so many people who know me and who genuinely care about what I'm doing.

There's plenty to dislike about Staines, but there are some good pubs, it's clean, it's safe as houses, it's only half an hour into Waterloo and ten mins to Richmond, or I can hop on my bike and be in the countryside in no time (or what counts for the countryside in Surrey). I don't even know my neighbour's name, but that sort of anonymity has it's attractions too. Many of my friends live there.

...and it's not Slough.

i wouldn't mind living in Southwark - i do a guitar class there, and used to pk at the Shell Centre, Southbank, before Shell banned it 'for my own safety'. i like Islington, where i currently am, because it's close to Hampstead Heath, which is full of great trees to climb.

I live in a tiny village in Bedfordshire. All I can see when I look out of our little house, is sky and fields and more sky. We have a small pond and our house is very near to moor-land and at the moment, we are inundated with randy ducks - all looking for partners. As I write this, I look out of my window and see four drakes in residence. Not sure what you call a group of drakes but I could it an 'armada' which seems quite appropriate. There is also a pair we call Bonny and Clyde who have obviously mated for life and they have been coming to our garden for the last five years. Only trouble is at this time of the year it is extremely difficult for poor Clyde to keep Bonny to himself and every night at sunset, I find myself rushing up the garden and waving my arms to frighten the other ducks away! We also have about twenty or so pheasants, red-legged partridges, squirrels, foxes (of course) muntjacks and a couple of hares - so it is quite a menagerie. Costs us a fortune in bird-seed and corn becuase everything, inlcuding the foxes, eat it! The only creature that doesn't in fact is our fluffy black and white cat, Chessie who's given up chasing everything and just accepts all the critters - most of the time anyway. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else and a bit like Tom, don't have the urge to go anywhere else. Nowhere could be more beautiful.

I live in Brighton - which, if you've got to live near a train station in the South Est of England, is a pretty darn good place to live. But I'm a country boy at heart and I long to return to my darling Devon, to be enfolded once more in her rolling hills, to tramp the moor and lie on her beaches, to hear the burr-full speech and drink the cider. First though we must make ABC work and make some money - which are not necessarily the same thing! Then we have promised ourselves a year in Sardinia and then back to dear old Devon. So it's Brighton for a while yet and I'm not complaining, much.

I live out past Reading in a small village called Pangbourne. It borders Oxfordshire, and is a truely beautiful place to live. The only downside is that we can't afford to buy a house here, and the kids are too settled to move somewhere cheaper. So... we bought a caravan on the southcoast, near Weymouth in the middle of nowhere and perched on a cliff.

ermmmm not alot. I quite like the beach when it's not over-run with holidaymakers turning themselves into lobsters all summer by not realising that it is our bracing wind that burns and not just the sun, and ermmm, nope that's it.

After much movement in my life I live in a city, and it's not even particularly cultural. I should say Tina you have my envy, you're living my dream, well part of it anyway! Not that I can complain having spent much time in a ten foot by four foot ensuite room. Now I have a lovely bungalow with huge picuresque garden, (formerly bramblebush). I live a five minute walk from a river bordered with a park that leads out of the city and I'm half hour from the New Forsest, brilliant for my autistic son who loves the outdoors. Like I said, can't complain. nobody

Camus, this beach is hard to get to - half an hour walk down to a shingle beach, 40 mins hard climb up. Even in the summer the beach is fairly empty. Plus there are loads of cool cave to climb around in (guilty - and I'm better at it than the kids). We go on holiday and come back fitter!

Battersea, Clapham Junction. 5 minutes from everywhere, and it gets pretty lively round here too (not always a good thing).

Lisa, your beach sounds a lot nicer than our stripey deckchaired and windbreakered, litter strewn holidaymaker haven. in the winter months a stroll down the beach here is pure bliss. However, come the summer months the pit rats arrive en masse. A pleasant stoll is no longer so pleasant when it is punctuated by "Jade, dun't get fooking sand on me fooking towel" or " Liam, I told yer , yer little bastid, if I 'ave ter tell yer agin and i'll giy ya a fooking clout!" Oh the joys of a 'family' seaside resort.

I've been living in Derby for five years. I came here from down south because of cheaper housing. What I like most about Derby is that it hasn't quite caught up with the 'yuppification' of most cities - the pace is a bit slower. Also I like driving into the Derbyshire dales which are really beautiful.

The solitude, sanctuary, foilage and country smells. Spiritually invigorating, shamelessly backward and, being a place interwoven with canals, it's folk and boat roots. Hear my music: http://music.download.com/3600-5-100795586.html

I live near a river, several lakes and the rocky mountains. There is also a road nearby.

I live in a village outside Cambridge, which is as big a city as I'd care to live in at this point in my life. Like lisa hinsley, we can't afford to buy as Cambridge has London-style house prices, but our house is reasonably cheap to rent, the village is small, well-serviced, surrounded by a few gentle hills (rare in Cambs) and lots of farmland. It's DEAD QUIET at night, the night sky is black, I can see stars, and smell the fields. I could, if feeling especially ambitious, cycle into town. Having only ever lived in Cambridge during my times in the UK, I think I got a bit spoiled by the city/surroundings, and can't imagine living anywhere else, with the possible exception of York, which reminds me a lot of Cambridge, only less snobby. My good friend Specs, who lives in Haringey, always comments on how clean the air is here when she comes to visit.

I grew up in a small village outside Cambridge, I think it is one of the main reasons why I dislike crowds of people so much, am just a country girl at heart. The largest place I ever lived was Nottingham, stayed there for 3 months and departed swiftly, way too many people for my liking. Winter here is ok, but the summer is awful, congested roads, people strolling down town without a care in the world when I am in a rush, nowhere to park and prices going up in the pubs. If I could afford it I'd be back to village life in a heartbeat!

I grew up in boring suburbia just south of Croydon, so anything's going to beat that. Lived in London for a while which was fab when I was in my twenties. Now, as an old gittesse, I'm happily ensconsed in Brighton. I enjoy all the benefits of it being a miniature London-by-the-sea - lots of theatres, vibrant atmosphere etc. But people here are very friendly and you're always bumping into people you know. I like its tackiness, the fact that the pier is open all year round and that the South Downs and pretty sussex villages are close by. I'm very lucky to live overlooking the sea and I don't want to move anywhere else. I would rather have sand than pebbles, but hey. Can't have everything. Oh, and of course I like the fact that it isn't Hove.

PJ this is a lovely thread that you started and i have really enjoyed reading about where other ABCers are from. I live in an eccentric house that has a downstairs about 3 times the size of the upstairs - the previous owner just kept adding and adding but obviously couldn't do stairs. My house is right next to a railway line, and i have come to love the sound of the trains - they are all different and have their own quirks. there are the boneshakers, the tooters, the whoosh express. I am sure they lull me to sleep because when there was a train strike i lay awake for hours. Flitwick is a rural town in mid-Bedfordshire, London Kings cross 45 mins from our local station - so the science museum is a fav. haunt in the school holidays. There are fields and parks all around us and even a few hills - though my lancashire husband calls them bumps. But having been an army wife - not anymore thankfully - i have lived in many places, and i've realised that as long as my family are around me then i feel at home. I have a real yearning to live by the sea, so when the kids finally leave - that's where we are headed. Juliet

Prosper,TX. The name says it all.

Fulham / London But will be moving to Barnes in the near future. I have lived in Fulham all of my life, and would like to continue to live here or hereabouts. "You can take the boy out of London but you can't take London out of the boy" as they say. I like the 24 hour culture, I like the fact that it is never quiet, while the sound of a distant (and sometimes very close) siren may alarm most, i find it almost soothing. Im with Mr Weller on this one...... A police car and a screaming siren - A pneumatic drill and ripped up concrete - A baby wailing and stray dog howling - The screech of brakes and lamp light blinking - That's Entertainment. A smash of glass and a rumble of boots - An electric train and a ripped up 'phone booth - Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat - Lights going out and a kick in the balls - That's Entertainment. Days of speed and slow time Mondays - Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday - Watching the news and not eating your tea - A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls - That's Entertainment. Waking up at 6 a.m. on a cool warm morning - Opening the windows and breathing in petrol - An amateur band rehearsing in a nearby yard - Watching the tele and thinking about your holidays - That's Entertainment. Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes - Cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume - A hot summer's day and sticky black tarmac - Fedding ducks in the park and wishing you were far away - That's Entertainment. Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight - Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude - Getting a cab and travelling on buses - Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs - That's Entertainment.

i live close to where jude used to live, and i recognise what she says about the place, it has it's problems, true, there hasn't been a shooting this week though, yet, so i look on the positive side... the hackney marshes are a great place to wander around, this will change when they start paving over part of them for the olympics though i'm in a tree-lined street, close to the marshes and a large park, so it's surprisingly green for an inner city part of london stoke newington is nearby, which has plenty of good restaurants and pubs, and i like it's proximity to other places, islington is down the road, and the city is about 10 minutes on the train. i could move, we bought this place when it was really bad around here, and have lived here all through the murder mile business, but i'm used to it, it feels like home

Thanks to Glastobasto for the Paul Weller lyrics.: are you Italian? I lived in a small village in Oxfordshire but at age 17 I occasioned across London (Long story) Picadilly Circus. And I knew. I just knew. This is where I want to live. The buzz the excitement. the music. I ended up watching Bo Diddley AND the Duchess at the Flamingo club in Wardour st. that night. I now live in Gospel Oak which is pretty grim, but the thought that I shall be leaving here sooner rather than later keeps me chipper. But Hampstead Heath is 9 minutes away, I'm close to Primrose Hill and Regents Park and my daily walk to The Alcohol Recovery Project takes in Regents Canal which is bliss. My council thatched cottage in Hampstead awaits.

parts of gospel oak are pretty grim, but then again, what do i know, i live in hackney but the heath is wonderful and you can walk there any time you like, that is a major plus good luck on getting that thatched cottage !! :-)

The road out. Living in a crap area means that wherever you go it's always going to be better, which is possibly better than living in Eldorado and always going somewhere worse?