No need to seek your fortune in London
AROUND 20 years ago, when I was first starting out as a trainee reporter, my editor gave me what he considered was some sage advice.
He was giving me a lift to our work five-a-side kickabout, which, now I come to think about it, took place in the old Mayflower Sports Centre, which has now been long-since demolished.
“You don’t need to go to London to have a decent career any more,” he said. “You can do just as well here.”
Two decades further on, it seems that he was probably right, albeit not for the reasons he could have possibly foreseen.
Although I had a spell of around five years out of the country to travel, living and working abroad, I’ve always had a base in the South West.
When I was looking to return from overseas, Devon was the first place I looked for a job, and, later on, for a short spell I even ended up in the same building that I had cut my teeth as a reporter.
The editor had retired, but his words had stuck with me enough for me to want to stay in the area.
Fast forward to the present day, and it seems that the South West is increasingly one of the places to be, as people adapt to the huge changes which have overtaken their lives in the last 12 months.
While there still aren’t the same level of career opportunities as the capital, the events of the last year have cast doubt on whether young people will still consider the same ‘rite of passage’ of heading off to the big smoke in search of a big break.
The first and most obvious reason for that is the trend of working from home. While I say trend, it has been more of a necessity.
Those of us who put together this newspaper have not set foot in our office since March, and have instead been holed up in our offices, bedrooms or at the kitchen table since then.
I don’t think that is particularly likely to carry on forever, but I do think the days of going to the office every day, five days a week, are done.
It will be a case of going into the office for meetings and a bit of team bonding, before heading home to get your real work done.
That links together neatly with the second reason that staying in the South West is now worthwhile: That property here offers, on the whole, a much more pleasant place to have an office than inner-city London.
It seems that it is not just me who thinks this way, as estate agents have reported, in some cases, a 300% increase in enquiries to their sales teams, driven by people who want to come to the region.
After all, if you could own a three or four-bedroom house with a garden for the same price as a one-bedroom flat, which are you going to choose?
For a long time, the London property market boomed as there was no shortage of people needing a place to live. I’m no so sure that things will return to that, even after this awful pandemic is behind us.
Instead, people want some fresh air, to be closer to parks, moors or the coast, and have enough living space to be able to shut the door on your ‘office’ at the end of the day.
The South West offers all that, which is why it’s no wonder so many more people now want to live here too.
I watched a short film recently, which was the latest in a series of travelogues by actor Will Mellor. He went to Plymouth, spending a few days in the city, with visits to quite a few of the pubs as well as hotspots like the Barbican and The Hoe.
As soon as he arrived, headed to the waterfront, watching the sun set over Drake’s Island, while taking great gulps of the fresh sea air.
Who needs London?
‘The South West offers, on the whole, a much more pleasant place to live than London’