Ten things I hate about Leeds

To mark my second anniversary of living in Leeds!!

1. The lingo - If you ask for a bun in a tearoom, you'll get a cupcake. Ask for directions and you might get directed down a ginnel or snicket. A pretty baby is a bonny babby. And you're not treated well, you're 'tretten' well. Eh?
2. The accent - Now I'm very aware that my regular readers have Leeds accents and I should point out that some of the strains of the Leeds accent are quite nice to listen to. But go to some parts of Leeds (I daren't mention which) and my word, it's like listening to nails scraping a blackboard!
3. The architecture - There are parts of Leeds that are beautiful. But go to the city centre and you'll see beautiful old buildings squashed between ugly 1980's office blocks, and there are so many 'funky' new apartment towers going up that soon all that glass will be necessary to create any semblance of natural light!
4. The size - I'm from Lincoln, which is a nice compact little city. Leeds however is ridiculously sprawling. The big disadvantage being that when you end up only seeing your friends at work or wherever else you met them because they live so far away that to pop round for a cuppa would mean about an hour's journey!
5. Kirkstall Road - otherwise known in our office as 'Kirkstall f***ing Road' (but of course I'm too polite to say that), when trains are down you can very easily spend at least an hour crawling along this betarmacced hell in a bus. And what have they done to help matters? Put one of the shortest and most pointless bus lanes on one of the quietest bits of the road!!
6. Train travel - I think I've covered that one before!
7. House prices - I recently read an article in the 'Lincolnshire Echo' my Mum gave me which was ranting about how average house prices in Lincoln are now a whopping £135,000. My goodness, if only!!! In February the average house price in Leeds was £167,485. Unless you're prepared to live somewhere rather dubious, you don't get much for your money up here.
8. The Loop - the name for the city centre's one way system. I'm not even a driver, but when hubby's desperately trying to escape the centre I do find myself thinking 'surely there was a more straightforward way of solving congestion problems?'
9. Hills - my legs were raised in one of the flattest counties in Britain. They are certainly not designed to climb practically vertical inclines just to get home in the evening.
10. The fact that, try as I might and in spite of the above, I actually secretly love Leeds. Don't tell anyone.