It occurred to me that I have lived in many places during my lifetime. This is a basic run-down of them all, giving rough locations as coordinates. I might return to it at some point and add dates, but this will do for now.

1. Locations

Table 1 lists the places I have lived. Let me state that it only includes places where I have lived with parents as a child and young adult (see items 1:8); and places that I have officially rented or mortgaged as an adult (items 9:end). Furthermore, if memory serves, we lived in two properties in Kuwait, two in Bahrain; and I lived in Chertsey more than once; and rented twice in Addlestone.

I have not included sofa-surfing or temporary dwellings.

Table 1 also shows the order of properties lived in, from birth to now (some 50-ish years later!)

**Table 1**
*Places I have lived*
List	Address	Latitude	Longitude
1	Abridge, Essex	51.65145	0.1240440
2	Stansted, Essex	51.90705	0.2017505
3	Kuwait City, Kuwait	29.37971	47.9735629
4	Manama, Bahrain	26.22350	50.5822436
5	Pilgrims Hatch, Essex	51.63572	0.2945186
6	Chertsey, Surrey	51.37897	-0.5202690
7	Stradishall, Suffolk	52.13974	0.5166220
8	Cowlinge, Suffolk	52.15838	0.5069070
9	Addlestone, Surrey	51.37128	-0.4896460
10	Twickenham, Middlesex	51.43854	-0.3367110
11	Twickenham, Middlesex	51.43490	-0.3328100
12	Bedfont Green, Middlesex	51.45076	-0.4396000
13	Jaywick, Essex	51.77630	1.1190790
14	Harwich, Essex	51.93319	1.2745890
15	Harwich, Essex	51.93265	1.2750310
16	Ipswich, Suffolk	52.06867	1.1304080
17	Bath, Somerset	51.39475	-2.3887440
18	Bath, Somerset	51.39235	-2.3846390

2. Interactive map

The coordinates are pin-pointed on a world map (use +/- zoom functions and left-click[hold]/drag to pan). Hover cursor over circles for labels.

Green circles: points of all places lived.
Blue circles: mean average location of ALL coordinates in Table 1 (see Table 2 for details)
Red circles: median average locations of ALL coordinates in Table 1 (see Table 3 for details)

3a. Static plots

Global view of places lived

The spread of locations in England

You can see that most of the places lived in England have been between \(51^{\circ}\) and \(52^{\circ}\) latitude, with a brief sojourn above the \(52nd\) parallel (although I spent around five years living in Ipswich (16)); and between \(-2.5^{\circ}\) and \(1.5^{\circ}\) longitude (quite a small area, considering).

The numbers represent the order in which the places were lived and coincide with Table 1 above.

It is interesting that, although numerous; and despite the huge leap between locations 2 and 5 (3 and 4 abroad, see main map above), the places lived are in relatively tight clusters suggesting that I’ve enjoyed a local familiarity for a while before needing/having to move on.

The clusters are divided across counties, as follows.

3b. Breaking down into counties:

Essex and Suffolk

Surrey and Middlesex

Somerset

There’s little point presenting a plot with two points on it, so Coordinate plot 5 below shows the locations in Surrey/Middlesex and Somerset and the expanse between.

3c. Mean and Median locations

Mean coordinates

I thought it would be interesting to know the mean and median locations of where I have lived in the world; and in England.

Table 2 shows the mean coordinates of both the worldwide; and the England locations from Table 1. In my mind, these give an indication of where I should be living according to the mean-average coordinates of where I actually have lived.

**Table 2**
*Average coordinates (mean)*
	Latitude	Longitude	Place
Worldwide	49.03711	5.4503520	Génicourt-sur-Meuse, France
England	51.69154	-0.0280919	Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, England

I must admit, I quite fancy Génicourt-sur-Meuse, France. I’ve never been there, but it sounds like it would suit me. Ironically, I worked in Cheshunt for a fair while until I was made redundant, though I didn’t miss the daily journey from Harwich and back which became a drag after about 5 years of working for the company there.

Median coordinates

Table 3 shows the median coordinates of both the worldwide; and the England locations from Table 1.

So, technically, these will be the absolute mid-point places to live according to both options.

**Table 3**
*Average coordinates (median)*
	Latitude	Longitude	Place
Worldwide	51.54324	0.2481346	Upminster, Essex, England
England	51.64358	0.1628972	Stapleford Abbotts, Essex, England

Note. The irony of the median coordinate plot is that both locations from the worldwide and England coordinates are a stones throw from where I was born! (Shown with an asterisk on the map above).

Distances from the median locations to where I was born

So for fun, we’ll use the distm function from the geosphere package to calculate the distances between coordinates in metres (tutorial found on Statistics Globe - actually a good site and recommended for many explanations of R-functions).

Once installed and loaded, I realised I needed another variable to hold the _Rush Green _ coordinates. Then, I found out that distm needs the longitude and latitude in that order, so had to reverse the two columns in my original mean/median variables, then combined the two new variables into one, for each.

So the calculation returns like this for Stapleford Abbot:

##         [,1]    [,2]
## [1,]    0.00 8734.64
## [2,] 8734.64    0.00

…and this for Upminster…

##          [,1]     [,2]
## [1,]    0.000 5582.602
## [2,] 5582.602    0.000

Summary

Remember the distances are in metres - I used this website (others are available!) to convert the distances into miles (not sure if the site specifies US miles as others have done, or my preferred UK miles, however…)

It’s enough to give a guide to how close Rush Green is…

to the median of places in England:

Stapleford Abbotts = 8.73Km (5.43 miles) away.

to the median of worldwide locations:

Upminster = 5.58Km (3.47 miles) away.

This has been an interesting project - thanks for reading. I might take it further one day and tell the story of each place and why I moved so many times. I’m sure that the average moves during a lifetime is far fewer than what I have achieved here. Does it mean I haven’t settled anywhere? Or is it acting on circumstances? A mixture of both? Why have I laid my hat in; and called so many different locations, home?

(Social) psychology would describe these transitional moments of upheaval as ruptures (Zittoun, 2006, p. 5), since they can cause stress and disruption to ‘normal’ life (whatever that is). Maybe that explains a few things!

Feel free to use it and change details to suit your needs - or improve it (if you do, please email me to say how you did it better - we’re all learning, right?)↩︎

Places I have lived

2021-07-14