I moved to a sleepy town with few people my age. My new friends – some elderly – have changed my life | Adele Zeynep Walton

Surrounded by families, friendly pensioners and retired hippies, my anxiety has been replaced by a sense of wellbeing

Moving to a small town in the middle of the countryside isn’t the typical choice for someone who has just turned 25. But this summer, it felt like the right step for me. In the sleepy town near Brighton that I now live in, the median age is 48. (The UK’s youngest region, London, has a median age of just 36.) I’m surrounded by families, friendly pensioners and retired hippies – it would be easy to feel out of place, but in fact I feel the opposite.

My friend Romalie says I’m an old soul. My first memory of using Spotify was searching for Ella Fitzgerald’s Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall on my dad’s desktop computer. I never loved clubbing, and freshers’ week was my lowlight of university, so a slower paced life has come naturally to me. But what I had not expected was how much I would be drawn towards friendships with older people as a result.

Adele Zeynep Walton is a journalist and online safety campaigner

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