The effect of property price rises on one young couple

Todd Green, 33, proposed to his girlfriend (now wife) Emma, 30 in the maze at the Brent Lodge Park - the bunny park. He says ''I told her she was 'amaze-ing and asked would she marry me' - luckily she likes puns as much as me and said yes!

Property prices continue to rocket in London and Todd and Emma are being driven out of an area they love.
He shares their story:

The bare-chested hooligan next to me threw a water bottle filled with suspiciously yellow fluid towards the stage, so I decided to squeeze away from him. Oasis, live at Wembley Stadium, 22 July 2010.

The next day I was at the Ealing Blues Festival. Elderly patrons bopped behind us while families picnicked and middle-aged rockers nodded sagely to the beat. Less than ten miles away in the same city, but the two gigs were a world apart.

Ealing is a village surrounded by a city. London keeps its distance. Since moving here four years ago, my wife and I have settled happily into life in West Ealing, and now that we're moving out we have created a lengthy Bucket List of places to revisit: Santa Maria, The Red Lion, Crispins, Mamas, Brent Lodge Park (where we got engaged, at the heart of the maze), The Village Inn, the canal walk and the Osterley Locks. If the list looks a little pub-heavy... well, that's because we made it at The Drayton Court, our second living room.

Now we're moving up to Hertfordshire, driven out (like so many young couples) by the British urge to buy and the difficulty of finding somewhere affordably spacious in Ealing. We always knew that we wouldn't be able to buy here, yet we stayed because we fell in love with the community feeling we sensed on that July day back in 2010. We've been fortunate to make local friends, and through them we've developed a sense of belonging that most people miss when they move to London after finishing university. I've spent many years living in west London; Ealing is the first place I've ever bumped into someone I know in the street.

Now it's time to buy, and it's time to go. To some friends it seems that the south-east is divided into two halves: there's London, and there's outside London - so it's a big thing when we tell them we're going to move out. But for us, we left London four years ago. Ealing is a village surrounded by a city. And we can't wait for this year's Blues Festival.

Todd Green

14th May 2014