Read don’t skim 
For a curveball suggestion if you aren’t fussed about living on the mainland,I’d say Jersey. St Helier is not exactly what you’d call a city,but the island has a continental feel with beautiful beaches where ever you turn.France just 12 miles away,flight to exeter 45mins
The island is basically run by outside labour force,loads from Portugal and Poland as well as the uk.
Possibly more seasonal if doing chef work.
Unless it’s changed,renting is done on an a,b,c type system depending what job you do. Chances of buying your own property,pretty much non existent.
I personally found it a bit claustrophobic as it’s approx 9 miles by 4 miles. Similar size to Plymouth,but approximately 80,000 whereas Plymouth has around 250,000.
Cost of living prices,similar to London.
Ah, I wasn’t sure if you’d been there previously. Anyhow, Sheffield (very different) is a good shout.
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Right then, Leamington Spa. A haven of the home counties in the surrounding Midlands-ness, a sort of cultural West Berlin of the current age where outside of a fairly sizeable Sikh community the largest expat group is from Surrey. A place inhabited by piles of professional engineers working for JLR who go to Eco festivals in the pump room gardens and computer programmers who go around perusing local artists in open studio season. As an further example of its civility, Presto Classical is based here which is very bad for my bank balance.
Transport - is OK, the train line goes to Marylebone so most of London is a slight faff but there is a direct link to Birmingham Airport for flights. For all the stuff around town you probably could get away with not having a car most of the time but not to the extent of Oxford for example.
Foodiness is an interesting one, there are quite a few local artisan things for producers but not really that many high end restaurants. However, it does have Aubrey Allen for properly good meat consumption. Kenilworth nearby does have at least one starred place.
Job prospects on the tech front may well be more evident, there are a wide range of computer people nearby from Codemasters to AVL/TATA Consulting etc.
Cost - now there may be a slight issue. It all depends on whether JLR are hiring, as the most pleasant town near to Gaydon and Whitley stuff here is quite expensive in comparison to, say Southam down the road.
Oh and if we had back to the transport link there is one fairly major transport link called HS2 that is currently digging up large portions of the countryside nearby.
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Good point. SiL #2 originally did a catering degree, and while her CRB check for later occupational therapy work got repeatedly bungled she fell back on that doing silver service (through an agency).
It turned out that she could basically have written her own pay cheque. It seems that if you actually know what you’re doing then there is infinite, well-paying work available serving food to poshos.
Absolutely. Rents in Bristol are stupidly high (if you can actually find somewhere).
This, Newcastle is a much better place now , rent still affordable , good live music and the coast isn’t too far if I had to leave Exeter that’s where I’d be heading. Most of my Scouse side have moved up around there including both parents
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You’ve been here and fucking hated it, so that’s everywhere from North Essex to Hull out because it’s all fundamentally similar.
Yorkshire people are mostly cunts (rare exceptions…) who actually genuinely do believe it’s ‘god’s own cuntry’, and believe that it somehow makes them special, and never fucking shut-up about it, so avoid Yorkshire. Most places near Yorkshire are also Yorkshire.
Geordies (which is everywhere North of Hull basically, fuck what they think), are twats, but friendly twats, and Newcastle is genuinely fucking nice to live in and comparatively cheap.
Almost exactly the same about Liverpool, but with a slightly lower rate of sex-crimes and higher rate of all other crimes. I actually like the place, and like Newcastle/Gateshead, would consider moving there when Sam finally decides to upgrade.
Manchester: meh. Fucking rain tho’.
Scotchland is full of the Scotch, altho’ some of them are OK, but even moar rain and less daylight. Fuck Embruh, Glasgow actually feels like a real place not a National Trust attraction.
Wales: 
London is a fucking toilet, garnished with lots of smaller toilets - all of them are blocked, and an ugly cunt with a heart full of hate is charging you £1000 to go and add to the Diarrhhoea Pond or you’re going to shit yourself. While you’re in there wicking-up other people’s piss and shit, someone will steal everything you own and rape your cat. But there is lots of work, all of it awful.
The South: It’s like resigning yourself to death, but more crowded. I come from there - surely I need say no more?
Almost everywhere else in Britain (and especially Brum and its shatellite towns) is either a poverty-wracked hellhole that is waiting to die - strewn with drug-paraphernalia and the empty human husks who use them to blot out the relentless agony of living in Britain in 2023, or is a retirement fortress with locked gates - full of armed pensioners who will die to keep you out.
Do yourself a fucking favour and go to New Zealand or Australia or Canada before you’re too old. Fake ID is cheaper and quicker 
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Have you thought about a job at the Tourist Board?
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Have you got a new job with Lonely Planet?
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Private chef to the rich you say. How are your sea legs? Yacht chef, Med, Carribean etc.
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I’d be looking at Cheltenham or Norwich. Upmarket enough but not trying too hard.
You need to decide just how much money you want to spend and just how many people you want to live with because the nature of the absurdly fucked landscape of the UK property market is that, unless you wish to allocate a knuckle whitening sum of money to the problem, some of the places mentioned here are realistically out; THIS is apparently the going rate for living on your own in Brighton at the moment for example. If you’re willing to share, it drops… but not by as much as you might think.
Should be affordable for you with a decent divorce settlement when Sam upgrades 
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God, the horrible old building Audio Innovations was in for a while is still there next door (New England House) Amazed they haven’t knocked that one down.
You don’t know Brighton that well!
It is expensive but those examples are very much top end, but yes a one bedroom flat is likely to be £1000 to £1250 a month.
I moved out of Brighton because it was time to buy and my budget wasn’t enough to get what I wanted in Brighton so moved along the coast a bit.
Going back there tonight for a gig though, so still like the place.
New England House is awful.
So bad that it is probably listed by now as a great example of the Hideous Movement
I freely admit that I don’t but I’m well aware it’s fucking spendy. It also seems to create landlord atrocities in the manner of London too.
Brighton is famous for crooked landlords.
Every resident knows who Hoogstraten is/was
I recall the Queen visiting it. Classic example of the place smelling of fresh paint for just one day before hastily reverting to smelling of piss again. 