Grace Eracleous reads the data on mood swings motivated by where we live.
In the few months since I came to live in South East London, my mood must have changed countless times. I know my demeanour fluctuates between untroubled and carefree to miserable and gloomy. But surely this is typical human behaviour? We all have some days when we can’t be bothered; and on other occasions any one of us may have enough get-up-and-go to fuel an entire university.
But perhaps my mood swings can be more precisely located. Maybe they have to do with where I’m living – that’s according to the Big Bang Data exhibition, currently showing in Somerset House on the Strand.
The exhibition’s curators gathered thousands of Londoners’ tweets over a whole month and rated them according to a list of 2500 words on a scale of positive to negative. On this basis, they came up with a list of the three happiest and three saddest boroughs. They also concluded that the self-same same places swing from one mood to another at different times during a single day.
Lewisham turns out to be the third saddest borough in London while Bexley is the happiest. Right now I’m living in Greenwich, exactly half-way between opposite ends of the spectrum. LIGHTBULB MOMENT! So that’s why my moods keep swinging!
But I mustn’t be self-obsessed. Instead I should extend my sympathy to the sorry folk of Sutton, the borough which tops the list for unhappiness. Imagine being constantly dispirited just because of the area you’re living in. Is it something to do with the air… or perhaps the water?
If you Sutton-ites can’t move house, my advice is to get a job in the City. Because on an average day between 12 noon until 2pm, the City is the second happiest place in the whole of London…until everyone has to go back to work after lunch.
Perhaps we could spend all day travelling from one borough to the next in search of happiness ratings. Or maybe we would just end up being tired and emotional.
On reflection, it suits me to stay temperamental in Greenwich.
Photo by Mark Harkin (Sad and Happy) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons