I Shouldn’t Really Be Here, You Know.

 

We left England almost twenty years ago.

Suddenly.

We gave up our jobs, sold the house, went off to live in France.

The whole process took a week.

A frantic week, admittedly.

Leaving aside the ludicrously dramatic reasons behind this sudden change, why France? Well, many reasons. We liked France and property was cheap. Reasons enough? We thought so.

We bought an old house, a ruined house, to renovate, make it habitable, a career move that was to continue for another 18 years. I’m not a builder, not even in my dreams, but I’m a quick learner. This was in the Loire Valley. Later we went south, to the shores of the Mediterranean and, later still, to Spain.

It was in rural Spain, ten miles inland from the concrete hell of the Costa del Sol, perched high in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean with views across to the Rif Mountains of Morocco, that I discovered my spiritual home. The climate, the relaxed pace of life, the absence of formality, this was how I wanted to live for ever. We stayed on, finished the 300 year old finca with its spectacular views and bought another house, a total ruin with equally stunning vistas.

Mixing cement, rendering, bricklaying, plastering, roofing, tiling – I’d mastered all these skills by now, but my knees were beginning to feel the strain. Every time I carried a bag of cement from the back of the truck, climbed a ladder with an armful of roof tiles, my knees sent me a message. A message that couldn’t be ignored for ever.

My lovely wife has been in sole charge of common sense throughout our years together and she took a long look at me one day as I hobbled back up the track after another 14 hour day in the heat of a Spanish summer.

‘Why are we still doing this?’ she said. It was a good question. The knee operations I’d put off for so long couldn’t wait any longer. We sold both houses, eventually, and moved back to England, on a trial basis. That was 18 months ago. English winters are hard to take after so many years away and this one is taking its toll on my spirit.

We kept back a piece of land in Spain, a project, for a day that may never come. An insurance policy, if you like. The land is calling me. Do I really want to start again, slogging away, mixing cement and carrying armfuls of bricks? Not really. Do I want to sit inside watching the rain fall in my English bolt-hole? Not at all.

So, what’s the answer? Once again, my wife had it all sussed. We’ll stay here, in England, move back up North, put down limited roots, establish a base camp. ‘Then we can go off and have adventures.’ That word did it for me, ‘adventures,’ I like adventures. We’ve been to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Fiji, Alaska and the Canadian Rockies in the last couple of years. Adventures. It isn’t necessary to go so far. I yearn to go back to Morocco for a month or two, perhaps do the big trek through the Sahara to the southern tip of Africa we talked about last time we were there.

But setting off in the camper van to do Eastern Europe is an adventure, meandering through Ireland or the Scottish Highlands is an adventure. So many choices. I’m content again. Of course I miss the year round sunshine, but I’m also enjoying my morning stroll to the cafe with the leather armchairs where they provide a log fire, all the day’s newspapers and generously large mugs of coffee. You don’t get that when you live two miles down a goat track, sunny or not.

Right then. Adventures it is. Getting excited now.