Going Home

Activity here has been somewhat absent these past few days. This has been due to Mrs L and I having to make a big – and difficult – decision. Eighteen months ago, we were optimistic as we set out for our new life in France. Today, that dream lies in ashes. I once said that wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to Blighty. So what happened?

If I was to distill the various influences, it all comes down to the economy.

Our plan was to sell our UK property and clear the debts I’d incurred during a period of near unemployment from 2005 to 2007. Had we managed to do this before the housing crash and the fall in the value of the pound, we would have started our French life with a small sum in the bank and a small mortgage with no indebtedness. Mrs L giving up her work was factored into our calculations as I could earn enough by coming back to the UK for a couple of weeks or so very six weeks. My daily rate means that I can earn a decent living on a couple of days a week. Certainly the maths worked out.

The fall in the housing market meant that we were unable to sell. What we did was increase the mortgage with a Buy to Let so that we had some funds for the removal costs and let the property so that it became cost neutral. In fact, with falling interest rates, it turned a small profit.

However, we went with the debts. Bad enough, but manageable if not for the other factors. My main client is somewhat erratic with payment. This was exacerbated by another client going into liquidation owing me a significant sum of money. While I could cope with late payments when in the UK when I was working some days each week and Mrs L had a salary coming in, thereby evening out the peaks and troughs, without that, we were exposed to some damaging gaps in our income. During the best part of 2009, I cushioned this with my tax fund. However, as of the 31^st January, that no longer exists – the nice man from the hmrc has it. Work carried out in February was due in mid March. I telephoned to check that it was going to be paid. It wasn’t. I was going to have to wait until the end of the month. The end of the month came and went and still no payment. I was finally paid on the 16^th April some two days after my direct debits were supposed to go out. I can budget for thirty day payments (my terms of business), I simply cannot cope with sixty days, which seems to be a habit.

In order to try and even out the appalling cash-flow, I’ve been returning to the UK more frequently and for longer. The cunning plan was to fly back to Beziers for a long weekend every other week. You can see where this is going, can’t you? Yup, if it isn’t bad payers, a piss-poor exchange rate and a rotten economy, it’s a bloody volcano. Mrs L is now feeling isolated as a consequence, despite having integrated fairly well with the local people. We are spending more time apart than we are together.

So what started out as a dream of a slower pace of life with more leisure, more time together and a better climate has become a rat race. She is lonely and isolated and I feel like a nomad who is never at home – and despite a decent income, we are broke.

Whichever way we look at this equation, it amounts to the same thing; sell the French house and move back to Bristol. This will leave us where we were in 2003 – no debt and a small mortgage of between £30k and £40k tops.

I will bitterly miss what we are giving up. Not least, because during the bad period of 2005 – 2007, we did everything we could to avoid doing just that. Which is why, perhaps, I am more unhappy now than I was then. Each of us has been increasingly depressed and avoiding telling the other. It all came to a head the day I set out in March when she said that perhaps we should go back. During the intervening few weeks, we have see-sawed between staying and returning, but she cannot cope with waiting with bated breath day by day for income that doesn’t materialise. Neither can I, come to that.

This was her ambition long before it was mine. Twenty years ago she would be looking at estate agents’ windows when we were travelling through France, planning our French lifestyle, so it must be a huge blow for her, but curiously, it is she who is now most forcefully pushing for a return to Blighty.

Given all of this, I’ve been distracted from other things. While I’ve noted DK’s foray into television and have my thoughts on the matter, and while I have raged internally about the over reaction to the volcano in Iceland, I’ve not felt motivated to comment. It may take me a while to feel motivated to say a great deal about anything very much.

In the meantime, when I get back there in May, we will be starting the process. Sure, something may turn up. But the likelihood is that come November, we will be repeating the journey we made two years previously in reverse.

Friends and relatives tell us that at least we tried – and we did. It doesn’t make the decision easier, though.

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Update: There is one small upside to all of this. Just for once, the exchange rate will work in our favour – providing the pound doesn’t strenghthen in the meantime…