Why France?

It's 2001 and we live in Skipton. Before that, we lived in Ramsbottom and had the time of our lives with great friends and our own little house - our first. The situation is that my company moved to Skipton, I lost my driving licence because of my epilepsy (see later) and we have just had a second baby so our little house was just a little too little. Commuting is out of the question (unless I fancy a 60 mile walk each day).

I liked Skipton: I earned a decent wage and was in the ideal location for mountain-biking. However, the startup company I joined at its conception was bought by an American company and was turning into a "proper" company (selling things for God's sake!) - the buzz wasn't the same, I had a new-found confidence in my professional abilities and was ready for a new challenge.

My wife saw it differently: people were unfriendly - it was difficult to make lasting friends (a problem that is not inherently part of her personality); one of our kids had some "relationship difficulties" with other children (...maybe that accounted for the lack of friends...); it rained a lot and she had difficulties accepting that sometimes you need to turn on the central-heating in mid-summer (can't think why).

Basically we were ready for a change. Given that my wife had stuck out 12 years in England, France seemed a decent choice. It overcame the climate problem at least.

In May 2002, a lorry pulled up, all our things were packed into a container and disappeared to a lockup somewhere in Sheffield for the next 2 months. We sold our car to a colleague's wife on a pub car-park and drove our hire car to Stansted airport before flying to Dijon to move into my father-in-law's house.