How it started
Fiona: “You’ve always wanted to live in Italy, right?”
Me: “Go on…”
Fiona: “Sipping espresso, cycling around the piazza, dinner, a passeggiata? Living la dolce vita?!…”
Me (eyes closed, nodding with approval): “Mm-hm”
Fiona: “
And so it began. Ideas were formulated, plans were hatched and plunges taken. Flights were booked and a camper van purchased. Thoughts of Italy faded under the realisation we would be spending 80% of our time in a space approximately the size of a small ensuite, which I would need to navigate from place to place, while simultaneously trying to fund the trip and home school the children.
How it’s going
We arrived in London and I was pumped. 3 flights, flying time, stopovers behind us with only one more short flight to Edinburgh remaining and what I considered a routine immigration check. When I told him we were staying in the UK for 6 months the eyebrows were raised. At first I thought he was just questioning my lifestyle choice, but it suddenly dawned on me that we was seriously contemplating not allowing us into the country, It didn’t help the situation that a serious lack of sleep made any of my responses seem like I had only recently taken up English as a second language. Just when we got to the point where I was sure we were on the next flight home quicker than you could say “moved to Timaru for 9 months while continuing to write a fake blog using imagery from Shutterstock”, he made a “discretionary call” to let us in, and with a look that said “you two are both muppets who shouldn’t be allowed to bring up children, let alone bring them to the other side of the world” we were passed through.
But for now that is all ahead of us. As I wake up on the first morning in a different land, on a different side of the world. Am I sipping an espresso staring out across a sunlit piaza? Am I fuck. I’m in a village in Scotland. And it’s raining. But it’s also quite beautiful.
