1: What the hell are you doing?
Erm, not sure. It seems like I'm packing the family up, and shipping them to the other side of the world (again), to live on an olive farm in the middle of nowhere, in the winter.
2: Do you speak Italian?
No, not a word of it. Well, obviously I know words like 'ciao' and 'bellisimo', but I'm going to struggle to order a coffee. But hey, I've managed to order a coffee in both China and Japan, so I think we'll be ok. We can learn!
3: What made you decide to do this?
It started when I saw a lecture by Stefan Sagmeister called The Power Of Time Off. Every 7 years he closes his design agency down, and takes a break for a year to recharge his creative batteries. Then 6 months ago, Twinkle asked me what I wanted for my 40th birthday. I said I wanted to spend much more quality time with the family, and wanted us both to be given the space and time to carry out our own creative projects. That, with a sprinkling of 'because life is too short' led us to try and find a way of making it financially work
4: How can you afford it?
Firstly, savings. We have been harvesting cash for months now. We very quickly built a spreadsheet with financial projections and various scenarios to estimate how long our money would last if I resigned my post at work, inputting as much detail as possible to capture everything. Rent was always the killer, and realised if we could remove rent from the equation, maybe we could pull this off. We discovered a website that effectively works exactly like a dating agency - you write a profile about yourself (or in our case, the whole family), and upload it for others to see - the 'others' being people looking for 'sitters' for their various properties all over the world. In exchange for free rent, we must work for 2 hours each per day, strimming the garden, carrying out general maintenance and walking the dog and the rest of the time is ours to spend as we please. Hours are basically flexible, so we can work an entire day if we choose to stockpile time which we can exchange for time away.
5: Can I come and stay?
Yes! Our new home is apparently VERY large! We really have no idea where it is, how to get there, or what we'll find if we ever find it. So Lord only knows how you'll visit us. But yes, so long as we know and like you, you can come and visit us.
6: Won't you miss Australia?
Totally. It's going to be massive shock to the system moving back to Europe, especially in the winter, in a rural location, and where the language isn't English. We'll miss the cafe culture, the weather, our friends, our apartment, our general life and many other aspects of Oz. This place is truly wonderful, with its crazy wildlife, and relaxed, family friendly atmosphere, and we question our own judgement on a daily basis. In all the time we've been here, we've only had one almost violent run-in with a rude drunken tosser - in London it happened all the time. It feels safe here, Twinkle and Rhett can walk home in the dark without fear of being attacked.
But it's not all sun, sea and sand here. To stay here, I'm either locked to a single employer (I'm currently on a 457 visa), and unable to work for others in any capacity, or I have to apply for permanent residency, which financially isn't attractive for us.
But we've never intended staying here permanently. Sadly, we've always been the proverbial Whinging Poms, complaining about everything from the heat to the price of bananas. It's harsh for us here - isolated and far away from what we've been used to. Will we regret leaving? Yes, very probably, but we have to go to find that out. Maybe we'll forever be Whinging Pommy Bastards, ping-ponging back and forth, spending what little savings we have on airfares and never being content.
7: When?
We fly to London on January 10th. Some time after the 15th, we'll be en route to Italy, loaded into either a van or a large car, equipped with a GPS to avoid d-i-v-o-r-c-e (as Dolly once sang). We theoretically arrive in Umbria about two days later, although there's no telling if that will in fact be the case. It could take weeks!
8: What if it all goes wrong?
C'est la vie. We of course have a contingency plan.
9: You know the Euro is about to collapse don't you?
Yes.
10: Do you like olives?
No.
No comments:
Post a Comment