The Exodus (Part 1)

The time has finally come to make all of these plans a reality. I have been discussing, and convincing, and pushing, and waiting, and doubting, and dreaming, of this move for so long that now it’s finally come it just feels natural, and no drama at all.

But it is, really.

In order to make this happen, we needed to:

1. Sell the house
2. Get made redundant
3. Find schools on the IOW
4. Initiate Sophie’s statement process early
5. Review and assess the facilities available on the island (and neighbouring mainland)
6. Keep in constant contact with the schools, as we could not follow the usual application process
7. Apply for schools in the North, just in case
8. Begin plans on how we are exactly going to make money when we get there
9. Find a house to rent on the island
10. Lots more little things

So, it has been kind of a big deal. The hardest part though is always getting your head round it at the beginning, once you’ve done that the rest just falls into place.

Up until now, pretty much everyone I have told has looked at me sceptically. They either doubt that I will actually do it (because that is what most people do), or they doubt that our plans of making money are based on any sense of reality, or that we left it so late that it would be impossible to achieve. Aside from a couple of fellow dreamers, we have been lone voices in this adventure, trying to convince people that we are in fact not mental, but inspired, visionaries instead.

Negative comments that we have heard, are; “You’re going to be stir crazy on that island without the nightlife”, “You’re going to miss your friends”, “You’ll need to get a job when you get there”, “It’s not going to be a holiday”, “People can’t do that in real life”, “Good Luck (said patronisingly), “Money?”, “Loneliness?”, “Money?”, “Loneliness?”, “Money?”, “Loneliness?”, “You’re Crackers!!!!”

Enough of that though because if you listen to that all of the time then you’ll never do anything brave, or different. What’s the alternative to be? Wind the clock on thirty years, we’re in a place that we’ve ended up rather than chose, in jobs that were just a means to an end once upon a time that we ended up too scared to leave, with good friends around us that we will have known for fifty years with the same conversations and the same way of doing things. Just typing that down scares me more than anything else I’ve ever heard. I can’t imagine anything worse than not progressing, not changing who you are, not being free to recreate yourself and grow a new skin. That excites me a lot, especially when I think of all of that opportunity out there.

After the journey so far, and in spite of some of the comments, we have finally reached the part where we actually travelled there to pick a house that, at least for a short while, will become our new home. Once we have the house we can then confirm the schools, which we have also visited to ensure that they are aware of us.

The next few posts are a dramatisation of the fateful four day adventure in which at the end we managed to tick all of the boxes that needed to be ticked.