When Little Me...

My journey of leaving the UK is not unique or special. There’s nothing surprising about my story, yet it astounds me daily.

I was always sure I didn’t want to live in my home town of Southampton all my life. I knew I needed to step away from the person I was, and start again, a clean slate.

How many stories start that way? Thousands I’d imagine, the difference here is that this is my true story.

I’d gotten into working in bars and pubs after dropping out of Uni. I was pretty good, I worked and played hard, and decided it was time to try my luck in the big smoke. I got a job as a duty manager in a (tiny) bar and club in Leicester Square, tourist central. And there, on my very first day, I met the staff, one of whom was my Simone, pronounced Simonay, Italian for Simon. He was cute and by all accounts quite the player. This isn’t the story of how we met, but just some background. We ended up getting together and after just over a year, we discovered that I was pregnant. Not ‘we’ were pregnant, ‘I’ had the nausea and sore boobs. Anyway skipping ahead, our daughter was not even one when his father started having more serious health issues, and his sister was frustrated and fed up (he was a cantankerous man). Simone had been working, we were living back in my hometown, and the humdrum life was starting to wear him down. Arguments ensued, discussions, ideas, and more arguments. The choice was between London and the South of Italy. Honestly, moving to the South of Italy scared me less than moving to London with a baby! I knew London would be tough, finding the right job, childcare, then the right area for schools. It just seemed too daunting, so scary. However, we’d been to visit his family in Italy, and it had been magical, such stunning beaches, small towns, old towns and not to mention the food. I never once went back to Pizzahut after eating my first pizza in southern Italy. So the choices were those! A move to the anonymity and potential poverty in London, or to the romantic, warm and welcoming South of Italy.

Obviously the reality of moving here is not quite so romantic, and not always welcoming. It is most certainly not for faint hearted or for the self-assured feminists. There are upsides and downsides, as there are to living in many countries. As many people thought I was mad, as were openly jealous.

So there it was, after almost two years from the original discussions, I agreed to move to Italy. To help out with Simone’s father and start a new adventure. We packed up and shipped the furniture, we quit our jobs, we said our goodbyes and one drizzly day in July we got in our little car, with our two year old little girl, and we started our journey...