The Great Exodus Was Our Idea First

Whenever I tell anyone about Helen and I planning to move to the country, I can’t stop myself adding “but we thought of it first”. For in the couple of years which have passed since we first started talking about making a new rural life for ourselves, the country has succumbed to the grip of a deadly pandemic which, according to the media, has infected Londoners’ brains and made them obsessed with moving out of the city. 

 Let’s all calm down a moment: if you ease your way past the tabloid headlines and items on The One Show, the truth is less dramatic. Londoners are moving, it is clear, but their desire is not for a rural idyll of village pubs, Morris dancing and teenagers getting banjoed on cider and Tipp-ex in the local bus shelter; they just want space. Terraced house owners are moving out thirty odd miles to get a bigger garden; flat owners are moving to terraced houses to get any kind of garden. 

This is all relevant to my tale, and not just because we were obviously the first people in history to think of swapping city life for the promise of misshapen courgettes and an overflowing septic tank. It was our misfortune that the Londoner’s new found love of space became the Londoner’s anathema to flats. Specifically, the flat we needed to sell in order to move to the country. 

It all started so promisingly. The estate agent seemed pumped up beyond a socially acceptable level about us being close to two different stations. She pointed out that our roof terrace was more than enough outdoor space for the most demanding buyer. She couldn’t see any problem selling it relatively swiftly. 

Our block of flats. You seriously expect me to believe people would hesitate to buy one of these?

 We went away for the weekend to ponder what we’d heard. Putting the flat on the market would be the Push The Button moment when we showed we were really serious about moving out of London. As a Proof of Concept, we were weekending with some old friends who had recently moved out of London to put down new roots in Dorset (But as I believe I’ve explained, we thought of it first). We revealed our new plan to them. They listened with the polite expressions of people who for twenty five years had heard us say how the last thing we wanted to do was live in the country. And obviously, we added as they took us for a walk round their village, we weren’t going to do that stupid thing people do of looking for a house when we hadn’t even put our flat on the market.

Then we turned a corner and found our dream house up for sale. 

 It was a Georgian broad-fronted building, like a child’s drawing of a house with the front door slap-bang in the middle. It had been completely renovated and (a shock that we would never get over throughout the months to come) it cost less than our London flat was going on the market for. We brushed aside any concern that our friends might not necessarily want us living round the corner, popping in every day for coffee and to borrow a rotavator. We put in an offer. Which was turned down, obvs. We were told very nicely to come back when we’d sold our property. 

We raced back to London. We rang the estate agent. We reminded her about the distance to the station, the swiftness with which she had intimated the flat would sell. We signed various forms; they took photos. We had done it. The great and terrible oath we swore in chapter one was changing the landscape of our lives. Within a couple of months, we would be installed in a beautiful Georgian house in a Dorset village, popping in to see our expat friends for coffee and to discuss home made patty pan chutney. 

But the flat failed to sell. 

The first time someone views your flat and rejects it, you are inclined to be philosophical. You even find yourself agreeing with the feedback that the third bedroom is too small. After all, the distance to the local stations will surely win out in the end. But feedback has a habit of accumulating till it just becomes irritating. 

 “There’s no lift” (Human beings are surely equipped for two flights of stairs?) 

 “The roof terrace is up a flight of steps” (The clue’s in the name, dirkbrain) 

 “The bedrooms are a bit gloomy” (I refer you to Jamie T’s song “Turn On The Light” and the advice contained therein). 

 The newspapers still insisted there was a property boom going on. They also mentioned that everyone was buying houses in the country. Would our positive thinking win out, or would we be condemned to be remembered as The People Who Thought Of It First But Never Made It?