the bright idea

The second part of the epiphany that led to the erm, situation we're in today happened to Ryan and I at about the same time - although for the record, Ryan said it first. We had both been lying in bed, eyes staring at the ceiling in the dark and then someone said :

- "What if... OK, I know it's going to sound crazy but what if... we built our own...

- ... house. Yeeeeeahhhhhh !!!"

Before the last h on that scream, I had already logged on to real estate websites to look for a piece of land in Lille.

Now, I should mention that by that time, Ryan had visited a grand total of two houses for sale in Lille and I had visited none - so can't say we chose that option out of desperation.

After a couple of minutes searching on the internet, we had found one that looked bloody good. Too good ?

how it all started

One fine day in July 2010, in the middle of a long, lazy lunch, Ryan and I decided that enough was enough, we HAD to buy a house.

(I blame Jamie Oliver's hamburger myself).

Our reasoning at the time (note the bottle of wine on the table) was that our landlord in Paris was getting fat from all that enormous rent we were feeding him each month and that, well, Oscar was growing up and we were getting old, and it seemed like the thing to do when those things happen.

The problem was that we couldn't afford a proper 3-bed house with garden in Paris or London and a life in the suburbs of either cities evoked nothing but shotguns and garden sheds. But neither Ryan nor I were going to let an impossible equation get in the way of swift action, so by the time the apricot clafoutis came, we had decided to move to... Lille* !

*For those of you who are fuzzy on European geography, Lille is on the Eurostar line almost exactly half-way between Paris and London, but on the civilized side of the Channel.