Why did we go to Alonissos?
| Jane and I met in London in 1986 and were married the next year. We both wanted to get out of London for several reasons but mainly so we could afford a decent place to live. Our friends lived in a gorgeous village just outside Chippenham in Wiltshire and both our families lived in South Wales so it made sense to look for somewhere half way up the M4. We aspired to quaint village life and started to look for jobs in the area. | |
I got lucky first and was offered a job supporting a group of learning disabled adults to live in a house in Trowbridge. Not quite the same as our friends little village but we felt it was a start. After a while Jane got teaching jobs and later a job as a day centre worker.
We made some great friends in Trowbridge and we still enjoy going back to see them but it has to be said, we never really took to the place.
Over the next few years we both progressed nicely with our work and Jane did the Diploma for Social Work in Bristol. After qualification she found it hard to get a job that suited her skills. Meanwhile I had worked my way up the managerial ladder to the point where a brilliant restructuring plan meant that my job was to change dramatically.
I was not happy. Jane was not happy. I had the offer of redundancy of about £4000 so we thought "let’s just jump ship and go!!".
The flat we had bought at the height of the property boom was now worth about £27000 less than we paid for it. You don’t get much more negative about your equity than that.
So we just found a letting agency and left our flat in their hands. We didn’t want to blow all the redundancy money but it was a good fall back if things didn’t go our way.
We had booked a holiday to Skopelos and Alonissos and just decided not to come home on the return flight.
We weren’t sure what we expected or whether we would want to stay in Greece but we left with an open mind and a spirit of adventure. I took my guitar and made some cassettes of my songs with a view to selling them. We were keen to work and ready for anything.
