Lifeswap

Yes! Yes! After years of not reading travel books because I was so blindingly jealous of the authors, averting my eyes from Spanish highway ads for "La Casa de tus sueños," and of folding away articles about changing your life - I am doing it. Yes, after years of thinking, No, I can finally think "Yes!" Not before time. It has taken me about twenty years of working in the City to do it - but I am finally moving to Spain.

I know it is not that exotic a decision; it is not as if I am going to run a dive school in the Caymans - that plan fell by the wayside just after our honeymoon. But I am finally going to live in Spain, to not be a tourist but a resident, proudly pushing my shopping trolley round the Mercadona instead of Sainsbury. For years, I have been trying to grow a lemon tree in the garden; it is wizened and unhappy from the rain, like me. Where I am going, we drive home through groves and groves of fat, happy lemons.

We bought a house in Almeria two years ago; it was a holiday house, bought to stop us "wasting" so much money on holidays (Sandy being Scottish; he really thinks everything you spend should be an investment). Two years later, we have found a way to live there: taking our children, Alexander (12) and Lara (10), to start a new life.

"Why are you going?" It's hard to say exactly why - there are lots of "what's wrong with the UK" reasons in the newspapers but actually I think we were just bored - and then, it's nice eating looking at an almond field outside every day. T

We are hardly being original, of course. Change is the new black: we are riding the whole Wife Swap, Extreme Makeover, Place in the Sun wave. Everybody wants to change their life, get rid of their baggage, start over.Leaving the UK is the in thing: apparently 75% of Brits are either doing it, or considering it. All the same, you'd think some people thought we were going to Ulan Batur.

"But why?" wailed Jasmine, my friend and neighbour. Her children are friends with mine and we have endless mutually convenient arrangements. I can see it's not good for her; being left behind is the short straw in partings.
"We don't like it here any more," I said, heartlessly.

"What's wrong with it?" she wails again.

"It's too small," I say.

"Well, buy a bigger house," she says. We would need about another million pounds to have the amount of space we can have in Spain but anyway, I don't want a UK house. I list all the simple things I don't like: grey skies, speed cameras, traffic jams, expensive nasty food.

"The food in that new place in Westerham is quite good for the price," she says. I can't explain. It's all just too small and grey, I says feebly. That is how the UK has started to feel to me: like one of Alexander's socks when it comes out of the wash. Once, it was nice and white; now it is not.

Over the next weeks, I have had two main reactions to the breaking news.

Me: We're moving to Spain.

Type 1: Wow! That's so cool! I'm so jealous!

Me: We're moving to Spain.

Type 2: Oh! Er..why?... how? Are there schools out there?

Me: Yes.

Type 2: (Pause). Oh. What about your house?

Me: Rented!

Type 2: (Pause). Well, if it doesn't work out, you can always come back.

Type 1 people, you are cool, rock on, you can come and stay. Type 2 People, no, we can't come back. That is like saying to the bride walking up the aisle, oh well, if it doesn't work out, you can always get divorced. there are about 8 million Brits in Spain so we are hardly original. This is long after Driving Over Lemons; Orgiva, the main town in that area, has long been invaded by the British.

No, it doesn't always work out, but there are a lot of stupid people about, many of whom are living in Spain. According to Gary and Sue, who have a removals business and live in the next village to us in Almeria, if "House in the Sun," or something like that shows in, say, Birmingham, lots of people from there call and book removals. About 3 months later, they call and ask to moved back. Why? " "Oh well, they don't like it. They didn't know this is what it would be like." What did they think it would be like - England?

Actually, I think this is true; the English are a bit weird about abroad. We were in the water park in Vera recently when a British woman asked me to speak to the locker attendant for her. "He doesn't speak very good English," she explained. No? Doesn't he? Unlike all those water park attendants in the UK who speak fluent Spanish. Of the 8 million Brits in Spain, I would guess about 75% don't speak Spanish. You have to wonder what people in Sevenoaks would think of a large immigrant population of non-English speaking Spaniards. Probably they'd say that at least they weren't black.

"So when did you decide all this, then?" Jasmine's husband, Steve asks. I think they think we will still change our minds; they are looking at us as if maybe we are not in our right ones at all. "Er.." I say. The truth is, I nor Sandy can remember how we made the decision to go, although when he is grumpy and suffering from removal stress, which has happened, he blames me. Perhaps we were drunk as when I agreed to let Lara have her ears pierced? Or was it a bit like getting pregnant "by accident"? Did our subconsciouses plot it long ago, as long ago as when we first twinkled at the idea of a holiday house? Whatever, one minute it wasn't there, and the next it was, like a quantum particle.

"It was when we went to Madrid last November," I say. This is sort of true. It was a stressful weekend; we argued ("discussed") all the time about moving to work there and by the end of it I didnt really care if we ended up getting a timeshare in Vladivostok. I went to see the 2 Madrid PR agencies I could find: one was a top agency, very grand and dark, like a Velasquez; they gave me a glass of water and politely explained how they really never hired anyone because they didnt like having to fire people. Did this mean they could see they'd have to fire me? At the end, I think the man felt a bit guilty and said if my husband was coming out to Spain, they could maybe give me a bit of work as pin money, or something like that. It was all a bit Opus Dei; they wouldnt let me see any of the office but I guessed there was a bit of flagellating going on. The other agency, run by a contact of a contact, was nice, but small, with not enough money to hire me in a proper job. Sandy, meanwhile, said the economics of going onto a Spanish salary didn't work. We went back to the UK very cross, and gave up the whole plan.

About four months later, we had decided to move to Almeria. My boss had left, my company restructured, and my job as Communications Director was over. I'd already spent over a year trying to find my next role - and it didnt seem to be going anywhere. "The trouble is, at your level, there are only going to be one or two decent roles a year," one headhunter told me. "And then, of course, you've got picky.." I glared at her. ".. Which, of course you are quite right to be!" she added, diplomatically. Well, not if I wanted to earn a living. If I'd wanted to do that, I'd have pulled myself together and made sure I got another proper job. To outsiders, even my friends, I probably looked pretty brisk together, like I was still going places. I had put "just below Board level" as the headhunters suggested, on my cv. This was a bit of poetic licence: I might have been just below it, but something pretty heavy was pressing down on my head.

Just before I went my friend Nick at the Work Foundation told me the percentage of women that leave their jobs at my level - he seemed to know most of them. Not that I'm blaming any glass ceiling exactly - more likely I had no head for heights. Either way, there are moments in life when you have to blow out or up, when the lid comes off the volcano or indeed when the superego loses its grip on the id - and my superego never did my id that much under control in the first place. Something which, all my life, has kept me doing well, moving up the career ladder, trying my best - suddenly gave way. It didn't happen all at once: I felt it weaken like a rope fraying, and once or twice, when a headhunter called, I tried to hang onto it. But it was too late: it had already gone. I told Sandy I thought maybe I'd spend the summer in the house in Spain, because I wasn't sure I could find the right job in time, and it would be cheaper. That was when we started to think: what if? What if I couldn't work and the kids went to local school? What if we rented the house? What if we don't have a nanny? In what seemed like five minutes, we had knocked down all the barriers and it fell into place. It's official. We are off in July.

"But what are you going to do?" is the second question everyone asks me. "You'll be bored! You'll have to find something!" I get a bit pissed off: I have only just got my head round leaving my job, I am knackered from working in the City non stop for 20 years and already everyone wants me to start doing something. Sandy will carry on working - his job goes anywhere and can be based anywhere - and as for me, I don't know.

Don't think I am not scared. I am: not of going to Spain, but of not working. I didn't even really stop work when I had my children; I took 3 months off and with Alexander I used that to do my rescue diving course. The whole idea of not working is terrifying, like being about to jump off a huge cliff, into the sea. I've spent all that time going up the ladder and now I'm jumping off it. But what makes it easier is knowing there wasn't really anything at the top. Perhaps that's why all the women Nick knows are off. They looked up through that glass ceiling, saw a table surrounded by old farts and thought: "Oh, so that's all that's up there? Oh well, in that case, I'm off."

"Oh well, it's all very mañana out there isn't it," someone says. Not really, folks, but the excuse will do for now. I might work, but not now, tomorrow. For now, I'm writing this. At least this way if I go native, fatter, more wrinkly and driving a tractor as some of my girlfriends seem to think, I will have a record of my migration. It will be like Extreme Makeover in reverse, and in slow motion.