Fifteen years ago I moved to France with my husband and a burgeoning baby bump, lured by low property prices and the chance to quit our jobs as teachers. That was in 2009, when Facebook was still a novelty, twittering was just for birds and I wasn’t sure if we’d need wifi at our new home. Gordon Brown was still prime minister, in case you need another measure of how long ago it was.
As we approach a general election and the potential return of a Labour government, I have recently moved back to the UK. The decision was made, at first, with some trepidation. After years of cuts, austerity and Covid, I’d begun to worry the place I’d be returning to might feel as alien as France did when I’d first arrived, with its unfathomable bureaucracy, shops that closed on Mondays and habitual lunchtime (and sometimes morning) drinking.
