A moving tale

I’d like to make clear that while it coincided with lockdown, the Covid crisis was not the motivation for me to copy the crowds and swap urban for rural. Unlike pretty much everything else in my life, in this instance I was a trendsetter, having registered an interest in the development in 2019. A Keithy-go-early, not Johnny-come-lately.

A humble accountant before becoming an even humbler scribe, I lived in the same ‘compact’ semi-basement flat behind the Town Hall in the unfashionable part of King’s Cross for 27 years before I traded in my views of pavements and parked cars for a vista of verdant National Trust lawn and the fields up to the ridge. Some great neighbours here, the odd nutter in the block of course, but I don’t miss having strangers shooting up on the doorstep at 3am.

I’ll save some of my thoughts on the developer and management company for another day but my flat itself is very nice indeed, over twice the size for more or less the value of the last one. Having many lovely rambling routes on the doorstep was one of the reasons for heading out here, and it hasn’t disappointed.

I’ve got used to part-time commuting. Of course, it’s easy to get teary/sweary at having parted with £35 only to find you’re the only one in the company to turn up to the office that day, but time on the train has renewed my interest in reading fiction, currently thanks to Daunt Books and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and generally ‘switching off’ from the working day.

Any regrets at such a move? None, I’d do it all again, and if it’s 27 years until my next move, I’d have done pretty well I think.