How It Got Started
A little bit about who we are
Aidan and I met in a bar, when we were very drunk. It was my boss's birthday, and he was treating the select group of us that were working on a contract in Chelmsford to some drinks along with a couple of his friends.
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Little did I know that a conversation that started out with my friend and I trying to get information out of him about another guy we worked with (the delectable Wolfie, from South Africa), that by the end of the night we would have asked each other about 100 Blind Date style questions!
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When we ran out of things to ask, I drunkenly blurted out my final question, "What are you doing on Wednesday night?" To which he replied, "What are you doing right now?" We bumbled along to Pizza Express, at some point as we ate, he leant over to kiss me and almost fell over, and we were pretty much inseperable from then on. Only problem was that the next day, when I went into the company I was working in as a contractor and looked Aidan up on the intranet, I discovered that he was technically my boss within the company - which blew out of the water the only dating rule I'd ever had!
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That was November 23rd 2001. It took us a further 8 and a half years to get engaged, and we are heading towards 19 when we will be making our way to City Hall to make things legal with a civil partnership.
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We fell in love with South-West France when we went to Carcassonne for my 40th birthday, and in the yeasr since we have returned often. We joked about living there in an old farmhouse, with lots of animals, growing our own food and trying to be as ecologically friendly as we could - but I never thought Aidan would actually go through with the idea of actually living there.
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However, with property prices so high in this country, and with my health (I have hypermobile Ehler's Danlos, Dysautonomia and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, as well as Myalgic Encephelomyelitis and Fibromyalgia) having meant that we've never been able to even get a toe on the first rung of the ladder, we came to realise that retiring to France might be a possibility.
And so, as Brexit came along, taking with it our European citizenship, we decided to finally get Aidan an Irish passport (his parents came here from Ireland some years before he was born), and to maybe head off a little earlier than planned. But, this means we now have to think about what to do to make a living - and so we have our ideas board with such diverse options as cider-making, a campsite, gites,a B&B, and a guibike shop and cafe (selling guitars, bikes and lots of cake!)
We've come to the conclusion that the house we fall in love with will probably dictate what we can do - but it is going to be fun/stressful while we work it out! Whatever we end up doing out there, and whenever we are able to make the move permanent, we hope Bob, our pampered puss, will like chasing French mice!