Confession

I moved to France about two weeks after I graduated with my Masters degree. I was all alone, luckily I had a job (I was transferred). I was put up in a hotel by the company for the first month. It was scary, but there were a lot of Anglophones around who I could hang out with in those first few weeks. They assigned someone to me to help me find a flat, but in the end I found my own, with a little kitchen and a bathroom and beautiful high ceilings. Then I was really on my own. It was hard, but at work I made friends, my French improved, and I learned to love the city. Half the time when I had a holiday I went to see my family, the other times I did EuroRail trips around Europe, and had some of the best experiences of my life in Vienna and in Germany. It was a really beautiful adventure, I lived there for 3 years. I came home because my sister was pregnant with her second child and I wanted to know him, as I had missed out on so much of my older nephew because he was born about a year after I first moved to France. I also needed therapy and thought it would be easier to get on the NHS. I miss France hugely. Brexit and T***p in 2016 spooked me, and I wanted to go home because I didn't know that Brexit would take so long. If I had stayed I probably would have had settled status by now, but never mind, that's not possible now. If it helps, I really regret moving back. I got therapy, and it helped a bit, but now I just feel trapped at home with little way out of finding my way out into the world again.

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Dream house

In my head, I have crazy idea for a house which is:

1) One half modern, with everything stored super cleanly away in its own drawer/cabinet, so very little clutter. This half has pale lavender accents, but very little in the way of colour. I'm a neat freak, I hate seeing cables, mess etc. so this appeals to me.

2) The other half is like an old Georgian or Victorian style home, with beautiful painted wallpaper, a lot of mahogany, a large wooden desk with a green leather top, beautiful tall wooden bookshelves, a globe, a lot of gold accents, like Trinity College Library if it was someones home (i.e. not as big or dusty). I also dream of having a reading nook in a turret.

Alas, these plans are doomed to remain dreams, unless I become super rich somehow and end up on Grand Designs. However if I ever get my own little house, I will do my best to create these two aesthetics in miniature, i.e. my bedroom will be the pale lavender / white / no mess zone, and my study will have all the dark wood, bookshelves and my beautiful desk.