Some 15 years ago, in September 2002, I left London for good for the Gers. The Gers?! Where on earth is that some may ask? The Gers: rural ‘département’ in the depths of south-west France, tucked away between Toulouse and Bordeaux just north the Pyrenean mountains. No motorway, a single-line railway and a main city of 22,000 people. In London, one of the world’s major cities after all, I was at the beginning of my carrier (law degree in the UK and France, qualified as a barrister, pupillage at a criminal law Chambers then head of the legal department of a French real estate agency). Give all that up?! That’s nuts!

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