I fled London for Paris in 2001. I was getting too old for my rented shared slum above an off-licence in Marylebone, and faced the great London question: do I borrow a fortune to buy a grotty little flat and devote my life to paying off the mortgage?
Then a cousin mentioned that his apartment in Paris had cost about GBP30,000. I felt the glimmerings of an idea. “But that was in 1998,” he cautioned. “Now you'd pay double.” The euro was then roughly on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, so I got straight on the Eurostar and bought a flat in a cute Haussmannian building near the Bastille for GBP60,000.
Many of my new neighbours had no visible means of support and seemed just to hang around all day. Paris back then offered a luxury even better than money: not having to think about money. I've lived there ever since.