Should I stay or should I go? Many years ago, in 2002, I moved to the UK where I lived and worked for 3 years before coming home. I went over on an ancestral visa. Yes, if I’d stayed I could have gotten my British passport by I was young and had had enough of the UK life so returned home.

Should I stay or should I go?

But recently moving has been playing on my mind a lot again. I guess your mindset changes when you have a child and you have to start thinking of their longterm opportunities and, unfortunately, I don’t see him having the kind of free life I had when growing up, nor do I see him being able to have the sort of tertiary education I had. It’s incredibly sad to think that the country’s education system is in such a state due to narrow-minded idiots.

So, today I’ve been investigating us going to the UK. Australia (although we’ve never been there) would be our first choice but unfortunately it’s not an option for us. However the UK is due to my ancestry so we need to consider it and look into all the finer details. It’s not an easy decision and it’s not one we will take lightly because it’s a big move and is life changing. It would be incredibly hard to say goodbye to all our friends & family here. The lives we have built and love would be completely changed. BUT, we can always come back if we don’t like it there. There are so many pluses for living in the UK – the main one is the incredible ease of international travel and both our businesses would do incredibly well there, but we would have to start from scratch socially – make new friends. Find our tribe again and learn a new way of life.

This is a decision that we will talk and think about a lot over the coming weeks. We don’t have to make a decision by a specific time, nor do we have to leave by a specific time. I doubt we’d leave this year – Tristan’s in school (paid for the year), we’re off to Fancourt for 3 months in March because of the drought in Cape Town and there’s too much to sort out to realistically leave before then. But it’s a conversation we need to have regularly, things that need to be considered and looked into and that all takes time and effort.