He found the town in August.
Nine at night and still light. Grilled fish on a paper tablecloth. Wine at $4 a glass, and a harbour full of boats nobody was in any hurry to take anywhere.
On the third morning he stopped outside the estate agent's window.
A stone house, two streets back from the water. Green shutters. A fig tree in the courtyard. $240,000, which was less than the flat he owned back home.
He went in. Just to ask.
By October he was under offer. By Christmas he had resigned, packed the flat into a van and told everybody he knew that he had finally done it.
He arrived in February.
The fish restaurant had a steel shutter pulled down over the front and a handwritten sign saying it would reopen at Easter. So did the one next door. So did the bar with the view.
Rain came in sideways off the sea for eleven days straight. The stone house held the damp like a sponge. Black spots appeared in the corner of the bedroom by the second week, and the fig tree dropped everything it had onto the courtyard.
The neighbours were not there. The houses either side were holiday lets, dark from October to May.
He found the one café that stayed open all year. He got to know the owner well, because for long stretches there was nobody else in town to talk to.
He gave it two winters. That was fair. Nobody could say he had not tried.
The house went on the market the spring after his second winter. Once the purchase taxes, the notary, the agent and two removal vans had been paid, the round trip had cost him somewhere past $30,000, plus the best part of two years he now describes as an experience.
If there is a standard way to regret moving abroad, this is it. Chosen on holiday. Lived in the off-season.
A February let in that town would have cost about $1,400.
One month. One suitcase. Nothing signed but a short rental agreement.
That is all it takes to try living somewhere before you move. A key, a kettle and the worst weather of the year.
It would have been cheap for a reason. Nobody wants that town in February. The whole answer was sitting in the price, and it cost less than the removal van.
Nearly every large commitment has a version that can be tried first. The move. The house. The career change. The business. The boat.
The trial usually costs a few per cent of the real thing, and it answers the one question the holiday, the viewing and the brochure never will: what this is like on a normal day in the worst season.
Plenty of men can afford the trial. They skip it anyway, because it feels like doubt.
How many of your own big decisions were made on holiday?
The rental would have given him the same answer and left the two years untouched.
THE HOLIDAY IS THE WORST EVIDENCE THERE IS
Every big decision gets sold on a good day.
The house gets viewed on a bright weekend morning, with the heating on and coffee going in the kitchen. The new job gets explained in a glass meeting room by the man who most wants it filled. The boat goes out on a flat, blue afternoon. The town gets discovered in August.
Nobody is lying. The good day is real.
It is also the day you will spend the least of your life in.
The move gets lived in February. The job gets lived in month four, on the repetitive part of the work that never made it into the advert. The house gets lived at seven in the morning, when the quiet street turns out to be a cut-through for every van in the district. The boat gets lived in the boatyard, in the rain, holding a quote for the hull.
So a trial only counts if it includes the bad part.
The worst season. The normal week. The real commute, at the real hour, both ways. The dull middle of the work instead of the interesting first day of it.
A week in the new city in May tells you almost nothing. A few weeks there in the wettest part of the year tell you nearly everything.
The same goes for a job. Try out a career before switching and the first days will flatter it every time. Judge it once the novelty has worn off.
TAKE THE TRIAL IN THE MONTH NOBODY WANTS.
That rule carries a bonus: it is the cheapest time of year to go.
The misleading season costs the most. The honest one is on sale.
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