Freelance journalist, writer & editor in France

As the summer ends, thousands of Britons returning from holidays are dreaming of living abroad. But what’s it really like to live life in the slow lane? RACHEL LOOS, 38, left her job as editor of Elle Decoration and sold her three-bedroom home in south-west London, to move to a six-bedroom mansion in Charente, south-west France, with her husband Michael, 42, a writer. Here, she describes the trails of giving it all up

When I was young there was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to have a career and that it would be the driving force in of my life. My parents worked hard – my father was a civil servant and my mother a secretary – and saved to give me the best possible education.

They sent me to a fee-paying all-girls school where, except for roller-skating (banned for not being sufficiently ladylike), we were encouraged to believe we could be and do anything we wanted - as long as we worked hard enough.

From my very first job as a rookie reporter, I was determined to climb the career ladder as high as I could; and so for the past 15 years, since the age of 22, I have relentlessly clocked up longer and longer hours, working to ever increasing and high-pressured deadlines, to reach the top.

For a long time, I absolutely loved my working life. My career brought me not just exciting new experiences, but during times of seismic change - moving from Sydney to London; getting married, divorced and married again, and watching my father die – work provided a structure that was a reassuring continuity, a straight path to follow when all around was changing.

Three years ago all that hard work was rewarded when I given the job as editor of the interior style bible, ELLE Decoration. Not only did I now have my own magazine to run, the title also gave me access to some of the most creative people working in the world today, and a certain degree of power and influence.

I went to as many as three openings and launches a week and was always a VIP guest, with PRs rushing to greet me as I walked in and designers thanking me for launching their careers. I regularly went to Milan and Paris for meetings, as well as to Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro to shoot covers. In amongst all this high-glam, I managed a team of thirteen and together we created a magazine that was under constant pressure to be on the pulse of what was ‘right now’, as well as to increase sales and advertising revenue.

This meant that from the minute I woke up – 6.57am for the weather forecast on Radio Four – I was on the run. I often ate breakfast at my desk, checking through the 20 or so emails that had arrived overnight not just from Europe but also from America, Australia and Japan.

I enjoyed it all, of course, and the job was hard but rewarding. Yet, slowly, and inevitably perhaps, what was once fresh and interesting, started to become humdrum and repetitive. I began to feel that my entire working week was just a series of tasks that had to be worked through and endured.

Increasingly, work became less satisfying and I started to feel stuck in the grip of a relentless routine. From Monday to Friday I worked non-stop; weekends, although bringing some relief, also had their ritual duties, however trivial – grocery shopping, familial visits.

Time for myself and my husband, Michael, whom I’d married in May 1996 after meeting him through work, had to be fitted in. I felt my life was no longer mine to control, that I had given it away, by proxy, to others.

I’d reached the top of my profession only to realise that career success was not enough. Like many thirtysomething working women, I was of a generation that had always been encouraged to go out to work to achieve personal fulfilment. However, I had discovered that I needed more than just a career to make me happy.

The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Michael, who had been made redundant, had decided to take this chance to restructure his own life and write books. As I left the house each morning, not due back for another 12 hours, he would be planning to his day. I envied him his freedom.

I was fed up with feeling tired all the time, of flying into an impotent fury because yet again there was a signal failure at King’s Cross, and of having to squeeze ‘quality time’ with Michael into a few hours a week.

I couldn’t countenance having a baby if, after a relatively short period of maternity leave, I faced having to negotiate time with him or her around the demands of work. What I wanted was a different kind of life: one that was not dominated by money or status but by simpler pleasures that fed the soul rather than my bank balance.

Most importantly, perhaps, I wanted my time back. In the UK we work the longest hours in Europe and have the fewest public holidays, so it’s no surprise so many people are starting to say enough is enough.

Thankfully, Michael too was hankering for something different. In his case, being a farmer’s son, he wanted space and land instead of a smallsuburban garden, surrounded on three sides by neighbours. So we decided that I would give up my job to go freelance, and that together we would move from the city to the country.

But there was an immediate problem: in England this was impossible unless we took out an even larger mortgage to the one we already had, forcing us both back onto the working treadmill again. What we wanted was to be mortgage-free, thereby significantly reducing our need to earn big money, giving us the freedom to try other things. Our only choice, we realised, was to emigrate to somewhere we could afford to live our dream.

I had no qualms about striking out, and after considering Australia (too far away) Michael and I settled on France. We liked the culture and the weather, having been there on holiday, and we knew that property, even with land, was the cheapest in Europe.

While my French was at a schoolgirl level, Michael spoke it well – he took it A-level - and was familiar with the history and customs of the country. Also, with the arrival of Ryanair in France’s regional airports, London was but a short, cheap flight away allowing us not only access back to the city for work if need be, but also to see family and friends.

We would continue to write, but we would also do something completely new: run our own business, a small plant nursery.

We chose to start our search in the Charente region, as it has the most hours of sunshine outside the south of France. We also loved the soft landscape and rolling hills.

We started by contacting local estate agents and set up a series of appointments over an initial two-week fact-finding mission. We saw about ten old farmhouses in the first week, but started to get depressed as they were all either too dark or too expensive.

Driving through the countryside, we spotted it hidden behind a large overgrown orchard. A tiny blue ‘a vendre’ (For Sale) sign hung on the gate. It cost just £100,000 and somehow we knew it was ours.

The house hadn’t been lived in for 20 years, so it needed some serious renovation (so far we’ve spent £50 doing it up), such as re-plumbing and re-wiring, and we also had to install central heating.

It was the ideal house for an ex-interiors editor because I could see its potential. Built in the Thirties, it is a mix of Art Deco and Art Nouveau, with mosaic tiled floors, marble fireplaces and stained glass windows. Situated at the end of a village, it has a three-quarter-acre garden, land across the road for the nursery, and a view of sheep grazing in the fields of a 16^th century chateau.

I loved the beautiful period features, the high ceilings and perfectly proportioned rooms, and knew instantly how stunning my contemporary furniture would look against a more old-fashioned background.

We realised there was a lot of work to be done, but couldn’t wait to get started. Luckily, the seller had recommended some fantastic builders and because Michael was freelance he was able to come out six months before me to keep an eye on the work.

He had to live in a local B&B for a few weeks before he could move in, and then it when he did it was another two weeks before he had any heating.

I had a lot to sort out in London before I could join him. We sold our house, put everything in storage and then trucked it over once the house was habitable.

The aim was for us both to spend Christmas 2003 there and for a while it was touch and go. They only switched us onto full power on Christmas Eve so we could cook our Christmas dinner and put the fairy lights up.

Finally, in May this year, having resigned from Elle Deco I flew out to France for good. Colleagues were shocked I was willing to give up such a high-profile position and a good salary for a new life in a different country. They didn’t expect me to swap my Manolos for muddy wellies.

Friends were also surprised but supportive, and promised to come and visit. I bid everyone a teary farewell, but never had any doubts that I was doing the right thing.

The day I arrived, I felt a burst of happiness when I saw the apple trees in the orchard covered in blossom. That evening Michael and I cracked open a bottle of champagne and toasted our new life.

Over the next few days we spent the days outdoors, sowing a lawn so it would be ready for summer al fresco dining. We also planned how we would turn a wilderness into a fabulous garden.

Lunch was fresh baguettes and paté bought from our small village shop; in the evening we gulped down fantastic wine that had cost us the equivalent of just £3 in the supermarket. The first few weeks were a honeymoon period. We went on long walks through fields, met the neighbours and were invited to Sunday lunches.

But then, slowly, reality took hold and I started to realise that shifting gear so dramatically, from busy working girl to chilled out country woman, is not easy.

In fact, as the weeks have gone by, I have discovered it really is possible to have too much time on your hands.

After years of being conditioned in the Protestant work ethic, I am struggling to re-wire a brain that expects to work 12 hours a day if it is to ‘earn’ time off, as well as have a sense of worthwhile achievement.

This is partly a reaction to losing the safety net of a salary regularly dropping into my bank account. Although I have already earned enough to last me for the next few months, I am battling to stop myself taking on more work.

I have long taken comfort in squirrelling away cash and it is frightening to spend money when I am not earning, even if it is only for a couple of weeks. But here I only need to earn £15,000 a year to live comfortably – a quarter of my old salary.

But there is a deeper anxiety: working hard was an integral part of a reward system that allowed me to take time off and enjoy it – I worked hard Monday to Friday so I ‘deserved’ to spend a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon reading a book.

Also, the job as editor came with easily identifiable gauges of success – people liked the magazine, the circulation went up, it made money. Here, I still feel I have to do a full working day before I am allowed to relax

For the first couple of months I amazed myself by working at my computer from 9.30am to 7pm Monday to Friday, as in my former life – it was as if I couldn’t quite bring myself to cut the umbilical cord to my former existence. Even on quieter days I found it impossible to leave my ‘office’ until the early evening. I always thought I should be doing something; if not ‘working’, then fixing the house or the garden.

Having always had days packed with things to do, I found waking up to one that is completely empty of pre-ordained tasks or deadlines so unreal that I rushed to fill each one up.

For the first two months I was flying back to London every ten days doing consultancy work for magazines. At the time I thought it was a great way to ease myself in to country life.

For the last month, however, I have been in France without a break and I have realised that the constant too-ing and fro-ing was part of the problem. It didn’t allow me to find a new rhythm of life, and now I’m finally starting to adapt, and feel more comfortable about the choice I have made.

It is a small thing but I no longer wake to an alarm clock – that first annoying deadline of the day has disappeared. I now start work around 10am, usually after a stroll in the garden, instead of a smelly 20 minutes on a packed tube.

I no longer sit at the computer all day, instead I work quickly and efficiently so I can spend time in the day doing the things I love, like cooking, and I have just started digging up the ground for a herb and vegetable garden.

I have discovered that intense pleasure comes from simple things: birds and butterflies I have never seen, or noticed, before; the fragrant old roses in the garden; my own fig and apple trees; and being able to see stars at night.

Instead of feeling intimidated by the lack of external structures in my day I am beginning to embrace the choice I now have.

Best of all I am now spending lots of time with Michael. I was concerned how we would cope being in each company’s 24 hours a day after spending so little time together in the past.

I have heard of British couples in France breaking up at the strain of too much togetherness but for us, so far so good.

It helps, I am sure, that we both have an office that is our own space, but we find that we really enjoy each other’s company, and I love the fact that we have time to have lunch together every day, go for long walks and make plans about what we are going to do with the nursery.

We are both far more relaxed than before. After living in suburbia for the past 30 years, mostly in flats or small terraced houses, we are both finding it wonderfully liberating to have room to move.

Until now I had no idea of just how stressful I found it living in London. Unnoticed, I had developed a layer of tension brought on by being hemmed in on all sides by neighbours, roads and passers-by, and the unrelenting urban din.

Here in France, we rarely see – or hear – our neighbours and we have got to know some lovely people, both French and English, in the surrounding villages. My French is slowly improving and I’m starting to shop at the many local markets.

So, yes, I do feel very lucky to live here, and that in it itself brings me great happiness. But most empowering is the simple fact that I no longer fret about the lack of control over my own life.

Today the way I live is controlled by me and I don’t think I could ever go back to having it any other way.