How much friction can you live with?

Some. Things take longer, and the trade is worth it.A great deal, if what you get back is beautiful.Almost none. Systems should work, and they can.Rules are fine. It is unpredictability you cannot take.

Pick something you would genuinely want from daily life:

That everything runs exactly on time, every day.Space, and not having to think about the cost of being ill.Somewhere to be outdoors within twenty minutes of anywhere.Warmth, colour, and people out in the street at night.

How do you feel about learning a language properly?

Willing. You would get there in about three years.You will try, everybody will switch to English, you will allow it.You want the hard one. The difficulty is part of the appeal.You would rather not, if you are being honest.

What do you want from the people around you?

To be pulled into family things you never asked to join.Directness, kept appointments, and privacy in between.Politeness, space, and nobody in your business.Warmth immediately, from everybody, strangers included.

Your ideal Sunday:

Coast, a lunch that takes three hours, home after dark.A long walk, everything shut, nothing to do and that is the law.A small excursion, precisely planned, and excellent food.An enormous meal with people. Several generations of them.

Pick the weather you could take for years:

Hot, long summers, and a winter that barely commits.Grey and wet, with wind, and you dress for it.Real winter. Months of it. Properly cold.Changeable. Four seasons in an afternoon, all year round.

What matters most about where you live?

That you could afford a life without earning enormously.That ordinary days are beautiful and the food is real.That it is safe and clean and you need no car at all.That nature is enormous, and genuinely close by.

How do you feel about being far from where you grew up?

Fine, as long as a train could get you back across a continent.Fine. A few hours in the air is close enough.Genuinely fine. Very far away is a part of the appeal.You want family reachable. That part is not negotiable.

What would you find hardest?

Paperwork that takes four visits, and nobody apologising.Rules you find silly being followed exactly anyway.The distances. Everything being a long way from everything.A small country where everybody knows everybody.

Pick the sound of your street:

Somebody holding a conversation between two windows.Bicycles. Almost entirely bicycles.Very little, in fact. A train, at a distance, on time.Music from somewhere, most evenings, until late.

What kind of home do you want?

Something old, near water, with tiles and a lot of light.Somewhere with a view you cannot believe people get used to.Small and narrow, in a row, with a bicycle in the hall.An efficient flat, properly insulated, everything sorted.

Twenty years from now, what would you want to be true?

That you became fluent in something difficult, and stayed.That you have space, and somewhere safe to have raised people.That you live somewhere remote and have never once regretted it.That your house is full of people most weekends.