Piero Pallavicini

I was born in Alessandria, in the North West region of Italy (Piedmont) some 54 years ago; I hold dual citizenship, Italian from birth and British, since 2014.

I moved to the UK straight after getting married to my sweetheart Fabiana in January 1996. Those were a few crazy weeks during which I resigned from my job of six years in Italy, signed a contract with my new Oxfordshire-based employer, flew to Patagonia, finalized the arrangements for our wedding, got married, packed as much as possible of my wife’s stuff, flew back to Italy, loaded my and my wife’s life on an ageing Fiat Strada…and hit the road, heading for the white cliffs of Dover. PHEW!

I arrived in Witney on a dark and grey Sunday afternoon on 13^th January and started work on the 14^th.

After buying our first UK home in Carterton, for more than twenty years we enjoyed living right on the edge of the Cotswolds region. We often spent whatever little free time we had – I travelled a lot for work – visiting nearby villages and taking in the cosmopolitan atmosphere in Oxford and occasionally London, something we were not really used to, with the two of us coming from rather small, provincial towns.

We furthered our education and working careers, and whilst we travelled a lot to visit our respective families, as well as for work and tourism, we stayed pretty much put for most of the following years.

We also started a family and now have two daughters, Milagros (Millie) currently in Uni in Manchester – and Valentina, attending the European school in Culham. In 2017 we eventually moved into our current home in East Hanney, closer to our daughter’s school and most of our friends.

Brexit came as a major shock for us, and for a long time afterwards it felt like a rejection from the country we had chosen to become citizens of only a couple of years earlier.

In real terms, nothing much has truly changed for us, yet… I guess to some extent we have been lucky to be living in the more international/outward looking part of the UK and having amongst our friends plenty of people originally from a multitude of places in the world, as well as well-travelled and open-minded British ones.

Despite Brexit, the chances are we will be staying in the UK for a number of years still, most likely until both our daughters finish their education and start their own lives as independent adults.

Besides the three “obvious” options for where to settle in old age – UK, Italy or Argentina – we had the chance to visit a number of places around the world where we would fancy spending more time. Among them, all things considered – feasibility being one – one region probably stands out in our minds: Croatia and Montenegro.

I guess we will have to see what opportunities our future will bring.