I am very lucky, living within a few miles of Oxford. The benefits of the city while not living in it.
I have often thought what a different path my life may have taken had we settled in any of the various alternative locations where Cyclomaniac had job interviews back in the late 1980s. Grantham, Ross-on- Wye, and Bristol being three alternatives that spring to mind. (He had a lot of interviews, often competing with over 100 applicants for one partnership post)
I know that, where ever we had settled I would have had opportunities and taken them, but that they would have been rather different ones.
As it is various opportunities have offered themselves to me because we are close to a university town. I have studied at Oxford Brookes and at Oxford’s ‘other’ University…. I had a research post for a while, working as a nurse on a study looking at infectious diseases in children. I have had a chance to work on specialist wards and to study as a district nurse, which remains my area of practice.
And now I am a member of a writing group which meets at one of the colleges. This evening I walked into the quad to be met by an atmosphere saturated with the smell wisteria blossom took a deep breath and smiled at my luck.
How different could your life have been if you had made different decisions earlier in life?
Boadicea's Chariot 
that would be telling far too much!
Ross-on-Wye lacks academia but there’s a good market, friendly little shops and it’s perched high above the river surrounded by countryside. That view of the church and the town on the cliff looks just stunning bathed by a rosy sunset.
I think if it wasn’t for DT man, I might have gone to London. Heart ruled head. Usually does with me.
Ross-on-Wye really appealed to me, Jan. I was terribly disappointd that we couldn’t live there! But the interview was all wrong and it wouldn’t have been right for C.
So much more suitable than that polytechnic college place in the fens.