It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I realised I wanted to leave London . It was the city that moulded me: where I went to school, cut my teeth as a journalist, survived and thrived in grubby flat shares, made friends for life, fell in love.

Every street corner had a visceral memory attached – somewhere I’d doubled over in laughter, cried, or been violently flung off a Lime bike. There was a time I insisted with all the certainty in the world that it would be my home forever.

But this summer, after 29 years in the UK, I left London for Lisbon , for good. Having a Malaysian, part Portuguese and part Japanese heritage, I had always been drawn to Portugal, a feeling that intensified last year after spending two weeks hiking its coastline, marvelling at its rugged beauty and friendly

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