Busy Husband received a call last week which set the cat amongst the pigeons. It was his business partner, Someone Else's Busy Husband, calling from his car in London, stuck in traffic, in the snow, on his way to a lengthy and unnecessary beaurocratic meeting with someone he didn't like. Why on earth were we relocating to the UK, Someone Else's Busy Husband stropped, and hung up. The recent lovely sunshine, lovely meals with lovely friends and, well, general loveliness that comes with living in north Cyprus were put starkly under the spotlight that evening at dinnertime. Instead of the usual 'Eat it!' shouting match with Goldilocks, she was given the night off in exchange for listening to her parents debating the pros and cons of living in Oxford versus Catalkoy, a stuck record that she and the other two have been subjected to over the past year or two. After a slow start out of the blocks, Oxford won round one (why is it that the lure of a tan suddenly makes builder's rubble invisible to me?); north Cyprus caught up briefly but, ultimately, Oxford won the battle, its recently being voted the second happiest city in the UK (second to Bournemouth) clinching the deal.

It's a situation that most expatriate families here in north Cyprus have agonised over at some point and many of us find ourselves frequently re-evaluating the answer to the Where Is Home? question. The reaction to our decision to leave the island after six years has been cleanly split: those who are right behind us and those who think we are completely bonkers. We have been accused of being educational snobs and naïve about UK life. We have had to justify, cajole and, ultimately, feel certain we know we are doing the right thing for the right reasons. Cyprus is safe, we have been told, it is a great place to bring up kids, it is clean and wholesome and innocent and honest. The UK on the other hand, is a dangerous, scary place, dirty and corrupt, full of obese goggle-eyed kids vying for the attention of exhausted parents who shove a ready meal and a tenner in front of them in the name of love. It goes without saying that this view of the UK is as ridiculous as that spouted of Cyprus.

Granted, the recent Unicef reports which firmly placed the dunce hat on the UK for being, well, a rubbish place for children to grow up, hasn't helped our argument. In the recent study, the well-being of children in 21 industrialised countries was analysed and the UK did indeed come out wanting, its standard of living for kids on a par with that of (gasp!) the US. Kids' material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, 'young people's own subjective sense of their own well-being', and behaviours and risks were rated, the UK's kids coming lowest by a mile in this last category apparently because some of them like to experiment with alcohol and, erm, don't eat enough fruit. You're fine, by the way, if you're Dutch or Swedish.

In the end, for families like ours, it comes down to being in between a rock and a hard place. A deep love for this island isn't enough for curious and intelligent children. Even the staunchest opponents to our decision admit that they'll go somewhere else when the kids' education reaches a level 'too important to get wrong' as one friend put it. And it doesn't just come down to education of course. There is a 'joke' amongst Turkish Cypriot families we know. All their kids share the same ambition: to leave Cyprus. This is in no way a reflection of any lack of love for their home, rather a sad recognition that Cyprus has very little to offer the reasonably intelligent child in terms of that other kind of education, opportunities for personal growth and development.

Busy Husband was a UN child, rootless with itchy feet. As he traveled the world with his family, he learned what it truly means to be a foreigner: you might speak the lingo, contribute to the community but, unless your family is pretty unique, you will always be 'other'. It was (and still is) a common fact that the later a UN family repatriated permanently to their native country, the more serious the problems experienced by their children, ranging from higher levels of drug taking to antisocial behaviour and suicides. The reasons for such hideous statistics are multifarious but even I can see how a 'normal', boring childhood would avert the terrible feeling of not belonging. And 'normal' to me means family life in all its excruciating glory: Grandpa snoring after Sunday lunch, glamourous Aunt Cath, or your bossy cousin coming to stay for the weekend.

Life's difficult enough without being on the outside all the time. You choose: spending Saturday afternoon crossing an EU border to go to the supermarket vs having tea with granny. Diversity and competitive challenge are a hard fact of life and I simply want my kids to grow up with the confidence that comes from safely experiencing life in all its weird, cosmopolitan glory. Who wouldn't?