CAN you taste the restlessness in the air? The Brits are on the move.

The ground trembles, the sea boils as we demented lemmings throw ourselves off the white cliffs of Dover - three-piece suites, Ikea wardrobes and MFI kitchen sinks strapped to our backs.

We are heading in search of a dream. After centuries of being settled in our Anaglypta-encrusted semis, we are re-discovering our pioneering spirit, following in the wake of Captain Cook and Walter Raleigh in the great trek to reclaim the planet.

Not since the Pilgrim Fathers boarded a cruise ship for new lives in the redskin-ridden plains of America has such wanderlust fevered the British brain.

A trip to the estate agents used to be to seek out a nice terraced house in Railway Avenue. Now it is to snap up a property with sun terraces in San Pamela on the Costa Anglaisie.

Wagon trains packed with gritty settlers carve swathes through the wastes of France and Spain in the search for pastures new.

I'm still here but I'm homesick already for the relatives, friends and colleagues who have boarded the EasyJet Mayflower and flown off into the sunset.

My sister and her entire family have just put deposits on homes near Seville in a village peppered with orange groves where life purrs along. At 50 she can afford to retire on the price difference between her English home and the ageing, white-walled villa she is buying.

My brother will probably jet off soon to join his son in Australia. One of my colleagues is negotiating for a seaside property in Menorca; some dear friends have bought a rambling place in northern France which they will convert into their retirement home and holiday lets; and one of our office cleaners has gone off to a new Spanish home complete with swimming pool.

Here am I, stuck less than 25 miles from where I was born and with no hope of financing a life abroad. The last time I moved house, it was to the next village just over a mile away. The man at the removals van hire firm thought I had called off the move when I took the vehicle back with only six extra miles on the clock.

Now I know my dad was just swelling my head when he said: "You'll go far, son."

Not long ago, I could post birthday and Christmas cards personally through the letterboxes. These days most of them have to go in blue and red envelopes marked Par Avion.

And where once I could shout to my pals from the bedroom window, now it is all international phone calls, emails and webcams.

It's not for me. I like to wake up and wonder what the weather's doing, not be cursed with 24-hour sunshine all year round. I like to move faster than a snail's pace, to do things today instead of manana and I like a holiday to be something special, not a way of life. Anywhere that's too hot for roast beef and Yorkshires is no good to me.

Not that a life abroad will be foreign for these people. They will take with them a little bit that is forever England. Well, a large bit, actually.

They will insist everyone speaks English, for one thing. They'll eventually take over their Spanish or French village and re-name it New Wetwang or Little Acomb. They'll still complain about the weather.

Have you noticed that - apart from York city centre on a Bank Holiday - the towns are almost deserted, the queues are shorter, tumbleweed is blowing more abundantly down suburban streets? It is because everyone has emigrated. There are only a few of us left.

All my neighbours will soon be Spanish or French first-time buyers driven over here by inflated property prices and the desperate need to escape the beer-guzzling, egg-and-chips devouring English hordes.

Throw open the borders, let the asylum seekers in, I need someone to talk to, work alongside, have an absinthe with, or even engage in fisticuffs over the garden fence when his senorita clacks her castanets too loudly at bedtime.

Updated: 10:01 Tuesday, April 20, 2004