Hiatus

The bluebells are out in full force. It seems heartbreaking to leave this place now, but also wonderful to be enjoying it at its best one last time. I think this will probably be my final post to bluebellview. Departure day is almost here. This time next week G and I will be loading up the van.

I still can't believe it's happening. The move, the trip, all this change. I have pottered along these last few years - emotional turmoil notwithstanding - and my home and work have been a great source of comfort and security. G and I could have probably continued to potter quite happily together. Things change, and you wonder how it happens sometimes, but this change has been deliberate and determined. I've been surprised just how much effort it has taken to change paths and do something completely different. I don't just mean coping with all the admin and bureaucracy, it has been a challenge to detach from normal day to day activities and cope with the physical and emotional uprooting.

But I am excited and thrilled that it's my last ever Monday in the office. Well this office anyway. I know it's the right thing to be doing and I'm definitely feeling ready. If not entirely prepared.

It's been a whirlwind of goodbyes the last week or so. Since Tabi and Sam came to visit, we've been in goodbye mode. Lara and family came for a final visit last Sunday. It was a magical day with walks in the woods and lovely times and (too much) chocolate cake. I'll miss her so much. Mum and Dad have been to see us again en route to helping Dad's elderly Aunt move house (an experience probably best not blogged I think. It got everybody thinking about what it'll be like to get too old to really know what to do with yourself). Coco has had her last walk in the woods. Friends have been popping in and I've spoken to more people at work in the last few days than in the last few years I reckon. We said goodbye to G's brother and family over several bottles of wine on Saturday night and tried not to think just how much G's two year old nephew will grow up while we're away.

We're pretty much all set to go.

After one last sniff of the bluebells.

www.travelblog.org/bloggers/milly-and-graham

Behind the scenes

It has been a whirlwind of administration this week. I've been trying to do it all at once and nothing is ever straightforward. Even to cancel a TV licence you have to provide proof that you no longer need one… And I've found out that my broadband supplier had sneakily tied me in to another 12 month contract without telling me when I upgraded my connection speed 6 months ago so I need to pay a chunk of money to get out of it. Grr. Although BT told me yesterday that my account is in credit by the same amount so the broadband injustice seems a little less irksome now.

I'm also hugely relieved to have decided against using a removal and storage firm for the move into storage and out again. I just couldn't rationalise the big sums of cash. Anybody established and trustworthy was charging as much as two round the world plane tickets. Everyone else still seemed expensive and a little bit dodgy - what happens if they go out of business with all my stuff still in their warehouse? - so I couldn't make a decision. Anyhoo - I phoned a self-store place in Shropshire on a whim. Their prices were competitive anyway, but then they told me about their half price for 12 weeks offer and were prepared to give a 15% discount for the rest of the term as I wanted storage for more than 6 months. The guy had a reassuring brummie accent and I felt as if my stuff was going to be safe with them. Daft eh? Just as likely to go under or catch fire I'm sure.

So G and I will be hiring a Luton van for a couple of days and trekking up and down the M40 a few times. It's going to be extreme hard work I know. But I feel so much happier doing it ourselves. There's nothing we can't really lift between us. Heck if G can pick me up, he can probably manage a sofa on his own. We can be much more flexible about moving our stuff out of storage when we come home too. Do it a bit at a time and dump/re-store/relocate stuff that won't fit properly in G's house.

And even with van hire, diesel and packing supplies it's going to come in at least a grand cheaper than the cheapest removals quote. That should pay for a few slap up steak dinners in Buenos Aires.

We had a lovely day with Mum and dad on Monday. Mum has wanted to go to the British Museum since the millennium roof was put on. She used to hang out there a lot in the sixties. In fact the last time she was there was 1966. She reckons she won't get the chance again once we move further away from the big smoke, so mum and dad came down on Sunday night and all four of us nipped up there on Monday morning. Dad enjoyed the Michelangelo exhibition enormously and Mum was not disappointed by the roof. She, G and I looked round the Egyptian and Greek bits while Dad did the sketches. Then we came straight home and went to a local vineyard and micro-brewery for a free tasting. I won the tickets in a raffle at work. The table wine was not good - even I could tell that. But the fizzy and the sweet wines were pleasant enough. We managed to taste a fair bit and enjoy the lovely location. G and Dad bought some very strong beer too and proceeded to get thoroughly plastered when we got home. We finished the day off with a very boozy but delicious dinner at a local Australian run gastro-pub. The green-lipped mussels and 'roo steak were superb. G and dad were pretty well hammered by the end of the meal. Judging by the state of them the next morning, I'm glad I was driving!

Lost

Sam lost his keys this weekend. Properly lost them. We looked everywhere. We retraced our steps over a five mile hike, went to all the same pubs and accosted random taxi drivers in an attempt to find them. No chance. Lost. No way to get into their car and no way to drive it home on Sunday morning.

I am extremely grateful to said keys for allowing Tabi and Sam to spend twice as long as planned with us. It was a great Easter as a result. It was a major pain in the @rse for Sam and Tabi of course and could have been a huge expense involving locksmiths and tow-trucks or an exhausting return trip to Cornwall to pick up their spares. Remarkably, a friend of theirs was driving up from Cornwall to London on Easter Monday and was able to meet them to drop off their other set of keys. It all seems a bit too convenient if you think about it.

I suspect it was some kind of mystical conspiracy implemented by agents beyond our comprehension in order to allow me and Tabi a bonus girlie shopping trip on the Monday and to let G and S complete their championship (kitchen)table tennis tournament… After all we're not going to see them again until 2007. I'm trying not to think about that too much.

I could have sworn I saw a polar bear in the woods too.

Getting things done

The more decisions that need to be made, the less time I seem to have for contemplation and recording of thought processes. That's all well and good, but I don't like to be rushed into things! A rather panicky stressy week all in all.

Anyway. Tickets finalised and paid for. Vaccinations complete (apart from the final rabies jab). Anti-malarials prescribed. Travel insurance shortlist complete. Removals shortlist complete. Budget refined and financials in order.

Is that all I've done? Seems like lots more. Might try not to think about it much over Easter. Can't wait to see my sister. I just don't want to think about it being the last time we'll be together for over nine months.

Pincushions

Busy few days. The pre-departure build-up is well and truly underway. Struggling with removals quotes at the moment. Horribly expensive. The removal charge seems really high when I reckon G and I could do it ourselves with a Luton and a lot of tea and chocolate digestives. However, the storage provided by removal firms in their own warehouses is very cheap. Commercial self-storage is about twice the price. And because we don't need access to our stuff while we're away, there's no real benefit over the removal firms' warehouses. So I may as well pay for the removals and get the cheap storage, rather than pay a lot for storage and have to do all the lifting too.

I'm desperately racking my brain and googling like mad to see if I've missed a trick and there's a cheaper, if not easier, way to do the removals and storage thing. Ho hum.

Four injections down and another two to go. Typhoid was definitely the most painful. The first rabies one was scary after my lovely colleagues told me it was an injection into the stomach wall. Seems their info was rather out of date and I worried for nothing. Just a jab in the deltoid and a small circular bruise after all that. Two more of those to go. Although it's a tiny bit painful and somewhat expensive, having access to all this medical care before departure has really made me think how lucky we are in the UK.

In other news, had a lovely weekend with G's mum and dad. Tabi and Sam are coming up on Good Friday for a couple of nights, and G and I are off up to Shropshire to help with some small scale demolition at mum and dad's before the builders arrive after Easter.

Five weeks until moving day. Seven until we leave these shores. Seems like an age, but there's so much happening in between.

Good when it stops

Feeling a bit bashed and bruised today. It's been a physically demanding start to the week. G and I ran the 10k race on Sunday. I really enjoyed it. Once I'd crossed the finishing line that is.

It was great actually. G stayed with me the whole way round shouting encouragement - which only got a little bit wearing - and we finished in 1hr 5mins. Only half as fast again as walking - thanks for pointing that out Dad. I felt it was an achievement anyway seeing as I've never ever run that far before. Well, it was more a mixture of jogging and shambling along, but the ground was very slippery and there were a couple of nasty hills… G demonstrated extreme patience with my inferior fitness. I could tell he was desperate to whip the Tesco boys who were arsing around at the back of the pack. But he stuck with me. What a guy.

Thanks to our sponsors for giving us more reasons to keep going :-)

Legs have been a bit achey since Sunday and now both arms are stiff and sore. Two travel injections done with one more to go. Unless we go for the optional rabies. £120 and three trips to the hospital (and three big needles…!) seems a bit excessive, but as the nurse said yesterday, you pays your money or you takes your chances. I don't like the sound of taking our chances much where rabies is concerned so looks like more needles over the coming weeks. Hooray.

Yellowhammer

When I pulled up at home last night, I noticed a clump of yellow feathers in the gravel of the driveway. I got out to have a look and it turned out to be a poor dead yellowhammer. He was very handsome - bright yellow with distinctive cinnamon rump. Yes - I had to look him up in the book to check. I didn't realise yellowhammers were quite so yellow. He looked very exotic. No visible sign of injury, but stiff as a board. He must have just fallen out of the sky.

I'm not really sure what to do with his little feathery body. I put him in our empty dustbin to make sure he didn't get desecrated by rampant moggies. Then a bit later I had to go and check to make sure he hadn't just been stunned and had come to inside the bin. He was still there. Such a privilege to get to see one up close. But sad too.

In other nature news, the lambs have arrived. The field out the back is filling up slowly and there are at least a dozen ewes and their gorgeous curly babies frolicking in the grass. I went to introduce myself yesterday evening. Funny how some lambs are really brave and inquisitive and others just peek at you from underneath their mummies.