First hurdle over

There are some things that invariably make me go a bit dizzy. One is bleeding, the other is spending lots of money; both of these things happened to me this afternoon. I had my visa medical.

It wasn't all that bad to be honest: the Polish receptionist directed me to a brusque but good-natured Australian doctor, who poked me and peered into bits of me and tickled me and hit me with a hammer and took plenty of blood and asked me very politely for a, erm, sample. He relieved me of £300, and sent me to the South African on reception at radiology. This person sent me in to the Kiwi radiologist for my chest x-ray.

Somewhere at the back of my mind I couldn't help think that this farrago of nationalities was there to rub it in that they'd been able to emigrate whilst I, thus far, have not. Smug just isn't the word. Still, they were all very helpful and pleasant, and the whole thing was over in ooh, about an hour. I'm dizzy now for two reasons.

The next steps seem simple enough. I have to collect my test results a week on Saturday. They will be in a sealed envelope. I must not open the envelope. I must enclose it with my other documents (application form, police certificate for me and the Kiwi, various bits of proof that we're an item etc) and get it to the New Zealand High Commission. It's the only copy, so if it gets lost we have to go through the whole thing again. It's not clear if I'll ever get to find out what my test results actually were, which if that's the case will be a bit of a swindle, if you ask me.

Apart from the slight dizziness, which is almost gone now, I feel quite unusual this afternoon. I'm really happy that one of the steps in the process has passed without incident, and as the excitement about leaving mounts, so does the pain of doing so. Friends and colleagues, as the date's getting closer, are reacting less with the excitement they initially showed, and more with sadness that I'm leaving. I almost want to say to people 'I know you're upset, but please try not to show it, at least not in front of me - it makes this all so much harder'.

Unreasonable I know, and I suppose it's selfish of me to say so, to an extent. Something I struggle with a bit sometimes is the desire to make everything ok for everyone else, before thinking about what's a priority for me personally. Seeing people upset because of something I'm doing pricks that emotion, unleashing waves of guilt. I don't have a solution though. I know what I want, and I know what I'm doing - the next few weeks though will be a case of putting my head down and getting on with it. It's going to be very hard indeed, but we knew that, didn't we?

Two months to go

A productive weekend, then. Faced with a couple of months of mental busyness, we'd decided not to go to Wales this weekend, tempted as I am to see the house I was born in one more time before we leave. Not only did another weekend away seem extravagant, but the opportunity to have a relaxed weekend together was too good to pass up.

Saturday I can barely remember, such was the level of inactivity. I know there was cheese involved at some point, a light, chalky chèvre, and some ridiculously creamy brie, and possibly a slightly disappointing St-Agur. I also know there was a brilliant hour or so spent on the phone to my sister (the younger of the two), talking about our week in Manchester in December and sharing plans for the future in general.

Sunday, bar a wander down the river for lunch in Putney, was mostly spent working out the insurance value of our shipping. Seemed like a fairly innocuous task to start with, but as it turned out, working out the detail of what we were shipping, leaving and packing, and the value of it all, was actually a bit of a mission, and at points pretty traumatic. The trade-off between 'what do we think it would cost to replace it' and 'how much will it cost to insure it' isn't a pleasant thing to do at all.

Still, we got through it, and the Kiwi even managed to chuck out a whole load of clothes she's not work in years.

Tomorrow is Medical Day, which I'm not looking forwards to at all. One more thing out of the way, I suppose. And yes, in 8 weeks' time, we'll be leaving London and starting our journey over to Auckland. Not all that long, really...

Banks. Grim the world over.

Whether you like it or not, I thought I'd introduce you to an intriguing little sub-plot to the whole emigration thing. One of the points that's been troubling me a bit is the piece of the puzzle that concerns banking.

As I've hinted at before, I'm not entirely without debt. Perhaps not as submerged as I was about three years ago, but still enough to be a millstone for another three to four years. It's all on payment plans, so there's a finite element to it, which is nice. Light at the end of the tunnel, even if that tunnel is extremely long.

So there's a certain amount of money that needs to go out of my UK personal account every month. Not having a UK salary to pay into it poses some issues. So I read with interest that HSBC offer what they call an 'International Personal Current Account', which purports to allow you to pay in and out in different currencies. Brilliant. Or so I thought.

Phoning HSBC was a bit of an experience, as no one person out of the five or six that I spoke to admitted to the existence of such an account. The most sense I got, having been shuttled from department to department, waited for a call back for a week, tried to arrange an appointment to no avail etc, was from a chap I spoke to this morning.

He said, and I'm so fed up with the whole thing that I'm prepared to believe him, that what it actually is is a number of individual accounts in the various currencies you need, which are loosely federated and allow you to transfer funds between them. At a cost, admittedly a small one. So far so... average.

The next bit's the punchline. The privilege of having them set up an account for me in New Zealand will cost me £100. This will save me a few weeks (and presumably a ton of hassle) getting it sorted once we're over there. I've not read all the documentation yet, but so far it looks like it might actually be worth doing in the general scheme of things.

Tell you what, this is like getting married. Wherever I turn there's another inflated charge that I can't really avoid paying. I'm seriously tempted to follow my grandparents' example and keep it under my mattress...

Visa worries, cathartic blog post

We're almost down to two months out before we leave - two months and one week, give or take a day. Still left on the to-do list (amongst things too numerous to mention) is the tricky issue of a New Zealand visa. Now, were we to start the application process now, we'd stand a bit of a chance of getting it sorted before we leave. As it is, I still need to get a medical in order to apply.

Not just any medical, you see. This is a full-on, total head to toe MOT given by one of only two clinics in London which are authorised to do it, costing £250, and involving laboratory work which can take weeks. That's assuming they don't need to have me back for more tests. So as you can imagine, I'm a bit stressed.

On the whole though, I'm reasonably calm about the whole thing. There are nerves, yes absolutely, and I'm about 85% terrified. The thought of leaving my friends and family is horrible, and things like seeing a friend's baby boy last weekend, and knowing that he's basically not going to know me when he's growing up, really set me off.

And yes, the opposite is also true. The thought of bringing up my own children without my family, and without friends I've known since school, is hard to deal with.

But the thing is, I've been through this all in my head over and over again for years now. For so many reasons (not least that I'm completely in love with the Kiwi) I know this is absolutely the right thing for me. Also, staying here in the UK, I couldn't see myself actually getting to the point of children at all. There are so many reasons why I'm looking forward to the move, and I'm never more excited than when things are going right. That said, I'm prone to being a bit doom-y about things sometimes, and when there's as much at stake as there is right now, it doesn't take a lot to go wrong for me to let all the scary thoughts get a bit overwhelming.

So this is what's left to do, the big bits, anyway, and in no particular order:

• Medical
• Visa
• Bank account (international & NZ)
• Job interviews for January
• Saving (more)
• Shipping
• Buying stuff (laptop, mainly)

Not all that bad, when you look at it in list form. I've got an appointment for my medical next week, which is a bit of a relief. The saving thing's a bit of a challenge too, given the amount of various things (the visa's £460 too) we need to pay for between now and then. I'm also counting on a fairly significant bonus payment before I leave, which in this economic climate isn't quite as sure a thing as it was.

Anyway, thought I'd document what's going on. This blog was always supposed to be about documenting transitional periods and so on, and there are few bigger changes one can make to ones life than this. Expect more, hopefully bearing mostly good news...

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day

Yarrrrr.

Sore legs, decent result

I’m in a rather unusual situation at work at the moment, in that I’m trying to write a paper on maintaining levels of service across an organization or some such, and in order to do so I need to refer to some stuff on the internet, and our internet access is currently down, so I’m a bit stuck. I’m also completely devoid of blood sugar and thus concentration, so trying to even draft a structure for the thing is futile at this point. So, I’ve decided to write a blog entry in the 30 mins or so that remain before it could be considered reasonable for me to head out to lunch, for one of those amazing ciabattas that the Tasting Room serve in Borough Market.

One of the main reasons my blood sugar is so low, I’m sure, relates to my efforts yesterday in the London Duathlon. Without a doubt, it was one of the most demanding things I’ve done, right up there with the second sprint triathlon I did a few years back. A 9k run, 20k bike and 5k run strung together, I was a bit concerned before going into it, especially as I’d done next to no training, and had spent the previous week drinking and eating to excess in southern Spain; not ideal.

On the day though, after I’d warmed up in the first 3-4k, I began to really enjoy it. The legs were starting to feel a little fatigued towards the end of the 9K (45:08 – bit below par), but a decent transition of 02:23 went smoothly enough and gave me a bit of time to get some fluids in comfortably before getting on the bike. Two laps of Richmond Park is something I’ve done before, but not after a 9k run. To be honest it wasn’t that bad; running then biking is ok, it’s the other way around you’ve got to watch out for. Two downsides on the bike: firstly I’d done pretty much no training, so my legs weren’t as up for it as they could’ve been, secondly the fastest downhill bit of the course suffered from a massive headwind, so I managed a time of 49:45, some way off what I think I could have done.

Still, a slightly quicker transition (02:07) got me out on the run without any trouble, save the inevitable crunch when you start running and the pain begins. It was basically 5k of sheer slog, with a slight incline up the first 3k or so. Quite a few walkers on this bit, which sort of spurred me on to not stop at all. Kilometer 4 was probably the worst; constantly thinking my legs were going to give out and a few of the quicker runners flying past me. I got home in 25:41, surprisingly quick considering how slow it felt and only a few minutes off what I’d have done with fresh legs.

That gives a total of 02:05:03, which is an improvement on my target of 02:15:00, which is great. Making the day pretty much perfect was the sight of the Kiwi and some friends of ours cheering me on every now and then, and being there to meet me at the end. The highlight of the day? Hearing that wonderful woman say ‘I’m so proud of you’ at the end. Simple things, but there you go, means a lot to me.

Now, I’m hoping that I can get my legs to work properly again in time for the Half Marathon. I’m still short on sponsorship, so all are welcome to donate at http://www.justgiving.com/[my name with no spaces]. Thanks!

Holiday good, gloomy home weather bad

What's happened to the weather? I go away for a week, ok - 9 days, and suddenly winter's crept in the back door whilst I wasn't looking. Not happy with this.

Anyway, we got back yesterday, so the memory of our stay in a brilliant villa in San Juan de los Terreros, which is here. The satellite photo was taken a little while back, so it doesn't look like the houses on our street are finished yet, which they all were.

It was a week of 30+ temperatures, lots of sleeping, both beside and in the pool, plenty of brilliant food, both in and out, and some truly excellent wines, the best from the Ribeira del Duero.

I have to say though, that Almeria, which we flew into, is a bit of a dump. We were lucky enough to chance upon a really good restaurant for dinner, but otherwise it's not all that. The one thing it has to recommend it is this hulking great contraption sticking out into the harbour.

It's some sort of industrial revolution-era device originally used to allow freight trains to drop stuff into waiting boats. Most cities built docks and the like, but the Almerians did this instead, and when it was decommissioned (assuming it actually was...) the mayor of the town decided that, given it was one of the only things the town had to differentiate itself, it should stay. Interesting, yes, but the appeal is somewhat limited as a tourist attraction.

The rest of the coast, up through Pulpi towards Alicante, alternates between beautiful desolation and near-desert conditions, and massive, semi-built urbanisations forming either second homes for wealthier Spanish families, or boxes for sunburnt cabbies from Romford to stash their horrible kids and sullen wives in for a week or two's drinking and complaining there's no chips on the menu.

Fortunately the Kiwi, in her infinite wisdom and skill, chose a predominantly Spanish town for us to stay in, so the only football shirts we saw were in Murcia airport on the way back. Seriously - whole families in them. I really feel for respectable football fans, like the Mighty Melvin - this lot really gives that garment, which I'm sure some people quite rightly wear with pride, a terrible name.

So anyway, the week's bookends aside, the holiday itself was one of the best to date. The villa we rented was pretty much perfect, with loads of space, air conditioning and a large enough pool to actually get a proper swim in of a morning. The perfect way to get us both to chill out a bit, before we begin the 11-week countdown to leaving London. The remaining diary pages are beginning to look very small indeed...