Explanation

Following on from yesterday's brief post, let me go into a bit more detail about the shape the next few weeks are going to take. As I've worked with laptops provided by work for the past four years or so, I've not had to buy a computer of my own since, like, 1999, so the prospect of leaving my place of work and subsequently having no computer was a bit daunting.

So I put aside a bit of cash to buy one, and mentioning this to my current work, they told me not to worry, I could buy my laptop off them for about a quarter of my budget. Nice. Thing is, I found out yesterday that their policy is actually not to sell laptops to leavers; something we could have done with knowing before we shipped the Kiwi's laptop to NZ.

So I got a bit stressy about it and generally acted like the world had come to an end and so on. And then I realised that it's not all that bad - I have an iTouch which can deal with emails and internet access, and there'll be the odd PC available most of the places we're going. And it's saved me a fair bit of cash too.

The upshot of this is that, whilst I'd hoped to be entirely blogtastic during my travels, it might be a little less prolific than I'd intended. Posting from the iTouch, whilst mainly very convenient, doesn't lend itself to particularly wordy posts. That said, I'm sure that's no bad thing where I'm concerned!

Stuff moves on here in the UK, this week's mentally busy for me and I can feel the physical effects of several flavours of stress building up. The Kiwi's under slightly different stress at her place, but stress all the same.

More later - last post from this machine on Friday, perhaps...

New Blogging Tool

So as it happens, work have decided they're not going to sell me a laptop for my travels, so in order to keep up with emails, blogs and the world in general, I'm resorting to using my iTouch. This is being laboriously typed using LifeCast... We'll see how long I can keep this up for.

Posted with LifeCast

The last week in London

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post. It seems like about five minutes. Five very packed minutes, but nonetheless it's gone by very quickly. It's been a fortnight of catching up with people, saying goodbyes, spending too much money, getting stupidly busy at work and generally not stopping once. Both of us are knackered.

So here we are at the start of our last week in London, for both of us our last week at work, and I can't speak for the Kiwi but I'm feeling a bit emotionally numb right now. There's been so much stuff twanging around my head for the last few months that it's almost like I'm becoming acclimatised to all this, or maybe I'm just coping with it all by studiously ignoring it.

Anyway, this week is about tying off loose ends at work, trying to close off my UK tax stuff, trying to remember if we've sorted all the last bills out, changing addresses, our last few drinks with various friends, and our last meal at the brilliant Turkish restaurant near our house. With our flat all empty and bare, and the weather doing that peculiarly British thing of just being... crap, I'm sort of keen to get moving, if I'm honest. With our worldly goods either on their way to New Zealand or in suitcases on our bedroom floor, it feels like we're properly IN the process now. There's quite a lot of it to go, though, and hopefully I'll be near enough wireless networks as we go to keep you updated.

Big Milestone: The Visa Has Landed

Very quickly, as this is the third post today and that's all just a bit extra: my passport came back from New Zealand Immigration today, complete with a two-year returning residence permit. That means that I can live in New Zealand, leaving and returning freely, for two years. After that, I go on to be assessed for a permanent one.

What a relief. I have to confess I got a bit emotional on leaving the embassy (not outwardly shown, of course), as the excitement of leaving began to feel really real, and some of that stress started to melt away. When I got down into Piccadilly tube station, a fairly good busker was knocking out a pretty good version of Here Comes The Sun, and I dug into my pocket and dropped all my change into his guitar case. Something I never do, but as I said I was feeling a bit emotional. Anyway, how very appropriate.

Also, the Kiwi's new snowboard arrived today, and all packed up, our snowboard case weighs in at around 0.25kg under our limit, AND I got an overdraft charge withdrawn from one of my banks, so all in all it's been a pretty productive day.

Goldfrapp, Brixton Academy, 10.11.08

The Kiwi and I have seen Goldfrapp live a couple of times to date, and have always been impressed by the live shows. You'd be hard pressed not to, the lengths they go to to put on a real spectacle, and last night was more of the same. It was the last gig we'll see in the UK, now Ben Folds in Manchester has been postponed until next May.

In general, overall, it was brilliant, like always. We knew she's ace, we knew every track would be a winner, and we knew they'd do Black Cherry and Strict Machine as encores, and we weren't disappointed. A blistering version of Train, and Happiness complete with dancing mop / sheepdog monsters (pictured) were the highlights, along with Strict Machine, which absolutely shook the building.

Image from Dave Smith on Flickr, used with thanks but not permission.

But something seemed missing somehow. She did mention that the whole band had colds (in a rare moment of verbosity); perhaps that was it.

The first few tracks suffered from a weirdly bass-less sound, none of that gut-shaking thunderous bass-ness that we know Brixton can summon up. This came back, to an extent, later in the night, but it left the whole thing feeling a bit of a lack of punch. The odd bit of feedback didn't exactly make it feel like a professional production.

Secondly, and I know I've ranted about this before, but the crowd sucked massively. It's part of that whole thing where, once a artist gets to a certain size, no one at the event seems to be there to listen to the music, and seems perfectly happy to stand around yapping to each other. In recent Goldfrapp tours this probably wasn't such an issue, but with the recent tracks being a little more subdued the chatter was all too obvious.

So on the whole, the band were brilliant as always, but were let down by a dodgy sound system and a bunch of idiots in the crowd. My last and lasting impression of London gigs.

Shipping Vol.2

All of it. All 47 boxes, tea chests, packages and so on, packed up by our shippers in three hours 20 minutes, with the Kiwi cracking the whip throughout, no doubt. I have to say, I was nervous yesterday about how it'd feel once I got back from work and saw our empty flat, but to be honest it's brilliant.

Not only is the flat considerably more spacious and minimalist than it was - just like when we first moved in really, but it feels like the whole thing we've been planning for for the last year or so has finally started. And that feels pretty good.

Last night we semi-celebrated (there's a lot to do yet...) with a visit to Brixton Academy - more on that in the next post.

Shipping Vol.1

I wasn't going to blog about this until it'd happened - rather than leave you on tenterhooks - but I'm so nervous about the whole thing I can't help it. It's moving day today, and whilst I'm at work fretting, the Kiwi's in our flat, presumably trying to make sure all the right bits get shipped.

Fortunately, we've gone for a slightly more expensive but probably more professional bunch of movers, who're packing all our shipping stuff up for us, so all we really had to do over the weekend was separate out everything we're going to carry with us when we go, but even that was no small order. At the moment, our best guess for when we'll see our stuff again is about 10 weeks, and in that time we've got work in cold London, snowboarding in cold Canada, beach in hot Australia, beach in hot New Zealand, interviews in hot New Zealand and potentially even work too.

That's pretty much my whole wardrobe, and Sonya's too, so with baggage allowances, we've had to make some compromises (and you know how much I hate that). Here's hoping we can carry it all come December - we're literally right on our weight allowance, so we're not allowed to buy or otherwise acquire anything in the coming four weeks.

More on this once it's gone, and the empty flat's weirding me out. On a more optimistic note, we're going to see Goldfrapp tonight at Brixton, so hopefully that'll take our minds off it. Much like a pair of cats with buttered paws.

Last Supper (sort of)

I'm a simple chap at heart, and in general it doesn't take a lot to keep me happy. This sort of explains why, at 0630 on Saturday morning I was wide awake and heading for the kitchen, all wide-eyed and excited by the prospect of chopping, roasting, reducing and boiling stuff for the rest of the day. Which is exactly what I did.

The event was the last dinner party I'll cook in my own kitchen, and E&T, who I know from Oddbins days, were coming up all the way from darkest Surrey, so I thought I should do it properly: haricot bean and tiger prawn soup followed by venison with chocolate sauce, followed by the Kiwi's amazing lime mousse, and some carefully chosen cheeses from various Borough Market stalls.

Wines were Ruinart NV to start, then a superb new white Burgundy with the soup, and d'Arenberg's 'Dead Arm' Shiraz from 1998 and 2003 with the venison. We moved on to a tremendous Southern French beast with the cheese, and then, possibly ill-advisedly, continued on with Port Ellen and Ardbeg for a bit too long.

Sunday was a bit of a write-off. But it was SO worth it.

This weekend we'll be packing up all that kitchen stuff (and some other bits and pieces), because some men are coming round on Monday morning to take it all away. Ten weeks later, customs and quarantine and bureaucracy notwithstanding, it'll arrive on our (or to be more precise, some kind friends') doorstep. The interim weeks, involving London winter, Canadian snow, Australian summer, New Zealand summer, interviews and so on, we'll be living out of suitcases, which poses an interesting wardrobe conundrum.

It'll be fine. I'm sure it will.