We're outta here

It has been a busy few days, spent tying up the looses ends and beginning to pack our cases. We thought at first that 2 huge suitcases, one tiny suitcase and one suit carrier was going to be enough...WRONG! We had to go to Matalan yesterday and buy another gigantic suitcase....and we've filled that to the brim too! I'm beginning to think that we didn't ship nearly enough! I don't know how we (or rather me!) are going to get this lot maneuvered round Heathrow tomorrow!

We're driving down to a hotel at Heathrow this afternoon. As there is more heavy rain predicted for the next couple of days we thought it was wise to go down the night before, rather than find out that find out when we're driving that all possible routes out of Malvern are under water!

We've had the last of our many farewell lunches, drinks and dinners now. I had a very lovely leisurely lunch with Mandy and Andy on Thursday. It had actually stopped raining for a few hours and the sun came out, so we were able to sit out in the pub garden and enjoy the few weak rays of sunshine that passes for summer at the moment. We had a good old gossip, and reminisced about the good (and the bad!) old days. I'd like to thank Andy for the gift. The eccles cake was delicious, and more than made up for "that thing" from M&S that you gave me at Christmas!!

Andy & Mandy looking cool in the sunshine

Stephen went out for a final curry on Thursday with Chris. We've been doing a lot of finals recently - final curry, final fish & chips, final bacon butty, final haggis, neeps and tatties.... Whilst he was out I had a phone call from Mandy insisting that I turn over to a show called Embarrassing Illnesses. As she knows I don't do medical shows of any kind due to a possibility of goriness, I was wondering why....then an old familiar face popped up on the screen! And they had a very embarrassing illness!!! I didn't stop howling with laughter for about 30 minutes, in fact Jane phoned me to howl with laughter too! My ribs hurt, but possibly not as much as this persons....well lets not go into details!!



Last night was our final fling in Malvern. We went to the Nags for a few drinkies with Richard, Justine and Kate. We had a great laugh. About Embarrassing Illnesses, the office gossip, who's doing whom (honestly, work is a hotbed of lust!), and about the fact that someone who joined us for a few minutes thought I worked in a Supermarket!!

Kate looking very relaxed after a drink...

I'm going to miss you all loads. So KEEP IN TOUCH! I expect daily e-mails!



We're collecting the keys to the house on Monday, and all of our worldly goods and the rental furniture is being delivered on Tuesday, so it may be a couple of days before I can get near a computer to update this, but I'll get back on line ASAP with lots of pictures of the house.

The sad goodbyes...

It has been an emotional couple of days. Yesterday was our last day in work at Malvern. I spent the day emptying my desk into secure waste sacks and filling up all the bins in the office with the rest of my rubbish. You don't half gather a lot of cr*p after 12 years! All those office moves when you look at your stuff and think it's indispensable - its truly not! Moving continents really focuses your mind! So much stuff - so little saved!!

I also volunteered to enter the final travel claim for Andy (my office husband) for old times sake. And he made it a good 'un! He pulled the most enormous pile of receipts from his wallet - I was well on the way to RSI by the time I'd finished!! But mustn't grumble - I DID volunteer after all!! I'm going to miss my office husband - or rather ex-husband now we've gone through the office divorce! But Andy, remember: I may have divorced you, run off, and left you to look after the "kids", but at least I gave you custody of the calculator!

I was actually quite good on the emotional front. I managed all day at work without any tears - the waterproof mascara not needed!! I even managed not to cry during our meal out with Spectrum's leadership team....although I will admit to welling up at a couple of points! Working for Spectrum had its ups and downs (dealing with blocked urinals when I was Ops Manager was a bit of a down!), but one thing we have always had was a lot of fun. And we had fun last night! Here are the pictures to prove it....

Me admiring Stephen's replacement BMW...


I'll miss you both...me with Andy (my office husband) and Mandy

The team

The girls

It was also fairly traumatic today.... It was my turn to have to wave goodbye to my baby. After the flooding had subsided a little (when will this rain stop??) it was with a heavy heart that I drove my little StreetKa over to the Ford dealer, handed in the keys and picked up the cheque. I'm going to miss my rollerskate! We were perfectly suited - it was little (Kerry-sized) and so gorgeously cute! And fun when you could get it's top down!! (no jokes or comparisons please!!)

It was also the time when it finally hit me that I have left Spectrum and won't be back for a couple of years. Until today it felt more like going on holiday, and that I'd be back in a couple of weeks.... I was writing thank you cards to take into work and I suddenly welled up. Tears, emotion - so not me!! I had another teary moment when I was saying goodbye to people. So, if I cried on you, or couldn't speak cos I was about to cry on you, then I'm sorry! I'll really miss you guys. (I can recommend Maybelline waterproof mascara to anyone in a similar situation! No panda eyes to be seen!)

A common language?

I've just got some good news - I've just checked e-mail and both our air shipment and our surface shipment have cleared US customs and are in storage in the US awaiting delivery to our new home. How perfectly has that worked out! That means that we'll have our own furniture, our own "stuff", and our own bed pretty much as soon as we arrive. I've missed my own bed terribly. When we come back to the UK I'm going to buy a comfier bed for our spare room!! I've slept in it for a month now and I'm finding lumps and bumps whenever I move!!

I can't believe that I'm finishing work tomorrow. It has been pretty busy for the past few weeks, and I seem to have managed to not do the winding up and finishing bit. I truly am just working to the bitter end! It rather feels like going on holiday for a couple of weeks, rather than finishing up for a couple of years! I need to empty my desk and all sorts. I did buy waterproof mascara at the weekend, just in case it hits me suddenly and I spend the day sobbing!

We have got a lot of stuff sorted out in the past couple of days, but I'm glad that we've decided to give ourselves a couple of extra days and travel on Sunday. We need the time - to relax a bit if nothing else!!

The office was in stitches this afternoon at my inability to communicate with the (not too bright) agent at the furniture rental store... we'd been emailing for a couple of days, mostly back and forward trying to get him to quote me for the actual furniture that I had e-mailed and asked him to quote for! All the e-mails had come back without any covering note, which was getting frustrating....so I took the bull by the horns and phoned him to arrange delivery of the furniture and payment of the deposit. The office was laughing because the conversation was going something like this:

"Hello Jeff. Its Kerry. You e-mailed me a quote for some furniture a couple of minutes ago"
"Uh"
"Jeff. Is it possible to arrange delivery of the furniture I was wanting for the 3rd July?"
"Uh-huh. I'll need the address to put it on the system"
"The address was on the e-mail, but let me give you it again. It was 828 South..."
"HTH?"
"No. 828"
"HTH"
"No. 828. In numerals. 8...2...8"
By this point the whole office was in stitches!! And it didn't get much better!! We had issues with the fact that we don't have a US bank account, phone number, or cell number as his "system won't even take the UK cell number you've given me"....like it was my fault that the world outside America doesn't exist for their company!! It sounded like I was dealing with Kevin the teenager! Only a sulkier version!!

David and Emma were over today with baby Ben. Unfortunately I didn't get to see them as I had a meeting with someone to take over the reporting side of the job temporarily. Stephen managed to pop home, and both he and Mum said that Ben was a cute as a button and very cute, happy, smiley baby. I hear that Stephen was doing his best to wind Ben up (it's Stephen's job to wind up small children!) - trying to tickle him and make him laugh - but Ben wasn't rising to it! He was happy to gurgle away.

Stop the car. I want a Wiiiiiiiiiii

We are now the proud owners of a suitcase big enough for me to sleep in! Hopefully we now have enough packing space to enable us to fit all the worldly possessions that we didn't ship... It's still a little strange to think that in exactly a week from now, we'll have checked in for the flight! I'm sure at some point soon this is going to sink in!!!

My car has been sold back to the Ford dealer. I'll have the rollerskate for a few more days until they can raise the cheque. I'm going to miss that little car - it was just so cute!!! And quite nippy!! Like driving a baby rally car...or a go-cart as Stephen preferred to describe it. It's going to be quite a change to drive the SUV we've ordered, which is huge in comparison, and with rather softer suspension. I suspect that the Escape will be more like driving a boat that a car!

Richard and Justine picked us up last night and we headed off to dinner at The Star, one of the local pubs that has a restaurant and does excellent Chinese food. Justine and I detoured to their house first so that I could pick a few more pieces from her jewellery collection (Mia Mia jewels - check out the website). I adore the pieces - every one is unique and the colours and textures in the glass are fantastic. I've picked about 6 pieces and J is going to drop them off today. I'm so excited!!

We all had a good catch up over dinner. Talked about the latest gossip - who's doing what, where and to whom - you know the kind of thing! As a group we've likened our lives just now to the "Season Finale"...there is so much going on, and all building to a climax!! "Tune in for the next exciting episode...."

When we got home Mum came rushing down the stairs. "You've got to come and try Boxing on the Wii - It's fantastic"...and do you know what? She was right!! I want one!!! We spent an hour taking it in turns to knock the living daylights out a series of opponents. I tell you, you don't need to go to the gym if you have one of these things! We were sweating buckets!! You get quite energetic when you've got the controllers in either hand and are punching away!

We've got 'em!

We've got our visas!!

I can't believe how quickly they have arrived! We were told to expect them on Wednesday, but had a voicemail this morning from the courier apologising profusely because he was going to miss the pre-10am delivery slot...we didn't have the heart to tell him he was actually 5 days early!

We're now in a quandary about when to travel...before our embassy visit we had planned to travel on Thursday, but were told that this would mean entering on a green visa-waiver form as the visa wasn't valid til the 1st July. This was going to make everything really complicated, so we decided to fly on the Sunday (1st July). Now we've actually got the visa's and they're valid from today....What to do? What to do?! We'll decide over the weekend...

I spent yesterday afternoon on the phone to utility companies giving them meter readings and changing stuff to mum's name. It took hours....mostly spent listening to bad hold music. I was getting very twitchy by the time I'd listened to Greensleeves for the 400th time. Companies - hear my plea - change it to something (anything!) else!!

Stephen and I went out for dinner with our old boss and his wife. David and Yvonne are really good company and it was good to catch up. Dinner was delicious - we went to Pepper & Oz bistro which is recently refurbished and just what a little town like Malvern needs. We were bemoaning the fact that there is very little choice of restaurants here. Most of them are Indian restaurants and, much as I enjoy Indian food, it would be good to have a choice of cuisines. The local council seems not to understand this...Firstly there was the hoo-ha because Pepper & Oz had replaced the tired old awning with a rather fantastic parasol and seating area, and there was also the issue of Ask's opening hours. Ask wanted to open a restaurant but were told that they couldn't open past 6pm on a Sunday or Bank holiday. I'm not sure if this was ever resolved, but it's as if the council are happy to watch Malvern town centre degenerate into a series of empty shops and charity shops. Okay...I'm getting of my high horse now!!

I need to go and put some slap on now...then we're heading off to Matalan to buy the biggest suitcase we can find!!

A trip to the big city!

I seem destined to get barely enough sleep at the moment! We had to be up at 6am yesterday to catch the early train to London - and you know how grouchy I can get! I don't do mornings - especially not that early in the morning!! It was fine once we were on the train with a cuppa and a bacon toastie (tea is the great healer - of my grumpy mood at least!).


The grumpy mood quickly returned when we got to Paddington though. There was an enormous queue for taxis so we decided to go for the Tube. BIG mistake. HUGE mistake. We didn't have enough change to pay for tickets in coins, so we had to wait in the truly enormous queue for the ticket machine which took cards and folding money, only for it to break down when we were next but one in line. So...off we trudged to the back of the next enormous queue to stand for 10 minutes. I got really, really narky when the first ticket machine suddenly sprang back to life and there was a mad dash to get back in line. We stayed put rather than risk being trampled to death in the scrum! All this hanging around (and the fact that the train was late getting into London) meant that the 11am flight we had booked on the London Eye was looking rather precarious - given that we also had to dump our suitcase somewhere beforehand! Thankfully there are stairs down to the Tube at Paddington, so I didn't have to suffer the panic attacks that escalators of that size bring on, and Stephen was spared having to knock me unconscious!! That spared a couple of minutes at least!


We dumped our suitcase at Charing Cross station and trotted on down to the London Eye. We got there just after 11 and joined the queue and were "flying" by 11:15. It was a wonderful experience. London looks rather fabulous when you're in a perspex bubble circling by the Thames!!



After our flight we retrieved our suitcase (and came face to face with Steven - the winner of Masterchef - pushing his bike out of the back of the station!) and hot-footed it up to the Strand Palace for a quick freshen up before we headed across the road to The Banquette at the Savoy. Its a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and Marcus Wareing is the executive chef (not that either of them were likely to be making my carbonara personally!), but its not as expensive as his other restaurants...apart from the wine which was extortionate!! It was a very nice ambiance - which was changed slightly when a pensioners outing arrived and asked if they could be fitted in for a quick lunch before the matinee of Fiddler on the Roof....


Both the tables of 4 either side of us were filled with chattering ladies (most of whom I would guess were over 70, but aiming for the look of Joan Collins in Dynasty, but with more make up, and bigger gold earrings!). The ringleader was sitting next to Stephen on his left, and her sister was sitting on the table to his right. I could deal with the "Mary, have salad and french fries"..."Mary, I TOLD you to have the salad and french fries - it'll be quicker", but I started to lose the ability to keep a straight face when Sister No. 1 said "Excuse me, can you pass Mary the butter" and thrust the butter dish at Stephen.... Mary looked a bit abashed and said something about being a bit rude and interrupting our lunch, but Sister No.1 looked puzzled and said "But I said excuse me"!!! It truly could only happen to us!!


We also had tickets to Chicago (the musical, not the city!) which was great. We were in the 4th row, so Stephen had a fantastic view of all the lithe bodies of the female cast (these girls must never eat and spend every waking moment exercising!). I thought at one point he was going to flood the theatre he was drooling so much! Here's an interesting little fact-ette for you...one of the cast members (Mary Sunshine) used to work on site at Malvern. I'd like to know how he (yes, he!) went from doing research to starring in a West End musical!!


Then this morning, it was up early (again!) and off to the American Embassy for our visa interview. We had been well warned that it takes simply hours to go through the process, but in the end it only took about 1 1/2 hours! Record time according to most of the people we've spoken to! The interview itself only took about 2 minutes. We get the passports (with visas inserted) back around Wednesday, and then....we're off!! How exciting!


We had a lovely lunch at a pavement cafe in Covent Garden. We sitting there munching away when Stephen said "look, there's Julie Goodyear" whilst nodding over my shoulder. I turned and looked expecting to see a matronly woman dressing in leopard skin...Nope, nothing...so after breaking my neck both ways he pointed out exactly who he was looking at - and it turned out to be Jilly Goolden!! Not much difference there really!!


I don't use public transport very often, and I'm understanding why now! The train journey back was "interesting". First of all we had to stop for a good while whilst they fixed the communications system. Then someone kept pulling the emergency cord in the disabled loo, which was another delay. Then a rather drunk youth came staggering through first class and started unloading the buffet trolley into a carrier bag...he was hotly pursued by the attendant and the conductor who, once they discovered he didn't have a ticket (and especially not one for first!), nor the money to pay for one and seemed to be on the train solely for the free booze, tried to get him put off the train at the next station. Which was another delay...which meant that they terminated the train at Worcester rather than Malvern...which meant that the moany old git sitting behind us had yet another go at the conductor! Honestly, I had had enough by this point....the difficulty in getting a taxi once we finally got the Malvern was just the icing on the cake!!

The first of the farewells

The first of my farewell dinners took place last night. Kate whisked me off for a very nice dinner in Cafe Rouge in Worcester...which is pretty adventurous for us Malvernites! We got down to some girlie chat over a delicious dinner and a of glass of wine. It took us the usual 1/2 hour to decide what to have - the standing joke between us is that Kate will pore over the menu for hours, exclaiming over the deliciousness of each dish and then decide to have Cajun chicken!! Every time!! However, there was no Cajun chicken on the menu last night, so both of our taste buds were tickled with a rather delicious chicken breast stuffed with leeks and spinach on a bed of savoy cabbage and onion sauce. Sounds delicious doesn't it? Well I can assure you it was every bit as good as it sounds. The fantastic thing about Kate and I is that it doesn't matter how long it has been since we last saw each other (days, weeks or months) we can pick up as if we last saw each other a few hours ago. Kate if you have managed to work out what a blog is and are reading this - get your butt over to see me in DC!! Be brave - the flight isn't that bad!!

The gluttony continued today with a girlie lunch at the Cottage in the Wood. I was actually restrained and had a smoked salmon salad - I must have sensed there would be a wickedly rich bitter chocolate tart to be chosen from the dessert list! I'm trying to pace myself a bit over the next few days as we've got a lot of meals out and I want to be able to fit into the clothes that I've sent to the US!! I really enjoyed lunch - all the ladies who were out have a fantastic sense of humour and we had a good laugh. The same offer applies to you ladies incidentally - if you want to come over to visit then let me know!! I have to admit it was a bit of a struggle to come back to work and focus on more mundane issues like setting up meetings and drawing up flow diagrams...

I'm currently sitting here at 8pm and the sky is dark and menacing. Nearly black. Considering we're only a couple of days away from the longest day of the year and it should be light til 10pm it's pretty ominous!! And...right on cue, the heavens have opened and lightning is splitting the sky. I'm just waiting on the power going off now... You just have to love the British summer weather!!

The weather closes in...

I'm now really convinced that Stephen has actually been abducted by aliens and replaced by a clone. He's displaying some very un-Stephen like behaviour. I have been asking for months for him to put up a mirror in the en-suite to no avail. Mum asks him once and he was bounding up the stairs, drill in hand...

Farewell my love...

The greatest love of Stephen's life left him today. No, I haven't decided that I don't want to go to Washington! His beloved BMW was driven away to be taken to it's new owners. I wasn't there to see it go, but I'm sure Stephen shed a tear or two when it disappeared from view. He's now driving round in my rollerskate - I'm not sure that a Ford will ever be a replacement!! On the upside, it's Bike to Work week and because we are "car sharing" we got vouchers for free bacon rolls this morning!! We are going to be sick of bacon butties by the end of the week!!

Wiiiiiiiii

In case you're wondering why there are no pictures of Stephen and I looking glamorous (and "gripped" in my case!) in our evening wear on Friday it's because we completely forgot to pick up the camera! After I had nagged about making sure it was charged and ready to go we left it sitting on the kitchen counter. D'oh! And after the hideous drive into Malvern to the Ball (Malvern drivers - no need to say more!) and the challenging parking situation at the hotel there was no way we were turning around and going back for it!!

I spent Saturday packing my boxes and unpacking some more of Mum's. I think we're nearly there with the house now (yippee!!), so I'll be turning my attention to filing and paperwork for the next few days. What fun!!

Whilst I was slogging away in the house Stephen and Mum were in Worcester buying a Wii. Mum simply loves playing shoot 'em up video games and was desperate to get her hands on a games console! Once it was all set up in the study (you can surf the web on it too - very clever!) Mum was in there playing "The Godfather" and trying to work up from her apprentice gangster weapon (a baseball bat) to something more powerful!! All I could hear were shrieks of laughter and the theme music to the Godfather wafting down the stairs! Mum loves staying in hotels and has likened her new bedroom to staying in a Holiday Inn Express (I need to try and up the star rating!)...now she's staying in a Holiday Inn Express with an Amusement Arcade next door - her idea of heaven!!

Mum was off to Ikea this morning and came back with a couple of bedside tables. We reverted to type quickly....Stephen went to Waitrose to buy (and BBQ) dinner and I got out the tools and assembled the flat pack! Oh, and a miracle happened today! Stephen helped me to mow the lawn! He actually pushed the mower around about a third of the garden - the first time he has cut the grass for about 5 years!! I'm still in shock....I'm not convinced that he hasn't been taken over by some alien life form!!

Magic knickers? I don't think so!

Stephen has sold his car - and ordered our car for the US. We're getting a Ford Escape which is a compact SUV - think of an X3 type thing and you're not a million miles away. The important thing is that it comes in Silver and (here's the technical bits for you guys) it has an engine and wheels.....

I spent this afternoon wafting about doing not very much, and realised that I had slightly underestimated the amount of time it would take to get ready for the Optronics Summer Ball. I hit the bathroom at 5pm, but it took me a long time to exfoliate, bath, wash my hair, sand the top couple of layers of skin off my face with my micro-dermabrasion kit...you know, girlie stuff! By the time I got out of the bathroom it was 6pm...and the Ball started at 7pm! The mild panic I was feeling about timings (it takes ages to straighten my hair!) quickly turned to hysterical laughter though....

Never, and I mean EVER, try to put on gripper knickers when you're slightly damp from the bath and standing in a warm room. Now these are not the smallest of smalls - they even have boning for extra "grip"! - and I got them pulled up to bum level with only a small amount of heaving and sweating, but then I ran into trouble! The boning folded over on itself and I was left with a concertina of knicker hugging my hips. By this time I was starting to laugh hysterically whilst frantically trying to tug them further up. I couldn't shift them! They were resolutely stuck....and I was starting to sweat more and more, which only made things worse. By this time I was crying with laughter, and trying to remember whether I had any talcum powder in the house. I swallowed my pride - and shouted for Stephen! Now who says chivalry is dead? Stephen came and manfully grabbed two handfuls of knicker and pulled, and pulled, and pulled. Eventually he got them to where they should be (about where they can be tucked into my bra!), with mutterings of "Jesus how big are these things". It was probably not the most enchanting sight in the world - foundation garments like these should never be seen by the man in your life!!

The Ball was fantastic. We got to catch up with loads of people, most of whom seem to be as excited about our move as we are! Perhaps they're just looking forward to finally getting rid of us!! Seriously though, it was lovely to get so many people wishing us luck!

Wow! That's hot!

Wowee! The chilli I threw together last night is HOT! Even with the addition of extra tomato puree to calm it down it's still hot enough to bring a tear to your eye! I'm taking it round to Phil's for dinner, so I hope he's got a cast iron stomach!! If you ever hear that people belch fire in Malvern then you'll know where that rumour started....

Phil came back from the DC office about 6 months ago and he's going to give us the lowdown on who does what, and the personalities in the office. Hopefully he's also going to spill the beans on where are the hot spots to visit and the "must do" things in Washington. We've got to get our priorities right after all....we want FUN!!

It has been a busy old day at work. I've got a lot of the moving to America work stuff done (export forms for IT etc), so I feel I'm getting somewhere at last. On a rather sad note I've compared my diary with Andy's (my office husband!) and as we're both out a lot in the next two weeks we're only going to see each for one more day. It was at this point that it finally hit home that two weeks from now we'll be on a plane...and days are flying by at a rate of knots.

Moving day for Mum

It was moving day for Mum today. She waved goodbye to the wilds of Leominster and said hello to the (relative!) civilisation of Malvern. Our house is now in complete chaos - perhaps I should have foregone the cider last night in favour of packing more boxes! Mum's furniture is in place and it all looks very cosy! ...and very different! It's a bit strange seeing Mum's furniture here - like someone has transplanted her little cottage into my house. Which, I suppose, is exactly what we've done!

I had a rather hair-raising journey to work this morning. I turned a bend in the road and found an old banger heading directly towards me on the wrong side of the road. There was nothing parked in the road, so no reason for the little wander - perhaps he just fancied playing chicken this morning!! Thankfully with a lot of heavy braking we avoided each other, and no harm done....except to the air round about me which turned a vivid shade of blue!!! I told you drivers here were nuts!

I've just made a chilli to take round to Phil's tomorrow night...and another for mum to freeze! There are two enormous pots simmering away on the stove. You'd think I was feeding the 500! I need to go and stir and taste it now - I've got a chilli makers reputation to maintain so I need to go and tip in the rest of the packet of chilli powder if its lacking punch!

Packing up

Well I was right about the frantic stuffing of things in boxes! Stephen and I have just spent a couple of hours dumping kitchen bits and pieces in boxes (or in the bin if they were a bit tired). We then roped Guy from next door in to help put them into the loft (best to get someone young, fit and with a sound back in to do the heavy bit!! - I don't want Stephen in hospital with a slipped disc right now!).

Then, whilst Stephen whisked Guy off for a "thank you" pint, I got to work moving the 3 tonnes of make-up and hair products (and bear in mind the 3 tonnes has been reduced drastically from the 7 tonnes that used to lurk in my dressing table!!) from what used to be our bedroom and into the spare room where we are now squatting. It covers every available surface...I'm going to have to pick my way over, round and through it to get into bed tonight! I might need to cut everything down to to absolute basics (1 tonne!) for the time being - but that's a job for tomorrow.

So, bar a bit of tidying up tonight, we're ready for mum to move in tomorrow! There's still a lot more stuff to be packed up...but its all stuff in rooms that can be done a bit slower time...so I'm going to open a cider, put my feet up for 1/2 hour and watch Big Brother!

Bye bye handbags...I'll miss you!

I'm bereft! The air shipment has gone and my lovely handbags are now in a box and en-route to Washington. Farewell my lovelies, have a good trip...Bon Voyage, Bye....bye. That's it - they've gone! And my shoes too...and the majority of my clothes - so apologies to the office if I get a bit whiffy in the next couple of weeks...joking, joking!! I've got enough to keep me going, and even an evening dress if I'm really pressed for something to wear. It might be a bit formal for the office, but as we have dress down Friday I don't see why we can't have dress up Tuesday!!

I got back late from the office and I was too tired to be bothered schlepping round Waitrose so Stephen and I headed round to the Fox for some dinner....which means I'm feeling the double guilt of having eaten less healthily than I ought (chips - need I say more!), but it also took ages (mostly because we were sipping large drinks!) and so I haven't packed any boxes tonight! There will be wholesale panic in the Spark household tomorrow evening and I'll be randomly throwing kitchen stuff in boxes to make space for Mum's stuff!

It's not been an unproductive night though. We're going to London next week for our interview at the Embassy and as we need to go down the night before anyway (it's a 9am appointment) we're going to go early and do the tourist stuff in London. I've just booked tickets for the London Eye, Theatre tickets and have made tentative e-mail enquiries at one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants about lunch. We might end up in Wimpey, but at least I'll have tried!!

More packing!

I got home from work at lunchtime on Friday and feel like I've not stopped since! Mum came over and helped me plough through the mountain of ironing in preparation for stage 2 of the freighting process. (My ironing pile is always mountainous! I swear that the stuff breeds as soon as my back is turned!!) The items we're air freighting are being collected on Monday, and this includes our clothes, shoes and my handbags. I'm aiming to send as much as possible as I don't want to be left staggering through Heathrow with 14 suitcases!! And believe me, it would be me staggering about as Stephen has been known to use me as his personal pack horse!! (Mandy: remember the photo shoot at Witley Court when I was left carrying 2 camera bags, a video bag, 2 umbrellas and a tripod!! And then he complained that I was being slow getting him film!!)

Anyway the imminent freighting triggered another massive sort out session. I've filled about 5 bags (so far) with stuff to go to the charity shop...I've been utterly ruthless! Its quite amazing the stuff I hang onto for no discernible reason! My wardrobe isn't quite "capsule" but it's a lot smaller than it was! After all I have to have some reason to hit the shops when I get to Washington! A large portion of my infamous handbag collection also went to the charity shop last week for the same reason...

Mum is moving in here on Wednesday, so I've also been packing our stuff (i.e. the stuff were not taking to the US) into boxes to be stored in the loft. Considering that sorting out and packing up has taken me all weekend there still seems to be a lot to do! I think this was in part due to the heat this weekend....26 degrees and humid doesn't help with motivation! I think I was doing quite well to battle on despite the fact I was "glowing" like a piggy! Anyway, I'm hoping that a couple of nights this week will see it finished. I'll get fed up being orderly and just start stuffing things in any old how!

Stephen has spent all day today swearing at our laptops, threatening to take one back to the shop, cursing when software wouldn't load/run and generally getting annoyed that the whole process was taking 10 time longer than it should! He has also had to say goodbye to another of his guitars and is somewhat heartbroken that he won't see it again for a few weeks - and that he'll have to make do with the 2 guitars he's leaving here.

To be honest it wasn't all hard slog this weekend! We did have Saturday night off from packing, and went round to Julie and Andy's for dinner - which was absolutely yummy! It was such a lovely warm evening we sat out in the garden chatting and making inroads into the bottles of wine till gone 11pm. No fleeces required last night!

Oops...

Oh dear! What a start to the day we had...we were driving into work together, got caught in the usual Malvern traffic chaos (people drive like loons here, with no concept of space, distance or other road users!) and were sitting in stationary traffic, when someone hit us up the bumper. This made Stephen rather unhappy as you can imagine! Especially as we are trying to sell our cars in preparation for our move.... Anyway, he pulled over, as did the lady who hit him, and surveyed the damage. Thankfully it wasn't too bad. It hasn't broken the paint, or badly scratched it, or dented it - but you can see where the impact was. The lady who hit us burst into tears and said "other people would let me away with this" which did make me wonder how many times she'd done this, and whether hitting a BMW 645 was her preferred braking method! You know..."I wonder what this pedal in the middle does?"

The day did get better! I was busy though. My "to-do" list was getting longer by the minute and I didn't seem to be making much headway. Probably down to the fact I'm still not feeling 100% and I REALLY wanted to take a nap for most of this afternoon! I finally managed to throw off the mental duvet with the help of Lucozade and zip through the pile of things I had to do (its amazing what you can do on a surge of sugar and "glucose energy"!). I even had time to swap a couple of e-mails with fellow Big Brother addict Sarah. Every year we say we're not going to watch and then 10 minutes into the launch night we're totally hooked! I'm not sure how I'm going to cope without my nightly fix, but at least I know Sarah will keep me up to date with the latest happenings!

We're getting "tooled up" at work in preparation for the move. Our laptops are off having VPN installed (which lets us connect to work e-mail from a remote location), and BlackBerry's arrive tomorrow. Gadgets....how exciting! Well, for Stephen anyway....he goes a little bit loopy for the latest technology. Stand by for the reports on TV shopping in a few weeks time...we'll be hosting the great debate "Is a 90" Plasma TV too big by far?" I'll let you decide which way I'll be arguing!!

Into work, and home again

After starting to feel like I was on the mend, I woke up yesterday with another sore throat. It wasn't really any better today but I thought I should make an appearance at work. It turned out to be a reasonably short one - I decided enough was enough at lunchtime as my head was splitting, my throat agony and I was starting to cough and wheeze. I slunk off home and fell asleep for about 3 hours on the sofa...which was quite a feat as it's a 2-seat sofa, and even I (at a weeny 5ft) was folded up like a concertina to fit on it! Still, exhaustion won out over comfort - I could have slept on a knife edge! It's going to be an early night for me tonight - duvet and disprin sounds good to me right now.

37 years on...

It seems my arithmetic may not be up to par as it turns out that it was actually 37 years ago that Uncle Jim headed off to Oz (maybe I'm just older than I thought!). One of my earliest memories is of Jim throwing me up in the air and catching me, and me screaming blue murder! Typical "Uncle" stuff - after all it's an Uncle's job to wind kids up and leave the parents to cope with the fall out!! I can only have been about 1 year old at the time, but it's a vivid memory...as I have a fear of heights I feel there may be some psychological scarring!

As an added bonus my sister Eve was also there last night. She had flown in from a trip to Canada the night before and decided to hop on down in order to see Jim and Birgitta. We had a really fun evening, the banter was top notch! We tossed jokes across the table in the way that only 5 long separated Scots and 1 Swede can, and laughed til our faces ached!

Jim and Birgitta have bought a house in Sweden, and it's their intention to spend Summer in Sweden and then go back to Australia for Summer....that really is the best of both worlds! Anyway as they'll be regularly venturing into the Northern Hemisphere we're hoping we'll be seeing them at slightly more frequent intervals than every 37 years now!

G'day mate! The long lost rellies...

I got to hang out with Eve this afternoon which was cool. It's been a while since we've had a proper catch up...so we flapped our gums for a few hours before I had to run her to catch her train. I'm now sitting here with power over the remote as Stephen has headed off to Brighton for a sales conference. The really disappointing thing is....there is nothing on telly I want to watch! My one chance to watch what I want without the remote control commando switching it over...and there is nothing on. Not a thing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Glorious weather! Time to garden...

For the first time in I don't know how long it has been a beautiful day, weather-wise! And, to make the weekend even better, it's the Bransford Plant Centre annual sale! They're a wholesale suppliers who open to the public one day a year and sell plants really cheaply. I find it really difficult to go to a garden centre and pay £10+ for a plant, when I can get it at Bransford for a couple of quid (that's the Scot in me coming out!!).

Stephen and I popped along this morning with the intention of getting plants to replace the lavenders which had died in the gravel garden. We managed this and provided a source of entertainment to our fellow customers as I tried to fit 30-odd plants into the boot of a StreetKa (affectionately known to my colleagues as The Rollerskate) which has a boot big enough to take a couple of bags of crisps and not much else! I managed it - not all the plants were in the boot though - there were quite a few in the foot well and quite a few in my lap. Thankfully we only live a couple of miles away!



Due to my weakened state, Stephen was kind enough to help me dig out the dead stuff and plant up the new plants. This is something of a miracle as he detests gardening! It has always been a case of "Kerry, your grass needs cut"...but anyway the milk of human kindness kicked in and he gave me a hand. Looks pretty good....just need to buy some more gravel to top it off, but might not mention that to Stephen just yet - cos I'll need a hand spreading it and I don't want to push him over the edge!!

We had a great meal out with Richard & Justine last night. It was one of Richard's infamous "odd but good" restaurants. It sells itself as being 6 restaurants under one roof - not sure where they get 6 - but the one we were in was really good! Food was excellent, and the slightly odd photos of Gurkha's in uniform which graced the wall weren't too off-putting!! We're off out again tonight, this time to see my Uncle Jim and his wife Birgitta. I've not seen Jim since he left to go to Australia 35 years ago, so it should be an interesting night!