Moving!

Usually, the thought of moving house fills me with dread. It's a hideous process, mostly because my luck with the weather means that it will either be the hottest day of the year, or pouring down (or both, as occurred during one memorable move).

Tomorrow, however, we are moving into our new house, which we've been looking forward to for about three weeks. It was three weeks and one day ago that we moved into our temporary accommodation, and first encountered the Most Uncomfortable Bed Ever. Seriously, this bed is terrible. I don't know if the owners of this place went out of their way to find the worst bed they could, but they certainly succeeded regardless. For starters, it creaks every time either one of us so much as breathes. The mattress has lumps and bumps poking out all over the place, although to be fair I'm now accustomed to the spring that digs into my rib cage. Finally, it's a double bed, which isn't good for two people who are both over 5'10" and don't like to share. We both wake up each morning with bags under our eyes, and accusing the other of having hogged the bed during the night. G also attributes his daily caffeine consumption to the bed, which is fair enough.

Therefore, even if we were moving into an absolute dive, leaving this bed behind would be reason enough to leave.

G has gone to London today for his work Christmas party. I know. Not fair - start work one week, and get flown to London the next week to hobnob at a wholly-catered function, and get put up at a nice hotel. Meanwhile I get to stay here, and pack and clean. The only upside is that I get the whole bed to myself, and will hog it without feeling the least bit guilty.

We're meeting the landlords at the house tomorrow at 12.30 to sign the lease, pay our rent, and get the keys. G will stop by on his way back from the airport, and in a fortunate piece of luck the Airlink Bus stops right outside our house. In further evidence of the excellent bus system here, I can get on the bus right outside our current place and catch it across town at our new place. This is also good, because we'll be moving house by bus. With such a good bus route, there was no justification for catching a cab there.

However, it does mean that I have to take two trips there and back. Although we arrived in Edinburgh with two suitcases and two carry-on bags in total, we've somehow managed to accumulate so much more stuff in three weeks. Today, G took in to work a full suitcase and a couple of bags of shoes, which he will bring home tomorrow evening. I valiantly tried this morning to cram everything else we have into my suitcase and my carry-on bag, in the hope that I might only have to make one journey tomorrow. No dice, unfortunately, so it's buses galore for me!

I'm also trying to eat as much food from the fridge today, so had ten sticks of celery, an apple, and vegemite on toast for lunch, and will boil two eggs for tea. Yum! I also drank the last of the Irn Bru, which was delightful.

Sunday is St Andrew's Day, which is the Scottish equivalent of Australia Day. Consequently, Friday is Wear Your Kilt to Work Day, so hopefully G will encounter many patriotic Scots at work. On Saturday, we saw a man in BHS wearing a kilt as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and it probably was for him. When we were in Germany, we saw many (older) men wearing Lederhosen, although this kilt-wearing gentleman was about thirty years younger. Those crazy Scots.

Much love

Farewell..?

The problem with having to postpone travel plans at the very last minute means that people change their plans too. When we were due to leave on 20 September, we had arranged to have farewell drinks with friends the night before, a Friday, and had a fair number of people signed up for the occasion. However, due to certain visa issues (not enough time or space to go into them here, and this is also intended to be a profanity-free blog), we were forced to cancel our flights the night before, at around the same time we were scheduled to begin receiving free drinks from friends keen to give us a proper send off.

When the visa came through last Friday (or rather, when G. heard last Friday that his visa had been approved the week before), we hastily rebooked flights for this Sunday, and rescheduled farewell drinks for tonight. This gave people only one week's notice, and many of them already had, understandably, other plans in place for tonight. For this reason, we will have a total of seven confirmed attendees tonight, and another two "maybes", depending on when their first function finishes.

While this situation could be interpreted as us not having many friends, and people not being bothered to get out and see us one last time, I choose to believe that those not in attendance are too utterly devastated by our imminent departure that they prefer to sit alone in their darkened bedrooms, where better to drown their sorrows in a heady mix of alcoholic drinks. It is Halloween, after all.

Besides, as G keeps reminding me, it's the quality people - T&S, E&T, P&G and A - who are showing up tonight and one should always go for quality over quantity. Plus I have a cracker of a headache at the moment, and therefore probably won't be up for anything too exciting anyway.

The upshot is, of course, that we're going to miss the friends left behind, but with the internet being the way it is these days, and with exciting things like Skype and VOIP (not that I understand them, but I know what they are), keeping in touch is just so easy.

Much love