victoria
3rd October 2007, 08:41 PM
Thought I'd put in my update of 5 months in. Today the gathering of all the paper paraphenalia of our lives was stacked & checked for the umpteenth time & duly sealed into a courier bag with our ITA. I looked in the local yelly for a company & got the fits as I came across a heading on the top of page 359 for Crack Detection.narf narf. Off it's gone & now our future is in the laps of the gods (well NZIS actually or same difference) A year ago in Kent we had a dream & now we're here & in the final stages of making it a reality. Steve works for a great boss & hasn't been so consistently happy for a long time. We were made welcome from day one by his boss & wife,the landlady who held this great rental for 2 weeks & gave us a further week to settle in before signing the contract,the neighbours who are there but not in our pockets, the friendly staff in the local shops,whittards chocolate, the local horsey crowd who've included me in everything & the ease of making acquaintances whereby we feel as if we've always lived here. There have been moments though. The stark emptiness with basic furniture for 8 weeks waiting for our stuff to arrive. It was winter & the days could be soooooo long. I hit the migrant blues after 4 weeks probably compounded by the worst cold I've ever had. I thought of my loved ones constantly & though I never doubted our decision OMG did I miss them so. Memories of such happy times would fill my head all the time. I saw the crazy gang at the old villa in northern Portugal & the night we put little candles in the stone walls & told ghost stories. We scared ourselves so much that the sight of 7 grownups running up the stairs (keeping in a huddle) must have been a sight for the locals. The many different friends at the enormous oak table in our countryside garden over the years sharing food & laughter. Using any snippet of good news to have a celebratory get together. Silly family bbqs & games like drinking as quickly as possible a yard of lemonade. The resulting belches causing screeches of laughter.(yes I know - how infantile) But our stuff arrived & familar things around brought the ghosts with them & was comforting. I wonder if the brain protects because we truely feel we've only moved into the next county & not the other side of the world. Well with that important package going off today sent me into an ethereal moment,maybe whimmsical. The itunes was on shuffle & on came Kirsty Mcall's "The Day" As those wonderful lyrics filled my space I saw my loved ones again but in a slide show with the slightest stop frame. I was sent into a reverie of happy times being left with a smile on my face. Steve was able to pop home for lunch & as we chatted ,a wet bedraggled girl from the pony club knocked on the ranch slide. One of the horse's rugs had partially blown off & was hanging around it's neck causing it to panic. Off we went to rescue it. The clever boy seemed to know we were helping him & in the midst of a v. heavy shower & gale winds he stood stock still while we sorted the poor chap out.It was the metaphorical needle scratching across the record as NZ stepped into my nostalgia & said you're here now. We love it love it love it. In fact tonight I'm going to dream of picking up all of NZ & giving it a great big hug. Apologies to anyone if I wake you up ... I'll try not to squeeze too hard. Night night everybody. xx :nice1