Goodbye Blighty

Thinking about these past three and a half months in the UK words often fail me. SO much has happened yet oddly enough I have very little to show for our time here. In ten days time we're on the move again, this time I hope, for the last time. At least for a while. I am so excited that our move date is finally here and that, without seeming strange, I can begin packing up. Leaving Singapore was hard. Leaving New York, the hardest thing ever. So it feels quite strange that leaving the UK seems a complete breeze. I will board the flight next Saturday with a huge smile on my face, partly because it's a business class flight courtesy of Pete's new firm, but mainly because I cannot wait to go. 

I have decided I am moving to South Africa with little or no expectation much like I did when we moved to Singapore in December 2007. If anything I am just hoping this move will end my run of bad luck. That's what I've decided to call it. Bad luck. Not fate, or the result of poor decisions, just bad luck. 

On September 19th last year when I received that phone call to say that Pete had been let go and was on his way home, I thought my world had ended. And for about five months it did. The last five months are five months that I hope in five years time are forgotten. I hope that in time I will only remember this time for the few happier moments it's bought me and possibly the few new friends I've met. The rest has my permission to be deleted. 

Bad luck and I don't really mix well. For anyone who really knows me, knows that I thrive on happiness. I am the jokey sarcastic, never very serious South African you invite along because I don't stop talking, love singing, and am usually willing to do anything as a dare. I love my friends and family and will often always put their needs before those of my own. So throw me, job loss, homelessness, miscarriage, hospitalisation (x3) and loneliness in five months and something was bound to go wrong. The little social butterfly that I always loved being, died. And maybe that's where the problem began. I moved to the UK with all this, for want of a better word, hate, and never really got past it. 

I ignored friends, hated being around my kids, didn't want to really celebrate Christmas, was miserable over New Year (that was partially allowed) and made every excuse to stay indoors, be antisocial and while away the days in my PJs watching kids TV playing lego. 

I apologise to all my UK friends for being so useless. Free accommodation in South Africa is on offer to make up for my thousand and one excuses. 

Yesterday saw my last and hopefully finally disaster unfold with Emma getting chicken pox and us having to cancel our week's trip to Hoboken to go see friends. Fighting with a Virgin Atlantic agent on the phone about ticket refunds and cancellation policies made me realise how bitter I sound. I'm sure 'Debra' didn't need to hear my life story but she got it anyway. And despite her umming and aghing at the appropriate times, I still got what I expected. Nothing. I guess there are some things you just cannot change no matter what, but maybe now I've realised that being down and miserable about them isn't the way about it. 

Maybe i've only realised this now because I know that I haven't got to endure the miserable weather or loneliness for much longer but either way, I'm hoping that I can leave for South Africa with a little more love and a little less hate than I did leaving New York arriving here. It's a start and a new beginning I'm really really looking forward to.