Why is the “silly season” so called when it’s the only time when you get some real news on the telly ? Now parliament has been reopened we just have a series of stories based on Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s lame press releases and hollow, cliché-ridden speeches. Oh yes, we still get the outrage-du-jour which is currently about children in London getting stabbed and shot. London kids have been shooting and stabbing each other since London was built but only during periods of media hype do we get each one spelled out. Unlike ten years ago, if you get mauled to death by a pit-bull, don’t imagine you’ll get any column inches; only stabbed kids are newsworthy these days.

So, when some real news turns up it’s quite refreshing.

Today in London there was massive piece of civil disobedience as part of the latest anti-war demo. Readers in properly democratic countries (if there are any) may be surprised to know that it’s now illegal to hold a demonstration outside parliament. As shocking as that should be to you, it’s worse than it sounds; that law was brought in because of one, slightly mental, but totally peaceful man. It’s hard to imagine Saddam, Stalin or even Hitler daring to introduce a similar law but here in the “free” UK we let it happen.

So, during today’s anti-war protest, loads of people broke through the barricades and protested in parliament square! Why would so many people break the law like this ? Because they’re just evil ? Because they don’t care ?
Or perhaps it was because they believe in real democracy where you should be able to remind the people that think they run the country that in fact they are simply supposed to be our representatives and that they work for us.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police are still adamant that they never put the public at risk while they were repeatedly shooting an innocent member of the public in the head. Nor did they break any health and safety laws….while they were repeatedly shooting an innocent member of the public in the head. Doesn’t sound very healthy or safe to me.

Do Indian restaurants in North America sell CTM ? Do they even know what it is ?
[Update: Mike, my brother in law, says “Yes, of course”]

Every day there are reminders that we’re moving away. Thoughts like “oh no, this maybe the last lamb shish I have” or “will I ever see a Routemaster again ?” But personally it’s a very odd feeling because I really don’t see it like that normally; I see it as moving house. Why should things be any different ? Most of the communications with my friends, family, and workmates occur over digital media already. Occasionally we’ll get some “face time” together but it really doesn’t affect how I feel about the people I love. In fact there will be some people I’ll be in contact with more frequently, purely because we will need to force it as we don’t have the convenient excuse of waiting for the inevitable, albeit unlikely, meeting.
Nonetheless, when I’d finished doing some work today and got a hug and a handshake off of some old friends/workmates it made me think a bit.

But it’s only 3000 miles! At light speed that’s about the same time as being at the other end of the room! And we’ll be back regularly; it’s cheaper to do a return flight from the U.S. than from London.

Well, despite my abysmal performance in the test, it seems that the company with whom I had the recent telephone interview have shortlisted me for the job! The only thing I do know is that the other candidates are extremely good, so I’m not holding out too much hope.
But I have to say that just the idea of going for a job interview in Wall Street is enough to keep me happy for a while.

[ No it’s not a Gordon Gekko type job – the head office just happens to be there. Cool on both counts. ]

Michele is currently at the vets with Humphrey for her pre-flight inspection. It’s been a long while since we took the poor little bird there and last time she was in shock for days afterwards. Consequently the whole experience is causing me a similar reaction; my heart is racing and I’m really worried about her. Not just because of this vet visit but because in about a week we’ve got to get her into the scary travel cage and then take her to the airport…
When she gets scared, she flaps and tries to fly…even if she’s in a little tiny cage. It’s awful. I wish we could give her a birdy sedative.

Time has been shooting past so fast recently that I’m prepared to believe the earth has sped-up to near light-speed. Further evidence for this is that my mass has been increasing although that is more likely to be related to my sedentary lifestyle and red wine consumption. But now we find ourselves two weeks away from the move and not much more prepared than we were a month ago. OK, in fairness, plans for Humphrey’s forced emigration are pretty much settled and we have booked Pickfords to move our impedimenta…but we’re still sitting here, watching the telly, waiting for our Monday night Pizza to arrive and generally not thinking about the impending change. The problem is, whenever we do think about the move, we panic uncontrollably.

Anyway, in one week I had a leaving do for my current workplace and a job interview for a potential new place. The leaving do was surprisingly good but surprisingly emotional. There were presents and speeches and posh food and everything.

The interview seemed to be OK too. It was over the phone from the west coast of the U.S. but I’m quite used to that that arrangement after my Citi experience. The problem came in the test which was administered directly afterwards by email. Maybe I was just very tired, very nervous or perhaps I just didn’t get it. Regardless I made a complete dogs breakfast of the whole rigmarole. Oh well – another one bites the dust. At least I might get some UK paid work for the first few weeks over there…

BTW – I have set up a new url for these “moving to America” type posts:
http://www.uk2pa.com/

Here’s a news item that is probably worth keeping an eye on. Alisher Usmanov, one of the shadowy Russian oligarchs, has bullied an ISP into taking down several high-publicity blogs, including Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads, Boris Johnson’s blog and Craig Murray’s blog, as the result of an alleged libel. For more informative coverage see SpyBlog, Chicken Yoghurt and
Boing Boing.

Recently my once exciting M600 (HTC Prophet) has been giving me jip and the handicaps of Winblows Mobile 5 have been driving me insane, and so I decided to see what could be done. Of course, it turns out that there is an entire army of autistic geniuses out on the net tackling this problem for us. So, I’m now running a custom ROM, based on WM6, but with all of the irritations of the old ROM attenuated. And it looks nice too.

One of the most brain dead aspects of WM5 was the difficulty of listing and killing running programs. Microsoft clearly don’t want you stopping things once you’ve started them, otherwise they’d have provided something other than the memory app for performing this simple task. This means that after checking your email, phoning a few friends, sending a text, and generally using the phone as it’s supposed to be used, you’re out of memory and the bloody camera stops working. But now there’s an omnipresent widget that lists all running apps with a big red cross next to them. Wow, what a power-tool…

So now I have an unlocked phone which works, feels nice to use (even with the fingers), has a newly updated radio ROM and will placate me until I get an OpenMoko or an N800.

Thank you, army of autistic geniuses! You’re my hero!

Today was the first time I’ve had to say “goodbye” to someone as the result of our move. A really nice bloke in my workplace is going on holiday to France tomorrow and won’t be back until after we’ve left the country.

Now, this is not only a sad occasion because he’s such a nice bloke, but also because it suddenly drummed home to me what we’re doing, and how close we are to doing it. Weirdly I’m not anywhere near as worried or upset as I thought I’d be. The last time we moved house it nearly killed me – really; it dragged me down so low that I really felt I might not make it. This time I just have a weird, excited, fear, like you get when it’s your turn to get into the roller-coaster.

Purging ourselves of a lot of crap is helping. Once you realise that all you really need in life is a load of pants and a laptop, throwing things away feels quite liberating. But it’s not easy! Even freecycle is not as simple as it sounds. But the worst case scenario is that we have to put stuff in the bin rather than giving it a loving new home. We can both cope with that I think.

After some good advice from British Ex-pats, we’ve pretty much decided to use Pickfords. They’re not much more expensive than the alternatives we’ve found and they even come round and do your packing for you! They also sent someone round to assess how much it was going to be. So much simpler.

Humphrey is the only real worry we have. We’ve sorted out all of the bureaucratic details but it’s just the trauma she’ll suffer. Poor, beautiful little bird.

Welcome to a new blog. It’s exactly the same as the old one except that it’s tagged “uk2pa” which means it documents our move to Philadelphia (PA) from the UK (London). At some point it’ll probably get its own URI.

We’re moving to America in just under a month and we’re both terrified about it. Whether we grow old and die there or come back after a month in tears it will all be documented here. In essence the move shouldn’t be too painful except for a couple of things:

• Missing my family, who are all wonderful.
• Putting our darling parrot into quarantine for a month…
• The fact I’ve never lived away from South East London in my 36 years on this tiny planet (or for 4 generations depending how you look at it).
• We have loads of old crap that needs shipping.
• Our friends, all of whom we will miss to a ludicrous extent.

But apart from that we should be ok.

In the past few weeks we’ve been involved in social occasions that have had a finalistic air to them. That’s not as bad as it sounds because, as much as I love my friends and family, I really want to try something new, and Michele wants to spend some time with her family. Fair enough really. And teh internets provide a suitably convenient medium for keeping in touch with my 21st century family.

We both love London, and who knows, we may end up coming back in tears after a month, but I hope not. On both sides of my family there has been a presence in South East London for a long time. Time to try something else.