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.