8 Weeks 2 Days

After a hectic week of packing up our entire house and living among boxes and no furniture with my four kids, cat, dog and both my parents staying – I am not happy to report that all our stuff is currently at sea somewhere heading south on the APL Barcelona.

I’d been secretly hoping for a last minute reprieve and that all of a sudden there would be some desperate need for Rob to remain in London for work, but sadly that hasn’t happened and we’re en route down under.

We’re still in our house but we’ve hired temporary furniture and pretty much everything from a company who will rent you anything from sofas to linen to potato peelers. I’ve even rented alarm clocks and a washing basket. It’s a much better option to moving into a serviced apartment with my ten hundred kids and it means all our things will be in Sydney when we arrive so we move straight back into our old house. Like we’ve never left. Except the number of kids we have has quadrupled since then.

I feel like I’m in limbo. It’s only 8 weeks and 2 days until we go and I have a constant knot in my gut all day long and the only thing that relieves it is sleep, exercise and coco pops. Even Nutella isn’t cutting it. Things must be grim.

Imagine this. Think of all the things you currently have in your life aside from your partner and kids. Everything. Then imagine going to the airport and leaving it all, knowing you’re never going back to it. Wouldn’t that be awful?

I’m doing that.

It’s no wonder I’m finding it hard.

I know there are people back home who think I’m un-Australian because I prefer London to Sydney, but that’s totally unreasonable. I really could give you 100 reasons why I like London better and it’s the reason why there are hundreds of thousands of Australians living abroad – because we are all different and like different things. What is so wrong with wanting to live in a country other than the one you were born in? Nothing.

So we’re all set to go. Almost. We were planning on shipping our car back with us but Rob was away on business last week and missed out on all the packing excitement so all the car documents accidentally got packed and are onboard vessel APL Barcelona in the middle of the ocean somewhere. He’s a bit stressed now.

Therefore it’s now just finishing the last of the school year in July and then we fly out. Well all of us except Jude and Charlie because the f-wits at the Australian Embassy still haven’t given them Australian citizenship. We should have applied as refugees, it would have been far quicker.

I’m secretly hoping we’ll get a letter from Australia soon saying “Sorry, we’re full. You’ll have to stay in England”.