Category: Travel

Nine Months

If, instead of moving to America, I had gotten pregnant instead, I would be having a baby about now.

If, instead of moving to America, I had gotten pregnant instead, I would be having a baby about now.

That’s a patently ridiculous statement – after all I don’t want kids – but it’s interesting to me as a measure of time. My last post on this subject was at the end of December, and it was very much a commentary on the sadness and loneliness that can take hold when relocating from a country that you’ve spent your whole life in.

Thankfully, the nine-month report is a much happier, healthier, and altogether bouncier child (sorry).

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Homesickness

Addressing the proverbial elephant in the metaphorical room

It’s that time. Time to talk about the Big H. No, not Harvey Weinstein, the other thing. Homesickness.

A few months ago I dumped a bunch of potential titles for posts into my Drafts folder to remind me what I had ideas about. One title was simply Homesickness, and AJ said “Well, you can’t write about that yet, because you haven’t gotten over it.”

I think I’ve been truly homesick just once before, back in September 2003 (or was it October?) when my family drove me the three hours from Wales to Manchester, and dumped me there. I remember feeling a profound sense of loss that day when they drove away, leaving me living on my own for the first time ever. This experience has been wholly different, for obvious reasons.

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Negative Nancy

It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to

I recently mused that if I carried on complaining about things in New York / America I’d earn myself a Grumpy Old Man badge, and then had a friend tell me that I sound frustrated or angry all the time.

Whilst it’s fair to say that a healthy percentage of my content has been more critical in tone, I feel it would be remiss of me to not point out the following (some would say obvious) fact: moving countries is hard work.

This blog was always intended to cover the trials and tribulations involved in uprooting ones entire life and moving it three and a half thousand miles across the ocean and, guess what, there are many vexatious things about a country in which you haven’t spent your entire life!

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Timehop: Paris

I reinstalled Timehop just over a year ago; the infamous app that lets you relive past triumphs, miseries, and WTFs all in one handy place on your phone.

It recently reminded me that it had been two years since we opened our office in Paris – it’s gone now, replaced by the acquisition – and I felt like doing some rambling reminiscing on the matter.

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You say tomato …

You say ‘toe-may-toe’, and I say ‘toe-mah-toe’. You say ‘Poe-tay-toe’, and I say ‘poe-tah-to’.

‘Trousers’ are ‘Pants’. Holidays are ‘Vacations’. Pavements are ‘Sidewalks’. Flats are ‘Apartments’. ‘Fucking awful drivers’ are ‘Drivers’.

And, apparently, ‘On Time’ is ‘Five minutes late’.

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Pack it up, pack it in

Let me begin

If you’ve ever moved house, you’ll be familiar with the chore that is packing. If, like me, you’ve moved eight times in the last four years, you will be so intimately familiar with it that the mere mention of packing sends you into a whimpering foetal position.

Packing to move house is easy though, really. You get a load of boxes. Put your stuff’n’things into said boxes. Hire a van, lorry, or friends & relatives, and cart it all off to your new place. It’s laborious and tedious work for sure, but it’s not rocket science.

Moving countries is a little more complicated. Especially when you have nowhere to live at the other end.

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