Three weeks home, and I’m not dead yet. I’ve got to admit this is a surprise, even to me.

The problem is not inhaling so many lovely plates of sausage, mash and beans that I choke and keel over - though that is not the most unlikely thing I have ever heard. Nor have I tripped over my own feet and fallen down a drain in my rush to pick up a Saturday paper and get to my favourite Brighton Brunchery before their tables all fill up and the eggs benedict runs out, although god knows that’s always a concern. Nor has a happy British cat slept on my face until I could breathe no more and furballed myself to death.

No, instead, I have just managed three weeks without being run over. Believe me, I am as impressed by this as anyone. And even more so than others.

The problem is not just the not remembering which way traffic is coming from - I know I had 31 years to get used to it before a brief couple of years in The America, but never driving, I wasn’t completely solidly sure of it all that time either, and the couple of years of traffic going the other way (unless it was on one of the many one-way streets, in which case it was going the same way, but twice as much), I’m four times as confused.

Also given the fact that there are many one way streets around where I live, and several of the streets that are two-way are so narrow the only way to tell which side of the road traffic is meant to be on is to measure which line of parked cars are most likely to have their wing mirrors swiped off by the oncoming car.

Telling me that the traffic drives on the left would, of course, be enormously effective… If I knew my right from my left.

Added to this the fact that someone I met the other day said “The craziest thing just happened to me, I was just driving down this very quiet road, at stupid o’earlyclock in the morning, and I completely forgot which side of the road we drive on…”

I mean come on.
If people living here ALL THE TIME can’t remember, what kind of chance does THAT give me?

I wrote this a week after arriving, when we didn’t have internet, but it was all quite fresh and I was still worrity about it all. The cats have settled ridiculously in the meantime. I’ll update this in a couple of days. Still, it was an extra thing I didn’t need while moving, and promised someone I’d expand on panicky twitter messages sometime….

22 hours before our flight: My Beloved, who is braver and less prone to floods of tears than I am, takes the cats to the airport. They have had their rabies shots, and their clean blood tests 6 months later to prove they have not been secretly harbouring rabies behind everyone’s backs. They have had their cat flu and distemper boosters, their worm-prevention treatment, their full veterinarian check-up, and all their forms filled in, witnessed, signed, dated, and stamped by the California State Official up in Sacramento. Their tickets are bought. Passage through the airport booked. Delivery from the airport to our house, booked. All things considered, they are now the most expensive rescue moggies the world has ever seen. Pound for pound, they’re more difficult to export than firearms, more expensive than white truffles. None of this is ever in debate, of course. There’s no question of NOT moving them. They’re our cats.

So My Beloved delivers them to the airport and sees them to their security check, then somehow manages to leave them there, even though they are looking at him like the most desperate and miserable and about-to-be-abandoned cats there ever were. And it is a bit heartbreaking. But it still needs to be done, and he does it. This is why he is measurably stronger than me.

10pm, seven hours after leaving the cats in the care of BA: A nice lady phones, and tells My Beloved that the flight they were meant to be on has been cancelled, the cats have been sent to a nearby pet hostelry, where they will be shown a good time for the night before being placed on one of the two BA flights the next day (we will be able to find out which, for sure, if we phone in the morning). This is a bit worrying, but cannot be dwelt upon. There is too much else to do.

Overnight: We receive notice from the people who were meant to accompany the cats through the UK border controls and vet, and from the people who were then meant to collect and deliver the cats, that, since they were told by the airline (that’s BA) that the flight was cancelled, they have cancelled their end too, and we should inform them when we know which flight the kittings will be arriving on.

First thing in the morning, the day we fly: My Beloved phones the San Francisco office of BA. He has a conversation that goes a bit like this, in summary:
My Beloved: Which flight will my cats be on today, since they weren’t able to fly on the cancelled flight last night and were put in a pet hostelery and shown a good time by one of your fellow employees?
Hapless BA Lady: I’m sorry, sir, but what are you talking about? There was no cancelled flight. There was a flight that left seven hours late, but it went.
My Beloved: Oh. And the cats were on it?
Hapless BA Lady: What cats?
My Beloved: My Cats.
Hapless BA Lady: Well I guess if it went, they were probably on it, right?
My Beloved: But that wasn’t what I was told earlier, when I was told the flight was cancelled and they were en route to a pet hostelery etc.
Hapless BA Lady: Well, the flight got uncancelled.
My Beloved: Right. But did my cats get un-taken-off-the-plane?
Hapless BA Lady: I dunno. I mean, the plane went. They should have been on it, so I assume they went. I guess.
My Beloved: Do you think anyone there might be less vague?
Hapless BA Lady: No.
My Beloved: Right. Thank you. Goodbye.
Hapless BA Lady: Is there anything else I can help you with toda…. [Head explodes in a shower of perfectly groomed hair, make up and bloodied bits of skull somewhere down the peninsula as My Beloved and I concentrate our most heartfelt good wishes upon her]

A call to the pet hostelery reveals that if our cats were shown a good time there, it was under an assumed name. Certainly they have never heard of them under our name. But then, they suggest, they might have been booked in either by airline, or in the name of whichever airline employee brought them in. And no, there’s no way of finding out if that was the case.

This does not help the general mood of panic in our house.

Realising that this delayed flight means that they will actually be landing in London momentarily, if they happen to be on the plane that two thirds of the people we’ve spoken to think they might be on, we ring the people who are meant to be picking them up and accompanying them through customs and the quarantine centre. These people say that, according to their computer, the BA left on time the day before, and was neither cancelled nor delayed.
Which is an exciting, if somewhat bewildering, development. They agree that if BA are claiming the flight left seven hours late, that’s likely to be correct, but since it hasn’t been updated on the computer, no one will be meeting the cats even if a) the plane exists b) the cats are on the plane, c) anyone, anywhere, regains any sense at all of knowing what they’re doing.

It is the line “No one’s picking them up at our end, Sir, no. According to the computer…” that sends My Beloved into a bit of a tailspin. It is a shame that it takes the sound of a grown adult so close to the edge that he is almost in tears, squeaking ’Are you meaning to tell me they’re just sitting on some TARMAC somewhere? In some or other country but no one’s prepared to pin down WHICH?…’ to get people to act like people again… but it does. Oh, she says, she didn’t mean that ‘no one would be picking them up, just that they hadn’t dispatched someone yet, and that as soon as she’d had the chance to check with BA etc, someone would be sent to do that. Of course. Naturally.

Epilogue, a week later: There were several other small glitches in the plan, but I now sit here with two remarkably happy cats curled up by me. They arrived a few hours after us. Apart from the fact that Little Cat, runt of the litter, keeps wandering into other rooms then yelling her head off because she doesn’t know where everyone’s gone, they’ve settled in faster, and happier, than anywhere in the last two years. Proof, as everyone kept telling me, that cats are hardy and can withstand being moved.

I, however, remain unhardy, and think if we have to moved them again, I might explode with anxiety.

[I started writing this two days before leaving San Francisco, and finished writing it a five days after we got to Brighton when I was feeling a bit sad and missy, so excuse me if it is a little sappy]

People keep asking what I will miss the most.

“Unlimited fizzy pop refills.” I say, being only partly joking - I really do like those. And the idea of always having iced water with your meal without asking for it. And the bottomless cups of coffee (even though the coffee in those bottomless cups is usually piss-weak and terrible. Sorry America, but that’s basically brown water you’re inhaling). These things, all of these, I will miss. Can’t deny it. It’s not the truth, though. It’s not the thing I will miss the most.

I will miss people randomly talking to me in the street. People say hello, or just smile, because it is a nice day and you have made eye contact. They talk to you in shops because you’re considering buying something they’ve tried before and they want to recommend it or warn you off it. They talk to you because they like the dress you’re wearing, or your jewellery, or whatever and they want to say ‘I like what you’re doing there’, without needing a reply or a reciprocation, it’s like a drive-by compliment. That I will miss.

I will miss the sunshine, and the attitude that life is made better by experiences than by stuff ownership, but I’ll be taking that with me anyway. I will miss the geography, and the fog, and the stuff nearby, and I will miss the positiveness that infects this city like the common cold.
And the sunshine. Oh, I said that already. Well, I will. A lot.

There are lots of things I will miss - (the same number of things that make me want to live here again, soon, as soon as it’s logistically reasonable, really) - but when asked what I will miss most, the answer should really only be one thing: My Friends.

And what I will miss the very most is my friends.

…

The last week in San Francisco was a whirling cloud of dust and wine and cardboard and laughing and wet eyes. I’m writing this more than a week later, as it’s the first time I’ve had time to sit down at a keyboard and take time to write anything, which is not representative of how much of a whirlwind it was, as much as how much of a logistical pain in the arse and sheer mess moving continent is. But more of that anon. The point is, inbetween the garage sales and the packing and the runs to the recycling centre, and the cleaning and the blah blah blah, we had a lot of fun.

On of the more ridiculous - and unforgettable - things we did was to rent a limousine with the core of the people who have come to make up our family of friends in San Francisco, dress up, and drive around all the best places of photo opportunity, and opportune the life out of them while drinking copious amounts of fizzy wine. See here:

And here:

And just generally drive around singing along with a playlist of cheesy tunes, hanging out of the window of a stretch limo with a horse head on and making sure to stop for In-n-Out burgers along the way. Yes. we were those people.

The other day, as I was wandering down to the centre of Brighton to get something boring but necessary - a phone, I think. Or a kettle. Whatever - I took with me a little ipod shuffle that I was expecting to be filled with interesting, brain-stimulating US public radio podcasts, and then found it to be still stuffed with the kind of playlist you might take along on a stretch limo ride instead. It made me smile from ear to ear, and will not be being wiped clean of that for some time to come.

The final Saturday, after we’d spent all day shoving most of our possessions onto the pavement for a garage sale, bringing them in again when it rained, taking them out again, selling stuff, packing other stuff, and cleaning and decorating the house enough to have a halloween/leaving/birthday in it - remembering to do pretty much everything on our list along the way apart from eat - people came to our flat and celebrated and farewelled and drank with us. And, while I wasn’t looking, somehow completely without my knowing, they installed a photo booth in our garage. A man came with a fully sized photo booth, and a huge box of props, and set it up. Knowing how much I love antique photo booths, and seek them out and insist on having my photo taken with everybody in them, over and over again, they did this. It was the loveliest thing I could imagine. They were all surprised when I didn’t cry when the photo booth was revealed. But I’ve cried enough about how amazing a gift it was to us as I’ve gone over the stack of hundreds of pictures left behind to make up for that.

I can even see them online any time I please, because the service they booked (Glasscoat Photobooth) is brilliant that way.

[NB: I should note here that the reason I look a little odd in these photos is that I was wearing a blue wig. The theme of the party was Red, White & Blue (thanks, Amy) because of the whole 'moving from the US to the UK' thing, and My Beloved was dressed as a red arrow (the British flying display team) and I was a Blue Angel (the American one)(thanks to Paul for that idea. It turned out thinking about costumes was one of the things we didn't need to give ourselves to do that week)]

There’s not much anyone can say to this, I know. It’s just me banging on about how lucky I feel to have made the friends I’ve made - particularly me, who doesn’t make friends very easily at all - I just know that some of them might read this here blog, and to not mention it at all (and how much I love them, and will miss them, and am looking forward to seeing them soon, here or there), seemed almost criminal.

Well, not quite criminal. That’s probably a bit strong. It’s not like shoplifting. Or using your phone during take-off, or something. Or arson. Or farting in a lift. Or murder. It seemed lower level criminal than that. By quite some distance. Anyway.

That is that. And now we are back in Brighton with other wonderful friends - here and around here - and ready for the next set of new adventures.
ADVENTURES, I SAY. Thanks.

“And then as I was sitting there, in the female-owned gender-inclusive omnisexual tattoo parlour, one of the other artists came in to brag to the guy doing my tattoo about what she was working on in the other room…”

”My client” she’d said, breathlessly “is ALSO having a bird, but get this - get this, it’s awesome - she’s having an OWL tattooed right on her PELVIC bone!” she’d continued, hands gesturing pointedly down toward the lower torso/groinal area.

“Awesome!” agreed the man, uninventively, with buzzing inky needle poised over my wrist, momentarily distracted. He liked owls. He’d told me.

“AND!… The TIPS of the WINGS, yeah?…” The artist continued, asking the question she was about to answer herself, as is the Californian way “Are on the very tips of her pelvic bone!”

She motioned meaningfully down toward her lower torso again.

”Aaaaaaaaawesome.” breathed my tattooing man, nodding slowly and in a way that represented being suitably awe-filled.

“And all I could think was: where does that put the actual owl? You know, the owl’s face?”

My friend nodded. “OW.” She said.

“I mean, I might be wrong about owl physiology, but I’m pretty sure I know where the pubic bone is, and I can’t see many ways that this wouldn’t end up with most of the owl’s head being portrayed on your ladybits? And I understand that might be a symbol of empowerment. But in what way, exactly?”

“Perhaps you wish to suggest it eats mice.” My friend suggested.

“Yes. Or makes screeching noises.”

“Or that it can rotate 360 degrees.”

“It also dictates a rather strict grooming policy. I mean, if you invited a new friend home, a very good friend, I mean, a special friend, you’d want to have a big momentous “Meet my OWL!”, rather than them be all “What is that, some kind of bearded mongoose?””

“Which would be less successful.”

“Yes.”

I am glad to be back with my friends in Brighton.

Dear Internet.

Hello! I have been away. I mean, from you. The internet. I have not been away physically. From places. Or rather I have been away from places, but only by dint of being IN other places, which were not places I had presently been in, and had therefore been away from. I am now in those places, and away from the other ones. As, in fact, I always am (and am not). As, in fact, we all are (/aren’t).
I have confused myself.

Regardless, I have been in several different places, but in very few of those places - almost none, in fact - have I and you, the internet, been there at the same time, so I haven’t been able to be ON the internet, and IN those places concurrently. And while I have not missed the places I have been in, I have missed the places I haven’t currently been in, and have missed you, dear internet.

(It should be noted for the record that I have also not missed some of the places I have not been in while also not being on the internet. I have not been in Leningrad either, for example, and have not missed not being there at all. I’ve never been there, in fact. I also didn’t miss a number of other places I’ve never been to).

So, Internet: what have I been doing, you say? Well, I have been doing quite a lot.

1) I moved continent. From the North American one to the European one, or rather to an island OFF the European one.
It was a very good move. In that, I mean, we managed it quite successfully, although the cats sort of got mislaid by an airline half way across, and My Beloved has had a cold since about the second he stepped off the plane. We are all in one piece now, though. Apart from My Beloved who is in one-piece-plus-additional-mucus. More on the kitty-drama later.

2) I grocery shopped transatlantically: One of the crowning achievements of our move - the thing that made us look more organised than anything else - was the fact that, several days before we flew, we ordered a supermarket delivery for the night we arrived, as well as a weekly fruit and veg delivery to start the next day. Of course, we didn’t quite take into account that the shop was basically filled with things that we had missed a lot (lemon squash, many many tins of baked beans and granary bread for toast) but that we didn’t have any cutlery. Or crockery. Or glassware.
For the first two days (until our stuff arrived in a storage unit) we shared a mug with SuperMario on it that someone had left in our new (quite temporary) flat.

3) I unpacked a box of belongings that I packed up more than two years ago: And at this point realised how catastrophically bad we were at packing back then. I mean, we’ve both moved enough - pretty much annually, as previously discussed - but neither of us had the time or the brainpower to think through how you need to pack differently when putting things in storage for a long time/cutting back on your amount of stuff full stop. Thus, unpacking was marked with a lot of groaning, and shouting ‘WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING?!’, or at least it was until we found out how damp quite a lot of it was, at which point it just became about what we didn’t have to throw away. Ugh.

4) I signed up for a boot camp: Yes, in order to get through the first month or so of dark mornings, disorientation and probable sads, I signed up and paid for a bootcamp, knowing that this would mean I would have to get up, no excuses. And I have, because I am stubborn like that. It’s four mornings a week, for four weeks, come rain, come wind, come more rain, torrential rain, gale-force winds and sometimes, SOMETIMES, chilly chilly sunshine, I’ve been down on the seafront, dressed like a ginormous condom, running, skipping, doing press-ups and kettlebells and boxing and all of that kind of shenanigan. I’m really, really enjoying it too. Weirdly.

5) I had a nice time reintegrating myself with some of Brighton society, and am looking forward to seeing lots of people in The London and ‘Other’ as well: Though I’m not sure when, but at least now we have you back, dear, lovely internet, I can go about organising things. I am ridiculously dependent on you, you know.

6) I did some work! Just in case you thought I was mainly larking about on beaches in the rain and sitting under a slanket with my cats, staring at piles of books that have to be reshelved, I have ALSO been doing work, honest (while under a slanket, with cats, etc etc)(everyone has come across the blanket with arms concept, yes? If I hadn’t have had one, I’d have run back to California by now, to be honest…)

What have YOU been doing for the last two weeks while I have been internetless please, dear internet? And dear lovely lovely people of the internet?