Here and there

A little bit of Scotland…

… in the heart of Dun Laoghaire, at the People’s Park:

Heeeeelllloooooooo Ireland

No proper internet access at the new place yet, so Mr. B has kindly given up his work computer so I can quickly add an update…

After 10 hours of driving, ferry hopping and then driving again, we’ve made it to Ireland and we’re staying with Mr. B’s parents for the week, as they live in a nearby town.

Now it’s a case of waiting for the rest of our lives to rock up in the removal van on Wednesday and start the grand unpacking, accompanied by the traditional house-moving conversation of:

‘What’s this – is it yours?’
‘Um… no, it’s not mine.‘
‘Well, it’s not mine either…’

You know, the kind of stuff we should have sorted out before shoving every last scrap of our lives together in a van and driving several hundred miles.

There’s also the small challenge of putting the kitchen together. If I have the presence of mind later on, I’ll take a picture and you can see the chaos.

Happy days.

Q2 – goodbye Edinburgh, hello Ireland

You’ve mentioned that you’re moving to Ireland. Are you finding that a move to a whole new land mass is more challenging than a normal house move? Are you apprehensive? Excited?

It’s all very exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. Perhaps this is a good point to provide some background to the big change – something I should have done in my first post, perhaps but I couldn’t get my thoughts straight at the time.

Many moons ago, I met my Irish husband-to-be in Edinburgh. And we decided to set up home here, get married, all that kind of boring domestic stuff.

Then work came up for him back in Ireland – about six months before our wedding in Edinburgh last July. So off he went. The idea was that I would join him as soon after the big day as possible, because the work was, er, working out for him. And I can do what I do just about anywhere (fingers crossed), so it made sense for me to move.

Now, it’s pretty clear that I’m a little late with the whole moving shebang. This is because I was offered a really good career move job for 10 months… in Edinburgh.

After talking it over with Mr B., I decided to go for it with his full support (he’s so fab). It could only help me with finding a job when I finally made the move, I reasoned (we’ll find out soon, I guess).

So we got married in July 2006, went on honeymoon to Italy and then came back to our respective countries to get on with work.

What it’s meant since then is a lot of pinging back and forth between Dublin and Edinburgh (I know the Ryan Air and Aer Lingus flight times off by heart) and enormous phone bills.

I like to tell people that I keep my husband in a separate country. That may be all very well and good if you’ve been married for 20 years and can’t stand each other. But we’re at the beginning of it all and we’d quite like to, you know, see each other every day. It’s not an unreasonable expectation, methinks.

Back to the main question… I’m being optimistic (naive?) about the logistics of moving to a different land mass. And I’m hoping that it will be relatively straightforward as the house is ready at the other end, so there’s no issue with waiting for people to move out etc that you get with a normal house move. It’s probably one of those things where I could tell you afterwards where it went wrong!

So far there haven’t been any problems – although that also worries me as it makes me suspect that there’s a big spanner just waiting to clog up the works. Like the ferry with all our possessions might sink on the way over. All fingers and toes crossed for a safe passage.

I’m sad to be leaving behind such all my friends and a fantastic city. That’s what upsets me most. And I’m not happy about having to look for a new job and all that entails. (‘Basically, I’m a people person but I can work on my own… My greatest fault? Oh, that would be my perfectionist streak…blah blah blah.’)

But the flip side is that it’s a whole new adventure – lots to find out, lots to explore – and I’m really looking forward to that. Did I say something about wanting to spend time with my wonderful husband? That’s quite a plus as well.

I’m also unreasonably excited about living in a country where you don’t have to hunt down 284ml cartons of buttermilk – you can get it in big tetrapaks and it’s right next to the milk on the shop shelf. Hurray!

The big move

Well, that’s it – I’ve handed in my notice and everything’s about to change. In just under six weeks’ time, I’ll be upping sticks, leaving family and friends behind, and lugging all my worldly goods from Edinburgh to Ireland.

My oversized cookbook collection forms a sizeable part of those goods. I’m going to start taking bets on how many boxes I’ll fill with them. Given that there is one bookcase full and several other overflowing shelves/piles around the flat, what do you reckon?

As the big move approaches, I’ll have to suck it up and try to pare down the stacks but I’m a hoader by nature and find it difficult to part with anything, let alone books (blasphemy!), food-related or otherwise. If anything, the collection is going to grow over the next few weeks as I trawl the second-hand shops and visit book fairs… Oh dear.

Book transport logistics aside, I thought it would be good to start blogging about my new life in Ireland and all the cooking, eating and sharing of food I’m hoping lies ahead. It’s also probably a good way for my mum to see that I’m eating properly – she worries a lot.