Number 32! – 22nd December 2018

On the 22nd March 2014 I wrote the following in my blog (back in the early days!)

“…I’m looking forward to never moving again, well at least hopefully not moving for at least 20 years!!! So what number move does this make, well it will be house/home number 29, but move number 31 – as I’ve been back home a couple of times – this also includes 3 overseas moves.”

Guess what, move 32 is now going to be happening! This will be a surprise to a large number of you. But to let you know what is happening, back in October Pat and I had a big discussion about our future and where we wanted to be and what we wanted to be doing. We ended up coming to the conclusion that for me being near my family and saving for my retirement were 2 very important things so we made the decision to pack and up move to Australia.

This was not an easy decision to make, as I really do love being in Europe and travelling to all the wonderful places that are here. But it is time. With the decision made we put our house on the market and Pat has started his Visa process. We figured that the hold-up would be the sale of the house. We were wrong! The average for selling houses in our part of France is around 2 years and with all the Brexit stuff happening that really has extended out to 2½ years. We had an offer in around 8 weeks, surprise to us but a good one. We’ve signed the first part of the paperwork which is good; the 2nd part should be signed in early March.

So we are now madly trying to decide what needs to be packed up and what we don’t need to keep. We have started to sell some items on-line – like our cement mixer, scaffolding, yesterday we sold my bike (I’ve had it for 5 years and the guy buying it asked if it was new – sort of shows how little I’ve ridden it).

We’re now need to find somewhere to rent, (consider France or UK if you know of anywhere). Why? Pat’s Visa is now the hold-up, this can take over a year, but we are hoping that it will be simple as nothing needs translating and we have been married for over 10 years. But we will see, Pat has to head up to Paris next week for his biometrics and then in January for his medical tests (I’m heading up in January with him – just for the day – so that I can go to the Eiffel tower – which I’ve not yet been too).

We would like to be back in Australia for Christmas 2019, however – there are also a large number of places that I want to make sure that I get to in the next 12 months. We also need to do all the paperwork for importing our pets – yes Siena and Wallis will also be making the journey as-well. Not sure how much they will like it, but I can’t live without my fur babies.

One thing I am doing is putting together a list of places within Australia and nearby that are must visits – so far we’ve got Queensland (to visit Pat’s son), Singapore (it’s changed so much since I last visited), Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and the Adelaide hills, Tasmania, might even get to New Zealand finally. Would love suggestions of places that are worth visiting.

So for now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia