For those who were worrying about this...

The sourdough starter survived the flight. I decanted a generous cupful into an "airtight" plastic container, wrapped it in a towel, sealed it in a plastic bag, and then wrapped it in PJ's sweaty gym gear and buried it in his suitcase -- I'm not daft. On reaching our hotel, I took it out and discovered that the manufacturer of the airtight container should have been sued under advertising standards legislation, but only the towel was damaged -- and easily binned. It now sits, malevolently, in our hotel bathroom, waiting to be fed and emitting noxious fumes. All will be well.

Goodbye Amsterdam, Hello Southampton!

Well, we had to start somewhere. And it's not been a bad start. We arrived at Schiphol yesterday to see one of the longest queues at passport control ever. Smugly, we waltzed through using our Privium cards, thus justifying the 100 euro per year fee. In fact, it was almost worth exiting the airport and then going through again, just to be annoying (but we didn't). The flight was on time, Southampton Airport is small but decent, and the rail link very efficient. The station is just a short walk from the terminal, and trains to Southampton take 6 minutes -- to Winchester, just 10. Not, of course, that we plan to be taking lots of flights, but it's good to know that we can get to Dusseldorf, Paris, Amsterdam, Majorca, Murcia, etc quickly and easily.

Southampton itself is also not bad. Yes, it's full of pale, flabby Brits and Yates Wine Lodges -- you were right, Alan -- but it's got a great park, cycle racks everywhere, and lots of shops. Borders! M&S! John Lewis! PC World -- all just a short walk from the railway station! People don't walk into you as you walk through the mall! Parents say thank you when you hold open doors for their baby buggies! Stores have stock on the shelves! This must be a bit like how it was for East Germans after the fall of the Wall -- shiny consumer goods everywhere! And then we got The Observer this morning and it's yet more consumer goods porn, but this time it's all ethical. Because that's less damaging than pikey working-class rampant capitalism, oh yes. It's all lust and satiation and endless guilt and I wonder how long it will take before i tire of it and long to live in a country that doesn't have "shop shop shop!" as its national mission statement.

So, a new blogging template, a new start, a new set of things to worry about. The rantings and ravings will have plenty of life here.

Tot ziens!

OK, we're off. We had a great farewell dinner last night with Bill and Beth at a Korean restaurant -- it was just a few hundred yards from the flat that PJ and I first lived in when we moved to Amsterdam more than six years ago, but we had no idea it existed until yesterday. I'm sure there's a gag in there about Alanis Morrisette and irony but I'm exhausted and can't be bothered to find it. But I will post a pic of our meal.



We're in sunny Southampton for the weekend and will be up in Winchester on Monday. Not sure if Virgin Media will have us online by Monday evening -- can't wait to see how UK service compares with the Dutch lack thereof. I'm well aware that I will have lots to complain/blog about when we get home.

So, what will I miss? Cycling, yoga with Sandra and Leo, friends, the view of the canal from our living room, cycling, our gym, puppies in baskets, outdoor life, laughing at tourists looking miserable on tour boats in the rain, oud kaas, jong kaas, Sushi Me, De Via Portare, cycling ... but not smoking in restaurants. At all.

So long!

Sucker!

We've done it! The movers packed everything (including half a roll of kitchen towel and a filthy dishtowel) on Tuesday and we completed the sale of the apartment yesterday, proving that there really is one born every minute. We never got to meet our buyer. After Ajaxing my fingers to the bone to clean every cupboard and surface ready for the inspection, the buyer didn't turn up -- she was off in the mountains, ski-ing (I presume), and had delegated a cousin to sign all the paperwork at the notary's office. We didn't get off lightly though. Halfway through signing all the contracts, the notary told us that our buyer's money hadn't yet turned up in their accounts and that we might need to sign over power of attorney to complete the deal the following day -- but hey, we could always sue her if she defaulted. Double-yoo tee eff!? Much to our relief (and that of the two agents in the room), a file clerk poked her head around the door to say that the money had showed up, all was well, and we could head off to Wagamama's for a celebratory lunch.

We are now debt-free and (temporarily) homeless. The latter situation is being assuaged by our staying in the most FABULOUS apartment on the Herengracht, courtesy of an absent friend. This place is gorgeous, crammed full of those designer pieces that you see in Wallpaper*. I hardly dare touch anything -- I like being debt-free -- and have done little more in the kitchen than reheat pizza and make a salad, but it just like staying in the bestest boutique B&B. It's almost tempting to stay and asset squatting rights ...

De trop

I feel somewhat surplus to requirements at the moment. The movers are here, and Martin, Dennis, and Jimmy are doing a great job. Stuff is rapidly disappearing into boxes, massive dust bunnies are revealing themselves from where the bed used to be, and I can't do anything except get in the way. I headed off to the library earlier to return my last remaining books and hung around there but felt guilty that I was leaving PJ to do all the work. Except he wasn't. He was doing exactly what I'm doing now -- sitting by the window, enjoying the sunshine, and surfing.

My biggest achievement so far today was lugging 12 bags of rubbish over to the other side of the Brouwersgracht. They get rubbish collections on Tuesday and Friday; ours are Monday and Thursday, and of course there was no collection yesterday, it being Easter Monday. We were facing the prospect of having vast quantities of rubbish and nowhere to put it, but I wrestled womanfully with the Amsterdam Gemeente site and figured out the nearest dumping point. Life is good.

I am starting to feel a little calmer about everything. Although, given the number of boxes they've already filled, I am more than a little concerned about where it's going to go at the other end.

Moving sucks

Whoever said that moving house was one of the most stressful things you can go through was right. There are two main problems:

1. I'm a chucker, PJ's a hoarder. Which mean that we argue over whether to keep just about everything. Of course we need those SIX empty Tanqueray Ten bottles! Why wouldn't we want to ship the world's largest collection of European plug four-ways. Old Amazon receipts from 2004? Well, they might come in handy one day. The house we're moving to had better have TARDIS-like proportions to contain all our crap. And that's another problem in itself. We only saw the house for about 30 minutes in total, the pictures we have aren't particularly useful, and neither the agent nor the landlady can give us room measurements. So, in my glass half-empty way, I think it's considerably smaller than it probably is, while PJ is full of boundless optimism and thinks it's much larger. And everytime PJ points out that there's a lot of cupboard space, I respond that I've already (mentally) filled all that space and there's still his collection of Japanese ticket stubs to fit in! ARGH!

2. Given that we are discarding some small cabinets, we now have piles of stuff in the living room. The movers will also pack for us, which is a fantastic service - I don't know how people pack books themselves, as I get halfway through and then start reading long-last favourites, before chucking as many as possible into a box and then not being able to lift it. However, the piles of stuff started piling up on Wednesday last week and the movers don't come till Tuesday, which means I've got about five straight days of feeling slightly nauseous every time I walk into the living room and am confronted with this.


I think we should go for a long bike ride today to get away from it all.

Down on the farm

Ah, 2007. The year we move back to the UK -- in less than 3 months' time. Which means we need to start looking for somewhere to move to. It turns out that there is such a thing as too much choice and it's incredibly hard to decide where to settle. We started off looking at Lewes and move westwards on a weekly basis. Lewes: too few restaurants. Brighton: too noisy and expensive. Hove: not bad, still in the running, still quite expensive. Worthing: up and coming (words to strike joy into middle-class hearts), but further out and possibly rather dull. Now Winchester has entered the fray, thanks to Papa Dumpling mentioning that it had been rated the best place to live in Britain. And it's not too far from Heathrow -- good for PJ when he's off on one of his many jaunts to the US on Mr Branson's nice airplanes.

Inevitably, in a quiet moment, I turned to the Interwebulator to check out property in Winchester. And found a rather nice six-bedroomed property in the Badger Farm area.* Yes, that's six bedrooms for a couple with no intention of ever having children. But, six bedrooms would mean one for us, one spare, one each for the future kitties, and two home offices -- a necessity, given how many phone meetings we both seem to end up taking. In addition, we have three next-generation game consoles and vast amounts of content to house, so six is starting to look a bit tight. Anyway, I rather pessimistically requested further details from the estate agent via one of those online forms and heard nothing via email (as I'd requested). Plus ca change, etc, I thought -- UK customer service will suck just as much as it does over here. But, amazingly, the further details arrived in the post this evening! Not that they contain much more than was on the site -- in fact, they have fewer of the murky, camera-phone pics snapped by the agent (without the owners bothering to tidy up first -- there's still washing-up in the sink!) than the Web site does. But it's a start.

Still, let's not count our chickens etc. We have yet to sell this place and we haven't yet been to either Worthing or Winchester -- both might appall us, leaving us back at square one. Any other suggestions of places to live -- excluding Stoke Newington?

* Who would farm badgers? And what for? Their tails?