One Year On

Welcome, faithful reader, as this week we catch you up with what's been going on over the last year, and discuss what it's like to be back here in the UK.

You of course left us in Lisbon, finishing off a long, slow journey back to Southampton. We arrived back in the UK 12 days after our furniture, and spent a couple of weeks doing various odd jobs on the house before moving back in. I say "various odd jobs"; we were fortunate enough to get someone to sand and refinish our dining room floor before the furniture arrived, as our last batch of tenants had left a delightful deep scratch of about 18" in the middle of the room. The lacquer wasn't fully hardened by the time the furniture came back, so we had to squeeze all the dining room furniture into what used to be our music room for a couple of days.

As we returned, we were reunited not just with the furniture we'd shipped back from California, but also the stuff we'd had in storage here in the UK while we'd been away. Naturally, there were plenty of electrical items which we couldn't easily take to the US, along with the piano, my large Ikea desk, a couple of sofas, bookcases, and our dining room furniture. We really weren't sure how big a place we'd end up renting in the US, so by volume we left about half our stuff here. We also acquired quite a lot of extra stuff in the US, so unpacking was a long process involving a lot of surprises and decision-making over what we were keeping and what we weren't. If you want to get rid of a lot of junk, then it turns out moving countries is a good forcing function to make you do just that.

So what do we like about being back here in the UK? Well, many things. Our first impression was simply that everything is so green here, and it certainly is a green and pleasant land. We have the luxury of a relatively large garden here, and it's great to see it growing and blooming with no sprinklers! Food-wise, Helen's a big fan of being able to buy bread that isn't sourdough, and obviously proper fish-and-chips is a treat we missed. And of course, being close to family and old friends again is wonderful.

But of course, there are many things we miss about Palo Alto, California and the US. It's green here in the UK because, let's face it, it really does rain all the time. Those sunny, low 70s (Fahrenheit) days which are essentially a year-round occurrence in Palo Alto are a rarity here. We miss being spoiled with great restaurants, sporting and cultural events, all within walking distance. We miss the incredible fruit and produce that's available in California: you won't find a pluot here, and I knew Helen had become a proper Californian when she said that the guacomole we bought from a supermarket here wasn't a patch on the stuff we got in Palo Alto. And we made good friends in California that we miss.

We'll always look back on our time in California very fondly, but we also love being back home. We like to think we've brought some of the best bits of the US back with us (go Giants!); unfortunately that couldn't include the weather! The blog is now back up and running, so stay tuned for more tales of adapting to life in the UK!