Points of Departure

Predictably, the final few days of my time in England descended into chaos, for reasons both predictable and otherwise. The days settled into a routine - wake up early, work on tidying, cleaning the house and setting things up for Korea, and going to bed eighteen hours later never having done quite enough. Our cooker was disconnected, our kitchen electricals were sold, my car was put into storage since I hadn't been able to sell it, and our woodworm treatment was done - the latter seeing us stripping up the hardboard from the kitchen floor at 23:30 on Monday evening. Old furniture was dumped outside for the local Council to collect, my cable company took our boxes away, computers were packed away, and a myriad of more minor tasks were generally accomplished.

Despite all efforts, not everything was completed and while there were conscious compromises, a few things were forgotten. Later I would realise that I had forgotten to pay one of the companies that did some work for us in the final days, and more minor issues, such as taking a microphone for Skype calls were overlooked. Had we not been working to a deadline, I'm sure we could have spent - indeed should have spent - another week doing the work. But the beauty - or curse - of the situation was that our flight was an immovable object and by Thursday morning at seven, we had to be on our way.