Royal Mail

As part of the whole move, I need to forward my mail to my new address. We've sold the house (early, just to be on the safe side) and secured temporary accommodation in the same town. We move in the next few weeks.

I looked on the Royal Mail website and saw that I could: a) download the forms, complete them and mail them in; b) call them to receive a booklet of the forms; or c) go to a Post Office. As I had other errands to do today before work, I thought I'd just visit the Post Office. This turned out to be a bad idea.

When I got to the Post Office I was reminded that this is the Tuesday after a long Bank Holiday weekend. The lineup was out the door - but I thought, well, I'm here now...might as well just get on with it.

Have you ever seen a comedy program called Little Britain? I don't like much of it, but there's one sketch - 'computa says No' - that I quite like. After spending time working in a financial institution I find it very funny indeed. 20 minutes later, when I got to the front of the queue at the Post Office, the lady behind the counter informed me that they had run out of forms to register a change of address.

I mentioned that I'd been waiting in the lineup for 20 minutes, and surely there was something she could do? Nope. Nothin'. (No apology, no 'I'm so sorry - I wish I'd known.) She told me that I could go home and download the forms from the internet. She was sitting in front of a computer, so I asked, 'Can't YOU download the forms from the internet for me to sign?' (after all, they're the folks that ran out of them!)

No - she couldn't possibly do that. 'Computa says No!' Thanks for nothing.

Canada, here I come!

Well, that's it. We've made the decision to emigrate.

Funny, it's something I've wanted to do for so long, and now I feel a bit weird about leaving. However, the upside - we currently live here:

It's a nice community 30 minutes outside of London, UK. The population of the Greater London area is about 6 million people.





And we're moving to here:

It's the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada - total population, 150,000 for the region. I think it might be a bit of a change. (For 'bit of a change' read 'Oh My God! I can't believe we're actually doing this!')

In my more sane moments I think it will be great. Let's face it - I hate the commute across London every day. I hate life in the Financial district of London. I'm not too keen on English weather - and certainly Steve feels there's more to life than the job he's doing now. I was kind of voting for Victoria, where my sister lives, but Steve's lifelong dream has been to fly helicopters in the mountains. (He's currently an I.T. manager.)

So - there you have it. We're going to commit economic suicide by selling the house, ditching Steve's job, and going back to school to learn to fly helicopters. (And I foolishly said I had 'more sane moments!)


And how does the Wonder Dog feel about it?


He's not actually that bothered.







Here goes nothing.