Well, its been 2 1/2 years since I wrote an emotional goodbye to Cape Town and here we are on the move again. This time, though, its not an emotional goodbye as we are not leaving somewhere forever as we did with Cape Town – I knew we would never live there again.
But the UK is my home and I have loved being back there the last 2 1/2 years and loved living there and everything it has to offer – so being on the move again was hard to get my head around at first, but we soon all embraced it as the next step on life’s exciting journey. Being a Sagittarius, the fire is in my belly again.
Having made the decision to move first to Dubai and then to Istanbul back in January of this year, it has been a long 6 months getting to this point. A fair amount of organisation, but not too bad compared with leaving Cape Town, as we are not finalising a life there. For me, it is a completely different prospect moving to Istanbul, knowing that I will be back in the UK every 3-8 weeks depending on whether its term or holiday time.
Sitting here trying to doze, I feel inspired to write my first ever blog post on the blog that Peter set up for me months and months ago – I know it was originally set up as a food blog but am going to use it to write about anything I feel like.
We’ve got about an hour to go before we land at London Heathrow to start our new life here in the UK… It feels so weird to have finally got on that plane after all the months of preparation and when it came to it, I didn’t really feel as if I properly said goodbye to the mountain and the beach and all the things that represent Cape Town for me as by that time, I was past it all and just had a tunnel-vision of getting on that plane. But even then, I didn’t quite believe it. As I sat marveling at the awesome service from Emirates, I kept having thoughts about how nice the return flight will be… except there is no return flight, these are one-way tickets – have to keep pinching myself.
Emirates is fantastic – its like travel used to be 20 years ago when you still got the menu telling you your breakfast or supper choices and you get the little snack packet with your gin and tonic (note to Karen – it was all so good that I broke my rule and had some wine also!! Further persuaded as was so excited to see good ol’ Jacobs Creek chardonnay). The food was also fab and as for the inflight entertainment – I am forever debted. I think out of 15 or 16 hours flight time, Billy slept for 2 and watched movies or played games for the rest.
Starting our descent down into London now and preparing ourselves for managing our 12 – yes 12 – bags (another great thing about Emirates is the huge luggage allowance thank God) but have realized that we don’t have any pound coins for the trolleys so not quite sure how we’re going to manage that.
Felt very sad and emotional over my last couple of days in Cape Town and saying goodbye to so many people – I know that I will see most people again and a lot have become very good friends but I will sorely miss in particular all my most wonderful women friends who have played such an enormous part in my life and provided me with the most amazing support over the years – I couldn’t have got through it all without you – Sam, Cathy, Karen, Dagmar, Gayle, Anna, Birgit, Helen – to name but a few. Thankyou for being amazing friends and thank you for being there for me – I miss you already.
