Let's see where this one ends up - 29 days

When you've just solved the mysteries of the universe, it's difficult to then follow that up with another blog post. It's kind of like the feeling I'll get when one day I eventually have this guitar - a left handed* Schecter Damien 6.

*My left handedness is responsible for a lot more than most people's handedness. If I wasn't a lefty I wouldn't have met my now step-dad, and I wouldn't have been any good at cricket (which of course is responsible for a lot of things itself, as explained in Friday's lecture).

Anyway, back on topic. Once I get the above guitar I'll play it for a bit and realise that it doesn't make me play any better, and it will sit in a corner for the majority of its existence. I might just leave the tag on it and call it Nigel.

I feel obliged to write a bit more about guitars, as it will look a little bit nicer if the text goes all the way down to the bottom of the pic. They leave scratch marks on teh wall and are noisy when they fall over. That should just about do it.

The above could all be an analogy for when I eventually land at Memphis International Airport, and reunite with my wife and son, riding off into a life of normality. I would actually be proud of that analogy, it if had been deliberate, or true.  But like all of my other posts, and everything else I write, it's totally ad-libbed. Just like my life so far. I'm getting pretty good at leading into stories thesedays.

Since I've moved around a lot in my 30 years of (linear) existence, the idea of moving away isn't as daunting as it may be for some folk. My friends are already spread across the country, and world, and I'm hardly the first person in my extended family to emigrate, with relations in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (real ones, not fucking clans with my surname).

Legend, yes. Scottish, no.

Oh, I'm going to stop here and get this one off my chest. If you, your parents, or you're grandparents weren't born in Scotland, as far as I'm concerned you're NOT FUCKING SCOTTISH. You are what you are, and if you have to go back generations to claim you're something else, you've got a problem.

When someone introduces me to someone who is Scottish, only for me to find out they've just traced themselves back to a clan, that doesn't cut it for me. We don't even give a fuck about clans. Braveheart is as historically accurate to Scotland as Weird Science is to the USA. Yes we do wear kilts, for weddings, and most of the time it's either ironically or grudgingly.

There's also a bazillion percent chance that I don't know the Scottish person you know.




Anyway, people are used to me moving and I'm used to people moving.

goodbye-juice

So, up until this weekend I had this weird feeling. Since all the issues with paperwork, surgery, and the house sale are resolved, but I still had about 5 weeks before moving, it just didn't feel like it was really going to happen. Most of the hard work is done, and I'm really just tying up loose ends, sorting our some stuff at work, and saying all of my goodbyes, mainly through drinking beer with people.

I knew that when I started to say goodbye to folk things might just feel a bit more real, and this was confirmed this weekend, after meeting my best mate from back in the day for the first time in almost 10 years. When saying our goodbyes before heading up the road, he wished me the best for the move, and I realised then that he's the first person I won't see again before I move away. Kind of weird that, considering how we just drifted apart in the first place.

This will pick up in the next four and a bit weeks as I do the rounds making sure I get to say cheerio to everyone, and maybe the excitement and nerves will kick in, but really, until the plane lands it still won't feel like it's really happening, due to the amount of obstacles that have been thrown in our way in the last year. The sheer relief we'll feel the second we all meet at the airport will be unbelieveable. Will our life then turn into a neglected guitar? (copyright, it's the title of the first single from my country album.) No. Because that doesn't even make any sense.