2014 In Review

It was the year we moved from the bosom of family and friends and bracing Yorkshire air, to a sunny little SoCal beach town. The year TLOML went from being underemployed to really rather busy (is it wrong of me to miss those months when he always had time for a coffee and stroll?). The year in which I got a Green Card, a CA Drivers License, and a CrossFit gym membership.

And the year in which Lady P went from a beautiful baby to an even more beautiful toddler.

Jan 2014

Dec 2014

Here's to another year of growth, and health, and love, and happiness.

Happy New Year.

Are we home yet?

Last Saturday we took Lady P along with us for dinner at the home of our dear friends in nearby Manhattan Beach. She slept in a travel cot while we ate, and afterwards we scooped her up and hoped she'd stay asleep as we drove home.

During the short drive we kept our voices low, hoping the whimpers we heard from the back seat were sleep sounds. But as we backed into the drive, we heard a very distinct 'Home' from little Lady not-asleep-at-all P. And when I carried her into the house, she said it again.  'Home'. Loud and clear.

I was glad to hear she thought so. And glad that when I put her down in her own cot she fell straight back to sleep. In her first 18 months on this earth she's probably slept in more different beds and clocked up more travel miles than I had in my first 18 years. It's nice to know she feels so settled, and knows where home is.

It's safe to say, Lady P fits right in here. She spends her entire weekend on the beach - not to mention several afternoon strolls there during the week - and has almost mastered putting on sunglasses. A true LA beach baby.

She thinks this is normal

Need privacy, must wear shades. Gah! Upside-down!

And us? Are we settled? It's been six months after all. TLOML took back to SoCal life like a duck to water. As for me, well, I still balk at the size of the fruit and the sugariness of the bread. But... well, I do have a flipflop tan line.

And I found myself tutting at the lack of parking at Target the other day, meaning I'd have to walk the whole long way across the parking lot (yes, I said parking lot) in the sunshine with my trolley full of discounted cleaning products. And the other day I scribbled the quantities for baba ganoush - something I've been perfecting lately - down and found myself writing 'eggplant' instead of 'aubergine'.

Speaking of cooking, I'm constantly rustling up kale chips or oatmeal cookies, like a good Californian wife and mother. And the other day I got a bill from the Dr and all I had to say was 'are you sure there's a deductible for preventative care?'. Like that's normal.

So yes, I guess I'm at home here too.

Homeward bound

Yippee! This time next week we'll be in Saltburn! We are heading home for a whole glorious month: 4 weeks with family and friends up North, bookended by a night or two in London at the start and end of our trip. It is a supreme indulgence, and I am supremely excited.

I have been feeling increasingly sentimental about lovely Britain of late. As in, welling up a bit, can't quite finish my sentence as I ramble on about how Lady P will miss out on autumn mists, and school uniforms, and proper apples, and cricket. (Yes, I edit out things like UKIP, the Tory disembowelment of our welfare system, and persistent light rain).

Saltburn! Aah.

England! Sigh.

I long for home! Much more than I did last time we lived in the US. Maybe we can blame my current trash TV favourite, I Wanna Marry Harry, which is full of shots of misty fields and golden stately homes and cream teas. Sigh. Or maybe just an increasing awareness that American bread tastes like sweet, salty nothingness.

On reflection, I think something about being in the US permanently has given me permission to indulge in full blown sentimental nostalgia about home.

At the same time, being in the US indefinitely (permanently?) requires me to get to like it a whole lot more - and being settled here makes that possible. I know why we came here, and the way we decided to make it work (namely with a long stretch at home every year). I also know the many benefits of living here: the Hermosa Beach lifestyle is a very easy one to fall in love with. We're happy here - to the extent I feel almost guilty about it. Like I'm cheating on England, where I always said I wanted to live forever.

I hope we can have our cake and eat it to. That is, enjoy the career and lifestyle benefits of being in LA. And still nurture those precious relationships with family and friends - and Lady P's knowledge of her English roots - with a long trip back each summer. I wonder though. I hope our month in Saltburn just cements this feeling that this works, and we don't lose too much by being here. And not that after we leave I cry for a month...

Furnishing the Sugar Cube

Furnishing the Sugar Cube itself is no great challenge. Its modest size will happily accommodate our modest furniture. We had to buy some bookcases and a new sofa bed and that's about it.

Furnishing the garden which surrounds the Sugar Cube is not so easy. As well as the lovely, pebbled backyard we have a patio alongside the living room, and a newly landscaped area next to the office.

The backyard, complete with grape arbour

The office's backyard

And to fill all these various, spacious spaces, we have... a small bistro table and two chairs.

The right thing to do, for the long term, is to go and buy a good, solid teak dining table and chairs. The arbour is about 15 foot long, and is crying out for a long Italian-style table. Then we need a picnic table or a bench, or both, for the space by the office. A breakfast-sized table and chairs for the patio, which is closest to the kitchen so a natural spot for morning coffee in the sunshine. And maybe some lower seating there too, so we can chill outside while Lady P learns to walk / ride a bike/ skateboard on the patio. Oh, and a couple of loungers for this sunny spot in the backyard.

My guestimate suggests that to furnish the entire outside space the way we'd like, we'd need to sell the baby, or a kidney, or both. So it's time to be creative (or, as some might put it, cheap).

I know, I know, first world problems.

Mmmm, the smell of fresh Fabuloso in the air

Our new house smells like home, or at least, how our LA home should smell. (Our English homes always smelt of cat, and books, clothes drying on radiators, and baking, but that's a different story).

TLOML tracked down our old cleaners and they are not only still available, they are as incredibly hardworking and detail oriented as we remember. They are three girls who claim to be sisters, which we find unlikely since they are all essentially called Mary. There's Maria, Maribel and Mary. Maybe their parents are really very devoted Catholics. Maybe we lost something in translation. Or maybe they are cousins, or friends, and not actual blood sisters.

Anyway, we call them The Marys. The first day after we reunited with The Marys was a real trip down memory lane. They favour a particularly punchy cleaning fluid called Fabuloso. It's the sort of product that when you smell it, makes you feel like your nostrils have been cleaned. Maybe even part of your brain and ears too. We haven't used it since we left Malibu and were no longer in their care. Now it's back and our little Sugar Cube house smells like the old surf shack in Malibu.

Also an old favourite game can be played again. We used to call it 'Hunt the kettle', because every week they cleaned the kettle and put it in a different cupboard. Now it's not only the kettle we are hunting, but also the tray for Lady P's high chair, and her bibs too.

We are also being reminded, fondly, of the vast quantity of products they use. They go through Fabuloso by the gallon, and miles and miles of paper towel every week. We think of them as really good value, but once you add in the products it would probably be cheaper to pay a Harvard MBA. Still, they are nice girls and they do a good job, and we are very happy to have them back.

It's like the old days back in Malibu only way more fun. Partly because we have more stuff for them to hide. And also because this brick floor is an a*se to clean, and I'm very grateful to have someone do it for me. Fabuloso, indeed.

When our ship comes in

Our shipment is en route with all our stuff, presumably chugging slowly along the Panama canal as I type.

In the meantime we have a small perfectly formed house in which to live. We are making do with some gap-filling bits and bobs. I've described it as camping but it's better than that. Still, I miss our stuff and am looking forward to being reunited with lots of material possessions. Yes, I'm that shallow.

But our ship is carrying all the little things that make a house a home. Not just the sofa and dining table, and all our clothes. Also a lifetime's worth of books, a lovely orange plate from my granny, TLOML's childhood baseball glove, and you know, tchotchkes. And useful things that we could replace, but it seems wasteful to do so when the ship will be docking in a couple of weeks. For example, my clever egg timer that cooks in the pan with the eggs. Last night's devilled eggs were a little on the soft side. And, for another example, a cheese grater. I guess I might be taking Von's up on that offer after all.

When our ship comes in we can watch TV from a sofa, not a rug.

When our ship comes in we will eat at a dining table, seated on dining chairs. The office chairs will be deployed to the office, where they belong.

When our ship comes in the beach towels will be for the beach, and our nice bathroom will get the fluffy white towels it deserves.

When our ship comes in we can relegate the sofa bed to the guest room and sleep on a Queen again.

When our ship comes in I will have more than three pairs of trousers to choose from. And I can keep them on coathangers too!

And perhaps most importantly, when our ship comes in Lady P will have a proper cot, and all her toys and books. We can throw out the Pampers box and install her toy box, and instead of reading stories sitting on the floor, we can get cosy on her daybed. We may even have replaced the crappy paper blackout blinds with something pretty by then too.

Hurry up, ship!

Double Red Letter Day

Sunday 16th February 2014 is a double red letter day. It is Lady P's first birthday, and it is the day we move into the Sugar Cube House.

Obviously the  big bold red letters are for Lady P's birthday. One year is a big milestone for her and for us. We kept her alive for a whole year! She's no longer a red faced screaming newborn who doesn't even know how to eat. She's an incredible human being who really does know how to eat.  Here's to Lady P.

Just born

One year later

And yet, I'm afraid our focus will be on the move. Most of our belongings are still en route on the container shipment. But we do have a tonne of IKEA gap-filling furniture to build, and a host of Target purchases to distribute around the Sugar Cube. Plus we're just so excited to move in and begin what we hope will be a long, full, happy chapter in Hermosa Valley.

I am going to try to bake a cake today while we're still in the temporary flat. So that's something (for a while it looked like a box of Target cookies was going to serve as her birthday cake). If Lady P's really lucky we'll find ten minutes to stick a candle in it, sing happy birthday, and take a quick photo at least.

And in years to come, if she asks us what we did for her first birthday, we'll say 'we gave you a room of your own, and an IKEA lamp'.

Seven days and counting

Seven days till we move into the Sugar Cube, and counting. Literally.

I am marking off each day that we have to spend in our temporary flat with great delight.

It's not that this is such a terrible place to be. It's in a great location, four blocks from the pier in downtown Hermosa Beach. We can walk to everywhere we want to be from here. The flat is also comfortable and well equipped.

TLOML and I each have our own spaces to work in. They are close enough together that we never have to shout to get one other's attention.

My desk is the table, his is the sofa

And TLOML's office space is conveniently located next to where we park Lady P's buggy, making it handy for a fast getaway for them both.

Yes, that is a Car & Driver you see in TLOML's office lobby

 ...and her buggy is parked up a nice short distance away from her play area, so there's not too far to carry her when we get home.

Note the Fisher Price ipad cover, now filled with a picture torn out of National Geographic. She doesn't know any better.

Practical and useful though it is, there are some drawbacks. For starters, someone is sleeping in what should be our walk-in, forcing us to use our suitcases as wardrobes.

Lady P's little tiny bedroom. Please don't call Social Services.

Also, well, it's not home. We're camping out here - and we'll be camping out in the Sugar Cube too, till our container arrives in March. But that's different. Here we have to put newspaper down when Lady P is eating, so we don't spoil the owner's rug. In the Sugar Cube she can mush all the banana she wants into the brick floor, and we can wipe it clean lovingly, knowing it will be the first of many thousands of times we will wipe that lovely brick floor clean.

Here we have to push the owner's stuff aside, or lift it up out of Lady P's reach, and to make space for ourselves. In the Sugar Cube we will have an awful lot of space and no furniture or tchotchkes and knick knacks to push aside. Instead, we'll have a big blank canvas onto which we can imagine our future. And of course to begin the lengthy debate about where to put the TV. I can't wait.

Househunting:

After months of searching online, and debating our criteria (3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, outside space, since you ask) we were all fired up for the actual househunt.

So we hit the ground running: we hadn't even been in the country 24 hours before we viewed our first potential home.

Described as a 'Tree Section Gem', it was in fact a rather small, dark, tatty old house. It certainly is in the highly sought after 'Tree Section', but 'gem', it aint. After that we viewed a dishwasher-free home a block from the beach. And a bonkers salmon-pink house where the kitchen and the dining room were on different floors. And a couple of very practical but totally soulless townhomes. We saw some bigger houses in Redondo but decided it wasn't the right vibe for us. And a couple of larger homes which were just the wrong side (i.e. East) of Route 1 for us.

It's starting to sound like I'm picky, doesn't it? In fact, TLOML has told me I am just that. But it's not all nitpicking.

In addition to all those flawed properties, there are a couple we really like. One is a small, but perfectly formed beach cottage, 3 blocks from the beach. Despite that it doesn't meet my '2 bathrooms and a little yard' criteria, it's so darn cute, and so very near the beach, that I would definitely compromise. And the moment TLOML heard the surf, from the front doorstep, he was ready to move in.

The other place is on the most wholesome street I've ever seen. Kids climbing trees, white picket fences, and all that stuff. It has a yard, too. And two bathrooms. It has a jolly yellow door and olive and lemon trees (you'd think I'd have learnt my lesson with the fruit trees, wouldn't you?). But it lacks the ocean breeze.

On reflection, I think Malibu really ruined us for life. We have been saying 'We really don't need to be right on the beach' for a while now. And we've been saying 'Let's rent a place with enough space for us to really settle into, so we don't outgrow it before we're ready to move.' And yet, here we are, seduced into a tiny cottage by the ocean breeze.

When it comes down to it, though, the little house with the yellow door is probably a better long term option. There's space there for Lady P to learn to ride a bike and for me to grow vegetables, and for TLOML to grow his business. Fingers crossed we get the place, because I am fully smitten.

Though if it doesn't work out, and we end up squishing into the little cottage by the beach, I think that would work out too.

Welcome to Hermosa Beach

Well, we made it. We are here in lovely Hermosa Beach, a few days into our househunt and readjusting to life in Southern California.

Thanks to a half empty plane, and an enormous bag of snacks and toys, the flight was not too painful after all. Lady P's body clock has not caught up with the time zone change yet, and we're enduring some 4am breakfasts and long, shouty nap fails. But we're hoping it won't be much longer till she chills out and rolls with the SoCal vibe.

It'd be hard for her not to, because Hermosa Beach (and neighbouring Manhattan Beach) is all about with the chilled out SoCal vibe.

The holiday flat we're staying in is covered in surf and beach themed knick knacks. Judging by the number of houses we've passed with 'this way to the beach' or 'beach house' signs on their exterior, I think this is the way people round here decorate.

The local corner shop is adorned with surfboards, sells wax, and specialises in surf-friendly smoothies.

People are jogging, skate boarding and beach biking along every sidewalk. (Yes, I said sidewalk. When in Rome.) There are bowls of water for dogs outside all the shops and cafes. People smile and say hi when they pass you on an early morning coffee run. It's almost like being in Saltburn, for friendliness.

Apparently the kids at Hermosa and Manhattan Beach schools can opt for surf as one of their Phys Ed choices. The pier has a 'Surfer Walk of Fame' on it.

The beach is dense with volleyball pitches and Baywatch style lifeguard stations.

I could go on, but I think you get it. It's a nice place to live. In fact in many ways it reminds me of Saltburn: a small, friendly community by the sea.

Now we just need to find somewhere in it to actually live.

Hands across the ocean

We're off, taking our tiny tyrant on a long flight to the land of perfect teeth and endless summer. Last night we crashed at our dear friends, the fabulous e-tailing entrepreneur (is that a word? Let's make it so) and her family.

The Fabulous One and I have been close co-conspirators since we met in our first grown up jobs. We've bridesmaided for each other, and once visited a ropey strip joint together. So you know we're fast friends. And for most of the time we've lived at opposite ends of a large city, a country and a continent and whatever you call the girth of the USA and the Atlantic added together.

The Fabulous One lived in Dubai for a spell, and a few years later in Tallinn, while I was firmly embedded in the NW5 comfort bubble. We quickly devised a method of emailing chat where we'd answer each other's questions in CAPS LOCK: to the outside observer it looks like shouting but we knew it was just the fastest way to answer important queries about fripperies, tittle tattle, TV shows and so on. We used to post each other magazines, complete with post-its and scribbles ('LOVE these boots!', 'Thinking of getting my hair cut like this, whaddaya think?') to recreate the feeling of flipping through a glossy while in the same actual room. And we were early Skype adopters. I made a few trips out to see her overseas, too, back in the days when I was footloose and financial-responsibility-free.

When I first moved to the US with TLOML, she was one of those friends I took for granted it was 'au revoir', not goodbye. We bridged the gap with emails and Skype, again. Despite the much longer flight, and the fact she had two lovely daughters to leave behind, her and her husband visited us in Malibu for a priceless few days of constant chitchat.

So it felt fitting to spend our last night in London with people whose friendship has already survived plenty of time spent apart. I calculate that we've lived in different countries for over a third of our 18 years of friendship. And I'm sure that in another 18 years we'll have just as much to say to each other, as we reconvene over a G&T and a Harper's Bazaar somewhere in the world. The same is, I know, true of friends like my WonderTwin, and my favourite little sister.With Skype on our phones, and most importantly, the willingness to swap idle chit chat whenever the opportunity arises, I know we'll still be besties even though we're far apart.

Thus fortified with friendship, I head off on my voyage. Au revoir!

Friendly skies

Up until about a fortnight ago, Lady P was a notably chilled out baby. You might almost have called her placid. Sure, she has her moments of wild giggling. And she loves to stampede about on her hands and knees. But she's one of those babies who will lie in her cot chatting away to her toys for a good 45 minutes in the morning. The kind who doesn't squeal if you take away, say, the iphone she's got her hands on, so long as you replace it with a rattle.

More to the point, she was a baby who would sit on TLOML's lap in a cafe, quite content to play with a sugar packet or pepper grinder while we enjoyed a relaxed coffee. And she honestly enjoyed sitting with a book. I'm not sure she fully appreciates the narrative ark of 'That's Not My Lion' but she loves turning pages, saying 'oh' at each turn, and touching different parts of the page in wonder. Her mealtimes were leisurely, if messy, affairs as she worked her way through a range of flavours with interest. She made her own amusement, fairly quietly, in many a confined space. So you can imagine we weren't too worried about travelling with her.

That was up until about a fortnight ago. Now it is a different story. Now she shrieks like a pterodactyl* if anything she wants is not immediately placed within her reach. Mealtimes are a rollercoaster ride of pleasure - when she finds something she likes - and terror, when more of that thing isn't instantly provided. Books are for shouting at, bashing and throwing on the floor. And her favourite game is moving at pace into a place of danger, shouting and shrieking on the way.

They say babies change quickly and everything is 'just a phase'. Please pray that this phase is a shortlived one. Or pity the poor sods who are on an 11 hour flight with our tiny tyrant in a few days time.

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*Actually we don't really know what a pterodactyl sounds like. But if you close your eyes and imagine a high pitched, repetitive shriek... well, you get the idea. It's what we imagine a prehistoric angry bird sounds like.

Househunting, again

We are househunting, again. Actually, we've been househunting for months. Ever since a return to LA was a glimmer in TLOML's eye, we've both been quietly surfing real estate porn. I'll admit I am often distracted by the high end, 'if we won the lottery tonight', stuff in Malibu for real, droolworthy surfing. But for the most part I am trying to stay focused on somewhere to live once our temporary accommodation ends.

So we're both constantly plugged into Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads and Westside Rentals. Not to mention Craig's List, which we will always favour because it's how we found the place we had on the beach in Malibu. Sigh. Anyway, sketchy surf shacks are no longer going to work for us. Nor will rabbit hutches, nor will cockamamie flats.

We need a proper, tidy, sweet little family home. With a grassy yard, or at least a decent patio. Preferably a shortish walk to the beach.

I'd like to live here

Or here

But do we need somewhere with 'nice energy'? That particularly Californian turn of phrase crops up on quite a few property listings. Call me a sceptic but I'm okay with just average energy, to be honest. And how about 'fully executive ocean views'? Seriously, one place really did claim such a feature. And so far as I could from the listings, they didn't mean a view of the skyscrapers of Downtown LA. Weird, and definitely not something that made the list of 'essentials' for our next house.

You'd think we'd have learned, from our NY experience, about the perils of househunting from afar. (We viewed about a dozen flats only to rent one we'd never seen, which turned out to be unimaginably small). But we've wandered the streets of Manhattan and Hermosa Beach on Google Maps Streetview so many times now I feel I know the place like the back of my hand.

Of course, there are real limitations to looking online. One of those is psychological - I know it's daft but I just can't get excited about any property with a grey sky behind it. So those streets which were photographed after the hazy marine layer lifted, and have that classic Californian bright blue sky in the background, shoot to the top of my list.

This time next week we'll be looking at these places in person. Yikes! I might delay any face-to-face appointments to the afternoon, when the marine layer has lifted and the sun is shining.

Adaptability

Like all good middle class parents, we eschew television for tinies, knowing it isn't helpful for her development. Much better for Lady P to have a fun singsong or look at a book or a toy with us. (Or, failing that, look at the toy on her own while I sit nearby playing on my phone).

Predictably, we're as fussy about food too. Almost everything she eats is lovingly handmade, from scratch, using low sodium, organic, ingredients. Except the Dairylea, but that's really just a treat for special (yikes, we're out of carrot soup) days. Oh, and the Aptamil. But let's not get into that again.

So far so wholesome. I even make her banana pancakes at the weekends. It's idyllic, honestly.

But now we are moving, and our stuff has been shipped today. So we are camping, with limited kitchen kit, until we leave on Monday. TLOML and I will work our way round our favourite Saltburn takeouts, a sort of victory lap for our final week. But Lady P is not so easily fed. I could scramble her an egg, and provide her toast and porridge and fruit. But the days of elaborate stews, soups and bakes are over. For now.

So I've stocked up on Ella's Kitchen: the acceptable face of convenience foods for babies. I hope she likes it. Actually, part of me hopes her first words are 'no, I prefer mummy's cooking'. But then again, she'd get awfully hungry this week. So yes, I hope she likes it.

As for the TV rule... well, ten hours in the air is a lot of time to kill with singing and books and toys. The TSA rules won't allow enough space for the amount of toys it would take to keep her amused for ten hours. And yes, she might sleep. But on our last transatlantic trip she napped for a total of an hour, during 20 hours of travel. Ouch.

So I've downloaded a series of In the Night Garden for her to watch. And we've ordered some ridiculous baby headphones in case she wants to hear the sound - so she can really appreciate the full narrative arc. I suspect she won't have much of an attention span for the iPad but I also know we'll be grateful for every 3 minutes of waking time that is not spent wriggling, grumbling or bothering other passengers.

How fitting that as we leave wholesome Yorkshire for a new life in LA our baby gets to watch her first TV and to eat her first convenience foods. Welcome to America, Lady P.

And if these strategies succeed, and she enjoys eating food from a packet and watching a screen instead of interacting with us, the next question will be - how do we wean her off the telly and the convenience foods and get her back on 'Dear Zoo' and my home cooked shepherd's pie?

The cull

It's always nice to have a clear out and get rid of some clobber. Having moved 4 times in the last 4 years we have had that opportunity plenty. Still, stuff accumulates. So before the packers came this morning to pack and load our stuff up, and before we pay through the nose to have it all shipped out, we did a quick cull.

This is partly about throwing out possessions that have outlived their usefulness. Clothes, old baby things, books that have been read and aren't worth keeping, that sort of thing. But there's also a category of possessions which are perfectly useable - but we just won't need to use them.

Some of the things we won't need in California are:

• My large collection of Oyster card holders, including this limited edition gem from an old Arts Council promotion. We're not going to need a lot of public transport accessories where we're heading.

• Our little milk pan (scratched and worn from overuse). We use it for warming TLOML's milk for coffee, as we don't have a microwave. And we have a special freezer-friendly plastic bowl we use to store ice in, since we don't have an icemaker. It's actually against Californian property law to rent out a property without an icemaker. I think. So both of those items can be left behind.
• Socks. When we last lived there I think I wore socks for a few weeks out of the year. So any substandard, slightly worn out, fall down too easily pairs are going to go. Best socks only make the cut.
• Coats, gloves, and hats too.  When you don't wear a coat every day for months on end, you don't need a few options to rotate. So I'm waving goodbye to the older, less favoured coats. We'll keep some for when we go away. After all, we're visiting Saltburn again in June. Just kidding: I was bare legged and sleeveless all summer this year. I'll really only need winter clothes for travel: winter visits to cooler cities, July jaunts to San Fran, and that one week of the year it's actually a bit chilly in LA and everyone gets excited about being able to light a fire. For the rest of the time we'll be like everyone else in LA, and keep our winter warm layers mothballed in the attic.
• All stationery items designed for standard ISO paper. As in, the paper size system that is used across the whole rest of the world. You know, the perfectly logical system where an A0 sheet folds down to make A2, A3 and so on, and all our envelopes and folders match up. North American favours a quirky system of two competing and very similar sizes of paper ('Letter' and 'Legal') and so all my C5 envelopes and A4 folders are being culled. American paper sizes is one of the things of the things that makes me sad about America (along with gun control laws and the religious right. But I'll keep politics out of it).
• All the little plastic drawers and wire hanging trays I've bought to supplement our bathroom and clothes storage in our rented places here. Even the most basic US rental will have proper built in closets, and a bathroom with a decent storage. Of course, that's because they were all built within the last 50 years. For what it's worth, I'd always happily trade in convenient closet spaces for characterful period properties. But as characterful period properties are in short supply in California, I'll embrace the spacious, many-shelved closets of the 1980s bungalow instead.
• This parking disk, for use in a scheme beloved by those who run Yorkshire's market towns. 'Free disk parking' signs completely baffled TLOML when he first saw them, though I'm proud to say he adapted as quickly to disk parking in Northallerton as I did to valet parking at The Grove.

It's almost a shame we are culling this stuff, as in our new, walk-in closeted, two-car-garaged* lifestyle we'd actually have room for all the crap we've thrown out.

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*This is the kind of house I picture us in, purely fictional/ aspirational at this point pending actual house hunt and lease signing.

English Understatement

One of the many things I know I'll miss when we move to the US is English understatement. American enthusiasm is often welcome, and I do like that Californian sunny sensibility that leads people to be overwhelmingly positive about even fairly mediocre things.

But there are times when a spade needs to be called a spade. The people who write the labels at Sainsbury's Basics know it's true. I meant to write a blog post about this a couple of months ago, when I noticed that their cat litter packaging bore the legend 'Does the job'. Brilliant. No high faluting claims about odour control, clumping, environmental impact, and so on. It's just cat litter.

They've updated the cat litter bag now but here are some other prime examples.

'A little less tidy' is a genius way to make lettuce snobs question their prejudices.

'No lookers', so don't come complaining that they're all outlandishly big and have gnarly black eyes all over them

Someone had a bit of fun with this one, didn't they? It's a nice little pun which makes it okay that their 'peeled' tomatoes actually might not be peeled.

Just tuna, innit?

'Takes your breath away' - I'm guessing this won't be one of the more subtle garlic bread experiences

'Some broken'. Oh well. Tastes the same, eh?

'Not quite as soft' / scratchy as heck tissues. 'Still handles a sneeze', after all, you're only wiping snot, what do you need it to be soft for?

My favourite. 'For the table, not the cellar'. If you're buying wine to lay down, maybe steer clear of the £3.50 bottle.

I thumb my teeth at your fancy packaging! Piffle to it! My big bar of chocolate only cost 30p!

We only started shopping at Sainsbury's since we moved to Saltburn, so I read a sort of Yorkshire drollery into these labels. They're the exact opposite of all those overstatements, the pretensions, puffery and hype I used to post about under a Emperor's New Clothes tag in New York. And the chances of seeing anything as dour in the land of year-round sunshine and megawatt smiles are slim to none.

So I'm enjoying them while we're here, taking special misty-eyed detours round the aisles to soak up any labels I haven't seen yet. Yes, I know that's weird. I'm getting sentimental, indulge me.

Logistics and lists

I've got so many lists I need a list of the lists. There's the list of utilities we need to cancel. A list of stuff we're going to courier out, as we can't live without it in the six weeks it will take our shipment to arrive, but we don't want to fly with (like some of Lady P's toys, or my work wardrobe). A list of stuff to sell or give away. A list of things to organise, like childcare and carpet cleaning, and shipping insurance. A list of things we need to borrow in the few days after our stuff gets shipped and before we leave.

So I could spend all day making these lists. Or, better yet, doing the things on these lists.

And yet, I find myself sorting out a massive box of 'spare' coathangers into piles: good ones, mediocre ones, poor ones. Or putting 'This Book Belongs To' stickers in all Lady P's nicest books. Or writing blog posts about how I'm writing lists and not doing the stuff on them.

Category C coathangers. Phew, glad I got them sorted

I think it's called procrastination.

Goodbye London, Hello America

We got it! We got the Green Card! I aced the test. Fully prepared for a full Mr and Mrs-style quiz, I was disappointed only to be asked a couple of questions about TLOML’s family – where they live, how many siblings he has, that kind of thing. Easy.

Perhaps TLOML didn’t share my confidence, as he actually stepped forward to answer the first question himself.

‘Where in the States is your husband from?’ asked the officer.

‘Well, I’m originally from –’ TLOML began, until I interrupted him with a sharp dig in the ribs.

‘I think the question is for me, darling’, I said.

The officer chuckled and I think pretty much got his big ‘DEFINITELY MARRIED’ stamp out there and then. It didn’t even matter if I got the answer right, there was something in the way I cut my husband down that demonstrated beautifully the strength of our relationship. (Also I suspect having your baby with you helps. Plenty of people get married just for a visa, but I don’t think anyone goes through pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood to secure a Green Card.)

We celebrated with an expensive Mayfair hotel bar lunch. Lady P especially enjoyed depositing mashed up banana and semi-masticated breadsticks on their leather chairs and clean carpet. And then we hit the road north, before they could issue us a bill for carpet cleaning, leaving London for the last time until we fly out to LA.

Fittingly our last weekend in London was spent staying in my old manor, in Lady P’s godfather’s NW5 flat. So TLOML reignited his relationship with Chicken Shop and E.Mono, and we had a good afternoon with old friends at a quality NW5 boozer. I also managed to squeeze in a little drinkin’ and dancin’ with my Wondertwin at an old friend’s 40^th, in a brilliant old pub in Kensal Rise. On the way home she wrangled with the taxi driver to put Magic on, which reminded me, hazily, of many nights out in our misspent youth. All in all it was a very good reminiscipackage of a weekend.

Good job we got the Green Card. It would have been a bit embarrassing to have to tell everyone we said goodbye to that ‘we’re still here’. As it is we can fly out to LA in a couple of weeks feeling like we gave London a decent farewell.

Visa surprise

The US visa process is really weird. I don’t know quite what the USICS are playing at. First of all, they publish quite clear timeframes within which each stage should happen. Secondly, they stick to them. What's more, they provide checklists so there's no confusion or doubt about what documents are required (thus avoiding the Brazilian passport notarization fiasco of last year's visa shambles).

We are moving towards Green Card status at pace, and after last year’s trials it is quite a surreal experience.

Not only is it faster, and clearer, it’s also a heck of a lot more thorough. I am required to have up-to-date vaccinations, a clean bill of health and a clear criminal record. At the moment I’m busily getting police records, updated vaccinations and medicals.

The visa paper mountain continues to grow

By contrast the UK visa process TLOML went through last year seems flimsy and arbitrary. He could have been a disease-ridden vagabond and still be let in. And yet we had to provide reams of evidence of the validity of our relationship, not to mention the deeds to my father’s house (despite demonstrating that we amply met the income requirements and would therefore be renting a home of our own).

Once we’d decided to move, we wanted to do it straight away. But that was never going to happen. Instead, this steady, predictable pace feels just right. We see enough progress to keep us happy that we’re moving forward – unlike the months we spent in limbo last year. And at the moment it looks as if I’ll be a Green Card carrying spouse by the end of the year. This should neatly coincide with the start of my new job with my old Big Corp team in the US.

It also means we can have Christmas in Yorkshire, which makes me very happy. It all feels rather too good to be true.

Living at the centre of the universe

I used to think London was the centre of the universe, and nothing of note happened in the rest of the country. I suspect that's one of the reasons Londoners put up with so many inconveniences - the high cost of living, the crush on West End pavements, the low level hassle involved in getting anywhere on public transport - because it does feel like the place where everything brilliant occurs. That's partly because it really is where most brilliant things in Britain do occur. But also because British media feature what appears to be a disproportionate amount of London. I notice that bias much more now I live outside of London. Magazines and newspapers, being written by a bunch of Londoners I suppose, are written as if everyone lives there. And London is a backdrop for a disproportionate number of TV dramas and films. Beefeaters, Big Ben and the classic London black cab are a visual shorthand for Britishness.

Yet the rest of the UK is nothing like London. People don't get on the Tube, or spend their Sunday afternoons in Primrose Hill, or shop in Space NK, outside of London. A little over 10% of the UK population live in London - the rest of us live in places like Saltburn, and Berkhamsted, Glasgow and Claygate. To the vast majority of Brits I think London is rather a foreign place. (In fact, I think London has more in common with other world cities than other British cities.) Still, if you live in London you have your faith in the great importance of where you live reinforced on a daily basis.

Saltburn - a little known backwater, frankly.

Los Angeles of course, has this ego problem even worse. Blame the lack of imagination of those people in the film industry, for they don't seem to be able to picture anything beyond the end of their street. So a disproportionate number of films and TV shows are set in LA. Plus thanks to all the celebs who live out there, most of the pap photos in trashy magazines have Santa Monica or Beverly Hills or boring old Brentwood as a backdrop. So despite that less than 5% of the population of the US live there one can easily get comfortable with the idea that LA is the centre of the American universe.

The centre of the universe! If you're in the movies, anyway.

I hate to admit that this is probably an underlying reason behind my preference for LA. It's not a real, worth-acting-on reason, but rather a feeling I'm a bit embarrassed to admit to. It's egotism, I suppose.

If we do end up back in LA we can reignite the illusion of living where all the cool stuff goes on. In which case frequent return trips to Yorkshire will be crucial to flag to Lady P that there's a real world out there. Of course, if we move to some beautiful but boring suburb in the Bay Area we won't need to worry about that. She'll grow up like I did, longing to move to the big smoke (that's London or LA), under the illusion that it is the centre of the universe.