15 days

I have 15 days. 

15 days before I head to Heathrow to fly, via a few days in Bangkok, to Perth where I am the starting a PhD. I keep getting asked if I’m excited. The honest answer is not really. With the wind howling and the rain lashing down it’s hard to imagine that there is a place where it’s warm and sunny, let alone that I’m going to be in that place in just over two weeks time! It feels too incredible to be true.

So what do you do when you’ve got two weeks left? For myself, it seems to consist of enjoying my free time as much as possible, in the certain knowledge that ‘free time’ is going to be a mythological beast for the next few years. I’m trying to tick as many activities off my ‘bucket list’ as possible, hence my seeing ‘Book of Mormon’ at the beginning of the month, seeing ‘Stomp’ later this week and visiting Exeter for the first time ever (how has it taken me so long?!). I’m also spending as much time visiting friends and being with family as I can. There’s also been an awful lot of film watching! I’ve seen ‘The Danish Girl’, ‘The Big Short’ and ‘Room’ in January, and intend to see ‘The Revenant’ and ‘Spotlight’ this week, plus I subscribed to the free month of Netflix and have been taking full advantage of its catalogue. I’ve managed to get the garden as ready as is possible in January, though the weird weather has meant that I’ve had to to mow the lawn! I’ve been sorting through my stuff – the intention is to leave all non-essentials in the UK but it’s as good a time as any to have a proper look at what I own and whether I really need it. I have 30kg of luggage allowance on my flights plus I’ll be shipping a few things that aren’t urgently needed which I’m intending to use once I’ve got settled so I’ve got to decide what needs shipping and what isn’t worth the cost.

Then there’s the organising that comes with any trip overseas – sorting of flights, accommodation, insurance – but the most stressful anxiety-inducing aspect has definitely been dealing with the practicalities of moving with a dog. Huxley is coming with me, but not right away. He’s being looked after by mum and Jo while I find somewhere to live (my supervisor has very kindly offered to house me until I get somewhere more permanent). I’ve had to find an agent to deal with his travel arrangements and the vast amount of paperwork that accompanies them. Moving a dog overseas is expensive. I won’t say how expensive, but will say that I could easily get a return ticket, first class, for the cost of flying him. He has to get various vaccinations and treatments against ticks, fleas, and other parasites and has to have them given at specific dates before he travels. It’s all extremely complicated. And he has to go into quarantine for 10 days after he arrives in Australia. The quarantine station is in Melbourne, which, for those of you who don’t know Australian geography, is on the other side of the country to Perth. Not that it matters as I’m not allowed to visit anyway. So for 10 days my boy will be all alone. It’s going to be a tough 10 days for both of us. And then his travails aren’t over because then he’s got another flight to get him to Perth where we will finally be reunited. But that’s in the future (though, as you can probably tell, it’s weighing on my mind somewhat).

It’s not the first time I’ve moved away from the UK – it’s not even the first time I’ve moved south of the equator - but somehow this feels different to previous moves. Harder. More emotionally complex. The failure of my time in Ireland haunts me. On the positive side, it means that I’m starting my PhD with my eyes fully open, but on the negative, it means that I don’t have the naïve excitement that I once had. I guess that’s what comes of being older.