First Steps

When does a journey really start? Is it a well defined point such as the moment you step onto the plane, when you drag your suitcase off the top shelf or is it months or even years before? The first day in a job, passing an exam, buying your first house or the start of a lasting friendship? Maybe it's all of these things and more. Or maybe I'm just talking out of my hat. 'Probably', I hear you say.

You see, in a little over 24 hours, I will be taking such a step and clambering aboard a 777 destined for New Zealand. A truly momentous occasion or just one step of many? And as some bright spark once said, it's not where you start or end up but how you got there that matters. Or, if you are an Ian Brown acolyte, it's not where you're from that counts but where you're at. Hhmmmm. 

Anyway maybe this particular journey started on the 5 March when, on a dull and grey Darlington afternoon we caught a train to Edinburgh to attend a 'This Is New Zealand' Seminar - an evening devoted to the mechanics of moving to the Southern Hemisphere. If this was the first step then it couldn't have been any less salubrious. OK, I admit we had 1st Class seats but this was the result of blagging some free travel vouchers courtesy of other delayed journeys. Not so impressive now is it? 

Anyroadup, as they have want to say in these parts of the world, watching monochrome grey house roofs spin past whilst a leaden sky threatens to dump more water on already sodden fields I got the feeling that I was thousands of miles off my intended destination. Metaphorically and literally speaking. Physically I still am but after only a couple of months of planning, form filling, house emptying, possession moving, van driving, goodbye waving and tear shedding I am closer than I ever have been. 

Or maybe it started many years earlier, when we bought our first house in Leeds in 1994 and started a chain of events that would culminate in moving to Darlington and eventually paying off the mortgage, giving us the freedom to take a break from the UK. 

Whether the decision to work abroad for a couple of years was a good one or a gargantuan mistake....... who knows. Whatever it is, and whatever the outcome, it'll be fun finding out. And like I said before, it the journey that's interesting and not where you end up.