New to living in Scotland

Here are three things about living in Scotland that I've discovered in the past 24 hours, that I didn't previously know.

• It's a bank holiday this coming Monday. The last Monday in August wasn't a bank holiday.
• No prescription charges (wa-hey!).
• If your son puts on his "formal wear" (it being Harvest Festival), and he hasn't had a bath the night before, you will have to spend some precious morning minutes getting him to sit on the bathroom floor with his legs outstretched, scrubbing at the mud with a flannel. Yes, "formal wear" is a kilt, and paraphernalia. I'm not a great fan of strict uniform for children, but I have to confess I do love 11-yo in his kilt regalia (and he likes wearing it, so that helps). 

Here is one thing I don't know about living in Scotland, and don't really ever want to know.

• While I was scrubbing 11-yo's knees, he was pondering how you're meant to have a pee in a kilt. He had solved the problem at school by going into a cubicle, and wrapping the event in privacy. But hold your horses before you start typing in the comments box. As I say, if you do know the correct Gents etiquette for kilt-wearers, I don't need to share that knowledge.

I love you all, but...

... no post tonight.

You know you're not in America, when you move house and have to wait over a month for a landline and internet connection. Yes, you read that correctly. Over... a... month... A very long month. Because a BT engineer has to come and activate our internet hub thingy (already installed in the house), before anyone from any other company can do whatever they do to get us connected. Apparetly BT are very busy. 15-yo asked if that didn't count as a monopoly, and if so, why was it allowed. I didn't know the answer.

All I do know is that not having a landline or the internet is a pain in the proverbial, though also strangely useful. It does mean that life is remarkably uninterrupted, and that unpacking can happen at our own pace. On the other hand, it also means that you can end up driving for over an hour round the city, because you're using the GPS to tell you where things are, instead of looking them up on the internet. The GPS tells you that a vet surgery (more on that in a minute) is 3.5 miles away. What it doesn't tell you is that the vet surgery it has in mind is the other side of the city centre, where there are serious semi-permanent roadworks, a zillion tourist buses, roads closed because of some international arts festival or other called "The Edinburgh Festival", and that it's lunchtime. I resorted to stopping at a petrol station and asking the way to the ring road after the vet surgery, which actually was a very clever move. I've only lived here six days and I'm already more savvy than the GPS. That's a relief. I hate being out-smarted by a GPS. That smug tone of voice... That know-it-all superior attitude... Though it has given me a good idea for an epitaph. I think I might have "Recalculating your route" written on my tombstone.

All of which is to apologise for the fact that I'm not posting much at the moment. BT are too busy to connect us up to the internet at home. When I do sneakily find internet access, hidden away in Husband's office (it takes three keys to get in here, but I get a splendid view of the city from the window), I have a whole list of boring admin things to do. Plus I did absolutely promise the kids that I would look at the Scottish Kennel Club website. A promise is a promise, so I must do so (though they are incorrect if they think it will make me more likely to get a puppy in the next three weeks before their term starts, rather than waiting sensibly until we are a little more settled in - as I have explained to them more than a few times). Faced with the choice of engaging with my beloved, but patient and far-flung, bloggy friends, or satisfying the impatient and close at hand demands of my children, I'm afraid I'm opting for the Scottish Kennel Club website.

This dog lark... it's a part-time job, I tell you, and I haven't even got the blessed thing yet.
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Moving on

We are moving back to Britain.

I don't know what else to say on my blog. I have learnt that anything you say, any information you share, you can't take back. I can't ever be properly anonymous again, but I can continue to be semi-anonymous, and I want to guard that. So I don't want to give out details of names and places. But I want to tell my news, dear Bloggy Friends. What to do?

I think what I'll do is tell you a little, and then if you want to know details, you can email me. The address is IotaManhattan, then the rest hosted by gmail. I'm happy to share information, dear Bloggy Friends. I just don't want to do it here. Please do feel free to contact me.

Suffice to say, there's a clue in the labels for this post. Husband has got a job as a school chaplain. It's a great option for the whole family. The kids will have places at the school, which is mostly boarding, but they will be day kids. We will live on site. So as far as the move goes, the two big challenges (finding a house, finding schools) are already in the bag. In the sporran.

It's one of those beautiful moments in life when everything seems to be falling into place around our ears. I haven't shared much about the search for a route back to the UK, but it has been lengthy and demoralising. Sometimes agonising. When we came to the US for a stint, we didn't plan for the credit crunch and what that would do to the job market. There have been times here when we have felt stuck, and panicky. The clock has been ticking in the background. We absolutely HAD to be back before our oldest was 12. He needed to start secondary school in the UK along with peers. That sacred cow fell by the wayside a couple of years ago. Then we had to be back before he was 14 and would start the GCSE curriculum. Bam! Another sacred cow keels over. I can picture it toppling sideways in slow motion, legs giving way and extending to a skywards-pointing position, as the bovine body hits the ground and rotates, sacred udder bouncing and wobbling. The field of our recent life is strewn with several of these supine creatures.

I have had to learn to go with the flow, to trust that life will work out, when we can't work it out ourselves. And now we have an option that is better than all the others. It was waiting for us, but of course we couldn't see it, hiding away round a corner in the future. Meanwhile, we've been determined not to live in limbo, and so we've never allowed ourselves to say "it's not worth it, we might be moving". It's a series of acts of will, but important for expats, I think. So I painted our bedroom even as Husband was in the UK having a job interview about this time last year, and I chose a colour that I liked, not a colour that would be sensible for preparing the house for market. We bought a table tennis table for Christmas, in the knowledge that we would never have a house big enough in the UK for it, and therefore probably wouldn't get our proper money's worth out of it. I started an MA, which I will now leave unfinished. When you're an expat, you have to live in the present, not for a hypothetical future. You really do.

I'm needing a clinching razor-sharp one-liner at this point, to close the post, but waah, I also have to make three packed lunches, get showered, put on some clothes, kill the haggis for dinner, and be out of the house in the next, oh, 4.2 minutes. Talking of living in the present.

I'm so happy.

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