Leaving!

Its late so I'll keep this one short...ish! Certainly no time to look up those big, clever-looking words in the thesaurus tonight, no Sir. I just wanted to say it has been a mad week or so. As avid readers of my two previous posts may gather, the trip upon which Kate and I are about to embark has been literally years in the planning. The thought of finally stepping aboard that aeroplane had seemed just too far away to comprehend. Every extra shift worked, every time I stayed a few more hours at work to clean up somebody's overpriced and under-eaten Nacho Combo(tm), it was with that moment in mind, as distant as it was. Yep, that extra two hours equates to maybe £7 after tax, which amounts to perhaps $11US, which could in turn pay for two overpriced Nacho Combos deals at a friendly hyperplex in the States. That was what I told myself anyway.
But now that moment is fast approaching and our last goodbyes are imminent. Sorry, that sounded dreadfully sombre...perhaps recapping briefly the 'mad week or so' would help lighten the mood and move this narrative in the right direction...

So, we left Bradford a day after my 23rd birthday. My mum and brother came to Leeds to say their goodbyes and wave us off in our GNER First Class carriage. Crazy as it sounds, the first class tickets to Norwich we bought a few days in advance were almost exactly half the cost of standard class, had we bought them at the station on that day. With our complimentary newspapers and cups of tea, we motored down to the city where we had met, studied, and grown to love. We had planned to meet and say goodbye again to a bunch of old friends from both university and the UCI where we had worked for over two years. It was fantastic to see all the old faces again, and quite remarkable to note that almost everybody was sporting a radically different haircut from when we left less than five months earlier! I met two old uni friends, Jack and Pete, who I'd not really spoken to for about two years. It was fab to note they'd not changed a bit, and had a great laugh catching up with them. For the outsider, sorry for the in-references, but I have to say cheers to Vic, Jude, Desi, James, Owen and everyone else who came out too! [Damn, while on the subject, cheers to the Odeon posse who made it out for my leaving do too!]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnyway, after staying just one night at a friend's house, (thanks again Desi!) we headed back down on the train to Kate's parent's place in Kent to spend our last few days in the UK furiously packing and saying bye-bye to even more family and friends! There's not been any tears shed yet by either of us, but I suppose there is still time outside the airport! Hopefully from the next post on, this weblog should start to get interesting as our journey will have properly begun! Either that or it'll become a word-desert, maybe the odd tumbleweed of a sentence - such as "We're having loads of fun!" - blowing past every few months or so. As I keep saying to everyone, I'll try my hardest to keep it updated, but I just can't promise anything! Also, I'm not entirely certain they have the Internet in the USA, so you might not hear anything for a while!

Andy.

Oh and for the record, the aforementioned Nacho Combo (tm) was of course competitively priced for the cinema environment - Odeon Leeds/Bradford and UCI Norwich would never seek to overcharge for their quality retail goods. Never. Fact. Yes. Never.