It begins

It's happening, it's really happening. I'm scared -- someone hold me.

We'd always planned on moving back to Australia some day, for the kids, for the weather, or simply because we were supposed to. And now we're doing it, we're repatriating.

My wife and I being Australian, you'd think that would make it easier. It doesn't. If anything, it's the opposite.

We've been in London for over a decade, living and working and raising a family and supporting various retail credit institutions, and now the time has come to go back. We're selling our house and shipping our lives back to Sydney.

Why should this concern me? Most Brits I meet can't understand why I'm here at all, let alone hesitant to return to the country of my birth. Let's see if I can lay out a few pros and cons to the move.

Pros:

1. We'll no longer have to rely on occasional trips to Spain and Egypt to tone down the reflective glare of our skin
2. The kids will be able to play outside without four layers of clothing, raincoats, boots, and warnings ringing in their ears to stay the hell away from those muddy puddles
3. The economy is strong, having skipped the worst of the recession by virtue of being able to sell to China the shit it digs up from the vacant plot of land out in the middle
4. Our families live there

Cons:

1. With all our natural melanin supplies depleted, walking around outside shirtless will be like taking a nap in a pizza oven
2. The kids will be able to play outside bare-arse naked, and will no doubt take every opportunity to do so (see con #1 re naps in pizza ovens), with warnings ringing in their ears to stay the hell away from everything, because anything you're thinking about touching will probably do its best to kill you
3. The economy is only strong for as long as they keep digging up desirable shit. What happens when the shit runs dry (not an intentional poo-pun)? What happens when China figures out it has its own shit?
4. Our families live there

I could go on and on, and I will, because that's kind of the point of this blog. This will be the dumping ground of my neuroses, my paranoia and my fears. What do you call a xenophobe who fears his own country? Me, I guess. Is it even my country any more? Will I recognise it? Will it recognise me? Will I be able to buy milk and bread without some kind of credit facility?

I'll miss a lot of things about London, and a lot of things I won't. We've got just under a year before our planned departure date, which might sound like a long time, but there's a lot of ground to cover.

Phase one is now underway: the house sale. The way house sales often go in the UK, I'm not just touching wood, I'm punching trees and rubbing the bark into the cuts in my knuckles. That's good luck, right?