America

Despite what I might write here, things are hardly unbearable here, by any means. I guess it's human nature to focus on the discontents and rant about them, but there's plenty of good here, too: not least, my god! we are rich :)

Well, at least more affluent than I've ever been - we have a brand-new car (my first ever), a pleasant 3 bedroom house in a leafy suburb, and pretty much all the toys and gadgets that we want: and if we feel the pinch a bit financially, that is just a combination of Cat not being permitted to work for pay yet, and paying off the cost of moving here & setting up house again, more or less from scratch. In a year or so, we should have those all done, and be able to buy a substantial house quite easily.

And, there is a sense of, well, unconstrainedness here: calling it freedom is a bit facile, but after the crowdedness of Europe, and in particular after the tight-corseted attitudes of England, things are much looser and easier. If we have periodic clashes with BastardCorp (in all it's different names), well, that happens everywhere - I still remember, bitterly, my dealings with Telebastards NZ, and those crappy architects that screwed the pooch in the Kinghorne street extension.

Plus, we are away from the english passive-aggressive, negative, carping atmosphere: that alone is like getting out of prison. OK, the people here might be racist & sexist, but hardly worse than the grotesquely racist working class english, or the (largely) snide and vicious middle class sexism: and at least here they are friendly and open at first encounter.

Oops, time to hit the road ... Memphis here we come!