I have been living back in Southampton for the past week.

The build-up to the move was hideous. Tears, tantrums and taped-up boxes everywhere. I know, I know, maybe I should have got the removal people to pack after all. I think it's a combination of bemused memories of the last time we had someone else do the packing (a wizened tomato, carefully wrapped in a yard of bubble wrap and placed in the kitchen box, ditto a used teabag on a saucer, large boxes filled entirely with books and thus immovable...) and my need to feel in control: if they had packed, we wouldn't have a spreadsheet listing the exact contents of each (numbered) box, now would we? My so-called profession doesn't include the word "anal" for nothing...

Once, however, everything that could be put into a box was put into a box; once the removal men had successfully managed to park their van right outside the house; once they'd started carefully and efficiently stacking the bulk of our possessions into the large wooden crates which will become their home for the next few months (so efficiently, that they only needed three containers instead of the quoted four), the tension began to ease, the horror began to turn to excitement, the realisation that what we'd been anticipating for the past few months was finally happening brought a smile to our previously grimacing faces.

Six (six!) hours of cleaning and several trips to the dump later and I'm finally waving goodbye to the my nine foot sunflower (pictured) whose flower had resolutely refused to open before our departure, and heading East on the A303 (a road which still makes me shudder), away from the West Country for the last time. Well for the last time as a resident.

At our new home (which is not actually our home but the furnished house of a friend who works away during the week but who offered it to us as a short-term measure until we buy our own place - confused?), Big was waiting. He'd travelled down with the man with the van and Umberto, the oversized umbrella plant who could not be put into storage nor would he fit into my car. Once we'd decided to use a van for this purpose, evidently other things started creeping onto our "Let's-take-that-with-us-rather-than-put-it-into-storage" list and we became a little blasé with our "What-is-the-minimum-that-we-actually-need" list.

Luckily, our host for the next few months has a generous double garage to house the boxes of "stuff" which don't really belong anywhere within an already furnished house.

So, here I am: back where I was when I started writing this; back where I was when I'd only just started seeing Big (our four year anniversary being tomorrow); back where I was when I'd decided that I needed to make some changes in my life - on which front, I certainly delivered...

In that time, I've:

• Owned two cars
  
• Had six different jobs (all largely pointless with varying degrees of disillusionment)
  
• Lived in four different properties (five if you include the current one) in three different towns
  
• Sold two properties
  
• Bought one property
  
• Been diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disorder
  
• Acquired a diploma in translation
  
• Written two blogs (though not simultaneously)

and those are just the things I can think of whilst writing this.

What I haven't yet done is resolve my work situation so that what I do every day does not fill me with either raging despair or lingering disappointment.

But one thing at a time. I am back where my friends are, I am closer to my family, I am in a place which feels more like somewhere approaching home. And that's definitely something to build on.