So it looks like we’re going to be staying in the UK for probably another 2 years. This has advantages (Kathryn gets Permanent Residence) – and indeed will be eligable to become a British Citizen, should she so wish, which would mean she could have dual nationality (having looked at things, it looks like America doesn’t mind, and Britain doesn’t mind, so that’s all good). Having Dual nationality would be handy, should we wish to come back to Europe to stay for a while once we have kids – which is something we’ve discussed… It also means that we’ll be closer to my mum for a while, and my friends here in the UK. We also have more time to save, and Kathryn has the chance of getting into a job she wants while I’m potentially better able to support her if she wants/needs to do some freelancing (which might be ideal for her).
I am, however, very disappointed to be putting off Canada again. Kathryn has to stay further away from her family, and I have to stay here, being pissed off about the way this country is. Watching the election debates, the second one, I was prompted to curse the whole damn lot of them when they started rambling on about immigration. They are all a shower of shallow idiots and it annoys me how xenaphobic the UK is – and has become – because of shite like the Daily Mail with it’s incessant rant of ‘Immigrants are badness’.
Immigrants are, for the most part, goodness. They bring novel ideas into the country, they bring people who want to work, and they bring diversity into our nation. This is good stuff. Without this, Britain would be a much less rich (culturally, and economically) nation. And it’s sad, watching our country scream that our culture is being destroyed, that the social support systems are being overwhelmed, when it’s clearly bollocks. I sit on the front line of the NHS and I see who comes through, and yes, some of the people who don’t understand how the system ‘works’ are immigrants, but the ones who abuse it seem, most commonly to be British people who understand full-well how the system is *meant* to work, but also know how they think they can jump the queue (and are generally disappointed and angry when they discover it doesn’t work that way).
And making me shout at the laptop incoherantly while watching the debate isn’t a ‘good’ way to make me want to vote for you*.
In other news, we’ve been nozing at properties. This is because if we’re staying in the UK we are not staying in Slough. We have a timetable for moving, which is I’ll grant dependent on selling this house, and sadly we’ve seen several houses that we rather like. And they’ve also made us ultra-picky. ‘150ft garden’ is within our pricerange, it seems, in the areas we’ve been looking at, which means that Kathryn shows me a nice house with an average garden and I go ‘Oh, no. The garden is too small’.
I also have been rather taken with another project house. For two reasons. One, we might make some money on it, and two, it’s got a garage. The ‘favourite’ doesn’t have a garage, which is a bit of a pig, because I promised myself that I would have a garage. It’s also got a smaller garden and no stream, the favourite has a stream, a workshop (with three phase) and a maaaaahuisve 150ft garden looking out on to fields. (I think the project house also looks out onto fields, but has some trees betwxit it and the fields).
My ‘thoughts’ such as they are, are that if we can make sufficient profit on this place, and make a sufficiently low offer on the houses we like, we could stick all our stuff in in boxes and take two weeks during which we get builders in to strip/plaster/prime and in the project house wire/plumb and then we move in and decorate. It’s really bad that I have these thoughts running through my head. I know how much of a pig this property has been.
We do however need to finish this house first, and one of the things we are going to have to do is ‘make a list’ and schedule works, because quite honestly, we suck at working on the house now because it is ‘liveable’.
Anyhow, I must get back to Advanced Life Support, because otherwise I am going to make an arse of myself tomorrow.
* I’m voting Lib Dem, incidentally, despite that, because I quite like a lot of their policies. Not all, but quite a few.
