For the past few months The Girl and I have been looking at all of our possessions and mentally putting them into three groups: ship, pack or chuck. The chuck category split further into bin, eBay, charity or friends. First thing we had to look for was a reliable shipping company. A colleague, with a beautiful falsetto singing voice, recommended that we used the Seven Seas. And it was easily one of the best recommendations I’ve ever received in my life. Apart from being one of the cheapest shipping companies we looked at, they also ended up being one of the friendliest, most organised companies ever. They supported us at every step of the way with some of the nicest telephone operators I’ve ever spoken to. So if you have anything to ship, nationally or internationally, speak to Seven Seas. Only cost us £300 for everything.

The day, or week really, finally came a while ago when we had to pack all the things we wanted to ship if they were going to reach us within a month of us arriving in Australia. We were both pretty good and got the whole lot packed in one night after work. We sat proudly before our nine boxes of cargo and booked the collection for first thing the following Saturday. The Friday before the collection we realised that we made a few mistakes. I hadn’t wrapped any bubble wrap around my precious items. The Girl had managed to pack all her heavy belongings on one side of one box. And both of us had packed shoes throughout four boxes. A frantic, last minute repack was needed. But actually it wasn’t as frantic as we thought it would have been thanks to being quite organised about what we were going to take. While The Girl cooked dinner, I was bent over in a bath furiously scrubbing every trace of mud and vegetation off 10 pairs of shoes. By the end we had six boxes totalling 134kgs, plus a guitar, synthesiser and one pair of skis. Not including the guitar and synth I only ended up packing 19kgs of stuff whereas The Girl packed around 40kgs. It would be easy to make the cliched joke of women being over sentimental hoarders, but that wouldn’t be fair to her. I know that I’ve never been an overly sentimental guy, but it was still strange to see that after 30 years of living in the UK I could fit everything into under one box. Where The Girl needed two boxes for just two years.

The final stage was to complete the paperwork. The forms for the shipping company were straight forward; addresses, contact details, insurance. But the Australian Customs documents were ridiculous. They were filled with spelling mistakes and the occasional riddle. One question was just to determine if someone other than you had packed something in the boxes. But it was written in such a way that if you thought too long you would get a nose bleed. The obvious questions like “Are you packing any drugs, guns or child porn?” were easy to answer. But another one just made both myself and The Girl exclaim “Really?”. Everything which we bought within 12 months had to be listed with the date we bought it and how much we thought it was worth in Australian dollary doos. Everything. By 23:30, the night before the collection we were almost monosyllabic in our descriptions: Clothes. $300. Nov 2010. What we lacked in lyrical descriptions, we made up in honesty out of fear of inspection.

The next stage, the eBay stage, has begun. So far it hasn’t been as enjoyable.