For the love of mince and tatties

Christ on a bike. This moving to Scotland malarky is proving to be a serious test of my mettle.

I'm now in my 5th week of being freelance. My 3rd as a full time, permanently at home, sellout tickets to every toilet stop mum.

And we're still in London.

When we first hatched this plan to move home to our beloved Caledonia, we know it wouldn't be easy. There would be unexpected bumps in the road, hurdles to overcome. Solicitors that would make a saint swear.

But...seriously, Universe. Cut us some slack now please. I'm begging you.

I keep reminding myself that this is the way it's obviously meant to be. This is the path that fate has decided we must take. High road, low road, who knows. But I'll bet you'll be in Scotland afore us.

It's a bit spooky really when I think about it. It's must be almost exactly 14 years to the day since we moved down to London.

We booked one-way tickets on sleazy jet and flew from Aberdeen to Luton (or was it Inverness...I honestly can't remember. How did we get to the airport? Were there tears? Nope. No memory). We'd booked a mere 4 nights accommodation in the nurses quarters at the hospital I was to be working at. All we had with us was what we could carry in our beaten up student sized rucksacks. Thankfully, we'd had the foresight to post a large box of kitchen essentials ahead of us. So at least we could cook.

By the end of our first 24 hours in London, we'd found a flat to rent and my boyfriend (now husband) had found a job. Yeah! We were rocking it! Moving to London? Piece of cake. Lets gloss over the fact that it never entered our naive little heads that renting a flat would require an eye-watering deposit as well as the first months rent. Lets also forget that we shared a single bed for those first 4 nights because we were too skint to afford a double room and too in love to sleep apart (aaaaah).

By the end of our first 36 hours in London we'd bought a bed and arranged for it to be delivered in time for moving in day. I'd dreamt of a gorgeous wrought iron number. We ended up with the cheapest duvan in the shop but didn't have enough for a headboard. But we didn't care.

The night we moved into our bijou one bedroom flat, we splashed out and bought a bottle of wine and scampi and chips. On the way to the chippie, we wandered past the newsagent and had a quick look at the For Sale postcards in the window. Huh. That's weird. Imagine advertising your massage business in the window of the newsagent. Extras available...extras? What, like specially blended massage oil? Geez, Londoners are weird. hahahahahahahahahahahah....oh...euuwwwww (naive? us? oh yes).

So back home to our bijou flat we skipped, slightly more enlightened by the types of businesses advertising in our locality, scoffed our scampi, quoffed our wine and had a minor emotional breakdown.

WHAT WERE WE DOING?

Who were we kidding? Living in London? Two country mice like us? We were obviously insane. So we promised there and then that we'd give it 2 years. Two years and no more. We'd move to Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. That was the plan. 24 months in London was going to be more than enough for the likes of us.

But then we got a foot on the property ladder.

Then baby number 1 came along.

Before we knew it, we'd been in London 10 years and baby number 2 was on the way.

Woah. Time. Fun. Whooosh.

Huh. 14 years in London town. Two sons born as Englishmen with London accents to boot. But our hearts still belong to Scotland. All of our hearts. No two boys can love mince and tatties that much and be true Englishmen.

Scotland runs in their veins as much as it does mine.