We had been packing on and off for a couple of months, including to send boxes and suitcases back to the UK with friends and colleagues where possible.

How though do you pack up four years of your life?   Four years of happiness.  Four years of challenges.  Four years of hope.  Four years of growth.  Four years of opportunities.  Four years of experience and experiences.  Four years of learning.  Four years of sharing.  Four years of sacrifice.  Four years of benefit.  Four years of deep friendships.  Four years of love.  Four years of memories.

With difficulties and an emotional roller-coaster for sure.  Simple tasks took much longer than planned.

Lots of stuff given away to friends as they gave to us, as well as as to our maid and strangers like the school next door to our apartment.  Making someone happy or giving a second chance to an object as I like upcycling/recycling. 

Three custom-made boxes containing art prints of Steve’s photography made their way via air freight so that we had a connection between 3B and Number 3 in physically the same images hanging on the wall in both locations.  For this we are hugely endebted to Steve’s Brother From Another Mother, Aruna, for having the boxes made, and another friend Mevan for offering a cargo contact who did the shipping at cost price; import duty at Heathrow when Steve and Misa drove back to collect them the night after we had arrived cost even more! 

Steve ran his precious store of fine wines and single malt whisky down to zero over the preceding six months, even to finishing the Glen Deveron 16 that he’d purchased at Birmingham Airport on the way out with his local brothers just minutes before he closed the door to 3B for the final time.  A fitting book-end.

By chance, as Steve took a final phtograph of our empty living room seconds before we left, Misa went to pick up his suit jacket from being draped over a chair.  That split second symbolised that our time was done – for now.

Rennie