Greetings from Edinburgh

So we finally got moved four weeks ago and, after a catalogue of delays and general buggering about on the part of numerous conveyancing and real estate ‘professionals’ (and I use that term pretty loosely), last Friday we actually sold the place back in Nottinghamshire. It only took a year.

Amid the stresses, strains, thrills and spills of moving have been any number of moments when I’ve thought ‘I really must blog that’. But those boxes won’t unpack themselves and, with a new city to be explored, we’ve all been focussing elsewhere.

So… a few potted highlights:

Meet the gang

Tom talks about ‘the old house’ and Ruddington (the village where we lived) a lot. Summer might seem like a convenient time for moving to a parent but, for a four year old who has just fallen in love with this whole nursery/school thing, it just accentuates the ‘differentness’ of this new place and the lack of playmates.

Tom’s approach has been to elevate previously ignored soft toys to the status of friends. The gang includes Trevor the much adored (and frequently filthy) giraffe; Steve, a teddy bear with an irritating jingle; a gangly frog called Eyeball; Mister Cat and a few other recent additions including a koala with unfortunate chalk marks.

We have just about manage to restrict the party to one or two for outings but, when Tom is negotiating the flat in his pushalong car, the whole mob gets crammed in the back.

Personalities have been developed – Trevor is the devil-may-care somersault expert and toy most likely to slide down a muddy bank while the koala has rapidly developed a level of authority-defying cheekiness – and we’re certainly not discouraging this endearing foible. Indeed, it gets every day started with a smile.

Tom’s bedroom is at the opposite end of the flat to the bathroom and our room and, every morning, Tom drives all his cuddly friends to the toilet where he, courteously, holds each of them up to pee before he finally takes his turn. We lie in bed next door, giggling as he provides the appropriate sound effect.

Festival!

So we arrived in Edinburgh just in time for the festival and, while I squeezed a few evenings of grown-up entertainment in while Nik and Tom were in Geneva, the highlight thus far has to be Tom’s fourth birthday treat - The Bubble Guy - http://www.bubbleguy.com/bubbleman/ .

Bubbles filled with smoke, bubbles inside bubbles, kids kissing bubbles, people inside bubbles – what’s not to love about that. Watching Tom’s face and seeing him completely enraptured for nearly an hour was the perfect gift for us – and I hope it was some compensation for him given that his party consisted of playing pass the parcel with three grown ups and sharing his cake with a line of stuffed toys in party hats.

So I’m writing this during one of my all too frequent stays in a dull London hotel – away from my beautiful wife and son in our splendid new city. Talking about them brings me closer to them in some small way and helps pass the evening – I really should do it more often.

I phoned home about 6pm, hoping to talk to Tom before he goes to bed. Occasionally he’s keen to talk and answers questions happily, telling me about his day and his many needs. Today, for the first time, he answered the phone and shrieked happily to Nik - ‘It’s daddy!!’

It’s a measure of how successful Tom is with his implants that it took me some minutes to realise what an achievement this is.

Not quite there yet...

This was supposed to be the entry that opened with an excitable, emphatic 'We're in Edinburgh!'... but...

Instead I'm sat at a borrowed picnic table that's serving as a temporary desk, surrounded by empty shelves and wondering just how the English house-buying system ever evolved into this drawn out torture. Like with any of these things, it's the uncertainty that gets to you. Our buying process is currently suffering from information constipation - there seems to be a hold-up a couple of links down the chain that wasn't as close to not being a hold-up as we were led to believe... so plans have got out of sync and, well, we now have the minimalist space we once dreamed of (and there's a little too much echo), a rather limited array of crockery... and I am typing at a picnic table. As you might have guessed, we're a little ahead of ourselves and the majority of our possessions are packed up and gone.

Tom, for the most part, is coping very well with these unsettled times. There's been the odd wobble - the questions about whether he'll still be going to his school and whether Mrs Charlton and Mrs Henson will be there - but for the most part he's finding the process exciting. We were nervous about the whole process. There's a story my parents like to tell about moving house when I was around two - I refused to remove my coat because I wasn't stopping. The length of time that this went on for has, I think, crept up over the years. But we have been sensitive to the little guy's feelings and Nik has done an incredible job of preparing him. We learned very quickly that packing stuff without his knowledge would meet with an adverse reaction and so he has been involved at every step. He helped make the boxes up (and hid in each one), pack some of his toys (his first line one morning was 'I've packed some more of my toys!' after we'd left an open box in his room) and load his push-along car on the van.

The biggest sigh of relief came with the dismantling of the beloved racing car bed. Tom dived in with his screwdriver and, in five minutes, the job was done. He's even loving the whole camping on the floor thing. All we've got to do now is move...

So why Edinburgh? Well, if you're in the UK and follow such things, this might be reason enough but we have a few others too. The company I work for has opened an office in the city (on the Royal Mile no less) and, after four years, I am done with working from home. Nik did her studying in Edinburgh, loves the city and she has family there too. For Nik and I then, the city is perfect but what about the wee man?

First and foremost, there is a pretty solid financial incentive. When we move, Tom's 'private' implant will no longer be our responsibility and will become state funded. I've checked. Twice. Just to make sure. If Tom had had meningitis in Scotland, under current legislation he would have had bilateral implants automatically and we discovered that this level of support applies to incomers too.

So that's good news for him... the sort that leaves a bittersweet taste given the number of children and adults with single implants in this country who don't have this option open to them (and NICE are yet to rule either way - current expected date September 2008 with a 4th appraisal committee meeting on 17th July). We have always counted ourselves fortunate in being able to push ahead with the second implant in spite of the decision made by the PCT and have prepared ourselves financially but this is an enormous relief and provides some stability and assurance. Until the NHS goes belly-up that is.

We've also found a wonderful school a few minutes walk from where we're going to be living. It looks like a fabulous fit for Tom - a little offbeat, small and focused on the individual. It's worthy of its own post but here's a primer on Rudolf Steiner schools. I've just watched one of the dvds posted there and discovered that Tilda Swinton is a Steiner parent. Now I'm not one to get starstruck but she does say the very thing I was going to finish on - the school makes you wish you went there and you can't get a much more positive recommendation than that.