What to do… and how to do it.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Abraham Lincoln

January is just about done. It is the time of year to put aside retrospection and to engage instead in a little gentle anticipation. Time to make a plan…

Our approach in this instance will be subtly different to that which we previously pursued. On that occasion our grand strategy was launched with due ceremony.  ‘Full steam ahead’ was the command and away we sailed – all guns blazing – only to founder on the ragged rocks of an unfriendly shore and to slip slowly beneath the waves – lost with all hands.

This time – with the memory of running-before-we-could-walk fresh in our minds – we are taking things one step at a time.

Step one: Sell the apartment in Buckinghamshire. Until this has been accomplished nothing else can be done – thus nothing else need currently concern us.

The good news on this front is that the market has picked up appreciably. The UK economy has now enjoyed four consecutive quarters of growth and a considerable number of new jobs have been created – many of them in the corridor between the M4 and M40 motorways to the west of London. Our humble apartment is located slap-bang in the middle of this area.

Even better – we hear through the grapevine that one of our ex-neighbours is also selling her apartment, which happens to be the one immediately below ours. As far as we can tell it was only introduced to the market around Christmas time, but it is already under offer and the asking price – which I imagine has pretty much been achieved – was considerable. We can’t put our apartment on the market until the point that we are able to give our tenants notice (toward the end of March) but we are – naturally – now eager to get things moving.

Further on the positive news front… the good old Pound Sterling has itself also been doing jolly well of late against the Canadian dollar. When I started tracking the exchange rate around two years ago it was hovering around the 1.55 mark. It is now slightly above 1.8 and is – apparently – slowly but surely still rising… as are house prices in the south east of England! I am not going to excogitate this scenario further for fear of jinxing the whole kit and caboodle but – as you might imagine – we now have fingers, arms, legs, eyes and everything else crossed. We must look pretty damned funny!

There is actually one other thing that we do need to get on with at this point. Regular readers may experience a strong sense of deja vu as I revisit the subject of my application for Canadian Permanent Residency. You might recall that the whole process ground to a halt when the Kickass Canada Girl returned to the UK the Christmas before last. Well – figuring that our delayed move is now likely to take place within the next two years it is essential that we re-ignite the process. Otherwise I might find myself in British Columbia but unable to stay there.

The process will – of course – be somewhat different now that the Girl is based in the UK rather than in Canada. I will update my previous musings on the subject (here, here and all points west!) so that those lighting upon this post in search of useful information regarding permanent residency will be able to get the complete picture.

“So we beat on…” – though unlike Fitzgerald’s protagonist we are in this case carried onward toward the future…

…and our motto for the day shall be “Softly, softly, catchee monkey!”