Is It Real?

Steve just phoned from work and said "it’s time to begin sorting through the apartment". He'd just come from a meeting with one of his bosses. Steve’s company has 2 offices: one in Vancouver and one in Reading, just west of London. This one boss who Steve has a great relationship with is the only one at his work who knows of our intention to move to England in the coming year. It’s been tentatively discussed before between them, but today he said to Steve that he’s going to set the ball in motion to transfer him to their Reading office in late March/early April time! There is a position there that needs to be created and Steve would be a good fit.

We have been talking (in a fairly serious way) about moving to England for about a year and a half. October before last we both visited my Mum, who lives in a small village near Ipswich (an hour by train northeast of London). I remember at that time being careful not to breath a word of it to her, because it would immediately be a certainty in her mind, and we weren’t 100% sure we could do it yet. While over there, we had an appointment with a lawyer about what it would take to move and learned that the immigration standards had recently been stiffened. Great!  In our situation, we had a few choices open to us:
1. Steve being sponsored by a UK employer. (I’m a Dual British/Canadian citizen, so I’m covered.)
2. A marriage. (While we’re planning to marry in 2015, I don’t want to do a quick wedding just for this reason; I’ve actually kinda done that twice before, but that’s another story!)
3. Or proving we have enough money to be self-sufficient in their eyes.

Our main plan became to get our finances in order by February 1^st this year, so we had enough liquid assets (not tied up in property or investments) to satisfy the UK requirement. This amount has to be liquid for 6 months prior to applying to live and work in the UK. That would put our application date at August 1^st, add a few weeks processing time, and a possible move anywhere from September to the end of the year seemed realistic. Since formulating this plan, Steve began working for a new company and shortly thereafter discovered they had an office in Reading. It seemed too good to be true, but in the past couple of months it has seemed like a real option that his employer may offer him a transfer and move us. This became Plan A, with Plan B still in motion just in case.

It’s suddenly seems very serendipitous I started this travel blog yesterday, but there you have it. It’s not like we haven’t been talking about this move for months, and the late March/early April date was discussed just before the new year when Steve and his boss talked about our time window. After checking with me, Steve told his boss that if a transfer was an option, we’d need at least 2 – 3 months’ notice to sort out the apartment or we would be happy to wait until end of the summer if that worked best for the company, but if it wasn’t happening we were going ahead with Plan B on August 1^st anyways.

So, I guess it’s all hands on deck, or whatever action metaphor works better for this shit just got real!