It’s a month since I wrote my last, emotional post as I sobbed alone in a Boldon hotel room, and I’m prompted into a guilty update. There’s so much that I want to write about but actually so little I can say, can bear to talk about. My days are now filled with the mundanities of normal life interspersed with preparations for the Big Move to Hong Kong. I’ve coped until recently with the imminent wrench from the bosom of my longed-for kitchen by not thinking about it but that’s now become impossible.

All of the paperwork to import the dogs into Hong Kong has been done; I’ve made arrangements with the cleaner and the gardener to visit periodically. OvenAlan has rendered my microwave as new. I’m trying to get the faults in our shower hot water supply corrected and been parted from vast sums of money to mend and “update” the software of our coffee machine. I’m incrementally separating the possessions I’m taking: clothes, music, dog paraphernalia, into things I’ll send by sea freight and things I’ll pack for the next four or five weeks, and trying not to think of my shoe collection being hijacked by pirates or running aground in a storm. I’ve tried to work through the bottles in the wine fridge but that’s not easy when you’re sharing a house with two teatotal, head-shaking twentysomethings.

Fearful that any reasonably-priced clothes in Hong Kong will be tailored for East Asian figures rather than my desi curves, and that the unaffordable designer brands in Lane Crawford are only ever available in size 6 anyway, I’ve bought up all the bargains in my favourite online sales. I still need to sell the car and somehow resolve #bouldergate in a satisfactory way but I’m taking solid steps to make this so.

I’ve bid farewell to my singing teacher for the time being, assuring her that I’ll try and make next year’s musical theatre course, and sung my last concert with my choir. The songs from A Sprig of Thyme still echo around the voids of my brain during spells of anxious insomnia (“It’s not real anxiety, though, is it mum?”) I said goodbye to my voluntary job a couple of weeks ago by engaging in a full and frank exchange of views with a Brexity colleague, and joined the Wooferendum march on Sunday because I can’t take part in the big one on 20th October: I’ve more or less sorted out replacement credit cards after my lovely purse was stolen on the way back from London that day- as if I needed any further sources of anxiety. 

I’ve confirmed the final catering numbers for my leaving party at a local pub. In my mind all my guests will behave as teenagers on the dance floor: my playlist is funky and sexy and full of old familiar hits from several of the last four decades. The object is to keep the emotional conversations to a minimum. I hate goodbyes so I’m going to try and avoid them. I know that I shall cry.

I can’t, however, avoid the most painful goodbyes, with my closest friends who have been my sustenance these last few years and months. And, my beautiful son, whose future plans have been in such turmoil. It is unbearable and can’t really be glossed over by a lovely lunch or a boozy supper involving far too much wine. In the sober, dreich daylight of reality, the fact that I’m leaving almost everyone and everything I love here looms from the shadows.

How can I cope with the prospect of this loss?

I’ve always found that it helps to get in and do stuff. Even a little step is a step in the right direction. I’ve been thinking about the next stage of my life and setting goals for myself. My appointment with the Immigration Department in Wan Chai to secure my Smart ID card is booked for Tuesday week. I’ve already taken out a subscription to the Hong Kong Ballet and I hope to do the same for the opera. I’ve booked Eliza’s Christmas flights. These, then, are my Hong Kong personal goals, for when the tears have to be banished and the next part of life must start: