I'm moving to Norway! (again)

My wife and I are moving to Oslo, possibly FOREVER, but certainly for the next seven months, it's all sort of dependent on various things.

Number one amongst those things and foremost in my mind, is that I need a job. My wife has one, it's why we're moving, and it's a good job, so that's fine. No really it is fine. But I'm walking away from three years and a possibly glorious and underpaid future in the world of book publishing and publicity in the UK. What am I going to do in Norway?

I do speak Norwegian, and we have lived in Norway before, and my wife is Norwegian, and we do have friends there, and we have recently found an apartment. So actually you might be thinking to yourself, why doesn't this guy shut up? But I was already thinking that about you before read this part. I pre-empted you and there's nothing you can do about it now.

Things that I might do in Norway range from the unambitious: work in a fish gutting factory to the overambitious: get a job on Norwegian Radio. In between are some more realistic ideas that I will let you know if I pull off as and when they occur.

When you tell people you're leaving London almost everybody says, “I was thinking about doing the same but I'm not brave enough/ I don't know where I'd go/I can't imagine how I'd do it”. Which suggests that most Londoners grip on London is remarkably tenuous. The answer to all questions about how you come up with the courage, tenacity and vision to move to another country is that you don't,your wife does. All you have to do is dolefully agree and then scuff your feet and huff and sigh quite a bit about how hard it is for you. Not just anyone can do it.

Things I will miss about London:

Friends
Cycling to work along the Regents Canal
London Fields park
Free museums

There are already two things that I'm looking forward to. Cycling around a new city is one, the other is that I've joined a Rugby team already. Wierdly the rugby team have asked me to send them a picture of myself in a state of undress so they can assess me. I can't work out if this is for personnal or proffessional reasons. Despite having played rugby myself for some years (I played under current England Captain Stephen Borthwick at college) their request isn't doing anything for the common misconception that Rugby, a bit like Ultimate Fighting, is full of people that need to stop surpressing their homosexuality.

Things I'm not looking forward to about Norway:

It's pretty small
Everyone will be better looking than I am (I keep mistaking Norwegian female twitter followers for spambots)
A half pint costs £5

To those of you reading this as friends, I doubt there'll be an awful lot of surprise in this move. For those of you who know me through work or twitter this really won't change the way I know you very much at all. I'll still be on Twitter, email, and here.

Perhaps we might even get to know each other better! No . . . no that seems unlikely.