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I have always known that life is better when you share it. I now realize it gets even sweeter when you expand the circle.
- Oprah Winfrey

For the next few hours or days it's moving time. THE BIG DAY is tomorrow. Moving house can be an exhausting and disruptive experience, but it also is filled with opportunities and anticipation of the variety that life tends to serve us on a plate in our exile. The biggest move in my life was the crossing of the Iron Curtain at 22. Since then I lived like a gypsie most of the time - it included stings at Traiskirchen was the Austrian headquarters for refugees ... Villawood became my Hollywood and then living with George Dorman - uncle of Leo Schofield at Croydon the leafy Bay Street. Lauren introduced me to Jessie Street at Westmead and together we saved to invade Darling Point Road at Darling Point where both girls Alex and Gabbie were conceived ;-) The longest time we stayed somewhere was at Birriga Rd, Bellevue Hill. Since then Adelaide and Brissie and Sunshine Coast where our homes. Now we say goodbye to the Shire and hello to Bondi again ...
Gabriella and I have used the surreal act of moving house again as an opportunity to sort out our possessions. We had a garage sale and we had given away stuff to friends and charity shops. As we packed everything up and the rooms came merely to hold cardboard boxes rather than our lives, the house returned bit by bit to a Platonic state of unreality about the move - IT all seems abstract and kind of ghostly. With each book I removed from the shelves I felt like David Bowman unplugging HAL’s memory modules towards the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Something wound down and faded, but you couldn’t call it a living thing. We were the living things, and we are on our way to a new place, and our memories are coming with us. I miss all those different places like I miss my childhood: terribly, but I wouldn’t go back ...

Moving house can be one of the most exciting things you ever do. Here are a few helpful tips to make moving more colourful ;-) Tips courtesy of Izzy’s Channel 7

So much of our lives on this side of the cemetery appears to be in the name of love and friendship. Indeed, friends give us memories we are unlikely to forget. ... Lately life's been good again, thanks to soulful friends, as we have rebonded over best thai, dark coffee and breezy walks ... How can I ever thank you enough? Steve, Chris, Phil and Roberto? Gina, Gwynne, Patricia, Kerri and Vanessa - thank you for restoring my faith in women. Every time I think of our intimate conversations, it makes me smile like a village idiot ;-) You have been the best brothers and sisters in the world, and have listened to me bitch, whine, and complain for years! I'd move a mountain for you Steve and Chris seriously. Enough with this sentimentality, I'll just buy you brandy! I'd like to thank you for always telling me the things I never wanted to hear, and for steering me in the right direction. Your support keeps me grounded, and your love for simple things in life is very inspiring.

Honestly, there are dozens of people I need to thank, because I have truly crafted an amazing life in exile with your help. Every day when I wake up, I am positively sure that it will be better than the last one. You see with friends like you, my success is guaranteed. Thanks for helping him create a meaningful and impactful life (Bear with me if I disappear temporarily beneath the river of life filled with new adventures)

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
-Melody Beattie