Way down in Alabam'

Another obtuse 1970's lyric reference... Ram Jam from "Black Betty" - which probably is a song that no self-respecting label would put out now given it's colour references.  Anyway - the line before the totally off topic title of this post is "She's from Birmingham".   Luckily it was via my interest in music that I learnt there are (at least) two Birminghams in the world - one in Alabam' (sic) and one in the West Midlands, which I knew about already, Jasper Carrot supported the football team there that didn't do as well as Aston Villa.  Funny to look back on stuff like that but frankly that was probably how I really did learn stuff like that in that way.

So why is that in my head today?  Because Son-of-Furtheron and his better half have moved to said fair city to start the next phase of their lives PhD studentships!  They are both starting PhDs in the next few weeks, S-o-F will be commuting to Leicester and doing something to do with the magnetosphere of Saturn and his girlfriend working at Birmingham on Helioseismology.  They collected the keys and moved in yesterday.

So what does this mean for yours truly?  Well firstly I'm off in a van tomorrow to deliver a flat load of various goods, clothes, books, kitchen utensils, guitars, amps, surround sound systems, TVs, Computers... you name it I'll have it in the van!

Secondly this is it.  This is really him moving out - before he's gone off to uni but always kept the main base as home.  For example the surround sound was something he got as a present maybe 10 years ago or so for games, films, playing music through.  It has always stayed at home until now and it was carefully disassembled the other night ready for the move.  He will no longer have the long holidays when he'll be "home", now he'll pop in when he is "visiting".  Time to get used to a step change in our lives, even though this year of course he was fully away up in the Arctic for nearly 6 months.

Tomorrow will also be AS results day for Daughter-of-Furtheron which will guide the decisions about A2s and what universities she'll be applying to later in the year.  This time next year I'll be blogging about her (fingers crossed) getting the place she wants and then a month or so later I'll be telling you about moving her into her first university accommodation etc.  Well that is the expected plan and hopefully it'll all come together well.  But then it'll be mostly just me and Mrs F at home for long chunks of time.  I think our 4 bedroom family house might start to feel a little big for just the two of us.