Am in the process of securing a living establishment

in Durham though an online flat rental website. (Well, of course it's an "online website" you nit. What other kinds of websites are there?) and I'm both relieved and terrified.

I really am going to be moving to a whole nother country...and in less than two weeks.

Yoiks! Whatever took hold of me to do this?!

Anyway, I've been running through the things that are worrying me:

Things are going to smell funny. How a place smells is very important, though almost never noticed. Ever since coming to Toronto five years ago, I've felt out of place, weird and uncomfortable. Just a while ago, I figured out why when I went back to Vancouver. This is the middle, and as I have said, people are not supposed to live in the middle. I know I'm not supposed to live in the middle because it doesn't smell like the ocean. The entire place has a pervasive, though almost indefinable not-smelling-like-the-ocean ambiance that has made it very uncomfortable at a deep subconscious level. Always a niggling sense of being in the wrong place. Like having your clothes not quite fit properly.

I think Ynglonde is going to smell funny. Maybe it will be better, (I suspect so) because it is not in the middle of a large continental landmass. But maybe it will smell funny because it's the wrong ocean. The Pacific Ocean is in my genes and I don't think any other body of water is ever going to smell like the right one.

The other thing I'm worried about is that I won't be able to go shopping. I won't recognise any of the brands or types of things in the shops. I will look for tea and not know which kind is good and which is Tetley.

I'm worried that things will be just that little bit different that it will throw me off and create a kind of mental nausea. If it were radically different, like Darfur or Shanghai, it might be easier since I would always be expecting it to be so wildly alien that my brain would never bother trying to compensate. But I suspect England is going to be just different enough to make me wake up every morning and not be able to remember which country I'm in.

I'm also quite worried I won't be able to find any pickled herring.