It's raining and blowing a gale in Cambridgeshire, but I'm hanging on in here...

Decisions are being made as we speak, about emigrating. Mr_Positive and I went to Canada last year, in fact we got married there, and we absolutely fell in love with the place. We spent two weeks in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, at Banff Springs (the photo of me was taken there on the night of my wedding) and we talked about going back...maybe to live...one day.

It was just a day dream until a couple of weeks ago, when things in the UK just started to get us down that little bit too much. Council tax is set to double. Interest rates have just gone up. They are going to introduce pay-as-you-go road user taxes. It's cold, dark and wet. I failed to get the job I applied for. The house won't sell. Why were we even thinking of just moving 5 miles down the road when we could change everything and start again in Alberta, Canada?

So we decided to look into a move to Calgary, and Mr P put some wheels in motion with his employers.

As for me...

Firstly I discovered that there was likely to be another voluntary exit scheme coming up at work, aimed at pond scum grades (I'm a civil servant in an organisation that's aiming to reduce admin and junior/middle managers, and guess who's a junior manager) - all sounded good - and then, to make the move sound even more enticing, there was an announcement by one of the directors, we'll call her 'The Grim Reaper' that despite slashing our directorate by 30% in 2006, there were still too many of us, and the entire communications team was to be culled. Guess who is part of the communications team? You guessed it...I probably won't have a proper job after March, but I'll be what's called 'a priority mover' which in practice means I'll have nothing to do except wander around the office asking teams if they have anything I can do.

Well, if that isn't an enticement to stick it out until I can take a nice voluntary exit payout and wave goodbye to England's sunny shores, I don't know how much more of a kick in the pants I need.

Now all we need to do is get Mr P's managers to sort out the transfer to Calgary, and sell the house. The announcements about voluntary exits will be made fairly soon...I'll apply...and they'll most likely take effect as from next summer.

Staying Positive - it's been a bit hard in the past week, but if I concentrate on Canada, living near the Rockies (going from below sea level to waaaay above) I can just about do it...