The three best bits of advice about relocating anyone ever gave me

• Accept every invitation for the first six months; you never know where it might lead.
  

• You’ll always miss every place you’ve enjoyed living; that doesn't mean the move isn't the right thing to do.
  

• You’ll never recreate the other places you’ve lived; everywhere will have some things that are better and some that are worse.

Each of these came from a friend who'd been there, done that, and in each case, these particular pals are people I'd put right up there on my "friends to save from a burning building" list (OK, so I'd save all my friends from a burning building if I could, otherwise why be friends with them? but you know what I mean).

Collectively, the advice has served me pretty well over 5 different countries and fuck knows how many new homes.

I'd probably customise the top one now the kids are involved and accepting-every-invitation is sometimes not logistically not possible. When we moved to Dublin, my new motto was:

"you don't meet people stuck indoors".

So even though the rain threatened to create an extension of the Irish Sea right there under the wheels of the buggy, and even though I was crippled by homesickness and brand-new nostalgia for a life we'd left behind (to say nothing of heavily pregnant and intrinsically inclined to melodrama), Jonah and I went out every single day, smiled when we could, and eventually, it felt like we lived here. That's the condensed version, but you get my point.