Why repatriating has been good for us

I hear so much negativity about repatriation, I can't help but think we've done it wrong and we're still waiting for the negativity to kick in or because it's different for us as we always planned to return to the UK when my husband retired.

Becoming expats was never our plan either and at the time of leaving the UK, my husband had 25 years service with the company so we weren't going on on contracts that could come to an abrupt end.

When we left the UK in January 2011 and headed off to South Africa, we honestly thought it was going to be for the inevitable future, but after 4 years, it was not to be with the government refusing to extend our visas, so not ready to move back to the UK, we went to Dubai, where I never thought we'd end up living for 6 years.

Our move to SA was based on a load of lies. Work for Peter wasn't too bad, other than dealing with different cultures and ways of working and pressure from abroad to work the same way as other countries did. If you've ever lived in SA you'll know that things are done very differently to back home. In fact EVERYTHING is done very differently to back home and it took me up to 18 months to settle in fully, after giving up the battle to be allowed to work or even study and I threw myself head first into volunteering and exploring such a wonderful country, with day trips and weekends away camping. We were adopted by a cat and adopted a dog.

Like our move to SA which was a huge adventure, we were only given 3 months notice to leave and after the rug was literally pulled from under our feet and we departed for Dubai, I never dreamt we'd be there for 6 years. I just envisioned we'd be moving on again soon, so I never put down any routes and although I was able to work, my return to teaching lasted only 18 months, I quit my job and was due to start another teaching post when my father died suddenly and I had to turn the job down in order to help my mother get her life sorted so I could return to Dubai to rejoin Peter.

In SA I was only in the UK for 2-3 weeks, once or twice a year. Then my father had a heart attack and we had dodgy tenants that took me 4 months to evict through the courts, so in 2016 we decided to purchase a flat in Wales to give us somewhere to stay for longer visits and for the youngest child to live in while he was applying for jobs after leaving school, for another to stay in on his visit back from his home in Australia and for our other son and his wife to stay when they visited the mainland from Northern Ireland.

I started to spend more time in the flat and just before covid hit, we'd already decided to get our house back from the current tenants and move the cat and dog to the UK, get house sitters and for me to travel back and forth to Dubai to see Peter whilst he finished his career over the next 2-3 years.

Having been locked out of Dubai for 4 months, we decided to bring his retirement forward to May 2021 and I spent lockdown getting the house ready for our permanent return and on a trip to Dubai in September 2020, we had most of the furniture and our belongings shipped, followed by the rest in May this year. This involved my son coming over to collect the dog for 2 months so I could return to Dubai, which turned into 3 months as Dubai was put onto the red list and there were no flights out. After an expensive and painful mandatory hotel quarantine in the UK, we were finally home, just to go to Belfast to collect the dog and unpack the rest of our belongings that arrived in July.

We're now settled back in the UK, unpacked and put away. We have a new kitchen and shed to look forward to and we're having an extension built at the back of the house to give us more downstairs space for when the family come to visit.

I only hear/read about the negatives of repatriation online and I can't be the only person who has planned our return and is happy to be back, can I?

Missing in action - My motivation

When you have all the time in the world to do nothing in, one tends to do nothing.

For the first time since I was 20, I actually have nothing to do.

I mean absolutely nothing.

Other than walking the dog, eating, cleaning the house and making sure I take a shower, there is nothing going on.

I had my first child at 20. By 28 I had 2 more children, by 30 I had remarried and inherited 2 further children. I was working full time and studying. By the time I was 40, we had packed our lives in and moved abroad.

For the past 10 years as an expat I've been juggling 2 homes over 3 countries, managing kids, lives, booking flights, trying to keep up with everyone, juggling 100 different things on a daily basis and aged 50, I'm now back in the UK with my husband, the cat and dog we picked up in South Africa. 

We're back in our family home that I spent the time during covid repairing, fixing and painting with a few trips back and forth to see Peter in Dubai and packing up all our belongings and shipping them back to the UK, with the 2nd and last container arriving in July. It's all unpacked now and we're just taking stock of what we're going to do next.

We'll be staying put in this house for the foreseeable future, neither of us can face another move. I've lived on 3 continents and had 17 permanent homes as well as many short term stays as we've moved around.

We bought the house in 2002, it was 4 years old when we moved in, we had a loft and garage conversion back in 2007 and I've just replaced the carpets and a couple of windows. We need a new kitchen and bathroom and have plans for the garden. But as the kitchen, bathroom and garden are functioning, we're not in any hurry to get any work done.

I'm currently glued to the TV with the Olympics, I've sorted out birthday gifts and written cards for the month. I've kept up with the washing and ironing. I've written letters, walked the dog, enjoyed take out coffees, weeded the garden and harvested some crops and picked blackberries. I've paid the bills and renewed the car and house insurance. 

I've had a couple of meltdowns with service providers about their lack of customer service and failing to provide the service I've paid them for. I've been frustrated at the sudden change of pace of life, going from being on my own in the day and when we've both travelled to being at home full time with Peter now he's retired, it's a huge change for both of us and takes some getting used to.

We really need to kick our arses into gear (once the Olympics are over) decide what work will be done on the house and who is going to do it.

I'm struggling to find things to blog about, everything seems boring in comparison to the last 50 years of my life. I stopped writing my weekly blog posts as it all seems so mundane. I found plenty to write about each week during covid. I'm not bored, I'm happy to be living a more simpler and quieter life. 

2nd July 2021 - You've just repatriated, what next? with Post Comment Love

Welcome back to #PoCoLo and July with Stephanie at Lifeat139a and I.

As you know and are probably fed up of hearing, we're now back in the UK full time. The response from people has been mixed.

'Oh you're back then?' as if we were on some failed mission to Mars, is the common response and bizarrely 'did you have a nice time?' as if we've been on holiday and the last 11 years of blogging, tweeting and face to face conversations have been ignored, in particular the past few weeks with hotel quarantine and of course there's the just ignore the situation because they don't know what to make of it.

When we left the UK we had a child living locally (they still do) one in Germany (now living locally) one in Reading (now living in Australia) and took two kids with us, who then left home from South Africa and live in Northern Ireland and locally. We both had careers and now we are both retired, all the kids have left home and we have one grandchild and another on the way.

We're back in our family home. 6 beds with parking for 2 and a reasonable sized (on the small side) garden. It's next to a school, but it's also near the train station, the local shops, the town and the retail park. Less than an hour to Birmingham and the local kids are within a 45 min drive and can all be visited within one round trip of around 3 hours. We've been looking at other properties in the area, but there's nothing we like the look of so we're getting people to quote for an extension, new kitchen/bathrooms and landscaping the garden front and back.

Our container docks tomorrow and we'll find out by Monday when it'll be delivered then we can book ferry tickets to drive to Northern Ireland to visit our son and his wife who are expecting a baby in November and to collect our dog, Bob that they've been looking after for the past 3 months.

I'd love to read your blog posts you've written this week and linked up with. I'm keen to see more fashion blogs as now I've hit 50 and gained a bit of weight after stopping smoking, I'd love to see what everyone is wearing.

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Week 22 - One Daily Positive - Back in the UK

It's been so humid here that the washing on the balcony in direct sunlight is still wringing wet at the end of the day.

I'm not sure I'll be doing project365 much longer and I might be giving up blogging and social media altogether. no particular reason other than I'm just not feeling it anymore. I find myself on twitter most days now, but it's not easy like the old days to gain new followers and find new people with similar interests, all the algorithms on SM seem to do is just keep showing the same things and the same types of people. It's like shopping on Amazon with the 'you bought a book, would you like to buy a book?' 

Peter says I should continue until at least the end of the year to keep the diary of our expat lives going till the end and including our repatriation.

149 Saturday Dropped the car hire back, no charges and full refund which makes a change, we did some shopping in Tesco, watched TV, had a sleep and went down for a swim in the pool. 

150 Sunday Off to the beach via the tram, had a coffee, went for a swim, walked back to the hotel, had to stop for another drink as it was too hot, some time by the pool then back to apartment for the rest of the day. In the evening we went round to a colleagues of Peter's for a drink.

151 Monday Off to the bank first thing and that's it, Peter's last day in work, although there is talk of some consultancy work in the future. Everything seemed to happen today, flights, quarantine hotel and PCR tests were all booked.

152 Tuesday PCR tests first thing then Peter returned his company laptop and phone to IT and I took myself off to the Ritz Carlton for the day, with Peter joining me in the afternoon. We packed and chilled out in the evening.

153 Wednesday Left the apartment in the Marina and checked into an airport hotel with pool and bar, had a relaxed chilled out day. Checked in for our flight at 9pm

154 Thursday Flight to UK with a 4 hour stop over in Amsterdam and then to our Quarantine hotel the Crowne Plaza in Birmingham for 11 days. 

155 Friday This is the last post in 365, we're back now in the UK. I'm going to carry on posting a daily photo, blogging and running PoCoLo weekly blog linky and joining in with My Sunday Photo.

4th - 6th June Back in the UK. Post Comment Love

Welcome back to #PoCoLo with Stephanie and I 

Yep, we're here, back in the UK.

Peter worked his last day after 35 years on Monday. 6 years in Dubai and 4 years in South Africa as well as the UK. Final payments and refunds were made on time and once we closed the bank account down, we booked flights, quarantine hotel, PCR tests and extra baggage.

We spent our last day in Dubai at the Ritz Carlton for a beach/pool day and the evening with friends for our last ever Dubai pub quiz and Starbucks finally spelt my name right.

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30th April - 3rd May 2021 - Post Comment Love.

Welcome back to #PoCoLo this week with Stephanie and I. It's not a bank holiday out here in Dubai, we do however have Eid Al Fitr coming up soon.

Time sure is racing by at the moment as my husband and I spend our last few weeks in Dubai and living abroad since January 2011. 

It's been a wonderful, and difficult time for us both, dealing with our last child leaving home, reduced contact with our oldest child who lives in a care home, we're now on our 3rd international relocation, having dealt with the death of my father and then the several joyous situations with 2 of our children getting married, the birth of a grandchild and several more family weddings and the birth of great nephews and nieces with a couple more babies lined up to meet later this year.

We're making the most of the medical aid getting eyes, dental and medical check ups and I'm also taking advantage of the nail bars and hairdressers here while I can and of course some last minute shopping.

It's not all fun and games though as you'll see with the post I've linked up with this week.

But life still has to go on throughout everything, as it has in its limited way since Covid. Just as it starts to return to normal, Peter and I change our normal with our return to the UK. 

Stephanie and I are looking forward to reading what you've linked up with this week.

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Preparing to leave Dubai.

I arrived back in Dubai 2 weeks ago. Peter has been off work while we've planned our exit. We sold his car, made a claim to cancel the Insurance which can take up to 3 weeks. We've had quotes for shipping the rest of our furniture, advertised the garden for sale and made arrangements to have broken and old furniture removed. We've now hired a car until the end of May.

I sold my car and closed my bank account back in September, so we're confident of how that all works.

There's still quite a bit of stuff to do, unlike a move within the country in which you live, when you leave a country you have to close everything down before your current visa expires. However it's a lot easier this move as we don't need a visa to move to the UK. When we moved from South Africa to Dubai, we had to return to the UK to get our documents certified and get our cat and dog out to Dubai before our current visa expired, but we couldn't ship the furniture or air freight until our new visas were in place. 

We have two more payments due out on the credit card in the next 10 days then we can cancel the credit card, but need to keep the main account open to pay in cheques from the deposits for the house, utility bills and an investment that matures soon. Once that has all cleared we have to withdraw/transfer the account to a zero balance then apply for a completion certificate to close the account.

We had to get the UK credit card activated so we could use it to hire the car

I keep getting informed that we can of course pay someone to do all this for us, but from personal experience having been told this in the past and actually following the advice we have discovered that 9/10 these people aren't qualified experts and that actually they don't make the job any easier as basically you still do all the ground work and they just basically queue on your behalf to submit that paperwork that you still need to sign and sorry but there is no way we're giving ANYONE a signed letter to deal with our finances on our behalf.

We're vacating the Villa on May 24th, we don't have a hotel booked yet as we're waiting for confirmation from the UK Government in regards to our isolation/quarantine on our return. 

At the moment we're required to spend 11 days in a UK hotel at the cost of £1700 each, we've looked into flying home via Germany where we'd need to stay for 11 days before we would be allowed back into the UK and the isolate at home for 11 days. We're allowed to travel between the UK and Dubai as we have Citizenship and Residency. We've both had the full vaccine and are happy with regular PCR testing.

Dubai is a hub, but we're hopeful after May 17th it'll be off the red list, Dubai have currently suspended flights from India.

Thankfully this time we're not leaving one place and arriving into the unknown. We are returning to our former family home that I've spent the past 18 months restoring after tenants and setting up utilities, buying a car and sorting phones and internet which hasn't been as easy as it sounds because we've not lived in the UK for so long, have no 'no claims' for driving, need insurance that allows us to leave the house empty for more than 30 days and has involved changing all the landlord cover back into personal use, getting new quotes and at one point had me measuring the outside area of the house and working out the square footage for the top two floors for buildings insurance purposes (since when did that become a thing?) We moved the cat and dog back in February.

We're registered with the Dr's in the UK but need to find a new dentist and I need to add Peter to the council tax and change our voting options.

We need to close everything here in Dubai rather than risk letting it just expire when our visas run out. We plan to travel through Dubai in future years to visit one of our sons in Australia and don't want to risk arrest should we have anything outstanding. 

I'm not looking for help, guidance or advice on any of this, there is a time scale to follow for all of it, just not all the same time. We've done it many times before, we'll do it now as well. I just don't have the brain space to do anything else for myself, let alone anyone else right now. An International move is nothing like an internal move, trust me, I did both last year. We're not planning on doing any further moves, internal or external for a long time to come.