TIA: This is Africa already! I spent all morning in Casa just getting a SIM card, and local cash, and taking a modest thank you offering to "Tom's wife's sister's husband's brother" (he has been looking after my bike since early June). Then a swim and lunch at Tom and Mehdia's place with the kids, collecting the bike, fixing an appointment for crash bars and an oil change tomorrow, a hair-raising ride back across town, and reorganising my packing - once again! 

In the evening a pleasant stroll with Tom across the golf course to a nearby country club for a sundowner, and later dinner across town in a large and unusual restaurant: where you choose meat, kebabs, sausages, offal (I will spare you the details) etc from the butchery counters, pay at the till and hand it all to a waiter - raw. He takes it away and barbecues it. Interesting, but it was a bit late in the evening for me - and it's hard to relax while this big project is hanging over me and still on hold. 

I am very impressed with Tom and Mehdia's spacious and very smart new home: aircon, swimming pool, marble floors, underground parking, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, including self-contained quarters for their delightful live-in cook/housekeeper. Backing onto an immaculately groomed golf course.  I wonder if they will ever be able to re-adjust to their modest duplex in Chiswick, and the lifestyle a UK teacher's salary affords.

Today I'm surrounded by loads of kids; Mehdia's sister has also moved here for two years and she is living close by with her own children. So there are 6 West London cousins all careering around, and/or slumping in front of the TV together. The Moroccan mothers want their kids to get first-hand experience of their ancestral heritage, and to perfect their Arabic. Meanwhile I have submitted applications for Irish citizenship for 3 of them - with all the privileges of EU membership. Funny old world, and it keeps getting smaller.