Where do we start here? The idea was that we would rent our house out around the beginning of October and head straight off just after my birthday on October 6th. What happened in practice was that we enquired with the rental agency in July and almost immediately got into a sort of bidding war with two families, both of whom wanted to move in during August, ahead of the new school year. The great thing was that they were prepared to pay our asking price. As the opportunity seemed too good to pass up, I handed in my notice from work early and we basically found ourselves homeless from 21st August with a month to fill before flying out on 24th September.

