We’ve settled in now into our flat. This place we are in living feels  more like a resort than apartments. The central building is a big recreation area, with free drinks, and barbies, and events and there are 6 pools next to it, one with walk-able fountains and one with a “beach” for the kiddies! Because they are used so much, you get to sit and meet lots of people as the kiddies (and grown ups!) swim; in our own house, it would be much more isolating at this early stage.

The weather is very tropical –  it varies from hot hot hot sunshine, quite dry rather than humid (much less humid than Singapore was, for example), to electric pink and blue storms on a dark violet expanse of sky, as the wind and rain bend the trees to the ground and the strikes charge the street lamps to such brightness that you think they will burst (which they sometimes do). Those mainly happen at nights, with bone-shaking thunder and the lightening that is really like nothing I’ve ever seen before in terms of frequency, neon-brightness and shape. Our flat is on the top floor (2nd floor (US 3rd floor), which is about as a high as anything gets in north Texas, so we can see for miles and miles, so we see storms that are 50 or 70 miles away, through our patio doors onto our balcony. We lay sometimes on our bed, around 11pm or midnight, in the dark and watch the show, the bedroom weirdly lit by the flash-powder blue neon that fills the room every 10 or 20 seconds, the lightening like a crack in the inky violet expanse of sky.

The hot really is very hot on the hot days, but unless you have to work as a gardener outside ;-), life is so civilised that you can move from one air-conditioned area to the pool, to another air-conditioned area.  It’s not as hot as places like India, or similar, but in July and August you plan your life around it — literally walk between pools (which are simply divine when it’s *that* hot), or a/c restaurants and malls, and theatres and cars. Rather this all-pervading warmth in your bones, than the wet, moldy cold of England.

Dallas is an oasis, I suspect, in the midst of a large amount of King o’ the Hill territory. Dallas really is very very cosmopolitan, in terms of the life you can lead. It has just about every cuisine on offer from all over the globe, theatre, shopping, etc etc, plus really great schools & a fabulously diverse population, which is a bonus. You can obviously also do the Western thang, and horse-ride, and country off-road, too.

I am truly enjoying myself so far. I potter around, just being slow, and relaxing, getting used to not having to work 🙂 Lost tonnes of weight which I am a bit happy about and am brown as a nut!

So far it’s fab, it really is. Daniel really gets on well with his company, and I think it’s his “break” in terms of moving on with his career.

The really knockout and unexpected thing about Texas (well, about Dallas and the Metroplex cities) is how darned nice everyone is. Texas just can’t do enough to make you welcome, and are particularly lovely to kids. it is so unbelievably diverse down here — from English, to Indians, to Pakistanis, to people from Ghana, to Mexicans and Japanese and Taiwanese — hence the Ark-like selection of restaurants!

So, almost a month into it, all is well. that does sound like a short amount of time, but you never know, maybe its our time to just appreciate being, and enjoy the fact that we are alive, and together, healthy, comfortable, and having fun.

We plan to drive down South to the coast (texas has a lovely tropical coastline with beach etc) and sample the wilds of Texas. Some parts are dry, and you can’t get a beer, which is weird, as it can literally be divided by a road. Mind you, we’ve quickly sourced a good line in French wine, and mexican and blonde biers!