'Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed'

When you're Moving to a New Life in a New Country, you imagine checking in at an airport, with enormous, J-Lo-style trunks full of clothes, furniture that is too important or sentimental to leave behind in Blighty and gifts for the natives. I may have watched Out of Africa a few times too many and substituted 'an airport' for 'the docks where your ocean-going liner is moored'. You also imagine a collection of well-dressed well-wishers, clutching hankies and smiling bravely through the tears.

Either way, you don't really think you'll be sitting under the departures board at Kings Cross on one of the hottest days of the year, with a rucksack you've had since your early 20s, a small wheely suitcase and a large canvas bag that was free with a magazine five years ago (hitherto used for the recycling), representing all your worldly possessions. On your own. The friend I was staying with prior to my departure had had to leave at 8.30am to get a train to Bath for a hen weekend. So I'd spent my last morning in London tossing things into whatever packing receptacle would accommodate them, whilst sighing - it felt as though I'd been packing for months, rather than a two-week at-home-and-at-work blitz - shuffling aimlessly from one room to the next and feeling a bit lonely.

I'd battled my way to the taxi office, building up a hefty sweat in the course of five minutes' of dragging my possessions along the pavement. I dropped my keys off at the estate agents' with only a minor twinge of guilt as I thought about the selection of random items that I'd left in the hallway of my former home, which I was supposed to take to the second-hand shop the day before. But which I'd been too debilitated by a leaving party hangover to face sorting out.

(As a sidebar, I'd had the most awesome work leaving do in the world, ever. A feat of organisation, planning, design, speech-writing, love, care and attention to detail, it featured, in no particular order: a speech which my boss had actually tried out on one of my colleagues beforehand - which had bullet points and everything; a fantastic card in which I'd been immortalised as Kerry Katona, for reasons which I won't go into; a print-out of the email one of my colleagues had sent to the designer of the card, asking him to 'Tango me up a bit' so that my face would match Ms Katona's hands in the pic; fantastic presents; the most amazing turn-out in the pub; a hilarious pub quiz that was ALL ABOUT ME - my ego shot off the scale; a selection of past colleagues and a This is Your Life-style mystery guest - my friend Julie, who was over from Canada - and then free champagne from the landlord, Paul. If I hadn't been feeling overwelmed before, then I properly was by the end. It was one of the loveliest things that anyone's ever done for me, and a Top 5 in the Nights to Remember stakes).

All of which was a good excuse to think, 'Ah, sod it' and leave my new tenants to wonder at the complexity of an absent landlady who leaves behind a purple plastic filing drawer, a copy of an old Sex and the City book (commemorating the series, not the grim cash-in films), a container full of spices and vitamin supplements, a large, green, plush toy hippo that I'd inexplicably stolen from an ex-boyfriend and a very tired-looking winter coat. This was added to the variety of possessions and clothes that now reside in the basements and cupboards of three of my friends in London, ensuring that no-one will forget me - no, you shall be confronted with the remnants of my Clutter Collection on a daily basis! Sorry about that.

Anyway, Kings Cross, midday on a hot Saturday in July was suddenly transformed by the appearance of my sister, her boyfriend, my sister's dog and an entire posse of friends and family that she'd organised to be there. My friend John was joined by Carolina (she of Operation Clearout), Emma and her three daughters (my godchildren - all of whom looked confused by the fact that they were at a train station, yet weren't going anywhere, and weren't quite sure why it was a big deal that I was).

It was quite a party atmosphere - cue lots of 'team photos' taken by an obliging stranger. Suddenly, I felt as though I were a Victorian explorer on my way to paddle down (up?) the Amazon. Especially when I got my entourage to cart various bits of baggage onto the train for me. Before I hastily shooed them off, terrified that the doors would shut and they'd end up trapped on the train and also starting a new life in Edinburgh. Or at least Peterborough. Although with pretty much just a rucksack and a bag of shoes, perhaps it was more like being waved off by my extended family for the gap year I never had.

The other two girls at my table must've been quite perplexed by a group of 30-somethings and three small children waving at me through the window as the train drew away, with me a blubbering mess. Expecially as Carolina had made me a packed lunch, with Tupperware and a Petit Filous and everything, which made me start crying all over again. Of course, being English, I didn't explain to my table mates that my Richard Curtis moment was because I was starting a New Life in a New Country. I just whipped my phone out and started texting my friends and family, telling them I was missing them already.