You are not as handsome as you were before

K decides to use the instrumental interlude in whatever song he’s currently blasting into the microphone to shout “Ahaha tiny woman bladder!” at me as I exit our karaoke room for the 12^th time. I had already hissed at him that I am NotWell, lady code for ‘I could shit through the eye of a needle’ but the 2.8% beer must have finally had an effect on him. After around 14 bottles each. I look back to scowl, nearly bumping into the two cleaners who have taken to standing outside our booth and peering in at the laowai screeching Winehouse tracks.

At the start of the night, I’d wondered if I’d finally reached my personal pinnacle of awkwardness in this room. Our hosts for the weekend had treated us to dinner, and then, as is the Chinese way, karaoke. For around half an hour, songs wailed sadly to themselves on the screen and disco lights aggressively flashed as the three silent foreigners smiled and desperately necked weak alcohol. My skin prickled and I’d been sitting on my hands, considering completely sober singing for no reason other than embarrassment at our inability to let ourselves go when our friends just wanted to have a good time with us. The boy and I gave each other shifty glances. Mine said, "You’ve lived in China before. This is your responsibility. Pick up the mic and save me from destruction." His said, "Why are you twitching, you wide-eyed goon?"

It's not just the wardrobe, right?

In the weeks before we moved to Beijing, I found it massively frustrating attempting to condense our lives into two suitcases each, balancing essential with luxury, need versus want. Most of the time, need obviously won out, though we did agree that some of the apparently unnecessary – the PlayStation, a photo album, a couple of our favourite books – were worth the luggage space for comfort. A peculiar comfort, I’ll admit, in rowing over Ni No Kuni because he thinks I’m just a ‘button basher’ during fights, and all he wants to do is fly around on our newly acquired dragon* but a comfort nevertheless.

However the rest of the time, as my pile of ‘definitely taking to China’ grew larger, K would roll out the ‘Just buy a new one over there’ argument. And I’d always reply, in a really not-annoying whine, ‘I don’t WANT to buy a new one. I bought the one I’ve got because I LIKE it.’ Aside from the fact we’ve had to extend our overdraft three times already setting ourselves up here, my wardrobe is my wardrobe because I liked all the things in it enough to buy them.

It’s not just the wardrobe, right? Of course it’s not, and some well-bargained sex favours secured me 12 pairs of shoes anyway, the point is that it tapped into a big picture fear about moving abroad. Knocking the bricks out of the life we’ve made.

“So you’re just planning to feel awkward for a year then?”

I can still recall the exact melt-into-the-ground-cry-with-shame feeling that accidentally tugging the hand of my primary school teacher’s boyfriend provoked, after mistaking him for my dad at some school event or other when I was about six years old. I burned up about that nanosecond of nothing for a good few years afterwards. Nobody likes to look stupid. It’s not something you set out to achieve in the morning, I understand this. However, I am pathetically terrified about it and always have been. I try to avoid situations that could prove awkward. Team-building, anything with audience participation, speaking on the phone to anyone at any time. Moving to another country where I don’t speak the lan- Oh.

I’m aware other - normal - people brush things off. I know I feel stupid at times when other people wouldn’t, mainly because K tells me so. I assume other people get through life by not thinking everyone is incredibly interested in their ridiculousness. However here in Beijing, it seems someone nearly always IS checking out what the foreigner is up to. And if Person A stares at Person B for long enough, sooner or later Person B is going do something that warrants a smirk. It’s probability.

Saying Goodbye: Bitesize London

When I first moved to London six years ago, I was prepared for city living to leave me cold. Or flat, like the headless beer I'd been warned about. I love home in Yorkshire. I love having a large, but close, extended family within easy reach, a big group of friends who’ve never lost touch, and a beautiful landscape that isn’t completely cut off from civilisation. By civilisation I mean more places to drink and dance.

I’ve only come to appreciate over the past few years how lucky I am to have had the childhood I had. However, career opportunities and a handsome Southerner beckoned. It took me six years to make the most of London life, and 2013 so far has been full of it – celebrating K’s 30^th at Sushi Tetsu, watching an open air play in Regent’s Park, rousing a friend from the depths of a serious hangover for a Sunday showing of The Dark Crystal at the BFI, managing to finally arrange a date with said friend and another good pal to eat birthday bone marrow at St John’s.

Then our background plan to live in another country at some point started to actually take shape, and it dawned on both of us that the life we’d been lucky enough to enjoy for a while was about to be fully remodelled on a Michael Jackson’s face kind of scale.

The five weeks between handing our notice in and getting on the plane to China were a blur of fun seeing as many friends as possible – and a pretty good snapshot of what we’re sad to leave behind. My bitesize rundown doesn’t include all my favourite places, but does include cheap eats, expensive cocktails and a tattoo in Soho – sounds like a good London night out to me.