Hi Fred/Terpe. Sorry for your loss Terpe, I was obviously half expecting you to say that. It is commendable that you stayed put for him (slaps back). My father will be 94 later this year but, very fortunately, he is in fine fettle and still baking himself cakes each week and cooking his own glorious Sunday roast! I still think I need looking after more than HE does! There is no substitute for good health (you have to be old to know that! lol) so I was not anchored to the UK for any good reason.

We actually moved out here in May 2011 (3 years now!) which was quite soon after we found this forum. We just got a bit busy to revisit here until now!

Yes Fred, all the stuff got here no probs in a 20 footer. No motorbikes, no cars (huhuhu) and no breakages either! Until we unpacked and wifey dropped a glass lol. I mugged up on container shipping and it scared the pants off me! Insurance for everything was available but at a high price. The UK is insurance overload......at the end of my annual insurances I always felt like making sure a claim was due just to justify the premiums! I never did of course as setting fire to my home and my office (both while they were simultaneously being burgled by persons unknown), crashing both cars and all four motorcycles, losing all my camera equipment, mobile phones and credit cards and dishing out bad professional advice all on the same day would look a tad suspicious.....

Guess how many 20ft/40ft containers are "lost" each year. Nope. Guess again. Nope. Give in yet? Ok, one more guess? Nope. 30,000! That seems a lot but it is actually a very very very small number when compared to how many are shipped each year......and even a small number when compared to how many one ship can carry!! You have the opportunity to state where you wish your container to be stored on board. Above or below deck. As many get shoved off the boat when it gets a bit choppy (as they overloaded it on the basis of a calm voyage) (yes, they really DO push containers off deliberately!) So we just asked for it to go below deck to make "shoving off" unlikely. Best news of all was that the ship carrying our container was not hijacked once my marauding Somalian's flying the skull and crossbones and it arrived entirely intact and generally ship shape :-) We did not take out any insurance on the basis that the financial loss would not be as great as the personal loss of treasured items and no insurance can compensate for that.

Moved around since arriving here and generally having a good time :-)