The visa itself wasn't the hard part. The hard part was everything happening around it — the house, the school transition, the job search, the emotional weight of an international move landing all at once.

I say that with full affection, because I have now lived through enough British summers — and British heatwaves — to understand that the way this country responds to extreme heat is one of the most purely British things I have ever encountered. It is simultaneously catastrophic and deeply, deeply funny.