Just in case anyone has stumbled across this blog rather than being friends & family who have been guided (read: frog marched) here we should first introduce ourselves. I’ll leave Hugo to introduce himself; in the meantime I’m Claire.

I am a Chartered Accountant*. A vaguely interesting accountant if you can imagine that, but an accountant all the same. I say “I am an accountant” when I should say “I am an accountant on hold”. Hugo, my husband has accepted a job with Apple so we have moved from Silicon Fen to Silicon Valley, and I have moved from a demanding but fun job to being wife of an H1 visa holder. I can’t even complain that I’m just a number as I don’t even get one of those.

So - what to fill my time whilst I can’t work in the US (and judging by the way things have started, while I don’t get to see terribly much of Hugo). Definitely some mountain biking, some surfing in the summer (sorry - despite being English I am a complete wimp in the cold these days) and up to Tahoe in the winter. Learning Spanish is a must – I had a good try to learn the basics when I went to Peru in 2000 but the altitude had the affect of switching my brain back to my O Level French… which was great, until 3 days later both languages disappeared completely as I acclimatized. Stanford is near so study is a possibility and I can work for charity, however to start with, and to keep my brain working we have our blog.

*I didn’t always want to be an accountant in true Monty Python style and in fact started life as a Geographer before embarking on my life of eternal examinations.