In six weeks time I am moving to Kansas. How did that happen? Well, it's a long story, but suffice to say it wasn't where I'd imagine I'd spend the next two years of my life. However, after a period of time spent railing against the unjustness (of giving up my job on a national newspaper, leaving my friends and family behind and most importantly, potentially sacrificing all attempts to have an ironic conversation for the next 24 months) I am starting to get just a teensy bit excited.

Much of the excitement comes from actually having a place to live out there. Have you ever tried to rent a house without actually being in, or even having visited the place to which you are moving? It's a bit of a shocker.

Luckily for us, help was at hand in the form of a dear English friend, who, handily, happened to be an estate agent in her former life.

So there I was, trawling through endless lettings sites trying to find the potential home of our dreams. I don't know if you've ever been onto an American estate agents website, but let me tell you, Foxtons is a dream by comparison. Wonky photographs, taken of extraordinary parts of a room (one site had no less than 4 pictures of the same piece of skirting board), no floorplans, no map of where the property is - precious little at all, really. And when you've become quite accustomed, thanks very much, to nicely presented properties - neutral decor, decent kitchens, tasteful bathrooms - the reality of the midwestern taste in interiors hits pretty hard. Think pine kitchens circa 1982, complete with electric hob (I mean electric! Who uses that nowadays?), plastic bathtubs that look as if they would barely fit a mouse and the most hideous dark brown carpets. I was freaking out, I can tell you.

Luckily, thanks to the help of the dear English friend, who patiently drove out to locations far and wide and gave us her honest feedback on the various internet links I emailed to her, we seem to have landed ourselves with one of the only tasteful properties in the entireity of Kansas. I'm only going on the photos she sent here, but we've got a nice open-plan house, light interiors, wooden floorboards and a back yard that - get this - actually needs a ride-on mower to keep it tidy. Ok so there's still an electric hob and a plastic bathtub, but I'm looking forward to being able to spread myself around, if you know what I mean, in our new four-bedroom abode complete with wilderness lawn out back. Gosh I'm even starting to sound like an American. Sigh...