That's it, I'm off.

Me by Joana
Originally uploaded by davehodg.

Off from this sceptic Isle at least.

It's not often you get the chance to turn the clock back ten years but, wrinkles and minor beer belly situation nothwithstanding, that's exactly what I'm doing.

As of Monday I'm off to Utrecht to lend Dave-fu to the Market Risk group at Rabobank; a team I was consulting at before joining the web 1.0 rush.

This came about totally by chance. I pinged one of my former colleagues to see what he was up to. That led to lunch. He described how some of the original team had been moved back on to the project, but they needed someone to bridge the business and IT and give the IT folks some leadership. "Sounds like you need me". Pause. "OK". A day trip to Utrecht to seal the deal and I'm packing boxes. Eat your heart out "six months to hire" Goldman Sachs. *That's* the way to do business.

I'm *really* looking forward to this: great people, really interesting project and of course, fantastic location. And it's long-term too: everything needs to be in place by 2010 and there's a lot to do. With luck, there should be some travel too.

There's also a good chance we'll be hiring more bodies and the Dutch tax system is awesome for expats. So watch this space.

I'll miss Camden. It's been an amazing six months of friends, gigs, emos and even some work in between!

Now the path to hell paved with good intentions:

1. I'm going to learn Dutch properly this time. Despite the protestations of the IT manager: "Noo! We need to improve our English!".

2. I'll get a two-bed apartment in Utrecht or Amsterdam so y'all can visit. I expect it to be booked out most weekends (and weeks!) when I'm not on the road.

3. On successful completion of the project I'll take a year and get that photography MA. For now, I'm retiring from serious photography.

If I sound full of it, it's because I am. This is going to be great.