Nothing you can sing that can't be sung...

I have been happily married to Alex for 32 years and in that time as a family, we have had many adventures. I was reminded yesterday that the choices we have made collectively and individually to sometimes swim against the tide and do our own thing is of great offence to some. When I have been treated with suspicion and cynicism because I am not bound by the restraints people often imagine are binding them, my ‘go to’ was immediately to accuse them of being jealous, but as I reflected on this I realised that it’s not always the case.  Sometimes people simply despise you for not wanting what they have. It's as though they view you as somehow dismissing their life because you choose not to emulate it but seek out your own path.

When Alex and I got married I was sixteen and he was nineteen. We were madly in love and upset everyone we knew with our obsession with one another. When we decided to get engaged we thought we’d probably wait a year before we married to give people a chance to get used to the idea, but with all the sensitivity of teenagers, we then decided that actually there really was no pleasing people so we were married in three months. Immediately we were a statistic. Living in a council flat, Alex was made redundant within weeks of our wedding and by that point I was pregnant. You’d think wouldn’t you that the rest would be easy enough to predict, but the fact that we were so young and full of naïve determination and passion for life meant that our eternal and youthful optimism carried us to wonderful places. Many were in our dreams, in our long discussions as we walked miles with our baby girl in her pram. We talked and we planned and we sang Beatles songs and knew that the adventures were out there, just waiting to be had. And have them we did.

Talking at an interview yesterday, one man asked what I made of it all, what I thought it had all been about; this life that I live. He asked me this question several times, in several different ways. It got awkward, I winced. He really struggled to understand what was glaringly obvious to me. It is and always has been about love. Because when you love, life is an adventure. I left the meeting saddened, feeling like my life had somehow been dismissed as chaotic, a nonsense. I came home to Alex. He held me, we drank wine, listened to jazz and laughed.

Frenemy or Foe??!

You know you’ve adjusted to the new place when you’ve made the new friends, and then you realise that you made some bad judgments. There’s a kind of desperation that comes with moving away which makes you extremely understanding to the point of stupidity, also known as being temporarily blind to other people’s not very nice attutudes or dare I say, personalities. Recently I’ve had to question myself, and ask what happened to my previous approach to friendship. I mean as I have - hopefully - progressed through adulthood I have I think, become more discerning when it comes to people, and so why I ask, did I abandon all of that experience when I arrived here. I know the answer, and so do you. Simply and honestly, it was sheer loneliness. When I got here I was feeling scared and without the support network that surrounded me at home, and so I grabbed onto whatever semblance of comfort I could find. I grabbed it with both hands, and got them burnt I now discover. Thing about burns is, as anyone who has had the misfortune to have been burnt will tell you… they can be so deep that you don’t feel the pain until later.  I also discovered that my ears had been burning too...  It seems Perth is just like anywhere else in the world. You get the genuinely lovely, wonderful people who sincerely like you and enjoy your friendship, and then you get the not so pleasant people. I think it's ok that after four months, I am now settled and confident enough here to be more 'me'... to exercise my experience at little, and that is what I call progess.

The deep thinkers amongst you will maybe have detected the teeniest bit of cynicism from me. I’m feeling homesick… It was the sun wot’ did it you see! I read this morning that it’s 22 degrees in Glasgow and it made me really sad. I know it’s hotter here, but there’s that feeling you get back home when it’s been a long horrible winter and then one day you get up go out and you can literally smell the season has changed. You feel the warmth of that stranger, the sun on your skin and you know no matter how you might complain about the rubbish summer it will bring… the winter has finally ended. It’s like a special kind of seasonal gratitude that washes over you. And this morning I missed it, because you just don’t get the joy of it unless you’ve actually lived it. Enjoy the sunshine my friends, and Happy Easter. xxx

A little pressie for you below... life's too short to sit around miserable!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR0v0i63PQ4

 

Hello, I live here

Forgive me friends for I have sinned… it has been far too long since my last confession (aka blog) and so much has happened that I actually have no idea where to begin. I have sought the wisdom of others on where to start and they have been no use whatsoever (you know who you are!) and so I shall do my best to fill you in on the crazy mental rollercoaster of the past two months..

We got a house remember… yay!!! It was terrible… booo!!! And moved out. After 3 days, or was it 2. To the Holiday Inn. The house was heavenly Californian chic by day and a Steven King horror by night. It was utterly infested with giant cockroaches. Oh not for us the moderate everyday ones you see in the Raid ads, oh no, but great big ugly enormous ones the size of your hand – I lie not I swear to you! Moving faster than the speed of sound, at the first hint of night out they came from under skirting boards and floor boards, out of the air con and under doors, beneath the fridge and out of cupboards – all night long.. out they charged. Walk into any room and there would be others just waiting to head right for me at full speed.  I am Legend? The Night Seekers? Will Smith curled up shaking like a leaf in the bath? That was me. I was in a state of complete mental trauma. Sitting up in bed for two nights with the lights on shaking from head to toe and holding a can of Raid. It was actually hades. Poor Alex was in trauma too, but not because of the damn cockroaches but because of my reaction to them. So, out we moved to the Holiday Inn – God bless it – and began the termination of our lease (I think that’s a juxtaposition I just did – and yes I know that was awful grammar there). 

At the time we were leaving the house of hell - did I mention btw way it was on a street called Edinboro? We so should have known. Anyway at this time our new friends here in Perth were heading back over to Glasgow due to a family bereavement, and in the midst of their grief they very kindly offered us their house. Our Guardian Angels! My troubles were nothing, absolutely nothing, when I think of what they were going through and I was deeply humbled by their kindness. So we spent the two weeks over Christmas staying in their gorgeous home which was appreciated more than words could ever say. Grateful doesn’t come close. It meant that when Beverley arrived on Christmas morning we could bring her back to their home and have a fabulous and bug free holiday. And we did. It was so exciting meeting her at the airport, so much better than saying goodbye that’s for sure. My little Christmas elf!! We did loads of stuff over Christmas and New Year, and while I know I probably went on a bit more than I should have about the cockroaches, I believe she had a pretty fabulous time too! We had a ball.

I guess the one thing we couldn’t escape from though during this period was the fact that we were actually homeless. Our friends were due to return from Scotland and we had nowhere to go. Not exactly an ideal situation in a strange and foreign land. Well after a bit of head scratching, we arranged that we’d move back into the original city apartment when we’d need to and hoped that we’d find a place very very quickly. And so it is with huge thanks to Beverley that we did actually find a place, very very quickly. On Zoo day. We’d been to the Zoo – A M A Z I N G – and on the way back Beverley picked up a real estate brochure and there, right on page 4 staring up at us was our new home! We viewed, applied and tied it all up in a week. It is just a vision of loveliness. And we haven’t tried to recreate our life in Scotland like perhaps we were trying to do with the Edinboro Street one. It’s an apartment with 2.5 bedrooms, a pretty view and a handy pool for hot days. It’s just very nice and we love it. I keep teasing Alex that he’s P Diddy, this is his crib… and I’m his booty! So here we are in our apartment and have no plans on moving again until we get kicked out. The lease is up in July and I’m not so sure the owners are your serious landlord types, so we could be searching again in a few months, but I hope we are wiser now.

Since we moved here we’ve had our first visitor… Andy!!! It was so fun getting a visit so soon after Beverley. In fact January just raced by which was great because my biggest enemy without doubt is boredom and I thrive on people and new things. Interestingly, when Andy was here we didn’t do all the things we did when Beverley was over but this time kept it all a bit more low key, which was perfect because it gave me an opportunity to really get to know my new part of town – or hood as Alex might say. So by the time Andy left I’d found my favourite local coffee shop, bar and restaurant and had gotten to know a few faces around the area. Perfect.

Now I mentioned that my biggest enemy is boredom. I never knew just how much me and boredom really don’t mix. Seriously. This week is the first ordinary calm week since we moved in here and it’s been a hard one. I actually love my own company and am very comfortable with myself – which is just as well really isn’t it – but I have become increasingly aware that I need more. I need purpose. I know that I’ve spoken before about this, so I risk droning on. But, while we can, rightly or wrongly, just about manage to suppress a whole manner of things about ourselves, this need for purpose is a massive part of who I am. So with this increasing self knowledge, I continue on my voyage of global and self discovery (?!!?!) with a renewed certainty that I must be working or I risk my happiness. I have finally applied for my teaching registration here now, it took a while to get it off, but fingers crossed I’ll have my registration soon and will be working by springtime. Starting a new life here is like making a jigsaw, it takes time and it takes patience. I was never very good at jigsaws but from watching others, I do think it helps when there’s two of you..

Lots of love to you… Me & Alex

(Searching for Brigadoon. Or something like it)

“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

I believe in working. Well most of the time I do. Which is actually just as well because I need to work for a living. In fact me and Alex both do and mostly we like it that way. I think needing to do something for your very survival can be good for the soul.  Like millions of others, we’ve worked to pay the bills, to eat, to educate us and our children, to holiday, to clothe us and to fill our homes with probably too much stuff that we don’t really need. And it’s big bonus time if we also happen to like our jobs. That makes you one of the lucky ones. Some people will need to earn to live and some will have less of a need to earn in order to live. Some people have a greater need to work than they have to earn. Everyone is different and that’s what makes life good. When I visited a temple on a school trip last month, our guide showed us a thousand little pots in the temple which are emptied and filled with water every night. This mundane and lengthy task is believed to help the person doing the job because it teaches patience, requires commitment and strengthens the character. The reason for my preoccupation with all of this is because recently I have been getting concerned at the pretence around the subject of money. Money, money, money… there I’ve said it!!! I am not a millionaire and I’m not going to pretend that I am. But ridiculously, there appears to be an increasing pressure today to do just that. I am not poor if poverty is measured by hunger, home, health, love, opportunity and education. But you can make me appear poor if you choose to measure it by something you know I don’t have. I am passionate about working hard and being rewarded for that, and I clearly will never merit a true marxist tag although in my more romantic moments I do imagine.. but that’s not who I am. I love the funny silly things in life. I love travel and good food and good company and daft pointless sparkly things as much as anyone. And I hate snobbery in all its deceptive forms. Reflecting on this, I have come to the conclusion that I clearly have too much time on my hands these days to be quite so preoccupied with the not very nice. I really do need to get back to work, and start earning those stupid sparkly things again.

Auld Lang Syne

Tomorrow I’ve booked to go and view a house! All by myself as Alex’ on a course, so no pressure huh! It’s below budget and in a bit of a boho area called Mt Lawley. We’ve been in Mt Lawley a couple of times already and I use the word boho deliberately. It’s honestly not code for ‘can be a bit scary and mental’ as I would think if someone used that description. It’s a bustling little area with lots of middle class organic types and brilliantly connected to the city. Only takes 5 – 10 minutes on the bus. I guess at this stage my only concern is the price. Its $200 a week cheaper than we’d budgeted for. But we’d originally planned to live by the beach a la Home and Away style, so fingers crossed it’s not a total dump and a big disappointment. As you might have gathered… I’m flying solo with this one – our ‘relocation expert’ has this time not been invited to rain on my parade!

I’m cooking tonight. I’ve decided that finally it’s time. The truth is since we arrived in the apartment almost two weeks ago we have barely used the kitchen apart from tea, coffee and wine pouring. It’s all a bit odd because I love cooking and I love having the time to cook, and as you know (!!)  time is something I’m not short of, but I haven’t once felt the urge to go in there and create something mildly resembling a home cooked meal. I get the most embarrassingly stepford pleasure seeing the fridge stocked full of cheese and meat and vegetables, but that’s as far as it’s gone. The kitchen, it looks like one of those shop displays you see in Ikea, completely spotless and unused. My theory is not that I’m missing cooking for a family, trust me that ship left the dock a long time ago –  just ask Claire and Dom (Oh how I miss your cooking!) – but it is I believe, something to do with this thing called ‘home’. Little steps.

I believe that I can also announce that I have friends… BIG phews!!! I told you last time that I was meeting a few people… well it all went amazingly and we discovered a mutual love of fun, wine and all things Scottish! My friend Lesley told me that when people leave Scotland they get even more patriotic and develop a greater awareness and pride in their heritage, and she’s right. And so while in my opinion I’m still spending far too much time on my own, this happy development means I now look forward to the next lunch or dinner or absolutely anything with these lovely new people.

When Alex and I were out at the weekend, the waitress serving us had a Glasgow accent. So of course I wasted absolutely no time in asking where she was from and within 5 minutes she was writing down ideas of places for us to live and inviting me back this week to hang out with her and drink wine! As my gran used to say… I’d get a piece at anybody’s door!!

A couple of family things this week reminded me of the massive personal cost of being away from home. My dad’s only sister, my Aunt Greta died and then a really close friend of my mum’s, Helga died almost immediately after. I shared this news on Skype with Beverley (our first born, in Japan) and immediately I could see on her face too the reality of that cost. This is such an emotional and reflective time for my mum and dad and with all of my heart I wish we were all there with them just now, just to hug and to listen and to share our stories and memories. As we can't be there, I've posted my own wee tribute. Click on the link below.

Speak soon xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1n-f-Zusaw

p.s. I'm not in any way technical so if this doesn't work with a click - copy and paste on you tube xx

I Don't Speak French...

Brigadoon? It's a mythical Scottish village, a perfect beautiful place that doesn't really exist. I saw the movie when I was about nine or ten on tv, it's a really old movie - I mean it was old even when I saw it.. and I remember thinking how perfect life would be if we all lived in Brigadoon. It was a santa thing. I knew it wasn't real but I enjoyed imagining it was and I think I still do.

We arrived in Perth (Australia) last Tuesday night, absolutely knackered, a little excited and a fair bit terrified too. We'd left behind a life crammed full of incredible people who give our lives shape and meaning, and who are far more important to us than I could ever express. So why did we leave? Partly down to Brigadoon I reckon. Alex's job ended and the opportunity came up. This really is it, this is the life we live, and if we refuse all the adventures offered to us then have we really actually lived at all? And so here we are.