The little things …

Perfect washing weather today.  There is a good breeze and the sun is warm when it gets through.  I’ve taken the opportunity to try out the rented washing machine for the first time and do the laundry, but though I was thinking about doing some messages at the local shops, I feel I need to stay close to my newly laundered load that’s hanging out on the line in case the rain comes.  Check me – Domestic Goddess In Waiting!  Mind you, I’ve been to the supermarket every day over the past week.  It’s the little things I keep forgetting, like salt. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself, launching into rambling waffle about laundry and groceries of all mundanities, when I haven’t provided the all-important update on our progress.

I started my new job at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) on Tuesday 12 March.  I have been told by numerous colleagues that the period of time between interview and start date must be an all-time speed record for the institution – and possibly for the entire global higher education sector – which I could well believe.  Under normal circumstances things would have taken far longer, but when informally offered the position the previous week, I pressed my (now) line manager to hurry things up for me.  Frankly, I was desperate to get earning and settled, as living with constant uncertainty and ever depleting UK savings was wearing thin.  You might have noted this already.   Anyway, God bless him, my new manager pulled out all the stops and got me signed up and on the payroll by Friday 8 March, just two weeks after the interview. 

So Tuesday the 12^th, I turned up to my new place of work, and met everyone I would be working with over coffee and cake, before beginning the obligatory period of ‘background reading’.  Not a bad introduction all in all.  As well as several Australians in my team there is an Indian, a Kiwi, a Guatemalan and now, of course, a Scot.

It wasn’t all strenuous coffee and cake consumption, however.  No sooner had we begun our descent to the café on the ground floor of the building I now work in, than my mobile phone rang.  It was the estate agent who managed one of the rental properties I had viewed the previous week, offering me the lease.  He said that if I could get bank drafts raised for the bond (deposit) and first month’s rent by the afternoon, I could sign the lease that very day and get the keys at the end of the week.

The property was one I nearly didn’t bother viewing, because I worried that it might be too far out of the city.  But being a little house with its own tiny garden, tucked away from the road, I immediately fell in love with it, when I saw it.  Matt had agreed that we should put in an application for the place but was also concerned about the distance from the centre of town, particularly given the working hours he typically keeps.  After discussion, I suggested that he have a go at buying a cheap, second-hand car.  He could drive it and a load of our stuff currently in storage in Brisbane down to Melbourne, saving removals fees, and have a vehicle to run around in once he got here.  He had just been offered a loan from his mother for just such an eventuality and within a couple of days, Matt had found a car within budget that would do the trick. 

I therefore left work early on my first day to go in search of a National Australia Bank that would give me a couple of bank drafts.  Now this isn’t the first time I have moved internationally.  I have had experience of having to grapple with foreign banking systems and different procedures, not to mention some of the wacky set ups back home.  It was therefore with some trepidation that I approached a branch of my bank in the city, without having made an appointment, to try and get the bank drafts raised.  To my amazement the whole procedure went off without a hitch.  In a couple of hours I was the proud tenant of our little house in Balwyn.

 That evening I moved out of my long suffering friends’ place and into a hotel, being now assured of ongoing income and a permanent place of residence in the near future.  (Thank you Mum!)

The rest of the week flew past and by Friday, I had two substantial pieces of work to get my teeth into.  Brilliant!  Background reading is all very well and what not but I confess to loathing it if that is all there is to do.  My reading slows, my attention wanders, I start looking blankly out of windows with my mouth hanging open and before you know it, I’m questioning my ability to do the job based on the fact that I’ve had to re-read a dreary sentence 40 times and I still haven’t got a clue what it means.

Now that I’ve stuff to do, background reading has a purpose and somehow it goes easier.

The weekend brought cold, rainy weather worthy of a Scottish summer, which totally derailed the Australian Grand Prix.  That’ll be why there’s no Glasgow Grand Prix then…  My aforementioned long suffering friends again lent me their meerkatobile to go and do some shopping for the house.  With it I headed to Doncaster’s Westfield Shopping Town (on the outskirts of Melbourne) and explored its tardis-like properties.  I couldn’t move into our house just yet because there was absolutely no furniture and no appliances save the integrated hob and oven, but I figured that I could get some essentials for when I did move in – like crockery, bedding, cleaning equipment etc. 

To solve the furniture/appliances issue and on Matt’s suggestion (I wouldn’t have thought of it) I sought the services of Radio Rentals – still going strong in Australia and open for the rental of anything from exercise equipment and x-boxes to bedroom furniture.  I attempted to hire from them a washing machine, fridge and bed, which were the absolute basics I needed to live in the new place.  The lassie I spoke to at RR was very helpful and assured me that they could easily fulfil my request.  All I had to do, as a foreigner, was find no fewer than 5, that’s FIVE, Australian referees to attest to the fact that I would not be either a flight risk or possessed of a tendency to blow up rental furniture and appliances on a regular basis.  Suspect they might have been watching too many imported UK TV shows featuring Richard Hammond.  Luckily, I know quite a few people of the Australian persuasion – or at least with Australian credentials – and so was able to supply the required references.

The delivery arrived on Tuesday 21 March, which was also the day I checked out of the hotel and moved into our new home! I was soo excited!  The delivery guy, true to their company’s policy on foreign birds, took one look at my passport (one of the three required pieces of ID I had to supply on delivery) and grilled me for a good 10 minutes on my purpose for being in Australia.  I began to suspect he worked for the Immigration department.  When I said my husband was Australian, he then asked me how I had managed to get in the country and how long I’d been living off the state.  I explained that we’d been married nearly 10 years and that I was living and working in Scotland when I applied for the visa, at which he expressed relief that I wasn’t one of those ‘mail order brides’.  I honestly didn’t know whether to be insulted by this or flattered that my superficial charms might qualify me as such. 

Since the delivery of the fridge, the washing machine and the bed, I have been pretty much living in bed (probably consistent with mail order bride status but with less housework and fewer beatings).  It’s by far the most comfortable of the three to be sitting/lying on.  This has been strangely enjoyable.  At last a bit of space all of my own!  That I am earning MONEY to pay for!  I cannot express the extent to which this particular little thing is so utterly game changing for me.

But no sooner was I becoming accustomed to my bed-based existence than another friend of mine offered and delivered a heap of furniture to me this morning.  I am now the proud owner of a sofa (courtesy of his mother in law), a desk, a kitchen table and two chairs, and a coffee table. 

Funky orange chair donated by friends

 

I am overcome by the kindness and generosity of my friends and family in the course of this move.  We couldn’t have done it without you.  You know who you are.  A thousand thankyous!     

And the house?  And its distance to the City?  No problems at all!  I have a couple of options in terms of public transport.  One is a fifteen minute walk followed by a tram that drops me right outside work. I’m not sure I should be publicising this, but there are always seats.  If it’s rubbish weather or if I’m running later in the morning, I can take a bus two minutes’ walk from my door that shoots along the freeway into the city in half an hour.  Quicker than the commute from far closer suburbs, again with plenty of seats and not a jakey or junkie in sight.  This enables me to spend a very pleasant 40 minutes or so either side of my working day people-watching.  Middle-aged male cyclists are far more entertaining than the grand prix in my opinion.  The competitiveness and one-upmanship you see on the roads.  It’s electric!  They’ll run red lights and all sorts of risks in order to get ahead!  Then there’s that peculiar brand of Melbourne quirkiness that you get to see.  The other day I spotted a woman skateboarding home from the supermarket.  She was in her thirties, dressed in a long, stylish, grey cashmere cardigan and sporting Jackie O type sunnies with her groceries slung over either wrist.  Just gliding on down the pavement without a care in the world.

The neighbours have been lovely and given us a bottle of wine as a welcome to the neighbourhood present. 

Matt has just finished up work in Brisbane today and is coming down to Melbourne mid next week.  I am on the point of daring to believe that things might be working out quite well after all.  At the very least I have taken advantage of the sparse furnishings and danced a waltz around our new living room in celebration. 

It’s the little things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Saturday Can Get Stuffed!

Yes, Saturday 9^th March 2013, that means You!   Very interesting and everything, but I have quite enough of you to keep me going for a while, if it’s all the same. 

The thing about being homeless and unemployed is that even when you know your prospects are improving (I had been appointed as a Senior Policy Adviser at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and estate agents were making positive noises about our tenancy application for a house), small things still have a way of destabilising you.  Politicians and policy makers have an awfully smug way of talking about homelessness and unemployment, like it's some sort of wacky lifestyle choice.  In my case that is exactly what it was - a choice - and one for which I had any number of options to reverse.  What of the person who is ill-qualified for the job market?  What of the asylum seeker who cannot work and cannot put down roots though they desperately need some stability?  What of the person who has simply been down on their luck for long enough to have their confidence eroded?  My situation was fairly trivial in comparison.

Saturday 9^th March was a pretty unremarkable day, punctuated – I’ll grant you – by a few minor, irritating, small things, but it should never have been allowed to get as out of hand as it did.  For example, I went to attend a flat inspection in Hawthorn, only to discover that the flat had been leased and the inspection cancelled at the last minute – too late for me to realise, as I’d been on an hour long trip across town.  This trip, which had begun as an interesting excursion, full of possibility, mutated quickly into a monumental waste of time.  Time may be one of the few cheap things available to an unemployed and homeless person but this in itself rankles.  The value of my skills has been in question for some time (due to a sustained period of unemployment), the value of my presence has also been challenged – for homelessness does this to you.  It seeps into your soul and tells you that you belong nowhere and nowhere belongs to you.  You begin to feel effaced, invisible and when seen by anyone, you feel like a burden and an encumbrance to them.  Every experience you have is filtered through a screen of doubt which casts a grey shadow on anything pleasant: this is all very nice, but I should really be job seeking; this is lovely but I’m imposing on others’ kindness – and utterly blackens anything slightly negative: this is a bit of a set-back and therefore a sign that I have taken the wrong path, that I have jeopardised my entire future; that I am purposefully being a burden on my friends, family, the society to which I have applied to be a part; etc.  Now my time too is devalued … by nothing but an administrative oversight.

Ok by now you’ll be familiar with my dramatic turn of mind and I fully admit that this could be increasing the filter effect described above. I generally think of my sense of drama as less of a failing than a way of articulating what is going on around me and with me.  It’s like applying a kind of amplified emotional metaphor, if you will, to situations.  Thus, if a situation involves sacrifice, and I am finding the making of this sacrifice difficult in some way, my mind leaps to a scenario where a hapless Mayan is being dragged to a bloodstained altar atop a pyramid, amid the frantic cheering of hysterical crowds.  Similarly when exhilarated, my imagination will kick in and have me (or rather a lithe and beautiful version of me) galloping across some sundrenched plains on a powerful horse, in perfect balance with its movements and generally dressed in something long and flowing and made of silk.  But sometimes, operating in ‘drama’ mode can become rather tiresome, particularly when there are aspects of your life that are genuinely stressful, like being a little bit homeless and unsettled, for example.

For this reason, despite the fact that I have landed an amazing, interesting and challenging job after just three months of unemployment…

despite the fact that I have wonderful friends and family, who have supported me at great personal cost… and

despite the fact that all the signs point to things getting better in the very near term… I had a meltdown.

It manifested itself while using the car I had borrowed from a friend for the aforementioned fruitless trip.  After ducking into a shop briefly, I returned to the car and found myself unable to open the driver’s side door.  I couldn’t even get the key in the lock.  At first I just thought:  it’s ok, I’ve just got the key the wrong way round, so I calmly turned the key around and tried again.  Still no luck.  I tried shoogling the key into the lock.  Nope.  I then tried turning the key around the way I had it at first again.  Still nothing.

At this point, the car became a symbol of the general sense of rejection I was feeling.  It was as if the car was saying:  No, thank you, you are not welcome.  You don’t fit in with your husband’s family – they all hate you, by the way.  No, you can’t get a home here either, because you do not belong in this amazing city – whatever gave you the idea that you could live here, you miserable cretin?  No, you can’t even get into this borrowed car, because you are defective and ungrateful and on top of all of this have managed to break your friend’s vehicle.  Look at what you’ve done!  Why don’t you just do us all a favour and shrivel up and die? I pictured the car pointing its nose in the air, sticking out a pair of cartoon, white-gloved hands, lifting its back fenders in the manner of a Victorian (historical not geographical) woman lifting her skirts to negotiate a puddle, and stalking off down Auburn Street on the tips of its rear tyres.  Leaving me.  In the middle of the road.  Pointing a key.  At nothing.

Right there, in the middle of a busy intersection, in the suburb of Hawthorn, still desperately jiggling the key in the lock of the driver’s side door of the car, I burst into a flood of tears, great shudders wracking my frame, until, through the deluge, I turned to my right slightly … and spotted a meerkat. 

This meerkat was made of plastic and looked as though it was half submerged in the back window sill of another maroon Mitsubishi Lancer saloon car, almost identical to the one that had just now been refusing me entry, just one parking place up the street.  It began to dawn on me that I had seen this meerkat somewhere before.  I was pretty sure my friend had one in the back of her car.  It was the kind of amusing trinket she would keep. 

Shortly after this a slightly apologetic realisation sidled into my consciousness, telling me, after clearing its throat and waiting patiently for my attention, that I might be stood in front of the wrong car and that, while I had been in the shop, someone else might have come along and parked an almost identical car directly behind that of my friend. 

This realisation was then crowded out by a rampaging thought that rushed into my brain like a mental version of Seinfeld’s Kramer.  This thought made it known to me in frantic tones that I had just been standing in a busy intersection in a major city, looking for all the world as though I were breaking into an automobile for the purpose of theft!

Immediately, I shifted my bleary attentions to the plastic-meerkat-infested car and at once gained entry, upon which I collapsed in a heap (safely inside the car) and sobbed until exhausted.  I then had to wait for a further 15 minutes or so before I was able to handle a vehicle again and drive off.

There followed a series of trivial but irritating events through-out the rest of the day that seemed to mock me.  It was as if the day were saying:  You total drama merchant!  You have not got it bad at all!  You have no idea what bad even means!  See here – you can’t get access to the library wi-fi!  Boo Hoo!  What a Shame!  Are we going to have a Crying Fit now, Mrs ‘I Can’t Get Absolutely Everything My Way’?  What about this – the internet is a bit SLOW!  Alas, Alack!  Does this not call for a Complete Nervous Breakdown, Little Miss ‘Everything’s A Bit Hard’?!  Oh wait, hang on, you want to escape your Difficult First World Life and watch a movie at the local cinema?  Well how about this:  Why don’t you queue for 20 minutes to buy a ticket and then discover that the box office doesn’t take EFTPOS and then have to leave the queue, find an ATM, get money out and then try again … From The Back Of The Queue!?  How Do You Feel Now?  Fancy having a Temper Tantrum Right Here In the Middle Of Fitzroy?

But by this time, I couldn’t even muster a dramatic little finger.  I was spent.  I had really had enough for one day. Whatever, Saturday, I sighed. You win.

And Saturday the Ninth of March then said:  And Have We Learned Our Lesson Yet?!

Well, I ask you!  If a day of the week were to run about speaking to you like that, all in initial capitals and what have you, would you entertain another single moment in its presence? 

I certainly didn’t.

Which is why I deftly gathered my skirts and pointedly moved my existence to the Tenth of March.