Bears and Jakeys

He's doing it again. 

One of the many things that drives me nuts. He's rescued an empty bourbon bottle out of the recycling, filled it with water and is now marching about the house with it, swigging as he goes.

"Oh for God's sake", I say, "why can't you just drink water out of a glass or water bottle like normal people?"

"This IS a water bottle now" he retorts, ensuring the water makes the maximum sloshing noise as he upends the bottle over his head for another thirst-quenching quaff.  "I'd have thought you'd have appreciated that, what with us being newly fledged members of the Green Party and all. I'm recycling. Look!"

"You look like a jakey!"

This was all I could come up with.  OK I admit it. I can't think of a particularly logical reason for wanting to outlaw this routine; I just don't want to see my husband stoating about looking like an alcoholic vagrant.

Even if it is in the privacy of our own home.  

In the dead of night. 

With the curtains closed.  

What is so galling about it really, though?  I can't fathom it.  I mean, I know he wouldn't walk down the street doing it. It's just a pet dislike of mine. 

Of course, Matt takes great delight in repeating little acts of annoyance that I can't find logical reasons for him not to do, and that makes it all the more annoying.

But those of us, who have been together for a while must all be allowed to annoy our partners in just such a way.  It's one of the pleasures and pains of the whole relationship thing, I suppose.

I can't claim not to have ample opportunity to get my own back.  

This winter, I bought a furry brown fleecy coat from Uniqlo with a hood that zips up the front to form the cosiest cocoon you can imagine.  I know I look like a case of horrendously bad taxidermy in it, but I don't care. It's the most comforting,  comfortable,  cosy thing you can ever imagine wearing and even though it is pretty much summer here I still wear it about the house every chance I get.  

Whenever it puts in an appearance, Matt sighs heavily. 

This is patently not how he imagined marriage. 

He calls it my bear costume.  

Unfortunately this only serves to encourage me, as it brings back fond memories of a lion costume my mother made for me for Halloween out of an old camel coat when I was about 5 years old .  I remember being indescribably thrilled with it and equally indescribably insulted when a neighbour mistook my mother's creative efforts for a bear. 

"Well," says he tremulously, "At least you never go out looking like that". 

(He doesn't know this but I have once.  Down the shops.  Don't tell him though, eh.)

Road-trips, removals and role reversals

(I wrote this in July but failed to post it and then lost momentum a bit for the blog – but rest assured normal service is now resuming).

 

 

When Matt discovered he was rostered to have 4 days off in a row in early July, we decided to use this time to hire a van, drive north to Brisbane and retrieve the rest of our personal effects we’d had shipped over to Australia, which were still at a storage facility at Seventeen Mile Rocks. 

The journey from Melbourne to Brisbane is approximately 18 hours.  It’s a long way but we looked into doing the trip only one way by road and it was going to cost us a fortune in relocation fees for any vehicle we hired.  We therefore decided to make a road-trip of it.  Matt made noises about us just putting a mattress in the back of the van and a duvet (or doona as they are known here) and stopping overnight in a truck stop to save money.  I contemplated this for a moment and several things vied for attention, chief among which were: 

·         what if I need the loo in the middle of the night?  (I frequently do – in fact just thinking about it makes me want to go!);

·         we’re taking the inland route – overnight temperatures in July can get pretty low (near to zero) in places and we can’t keep the van running all night to stay warm; and

·         How are we going to sleep in the back of the van on the way back when it’s full of our stuff?

At this point I also wished I’d never watched Wolf Creek (a horror film about backpackers on a road-trip being waylaid by a psychotic bushman).  So I vetoed the ‘sleeping in the van’ idea and booked us a motel in Dubbo – the halfway point.  (I still can’t believe there is a place called Dubbo!)

Time was tight and Matt was really busy in the lead up to the long weekend, so I made the bookings (which is usually my job)  but then also out of necessity I had to do several things that were not in my usual position description. 

1.        Pack Matt’s bag for the trip.  I NEVER DO THIS NORMALLY!  It offends my ideas of gender equality.  Inherent in the ‘wife packing her husband’s bags for him’ scenario is the assumption that either a) packing clothes and toiletries in a bag is a domestic chore and all domestic chores are the wife’s domain or b) men are too stupid to think ahead about what they might need for an overnight trip.  I heartily dislike an disagree with both of these assumptions and have therefore flatly refused to perform this task at any point during our 10 year marriage … up till now.  In fairness, Matt has never demanded it and this time, given the logistics involved, I offered, but it was a deeply disturbing experience, all the same.

 

2.       To make up for this, I arranged hire of and picked up the white van we were to transport our belongings in, ensuring that in the process, I reversed one-handed round a corner and blasted the horn at various drivers on the way back to the house until I felt that balance had been restored.  I must add at this stage that most of my horn blasting was to encourage people to take me up on my offer of giving way, when the initial attempt at waving and smiling didn’t work.  In Melbourne, the phenomenon of polite driving is scarce enough quite apart from it emanating from a white van, that I was forced to be rude for their own good.  Honestly! 

 

When Matt got home from work we took off.  We were rather disappointed at how loud the van was given that it was a relatively new model but it drove pretty well and had plenty of poke for overtaking.  I took the first shift, up toward Gouldburn Valley Highway (where the fruit comes from), past Puckapunyal (where Mum and Dad and Denny famously saw the passing out parade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY) to Shepparton where we swapped seats and purchased ridiculous quantities of snacks.  I’ve heard of so many of these places and it was kind of cool to drive though/past them even though this route is far from the most picturesque way north (the view in the van excepted of course!) 

When Matt took over the driving again we once again remarked on how noisy but, thankfully, responsive the van was.  We did have to stop rather more frequently for fuel than we had hoped we’d have to, as well.  Again, this prompted wonderment at how such a late model could be so inefficient fuel wise, but hey ho.  We were well on the way now. 

Arriving at Dubbo, we let ourselves into the room we’d booked  – we’d told the proprietors we’d be in late, so they just told us the room number and said the key would be under the mat – then we got ready for bed and crashed out. 

The next day’s drive went smoothly and uneventfully.  Fuelled by the biggest breakfast I have ever seen in my life we continued to take turns driving through glorious sunshine all day. Long stretches of straight road punctuated every hour or so by a right angled turn at some junction or other.  It can get quite mesmerising, which made me a bit paranoid when I was driving.  The guys at the hire place had warned us about kangaroos.  There were also plenty of warning signs all along the way, to which  some individuals with a passion for anatomical accuracy had set about adding genitalia.  However, though we saw plenty of carcasses, nothing jumped out in front of us and we mercifully failed to end our days in a mangled marsupial mess. 

 

 We reached Toowoomba around teatime and because of the road-works taking place on the steep and winding road off the range, the last hour of the journey felt interminable.  We were well and truly ready to get out of the van by the time we drove up Pam’s driveway. 

Pam had several guests who had all come round for a barbecue to watch the British and Irish Lions play the Wallabies in Brisbane.  As the evening proceeded and the match got further away from the home team, the mood became distinctly subdued and disgruntled.  I was the only non-Aussie there and once again an incidental guest in Pam’s house.  I  therefore decided to keep quiet about the sporting disaster unfolding.  I’m not massively into team sport spectating but one of the things I was looking forward to in coming to Australia was being able to support sportsmen and women who had half a chance of actually winning something for a change. But between the pitiful performance in the Ashes tour in England and the Lions tour here, I was experiencing some surprise at the role reversal between this Great Sporting Nation and that of various teams originating from the British Isles.  It felt very odd.  What the hell was going on?  Maybe it was me!?  I never could watch Chris Paterson take a kick without him fluffing it.  Maybe the same jinx was now applying to Australian sportsmen?  (Note from December 2013:  Of course the Aussies have more than made up for these past humiliations in the Australian 2013 Ashes test, it would seem.  I’m most relieved that it wasn’t me after all.)

The next day we managed to catch up with a bunch of friends in between getting our stuff from the storage facility – in which more role reversals made themselves apparent.  Matt spent the whole time blethering to the bloke that ran the place – lovely people – while I gave directions to the fork lift guy and loaded the van. 

We were just leaving the storage place when Matt, in attempting to hand me his phone to answer and pull away into traffic at the same time (Matt?  Multi-tasking and keeping us back blethering all over the place?!)  jogged the gear stick by mistake causing it to slide alarmingly to the right … at which point we realised that we’d just driven 18 hours to Brisbane in third gear.  Neither of us are familiar with driving automatic transmission vehicles.  The 3 and the D were on the same level and in putting the van in gear, neither of us had realised that to get it into ‘Drive’ we needed to slide the stick sideways. 

On the way back down the road the van was much quieter and more fuel efficient… we noted humbly and bashfully.

We stopped off early the next day at Parkes Observatory – famous from the film ‘The Dish’ – fascinating stuff.  Our favourite bit was the two satellite dishes they have in the gardens.  These dishes face each other with a distance of around 150 metres between them.  You can stand in front of one and hear the person standing in front of the opposite dish whisper as though they were standing right next to you.  It’s a gimmick designed to demonstrate the efficiency of the dish shape in picking up signals over large distances, but we were enthralled.  It’s possible that the long, boring drive had made such highlights even higher in our estimation, but whatever. 

 

The final leg of the journey all role reversals were set to rights once again when I haired off down the wrong road and only started worrying after about an hour of seeing signs to Sydney instead of Melbourne.  We did a mad dash through countryside populated by very few people, ever tinier roads and ABSOLUTELY NO FUEL STATIONS to get back to the right route.  Again I wished I had never watched Wolf Creek, especially when we went through a wee village called Lockhart that looked strangely surreal … like a film set and STILL didn’t have a fuel station. 

In the end we got home about the same time we had planned but it certainly made for an exciting trip.  While on the whole, we’d enjoyed the trip  - including the snack pit as we named it – we agreed that next time we went to Brisbane, we’d be going by plane. 

 

 

 

Normal?

So…… yeah.

Life is pootling on.  People are asking me how I’m going and I’m like:  Yeah.  Fine.  Not much to report.  We’re going to work, coming home, hanging out, eating nice food, drinking reasonably priced wine…

It’s all feeling weirdly normal.  Which is unsettling.  Actually, scratch that.  Not all of it is feeling normal.  And that’s unsettling as well.

I’m doing a lot more exercise now that I’ve joined a gym again and signed up for a cheeky wee 5k run in July.  As a result I’m wondering when, if ever, I am going to feel normal about doing reasonably intensive exercise for around an hour three times a week.  Doesn’t seem like much but for a full two days after said exercise I want to spend my time looking desperately at the sky while shaking my upturned, claw-like hands on outstretched arms,  wailing:  WHEN WILL THIS FEEL NORMAL? 

Meanwhile every atom in my body spends its time shouting in reply:

NEVER!  IT’S NEVER GOING TO FEEL NORMAL!  AND WE’LL THANK YOU TO NOTE THAT IT’S POSSIBLE YOU MIGHT HAVE NEEDED THAT LUNG YOU’VE JUST COUGHED UP AT A LATER DATE AND NOW YOU’VE GONE AND GOT GRIT ALL OVER IT.   

My atoms are a right bolshie bunch.   

To be honest, I have to hand it to them – I’m beginning to feel like I have actually lost a lung or that one of the lungs currently occupying my chest cavity might be full of grit.  This too is slightly worrying.

But nevertheless, a lot of life is feeling normal.

There is still the odd moment, of course, where something doesn’t quite go to plan.  We’re both still in that phase of transition from a period of instability and stress to one of normality and calm where an unexpectedly open door or misplaced item can send us gibbering into a corner.  In between these moments, however, we’re kind of amazed at how we’ve managed to get away with it, in the manner of people who accidentally get caught up in a major heist, manage to bag some of the cash and end up on a beach in Mexico.  A half-baked ill-executed plan to move to the other side of the globe somehow didn’t go disastrously wrong and here we are.  Doing not too badly, all up-GAKISTHATTHEROOFFALLINGIN?! 

No. It’s just a light bulb blowing. 

Oh ok.  *I Slowly creep back out from under the table where I was really just checking for … stuff.  No alarm here.  No sir.  Not at all.*

So this normality, right…  I’m wondering:  is this a good thing?  Is feeling normal about everything actually a desirable outcome? 

What if normality isn’t enough for me and what if that’s why I’m hammering away at my poor squidgy body.  Maybe that’s why I’m also jumping on buses without looking and picking up impossible tasks to undertake at work.  I’m having to curb constantly the urge to say or do something outrageous and inappropriate.   To sing out loud along with the tunes I’m listening to through my earphones.  I’m feeling dangerously devil-may-care.   And this is the point Vic Roads decides it’s appropriate to bestow upon me a full drivers licence? 

Good God, What Next and Where Can This End?

ROAD TRIP!

(PS I'm really hoping this is just an attempt at an amusing blog and not some kind of prophecy about my own demise...)

Ten for that you must be mad

I have a confession to make:  I have always been rubbish at haggling.  

My first introduction to haggling was aged 10 in a suk in the Arab quarter in Jerusalem.  I was attempting to buy a souvenir.  There were little price tags on things and I chose a pottery plate and went to hand over the appropriate sum as directed by the tag.  The Palestinian stall-owner pushed my proffered shekels away in a kindly but impatient way and explained to me that I should be offering a lower price and that there couldn't be a sale without an argument.   I blindly and falteringly played along with the stall owner, who was after all being very caring and paternal but I was completely dumbfounded by the whole episode, not least because the plate was already pretty cheap, but also because I suddenly found myself playing a strange game, the rules of which I didn't understand and the purpose of which I could not fathom.

Years later I saw the scene in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ where Eric Idle forces Graham Chapman to waste precious minutes haggling for a false beard.  It was almost a replica (albeit a biblical parody version) of my 10 year old self’s experience.  And the thing is: I still don’t understand it.  I mean!  Is it too much to ask for salespeople just tell me what a thing costs?  Will the markets cease to work if a price is arrived at transparently?  Haggling to me seems dishonest somehow.  Like cheating, it is secretive and exclusive - open only to those who have the talent for poker and other dark arts. 

Maybe I’m just too Presbyterian and legalistic for my own good.  My cultural upbringing has been steeped in the principles of monetary obligation.  The wages of sin is death.  Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors …  If the weather’s good today, we’ll pay for it later…  

I never did get the hang of the supposedly Scottish trait of extracting every last ounce of benefit from any given situation for the lowest price and I haven’t seen much evidence of this in my fellow country people, if I’m honest.

But why am I even bothered?  It’s because this haggling club has an illustrious membership of great entrepreneurs, movers and shakers and part of me would like to be enterprising and persuasive and influential.  In short, part of me would like to be in that club, even if I have just made it sound a bit like the Freemasons.

As a bit of context for my ponderings, I've been looking at joining a gym in Melbourne to regain some of my long lost fitness.   My search was informed by a precise set of criteria designed to prevent me from not bothering my arse as soon as the ink was dry on the membership contract. After looking about I thought I’d found one that filled these exacting criteria, so I booked myself in for a freebie try-out session online.  No sooner had I hit ‘print’ on the online voucher than I received a call from one of the gym’s hyper-cheerful sales people, who offered to book me into one of the classes I was interested in as part of my freebie visit.  So far so good.

The visit also went off fine - though the sales guy I'd spoken to on the phone wasn't there. I got all the details of the membership costs and had a tour of the facilities not to mention use of the gym and attendance at said class.  At the end, even though I had basically made my choice, I declined to join straight away because Matt still hadn't got his Melbourne work contract signed and I was still a bit concerned about how far our money would stretch at this early stage. 

But in the days that followed …

I received no fewer than 2 calls from the sales guy PER DAY, asking whether I’d yet made my decision to join.  Once I started recognising the number, I took to rejecting the call as soon as it popped up on my phone screen. 

Anyway, on a day of particularly heavy gym sales harassment, I expressed my exasperation aloud to a colleague.  ‘Ooooo’ – she said excitedly – ‘they must be desperate to hit their target – you should totally haggle for a discount’.  My heart sank.  I confessed my rubbishness at haggling to her but she wasn't at all daunted.  ‘I've done it heaps of times’ – she claimed –‘they will do anything to hit their targets, these people.  Don’t worry – I’ll coach you in the ways of haggling’.  And so she did.  And I listened intently.  I really did. 

And if that wasn't enough, I looked up the internet as well and found no end of similar advice claiming that only utterly deficient people join gyms and pay the full membership fee.  ‘You wouldn't go to a car showroom and offer to pay the advertised price, would you, and this is exactly the same thing’, the internet scoffed.  Er well …  actually I probably would, I thought ashamedly to myself.  I bet Birgitte Nyborg would talk those slimy car salesmen down a few grand! Not that I’m planning to be the next Danish prime minister or anything, but I was beginning to think that the world of empowerment and entrepreneurship would be closed to me forever if I didn't get the hang of this haggling thing and soon.  Besides, a car is one of the many big ticket items on our medium-term shopping list – all of which, I have now discovered, are hagglable. 

But still I procrastinated. 

Then I got a phone call from a mobile number I didn't recognise and answered it.  It was the gym sales guy.  I told him I couldn't talk right then, so he spent the next few days texting me reminders to join the gym instead. 

My colleague was full of confidence – ‘they will totally give you a discount or at the very least throw in a load of freebies.  You see if they don’t!’, she enthused.

The next day, therefore, when the guy called from his mobile again – this time to give me a guilt trip about my lack of commitment having an impact on my health (the cheeky bugger!) – I agreed to pop round and discuss membership further with him.

Armed with my gym kit and lots of confidence injections from the colleague, I marched up to the reception counter.  ‘Go over there and wait’, they suggested, ‘and the sales guy will be out shortly’.  So I waited.  When finally someone appeared it still wasn't the guy who’d been calling and texting me incessantly, but one of his assistants who bounded up to me all smiles and enthusiasm like a golden retriever puppy.  This wasn't going to plan.  I'd managed to work up a bit of dislike for the sales guy but this one seemed genuinely nice.  Driving a hard bargain with this other guy would be that much more difficult.  My imagination was already beginning to conjure up images of the original sales guy as this hideously disfigured recluse who runs all his sales operations from a darkened airless office and only sneaks in and out of said office in the dead of night.

My colleague had warned me that if it was a lackey trying to sell me membership they’d not necessarily have the authorisation to offer a discount.  In spite of this, I tried.  This attempt was met with ‘well the thing is, we truly believe in our product and that is the price we have decided reflects the value of what we offer.  It is not our policy to offer people discounts as we believe it is unfair that some people should pay more for the same products and services than others’.  A slightly rehearsed speech it had to be said but it totally had me snookered, because THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT I BELIEVE.  It was as if I had been caught with my hand in the till.  I was almost expecting the guy to tell me he was away to tell my mother what I’d been up to. 

After he’d got his breath back from delivering his spiel, and I had hollowly expressed regret that this was the situation, he was back to his bouncy puppyish self, asking me if I was ready to sign up now.  In a vain attempt to save grace, I quietly declined and said I’d need more time to decide. 

Since then, it has been rather quiet on the gym front.  Well unless you count the texted offer of a consultation worth AU$200 to assess my cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, BMI, and body fat ratio as well as various other health indicators if I sign up before the end of the month.  Consultation? Sounds more like humiliation to me.  No thank you.  Jeez guys - I’d have settled for a free towel.

So this evening I head off sheepishly to pay the price for my failed attempt at haggling.  Oh and to have a nice swim.

Looking up

Maybe it’s because there are more nice days in Melbourne (even though they are getting colder) or maybe it’s the fact that my surroundings are still new to me.  It might simply be because my life is looking up in general, but I’m conscious of how blinkered I can be – particularly on my way into work.  I have a routine of getting on the bus, plugging my earphones in, listening to music while browsing my twitter feed (@marybadlady).  It’s not a bad introduction to the working day but I realise I enjoy the day so much more when I look up and notice the people and things I’m passing by, even if they are relatively inconsequential.  I’ve therefore resolved to #Lookup more often. 

Examples of what I’ve seen recently:

• Hot air balloons in floating in a dusty pink morning sky above Kew in Melbourne.
• Hoddle St: CCTV and Security equipment wholesaler - Cement works – Auto repair shop – wee court yard with hanging baskets, pot plants and a garden bench – Busy intersection …
• Tall business man in his sixties sprinting to make the tram, pinstripe suit, briefcase and all.  He really shifted it!
• A woman getting on the bus in the morning with a plate of raisin toast and a latte in a glass cup, standing in the middle of the bus, breakfasting away.
• A wedding cake shop that looks like a cemetery of future special days.
• A cockatoo sitting on a police station (thought it had been blown rather far south and then read the local newspaper which announced that someone’s pet bird had escaped.  Maybe he was turning himself in, but I hope he turned his beak north and flew off to freedom)
•  A heart-shaped stone on the beach…

Life in the ‘burbs

The title of this entry may in part be influenced by our having rediscovered David Attenborough’s autobiography, ‘Life on Air’, in audio format (narrated by DA himself) on our home computer.  He’s been chatting on about his life’s work for the last week or so, giving us solace in the face of our persistent lack of internet connection, but I'm still not sure I've heard all the contents. 

Matt bought the audio version of the book when we were still in Scotland because of my insomnia.  We’re both great fans of Attenborough’s natural history programmes on TV but I have found that despite my interest in what he had to say, his soothing voice always lulled me into a bit of a snooze.  Even when he uttered those fateful words: “a calf being separated from its mother” – a sure sign that said calf is about to be felled and hideously disembowelled by a pack of wolves or similar – I would frequently find myself nodding off comfortably.

Being one who often struggles to sleep when everyone else is, and who has found this struggle distressing at times, Matt thought the David Attenborough effect was worth exploring as a possible cure.  His motives were not purely altruistic, it has to be said. Infuriatingly, he has absolutely no trouble sleeping, except when his wife persistently nudges him with urgent whispers, such as “are you asleep?”, and if there is no answer:  “how about now?”.  If he gives an answer, this – in my view – constitutes licence to discuss the thing we forgot to do or need to do tomorrow, or speculate aloud about the source of any unidentified noises.  Matt has taken to answering “yes” when I ask if he’s asleep.  Sometimes I mash it up a bit and ask if he’s awake.  If he’s even half asleep there’s a good chance he’ll fall back on the default answer of “yes” before realising what the question was.  Thus, a poor, long-suffering husband is separated from his sleep…

Anyway, during a particularly bad patch of insomnia (I think it was back in Glasgow during Ramadan, when the entire Muslim community in the city would spill out of the mosque opposite our house at 11.30 pm and chew the fat for an hour or so), Matt suggested we try it out.  It worked a treat to the point where I never got to the end of an anecdote from the autobiography.  Listening again while pottering about in the house has provided me with a form of closure I didn't know I needed.

However - we now have internet.  FINALLY!  A whopping 7 mbps in off-peak time along ancient copper wires, but still.  I can’t believe how dependent I have become on an internet connection.  Part of the reason for my blog silence of late has been because I haven’t been able to access Blogger from the data supply on my phone, but there are no excuses now.

Settling in has been fun, but also overwhelming. We have so much to get for the house and so many decisions to make, coupled with limited supply of funds – at least initially – that we’re in a kind of holding pattern until we have a few more salary slips behind our belts.  Matt has been pursuing job opportunities down here and things are looking relatively positive but he’s yet to sign on the dotted line of a contract.  Until then, the things we can do to settle in are limited.  Over the last few weeks,  we've slowly been building up stores of crockery and kitchen equipment that we didn't bring with us.

On arriving back from a shopping expedition for some of this stuff, one of our neighbours pointedly mentioned that he’d kindly just mown the patch of grass in front of our house for us. Thinking that might have been a nudge to get our act together in the garden, I suggested that Matt go out and attack the grass in the rest of the yard with the hodder-didder from the garage (cf. E Izzard:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KDoxevZgTU), while I did the indoor chores.

He was out there for quite some time and on his return, reported that he’d just spent the last hour hacking down the vine which had been growing over the fence from the neighbour’s yard, which he asserted was a complete disgrace.  His ferocity was such that I began to worry about our decision to move to the ‘burbs.  What if my beloved husband turned into one of those suburban grumps?  What if we ended up on one of those TV shows about neighbour disputes?

All I can say is:  Thank The Lord for the eventual arrival of the internet!  Now we can go back to taking all our aggression out via Team Fortress 2. 

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.