Hmm

This last week has not been the best. 
I don't believe in fate. I really don't. The thought that stars or other matter have the remotest interest in what happens in my life, just doesn't make much sense to me.
But there are times when it does seem as though the fates are trying to tell me something. 
As anyone reading this blog may have guessed, I am not totally au fait with the idea of leaving Australia. Yes, there are times when I imagine soft green grass, morris dancing, pubs that smell of old wood and stale beer and banks of flowers; times when I think of dappled forest glades flooded with bluebells, the fact that James Ehnes if far more likely to appear in London than Brisbane; ties when I imagine strolling down cobblestoned streets and gazing at buildings that have History and Character and Beauty; there are times when I think of all these things - of my family and friends back in the Uk - and my heart glows at the thought of being back there.
And then I remember traffic queues at Sainsbury's, slipping on cobblestoned streets in the pouring rain, David Cameron, freezing cold winters, cramped houses with no swimming pools (yes, what poverty!) and my heart sinks. I look at my fat back lab and want to howl. I look at my three children - the eldest who has suddenly developed a social life after 15 years, the middle one who has enough drama in her daily life to furnish a Wagner Opera, the youngest, who is - most of the time - my little ray of sunshine - and I think about what lies ahead of them - learning to cope with getting up in the dark most of the year, learning to cope with grey skies most of the year, having to learn a new school system, the fact that the people who have known them all their lives are now going to be literally a world away - and my heart quails.
I look around at our lovely house, the swimming pool, the mango tree which is covered in mangoes, all of which will ripen after we've gone, all our beautiful friends and I wonder why on earth we are doing this?
And then we have a day like last Sunday, when I woke up to find that the chickens, Gwendolen and Dopiaza, had been slaughtered overnight, in spite of the fact that they were locked in their coop and that my beloved cat - the cat I have nursed through an amputated leg, tick bites, magpie attack, renal failure and depression, the cat who slept with me every night - was dead by the side of the road, presumably hit by a car. 
And now the thought of leaving this house is no longer so dreadful. To be honest, if it didn't mean saying goodbye to Guinny, I would leave tomorrow. If I believed in fate, I might even think that he/she may have played a hand in this, but then that would mean that she/he is not, after all, a very nice person, certainly not an animal lover!
Onwards and upwards, so they say. New horizons beckon.