Rupert has left me....

He's coming back in eleven days though, hopefully – he's just gone to England to buy a house, as one does. We're hoping that he will find the perfect house, put in an offer and then, over the course of the next couple of months, we can settle remotely so that when we arrive in England at the end of this year/beginning of next, we will have a house to move into. There's nothing wrong with setting one's sights high, is there?

Hopefully, he will at least be able to find a nearly decent house and start negotiations. At the moment we are living in limbo. We don't really know where in England we will be living, except that we need to be within commuting distance of London and the Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, which is where we're hoping that Sam will go. But until we have found a house, we will not be able to apply for schooling for the girls (not being in the sixth form, it's more complicated for them), we don't know whether we'll be able to take the piano (it's a full size concert grand), or the sofas (the only ones in Australia that we found comfortable) or whether we need to sell half our stuff. Until we have found a house, it will be very difficult to look forward.

But it's all a bit stressful. For one thing, we're not very good at being separated and this is the second time this year – bring on Moon River. For another, though I mostly trust him, this is hopefully the house we will live in for quite a while – the thought of moving again within the next 100 years, is not particularly appealing. And considering I will probably spend more time at home then he will – at least for a year or so - he'd better find one that I like!

Then there's the fact that the last time Rupert was in England – for a whole two weeks – he spent the entire period saying how much he hated it and how he couldn't wait to get back “home” to Australia. Now, just in case you haven't realised yet, it's been mostly him driving this whole decision to move back to the UK – he is the one who is desperate to go and is “convinced” that it is the right thing to do. So, since we've virtually signed the house away to someone else, made arrangements for my darling dog to go to a new home and are in the process of organising the removals people, am somewhat hoping that the lenses don't suddenly drop from his rosy tinted spectacles and he doesn't come rushing home determined to stay away from England forever.

More than all that, however, is the fact that this step is making the whole moving thing frighteningly real.

Musical Memories

I have heard that of all the senses, it is smell that is mostly linked to memory, but I sometimes wonder whether it is actually your hearing? Or my hearing, that is....At any rate, sometimes I only have to hear the first chord of a piece and I am transported through time and space - generally to a time and place that has nothing whatsoever to do with the music.

For instance, take Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March. Though I have played this a zillion times, with many different orchestras, though I have sung it as it is surely meant to be sung – as one of the crowd in the Arena at the Royal Albert Hall at the Last Night of the Proms, I can't actually remember all those times. Whenever I hear it, I am instantly in Saudi Arabia again, smelling dusty air conditioning, in a huge room full of drunken, homesick ex-patriots, singing their hearts out, accompanied by a concert band of doubtful tunefulness, performing our own Last Night. And with those images, comes the emotion, the pride I feet in standing on the stage, one of the performers, the anticipation of morris dancing in the interval, the niggle of excitement because HE is in the audience, the niggle of worry that maybe HE won't notice me, won't see me sing, won't see me dance, won't actually care that I exist! (Yes, this is a memory that date back to my teens!)

Then there are three hymns – The Lord's my Shepherd, Oh Hear oh Lord, the Sound of my Prayer and another-one-I-can't-remember-the-name-of-right-now, but which take me straight back to a hot, steamy Cathedral in Liberia. It is lit by candles, blowing and guttering in the wind, whilst rain pours down outside, turning the earth the colour of blood in an emerald world and I am here, safe with my family from the flash and tumult of the thunderstorm.

Elgar again: Where Coral Lies, a song about the English sea, takes me to a world of bright blue skies and palm trees, the singing of Mullahs, calling people to prayer, a blare and bugle of car horns, Friday mornings in Riyadh, with trips to the British Council Library and a tape of Elgar in the car player.

Star Light, Star Bright is a well known verse, but put to music by my sister, Mary-Anne. I sing it often - whenever I am outside to see the first twinkling of twilight, in fact. But whenever I sing it, I am really back in a boat on Lake Shepherd, in Harper, watching the sun sink into the Atlantic Sea, ears full of the rushing of water from the engine, the whispering of the breeze, nostrils full of the scent of salt and fresh caught barracuda and petrol and water-weed and I hear us all, my sisters, Mummy, Daddy and me, singing it, over and over again.

Moon River is one of my favourites. I listen to it on Youtube whenever I'm feeling really sentimental, but though it may be played by an orchestra or string quartet, I am really hearing the sweet, full tones of my mother's harmonica. But sometimes, I hear it as she played it on the boat, chugging our way back over Lake Shepherd, sometimes I hear it as she played it, sitting beside a bright, golden orange camp fire, where the emptiness of the desert, beyond the light, hovered at the elbows, making your heart fill and break and fill again.

The other day I burst into tears when I heard the first few notes of The Lass of Bon Accord on the radio. I then had to try and explain to the dumbfounded Juliette, how it represented the days of my lost youth, (yes, I know, bring on Moon River!) dancing at ceilidhs on the British Aerospace compound or at events at the British Embassy.

Haydn's Imperial Nelson Mass, one of my favourite pieces, is the American Embassy in Riyadh, Bach's Magnificat belongs to the old British Embassy. Terpsichore is Ruth and Erasmus's house, soft orange lighting and sticky, custardy, danish pastries.

I could go on but, luckily for you, I won't....but I do wonder what pieces of music will remind me of Australia?

Will it be music I have played with The Queensland Pops Orchestra, the Sinfonia of St Andrews, the BCPO? Or any of the chamber music I have played with the lovely John, or my Wine and Olives piano trio? Will it be any of the songs I have taught to my Ladies Choir, or my pupils, or any of the wonderful music we have had here at our house for the many soirees we have hosted? 

Hmm, maybe. But thanks to Juliette and her incessant iPod playing, I rather think it is most likely to be Ellie Goulding, or Christina Perri's Thousand Years. 

We shall see.

Why I admire Estate agents.

Estate agents always seem to get a negative press, but I am coming to admire them. They have so many admirable qualities after all, don't they? For instance, see the two statements below.

Number one: “Yes, this is a really great house and the market is really picking up at the moment. We won't have any trouble selling your house at an exorbitant price, don't worry.”

Number two: “Well, you know, it might not be the best price, but there's no saying you'll get another offer, the last people we had through are selling a really nice house and so they didn't really think this one was up to scratch. The market's not as good as it was three years ago, you know.”

How many people would be able to look you in the eye when making the second statement just a month after making the first?

But it's not just that. It is breaking my heart to sell this house. We designed it and had it built ourselves, just ten years ago. It is light and airy, has room for the grand piano and a wall on which we can project videos, pillars on which I spent many, many hours painting Moroccan wall tiles. As I work from home, I spend a lot of time here, emailing, practising, writing, sitting at the table looking out at the sprays of bright pink and purple bougainvillea that frame the view of the mountains beyond; chickens running in and out, demanding more cat food, cats running in and out demanding more cat food, dog stealing cat food whenever he's not lying, farting at my feet, or stealing chicken food. 
I love watching the birds – the bright white cockatoos that wheel screaming overhead and litter the grass looking for seed, the rainbow and scaly breasted lorikeets who squabble in the grevillea trees, the pale headed rosellas dipping and swooping and chattering, the swifts and the butcherbirds with their intelligent interest, the big green and red King parrots and the peewits, the silly, yellow masked lapwings - even the magpies with their throaty chuckle. Sometimes, a flock of black cockatoos shriek their pterodactylllian way over the garden and, very occasionally, high in the sky, a wedge tiled eagle soars, looking for chickens, I suspect, or maybe just a bowl full of cat food.

After having asked for a Jacaranda tree every year for the last ten, Rupert finally bought me a sapling last year and now I will never see it grow. Our mangoes, tiny little buds on the tree now, will be eaten by another family this year.

And here's the thing – to quote Bill Bryson as I so love doing. By the time this house is sold, I think I will be only too glad to go – we are only a month into this business and I am already sick to the back teeth of it all and I have the estate agents to thank for that.

But for now, I need to go and yell at the kids to get them out of bed before the open house this morning. After all, we wouldn't want people to think that we were selling teenagers with the house, would we? (Now there's a thought)

To Wrap it all Up...

How does one wrap up a life, built up over the course of fourteen years, and start again, with three children, a three legged cat, a one eyed dog, three chickens and another two cats? Answers on a post card please...

Well, the heartbreaking truth is that we are not starting again with all of the above. At this stage we are only planning to take two of the cats with us and leave the rest of the animals here.

Guinness, our 13 year old Labrador, who is stone deaf and agoraphobic, is going to one of my favourite people in the whole world, the legendary John Colwill, whom he loves and who will love him. How I will cope without my beautiful, farting companion, I don't know. Just trying very hard not to think about it.

Simba three-legs will go to my friend Julia, if I can't persuade Rupert to let us take him. Rupert is of the mind that it is not worth transporting a 17 year old cat with renal failure and depression across the world, but I'm not sure how he would go with the desertion. Rupert is hoping that I will finally be able to catch up on 16 years worth of no sleep, but I'm not sure that we could guarantee that the next cat/dog will be an awful lot better.

The chickens, Dopiaza and Gwendolen, will go to my cousin Meg. To be honest, I don't think they will care where they are, just as long as they have a decent supply of cat food to keep them going.

As for the kids, whether we take them or not will depend on whether they learn to keep their rooms clean between now and December....

And of course we have to leave all our friends here, my pupils and fellow musicians with whom I play.

So, these are our “plans.” We thought it would be good for the kids to see out the school year – Lydia finishes primary school this year and they will have all the end of term concerts, parties, dance shows etc. And then, depending on when we sell this house, whether we have another one in England to go to etc etc, we will hop on a plane and leave Brisbane. Neither of us will have jobs and heaven only knows how long it will take before we have an income coming in.

“Oh, but we did it before, when we came here,” Rupert says. Yes, we did. But we only had one child then and he didn't eat a whole Sainsbury's worth of food every day, as Sam does now. Exciting stuff.

In July I made a very flying trip to England to look around schools. Sam is in the middle of the IB here and we really wanted him to continue with it, but it turns out that very few state schools in England are able to offer the course. However, we found a school in Aylesbury which seemed very nice and they are only too happy to take him – which made at least part of our decision-making much easier. In that we now know that we need to settle in a house within striking distance of Aylesbury. As far as the girls are concerned, because they are younger, it seems that we need to wait until we are living in the UK before we can apply to schools for them.

Whilst in England, I also looked around a couple of houses. The funny thing is, that before we came to Australia, we preferred modern houses, but now, the older the better. Wonky staircases, thick walls, beamed roofs – the older the better, as far as we are concerned. After all, if we are giving up everything here for English history, then it might as well be worth it, mightn't it? The only trouble is that our wallet doesn't seem to agree. If anyone has an old castle for sale in Buckinghamshire – good working order, just let us know, eh?

Leaving Australia!

I haven't written anything much on here for a while, but what with our BIG MOVE coming up, I thought I might start again now.

For anybody who doesn't know or is remotely interested, we have decided to move back to England at the end of this year.

This decision has come as a big surprise to most people, especially me. After all, most of the emigrating is happening the other way, isn't it? Why would we give up our huge house, with its acre of land and swimming pool, the blue skies, ablaze with sunshine and winged with a multitude of brightly coloured birds, for the joys of living in a tiny, cramped house in Aylesbury? Well, put like that, I'm really not sure.

At the beginning of this year, I didn't think that it had crossed my mind to go back. I have lived in Australia for longer than I've ever lived anywhere in my life and we have been Australian citizens for a while now. But I guess, if I'm honest, the thoughts have been percolating in our brains for a couple of years now. Much as Australia has been wonderful for the last few years, the best possible place to bring up young kids, Rupert and I are both getting to the point where we find we are missing our families, missing the sense of history that only comes from walking down a cobbled street which has felt the tread of centuries, missing the proximity to Europe and its myriad cultures and climates. And, like a blow to the stomach, has come the realisation that we are not getting any younger – that if we left it much longer, it would be almost impossible to make the move back.

It must also be said that the shine of living in this beautiful country, with its safety and freedom and wide open spaces, has been dulled by the thought of those many, many people – including many children – who are being denied that freedom and safety and being locked up like criminals, with little or no hope, by the government of this country. For all the marches I have been on and letters written, the situation doesn't seem to get better and so we are voting with our feet – because surely, the desertion of the Bignalls will bring Tony Abbott to his senses....Well, anyway, we are returning to a country which hardly treats its own refugees any better, but then, at least, we will only have the guilt of one country on our backs....

The news of our impending return to the UK has been met with great joy. My sister Camilla, who, incidentally, is married to Rupert's brother, immediately announced her and John's plans to emigrate to Germany and my youngest sister, Miriam, is absconding, with her husband, to Dubai! Clara maintains that she and her family will be staying in England, whilst keeping busy furnishing their “holiday” house in France. Bernadette seems intent on staying in Hemel Hempstead for the moment, but we shall see how long that lasts...

My eldest sister lives in America so I imagine she thinks she will be safe there, though of course we will be a lot closer to her in England than we are at the moment....As for my parents, they live in France most of the time and their lives are a mystery to everyone else, so who knows. They will probably move to Antarctica when we get back.

As far as Rupert's sister and parents are concerned, we have not yet heard of any plans to skedaddle....Andie??

So, we are now in the infuriating process of selling the house, trying to get our heads around all the things we need to get our heads around - and, for the most part, not succeeding! For more exciting updates and even the odd piece of fascinating news, you know where to find me!

Once Upon a Time....

 The Kingdom

Once upon a time, a creature crawled from the depths and he gathered all the people unto him and he said: 
"I have a wonderful idea.
"I would like to change this kingdom of ours. I would like to rape her oceans and lay waste to her earth, so that the rich may become richer and the poor shall become poorer.
"I would like to build a great wall around the kingdom so that those who are desperate will not be able to find refuge. 
"I would like to put females in their proper place - that is, I would like them to be valued for their sexual worth alone and paraded around like magician's assistants.
"I would like to take this kingdom back to the golden age when our technology was far behind that of other countries.
"I would like to make sure that only those people whom I consider to have an acceptable sexuality are able to officially declare their love for each other.
"And, instead of wasting money on starving children in other countries I would like to pay it, instead, to those of the rich who have decided to have children in this kingdom, so that they may profit from their  progeny."
And the people replied: "Yes! We must have this person as our leader."
And they all lived......

If you have enjoyed this story and would like to read more of my, let's say, rather less bitter writing, you could look for Tales of Music, Mystery and Mayhem on Amazon, or copy and paste this link:
http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/assets/march-13-ebook.pdf

 

Election Fever

So, we've got an election coming up and Rupert is out and I am too drunk  - after a small bottle of cider - to do anything useful, so thought I would write a blog post - for the first time in a while.

The last few months have been pretty busy, trying to finish two novels and get a string quartet up and running, gigs here, there but not everywhere, teaching and looking after three kids. Not that they need looking after as such, it's more about driving them places and yelling at them, nowadays. Most of our interactions are along the lines of "Where's my...." and "Who's left their socks on the floor again?" Very occasionally, I get to exchange a couple of words with my other half, but not often.

What I want to know is: is there such a thing as Election Amnesia, in the same way as one gets Childbirth Amnesia and forgets the blood and gore and agony of childbirth, in order to keep the human race going? Because, if this election is as bad as most, then surely we would have ditched democracy a long time ago?

At the moment I am favouring the idea of going back to a feudal system. The thought of being able to build a nice windowless keep, pull up the drawbridge and retreat from the world at large is very tempting. Part of me thinks I should just be grateful that we don't live in Syria or Egypt at the moment, but at the same time I wonder - is this how it all starts? How did we get to the point when the major parties are battling it out to see who can be the most Xenophobic? The least compassionate?

I would go on, but am feeling so full of despair that I am going to join Juliette and her friend Keely and watch Justin Beiber. And if that doesn't say something, then nothing does.