After spending time in Derby and Brum with the Woodwards we embarked on the massive mission of catching up with as many people as we possibly could… whilst continuing to munch through Matt’s food wish list.

The rolling English countryside!

Saturday morning we got up and drive over to Hereford. Hereford, is where I was born and where most of my family lives.   We drove straight to my Nan and Granddad’s house and caught up with them for an hour or two.  We walked in whilst they were in the middle of decorating their living room so Matt made himself useful by taking down the blinds! They both seemed really well which is relief as Nan has had quite a few health issues this year.  The only resident of the house hold who seemed a little subdued was mad dog “Whiskey” who amusingly seems to have put on so much weight he didn’t manage to greet us in the passageway as he usually does… he can’t fit through the pet door anymore.  He also seemed far less inclined to bounce about and spin on the spot.  Other than that I’d say everyone, including Jason the cat were all good!

Uncle Nigel was also there being chief wall paper person so it was great to see him too before we headed off to catch up with other relatives.

One significant thing I had to do was visit the grave of my late Nan and Granddad.   A week after we left England my Nan passed away and I didn’t have the chance to attend her funeral and say farewell.  So, rather than grabbing chips from the college chippy and having a cup of tea with her we had to head to the cemetery to say hello.  It was very strange and sad but it was good to take some flowers to cheer up her resting place.  In fact, we ended up picking up sandwiches and eating them on the park bench a few meters away from where she rests; I reckon she’d have liked that, us having lunch with her.

After visiting Nan’s grave we headed over to my cousin’s house.  She had a little baby girl whilst we were away and we’d never met her.  It was lovely to catch up with her and her brood.  They really are awesome kids, she should be very proud of them.  We arrived at a point where he oldest son had to apologise to her because he’d managed to hit her with his toy dinosaur… His response was that “big t-rex did it” and when she replied that big T-rex better apologise then he put on a monster voice and said “sorry mummy” .  Very cute!

It was also really cute to see the traditional Lloyd style sibling personalities in evidence.  Oldest one…  noisy, confident and independent.  Youngest one… shy, clinging to mum and quiet.  Tee hee!  Even Matt said I can see you there and Kelly there!   lol  It was really cool to catch up with them all.

Now.. this is BALTI!!! YOM!

On the same day we’d booked ourselves into our favourite Brummy curry house, the  Shylhet Spice Cuisine, in Kings Heath.  I can’t tell you how amazing it was to eat a proper curry with a proper Naan! Lol  I’ve really missed an actual Balti.  Our local curry house tries hard to make them but they’re just not the same as an authentic Brummy Curry!  YOM!

The curry gang! Thanks for coming you guys! :0)

What was even more lovely was that nearly 20 people came to eat with us.  Some of them driving from North Wales just to spend a couple of hours with us!  We are really lucky to have such fabulous friends.  There was a lot of love in that room !

We graciously gave ourselves Sunday off from our mad dash and, after a very important breakfast at Beckett’s Farm (sausages)  spent most of the day at Mum’s setting up their NAS drive (NERD ALERT!) Matt, of course, made sure that he had the opportunity to drink more English Ales in the evening; I was so tired of going out that I stayed in… Unfortunately, I didn’t know that Matt had taken a house key with him and so ended up staying up until the wee hours so I could let him in…. you might have seen the Facebook status! Lol

We bounced back into the swing of things on Monday, heading to my favourite place in the whole of the UK… Stratford upon Avon. I just had to go and see the new theatre and have a yummy cream tea by the river! I know it’s a clichéd British thing but I really do love a cup of tea and a scone with proper clotted cream!  YOM!

We were joined by friends of ours so we were given another opportunity to catch up with people we hadn’t seen for a while! All good

By Tuesday lunchtime we were on the train to London so that we could spend some time with my bestieN8 and her husband – I need to invent a little name for him    It’s always awesome to catch up with her and we’d planned in a little spa day to ensure that the gossip wasn’t interrupted by smelly boys.  That meant that we left Matt to his own devices.  He ended up catching up with a friend in the pub at lunchtime… and didn’t finish drinking until late that night…  I force-fed him about 2 liters of water that night… there was no way I wanted to travel back to Adelaide with a really hung over husband!  NO no NO! I think it worked too!

On the Plane home.. Matt didn't know what I was up to

And that was that.  A plane out of Singapore down to Adelaide and we arrived home Saturday morning! A whirl wind tour of Britishness and now it’s all back to normal…. Sunshine, 20 degrees, coffee at the beach….

dodgy quality (and video)
All true except the lyrics which imply I am tired from recreation…

Well aparently it does. I never seem to be able to find the time to write anything longer than a few sentences these days; most of those seem a little dull!
I guess the blog has always tracked how i felt about things, what I was up to etc. Things are dull, dull, dull. LOL. No travels to report on, not very much in the way of new experiences either. Lots of thoughts in my head: most of them not suitable for the blog! lol

SO Update time…

1 ) We’ve started saving for the epic return journey. It’s time for us to make a move (well as soon as the epic amounts of money are saved and the house is sold) back to the land of upside down. No offence England but you’re killing me !! As much as I love my friends and my family i KNOW that they’re all ok and will continue to be ok even when i am in the other hemisphere; that’s exactly what happened last time anyway.

Australia has it’s head screwed on right and the beaurocracy, lack of trust and pressure just drives me closer to the airport with every passing week!

2) We have bought a new camera. SPAN its a lumix jobby and it’s cool. Our old faithful HP Camera bit the dust after sucking the life out of yet another battery to the point where it was totally non -rechragable! LOF loves the fact that it has what we have called a “pap” mode – shot after shot continuously. He even followed me around a shop with it! Strange but celeb like.

3) Xmas shopping hasn’t really begun and need to get on with that…

4) See! It’s been over a month and i’ve run out of things to say…… tum tee tum tee tum….

LOL

It’s been a strange experience returning to ol’ blighty. It’s been 6 months now. I can’t believe it! I’ll be Mrs W in no time at all now (and that’s cool) but that 6 months has flown by, with all of its complications, reunions, brilliance and confusion. I still get asked by at least 2 people every day whether or not I’m “going back”. I now have a practiced reply: “Oh yes! It’s just a question of when”. In truth my head is now split and it goes 50/50.

My god I miss it though! The totally different way of seeing the world. But as someone said to me recently, the fact that I can see things differently may be of benefit to those who may be happy to open their eyes too. However, I’m not sure it’s my job to do that for others; or indeed whether there is any point! It’s very hard to remain inside my new ethos. I am sooo totally exhausted tonight as a result of workplace who actually seemed to have planned to have so many important things going on at the same time that I can’t see the wood for the trees!

This week I had deadlines for 120 reports (although, thank god, system outage means only half of that work needs to be done by Monday), I had to prepare a lesson for an annual observation ( and that was important to me), I had to help run two very enjoyable but completely hectic media days and I needed to get on top of a trip I am trying to organise next Wednesday. I stay and I work an extra 2 (unpaid) hours every night. That’s 40 hours a month… but the bosses decided that we needed to have two meetings a week every week for a while and they decided to do this at the same time that they expected us to complete all of the above! (!!???!!) I had my after school time taken away by two large meetings on four nights in the last 2 weeks. The result of these meetings meant even more work and most of it all had to be done by Monday 16th (the same deadline as the reports)! LMAO.

I feel that in hindsight, that calendar decision may have been a little unfair to all staff! Granted some of those decisions (the trip for example) are my own doing but CRIKEY! I hate feeling like I’m not on top of things… it’s so easy to sit here and give in and become a British English teacher; sit here for hours, in my own time (half asleep and exhausted) marking, writing reports etc to meet these unrealistic time scales. BUT – and that’s a big but I’m not going to. I can’t and I won’t.

Seriously… it’s not a good thing to have had all of that… I am drained and knackered and i need to rest. The fact that I am not going to have any free time until Tuesday to complete some of these things is not my concern… It’s just the way it is and so I have to learn to relax, accept that and get on with relaxing in my weekend! In truth most of the massive hurdles are already done but trying to keep up this week has been exhausting! lol

Ah well! I could really do with a nice stroll along the beach you see. Maybe to Glenelg. Sitting on the balcony at Starbucks (where they make actual coffee not the crap they charge you 3times more for here that does not resemble coffee at all) and watching the sunset would be just what the Dr ordered. I reckon I’d pop to “Goodlife” for a pizza too. MMMmmmmm that was tasty pizza.

I wonder which lifestyle you would choose?

Because I had NO internet!!! I know! It’s a wonder I didn’t go crazy! But now I have lots of broadband bandwidth and can start to post, post, post!! Moah ha ha!

We’re in the house, we have a sofa, a TV a kettle and much much more! It’s taken a couple of weeks to get it looking like a home. We hadn’t got any furniture at all and so everything has been bought in dribs and drabs ( i can tell you now that as a direct result of us moving back to the UK IKEA has seen an increase in it’s sales and profits – no recession worries there!). It’s really nice to have our own place and to have the kitties to share it with us. Henny is lying on the sofa next to me, whining to himself about the fact that he might have to turn over in a moment.

All is well any hoo and now we just have to get used to living in the UK again!

Bridemaids dresses to sort out tomorrow. LOF needs to get himself a best man, a suit and a stag do… Ahhh plans, plans, plans… at least it keeps us busy.

We got the keys today…

We’re at mum’s tonight because until tomorrow we don’t own a bed! lol
But we officially have the keys and the dinning room is full of boxes… Boy what a lot of stuff for the charity shop

Well the house is nearly sorted. They told me that I might have to wait until NEXT Friday!! I was most unhappy about that so set about poking my nose into areas that I am sure only solicitors are supposed to poke. I called the mortgage company and let them know that I wanted the money to go through in hours not 7 days. They were surprisingly obliging and told me of a little known Speedy Fax number which I could ask my solicitor to use. They couldn’t guarentee the money would be through by the end of the day Friday but at the very latest it would be Monday – this was a big improvement on making me wait another whole week! A week in which I am off work and can unpack!

So… we instructed our solcitor to use this number, we went in to sign the contracts and then went to the bank to transfer the deposit. I recieved a phone call at 1pm (lunchtime) to tell me that all the money had arrived. Great! that should mean I can pick up the key and have all weekend to move things out of attics and into houses with the help of strapping young men who have the weekend off. UH ER! (Buzzer noise Unfortunatly, the vendors solicitors have informed me that their clients have not signed their contract yet.

WHAT?!!
Oh no!

So we have spent all afternoon trying to get hold of them to get them to their solicitor to sign. We were unsucessful…. Here’s hoping they managed to do it on Monday… I’m paying interest on a mortgage and I don’t have a house! EiK!

The barnio….

Ahh the barnio… that was interesting. Last you heard we had been invited to make another offer. Mindful of that fact that they had previously accepted an offer of 235,00 we offered 230,000!! Well, they’d messed us about and we had two other properties to choose from anyway. We’d both kind of moved on. They rejected this offer of course so we then thought ah well… we’ve had 235 accepted before so we’ll try that again. They rejected that aswell.
I suppose from their point of view we had gone all the way up to 2,000 over the asking price of 240,00 last time and they were probably hoping that we wanted the barn so desperatly we’d do the same thing again.
Obviously they were wrong… we weren’t in the same position as last time. So we told them that that was our final offer.
We then made an offer on another property and had that accepted!! yay! So we have a house! Of course on the way to the mortgage advisor to finallise the paper work Nigel Poole rang to say that they though that they really should have accepted our offer and would we wait until tomorrow to get an answer. It was very satisfying to tell them to get stuffed. Nigel Poole’s assistants will tell you anything to get a sale and to try and push you. Be warned. Walk away, Particularly if the sale on the property has fallen through 3 times previously.

So…where are we going to live?
Studley! Yep we’ve bought a house in Studley, Warwickshire. It backs onto Studley common and has a lovely view,

is detached and refurbished and has a big conservatory for the cats to lounge in. I will finally be able to have a reading chair in a sunny spot and line up my books on the window sill Yay! And Debs can pop round for a cup of tea after work. We havne’t seen each other for over a year!!!!! NO GOOD! AT ALL!
We should be in at easter

It’s strange. Chatting to LOF this weekend we had almost given up on a house, we had almost made the decision out loud to go straight back to Oz after the wedding (even though we both know that this is not a good idea! Not that quickly)and we were both feeling a little more than fed up. I had a headache and a cold and was a grumpy ol’ thing and he had been feeding paper into a printer over and over again in an attempt to get some invitations finished.

Then things started to change today.

I got so fed up in a meeting at work that I suddenly, without really thinking first said out loud what has been in my mind for so long… I told everyone how I felt about it all how it was making me miserable, making me consider a new job and how it was all so sad.

As a result a whole new (hour long) debate started where everyone seemed to sigh and seem relieved. Everyone was surprised but seemed to agree and for the first time in a while everyone was united in something… I felt terrible at the time.
Things were getting desperate and I wasn’t sure I could take much more…
So I said it
and now I know I need to say it again to the right people all at once.
It made me feel a little better to know that it’s not just me. That it’s everyone. I am clearly not going mad and have clearly not got confused about what this job is.

Then… when I left work and met Matt at Span’s house (we stole a tea bag He told me that he had had a phone call. Apparently the barn’s sale fell through. Do we want to make another offer?? Well well well well well. Of course we do but it’ll be about 8 grand less than we offered last time and we want to use our own solicitors. Are things starting to take a turn for the better?

I’m sat in the foyer of the “empire” cinema Rubery. I@m supposed to be in screen 5, watching a monster rampage through New York city whilst a silly “vice president” man tries to get to Beth. At least I think that is what might be happening. You see I’ve had to leave the screen. The jumping, juddering hand held cameras have caused the same issues that they did when I attempted to watch the ” Blair Witch Project”.

The fresh air, quiet and the stillness of the foyer are slowly dissolving the overwhelming feeling of sickness. It’s taken me 10 minutes to get to the point where I am able to write.
Note to self: Take sea sickness tablet at least 1 hour before voyeuristic, hand held camera-esq cinematography occurs.

Amusingly, I rarely get actual sea sickness. There was that one time, on a trip to a cold country in Europe but that’s it. Trying to watch the 6th Sense whilst the sea lashed around you gave the overwhelming fear that life was about to end in a similar fashion to that of the brave souls aboard the Titanic. Ah well, at least this is proof of the DNA link between myself and mother – who, by the way, gets seasick on a lilo!

Maybe sitting in a foyer, avoiding the gaze of puzzled cinema employees will give me some time and space to ponder all of the many things that are fighting for prevalence in my mind at the moment.

The ever continuing saga of where to live and what to buy and the stressful revenge that life seems to be throwing at us. As if to say “You might have been responsibility free for 12months but here’s what you might have missed = ALL AT ONCE!”

A frail and wonderful grandmother who worries so much about trivial things that she cries and cries until she can barely remember who she is.

The amazingly beautiful, intelligent and caring best friend whose heart has been splintered into several unbearable pieces who wishes she could forget sometimes.

The job that seems such a vocation which is starting to feel like the clichéd dead albatross around my neck.

The adjustment from solitude, solace and serendipity to hustle, bustle and pressure.

The niggling feeling that I don’t know where I belong and the certainty that right now I need to be exactly where I am. And the constant warmth love and affection of the one control in my life.

It’s been busy and uncontrolled and wonderful and unbearable. A true collection of oxymoron feelings, thoughts and events that remind you of what being with your friends and family means. Perhaps the point is that there’s not supposed to be any one correct answer.

Several paths open everyday and the choice to walk is our own. I tool the path that was ” less travelled”. It opened up an entirely new world to me. The path that was the hardest was the most rewarding in the end. Squashing the tangled mass of terrifying thoughts and feelings allowed me to find parts of me that hadn’t even existed before. How ironic it is that now the place that once felt so familiar and manageable is the most difficult thing to deal with.

Is sometimes wonder if is the place I miss or the person I was allowed to be there. I have to consider if that person can exist here too and I have to do everything I can to help her be.