Our big news this week is John has been offered a job in Adelaide!!!! We will be flying around the 1st April, so it’s all very stressful. We have to move into our other flat and try and sell this one, and the packers are coming to move us on Thursday. Then we want to see our kids… so that means a trip south, and its just fitting it all in.
I am excited though, and we are going to be staying in Glenelg! How spooky is that! Named after the little village I lived in on the West Coast of Scotland. After the Highland Clearances, the people were sent off to Canada and Australia and now I will be staying there! John is to be working with a Korean company. It’s a cable company… laying some electric cables in the sea or something (I am vague about all that… will pay attention later). The guy who John used to fight across the table with in Doha must have thought he was good as he said he would really like him to work on his side! How lucky and funny. So much to think about and we have to leave so soon. Below is a picture of Glenelg, Australia!

(Nick in front of our old house in Glenelg and scene of Glenelg bay a couple of summers ago).

)Bang goes my play, and bang goes my ballet dancing… just when I bought the shoes!

This last week has been very social. Had a farewell dinner party here with good friends, which meant too many margaritas, and delicious spicy African lamb and a tirade from one guest on his ‘soap box’ bemoaning the poor daffodil, as a little b…. pretending to be the harbinger of spring but in fact allowing no one to enjoy it as its always accompanied by the f…. north wind!!!!! Quite.

Then he went on to growl about the hypocrisy of Scottish funerals… his face screwed up to imitate the sanctimonious Edinburgh minister, ‘OOOH he was a good family man, wonderful citizen blah blah blah…’ but on the pews at the back are always the aged hags in mourning, with the hems of their dresses tucked under their chins, and saying ’Oh but he loved me the best.’

Good stuff, and outrageous chatter… and makes it difficult to leave.

Yesterday two friends Joyce and Al, from my Golden Age arrived for lunch. They belong to the years when I was about 25 and living in Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia. They were perfect times, living by the sea when the children were tiny and Sundays were spent on the islands in the South China Sea.

We met yesterday by a sea of daffodils (little b’s! but the sun was shining and there was only a whisper of a wind) and we talked and caught up, and inevitably we reminisced.

I had forgotten the day Mai learned to water ski. Joyce and I lay on the beach, writing the numbers of her failed attempts into the sand. It got to 31, and Mai’s face was ecstatic when she finally got up and was skiing along.  She didn’t notice the horror on the faces of the guys in the boat as a huge fin broke surface behind her. A barracuda!!!!

Pictures of Joyce and Al with me in KK in 1980.

The reminiscing continued after they had gone, and I started to clear out drawers in the desk, ready for the packers. We all collect rubbish but I was bemused finding a brown envelope from my days teaching at the Edinburgh Academy. They were all the notes from mums saying, ‘please excuse Ian, he is sick today’ etc etc…The difference in these letters  were they were written on beautifully embossed paper, with all the finer points of correspondence included! Funny. Such beautifully polite people! (as were their boys.)

Quite therapeutic moving house… you do de-clutterise, and I am quite pleased with the mountain of memorabilia that is now in the bin bag. I still couldn’t quite part with my dance cards from the St Andrews Ball in Kota Kinabalu, way back in 1980-81. They still have their little pencils attached.

So onwards and upwards… I have a train ticket to book, and will be in London by the end of the week. Then back here to do the final pack for Adelaide. Oh my.