Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

So three months on this massive island and I'm still grappling with the cultural implications of living upside down. By turns it's all so familiar here: the people; the language; the fact that I can't find a babysitter; but then so foreign: the ubiquitous scrap-booking (no really; why?); the refrigeration of fresh dog-food in the supermarkets, right next to the trays of lamb chops and chicken necks (dry heave); the way cashiers round off every transaction to the nearest dollar since reaching into the till to retrieve your 3 cents change is really too much trouble. Socks for sale, only used once! $2 One thing that has become very clear -- and not surprising considering the living costs -- is the relative frugality of the way of life here; nothing is thrown away that can be reused, sold, swapped. I mentioned in an earlier post about the buy, sell, swap groups on Facebook , and have been curious to discover that these aren't the preserve of large, expensive items s...

It pains me to admit this, but I simply must get it off my chest -- I don't really understand politics . There, I've said it. This fact was never more explicit than last week when I spent several pleasurable hours curled up on my hideously tasteless but much loved  chaise lounge, reading the late great Christopher Hitchens's Hitch-22 (an act which necessitated one-year-old spending an unhealthy amount of hours sat in front of Cbeebies, but hey, it's educational to watch a forty-year-old ex-drama student  -- dressed up in a costume made out of toilet rolls and cereal boxes -- pretending to be a robot. Isn't it?) I realise that viewing my slim grasp on the political system through the prism of that of one the greatest intellectuals of our time is probably setting myself up for abject failure, and really I should be aiming for a more even contest with, say,   Jedward  for example -- against whom I would surely have a fighting chance of outwitting (but not of o...