Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

Well I got the bronze award in the Expats Blog Awards -- so thank you to all my followers who gave me the thumbs up! Luckily I'm not particularly competitive so bronze sounds pretty good to me; I know my limitations. In fact when I came last in a running race when I was seven, it mattered not a jot to me for the simple reason that they gave me a consolation prize for being such a crap runner. I'm easily pleased like that.  In my eyes I WAS the winner! And although I came second last in a cross-country running competition when I was 12 (I was in front of Fat Tanya, which really didn't count), I didn't feel too bad about that either. We were running laps of the sports field, and as everyone was finishing their third lap, I was still on my first, but I don't think anyone really noticed (and besides, poor Tanya was still only half way around the track). After that I made the brilliant discovery that PE in any form could easily be avoided by hiding in the changing roo...

Well it's finally happened. Heralded by a a thousand clicking cicadas outside my window, the ticking clock of my mortality has struck forty. Forty. I'm saying the word but my brain can't keep up; my planets misaligned. Forty. I don't know what I expected, but to me forty speaks of pension plans, weekly trips to the hairdresser, a clean house, not to mention practical clothing. None of these things apply; the only financial security I can take cold comfort in is an insurance policy which promises to pay off my mortgage if DH pops his clogs unexpectedly. And apart from the monthly attack on advancing grey hairs, my hair hasn't changed since I was a child, and rather than nicely coiffed and hair-sprayed -- as my mother's was -- is permanently in scruffy-ponytail mode. As for the clean house, my idea of washing the floors is to place one of the baby's wet-wipes under each foot and simulate a skating motion around the kitchen until each one is black. Repeat ...

You will no doubt be relieved, dear reader, to learn that I -- after a year of living up in these here hills --  have finally come face to face with my neighbour, although I can't honestly say that my fears regarding any axe-wielding murdering tendencies he might harbour -- real or imaginary -- have been allayed all that much. Axe-wielding murderers aren't always easily spotted, particularly when they're wearing just their underpants. When I say face to face, what I mean is that the decaying wall which hitherto stood between his house and mine has been knocked down to reveal a building with a large glass window running from floor to ceiling, revealing the inner-workings of his entire life. In all its underpanted glory. He appears to live in just this one room, and there is a sheet-less double bed in the corner where he sleeps. He has made some efforts to conceal his world from our view, by stringing a couple of blankets across the top of the window,...