It’s hard to believe we left Paraburdoo just over a month
ago; looking back on it, that life seems like a bizarre half dream, the type you get after you’ve
drank too much champagne then fallen asleep in front of a blaring telly.
Life in our new home has settled into a comfortable rhythm;
the older children head out across the frosty garden each morning, while the daylight is still struggling to establish itself, to take the (free) school bus to a neighbouring village where they
attend their secondary school.
Having seen them off, I’ll snuggle back in the sofa bed (the
marital bed is on a ship somewhere in the South Atlantic and won’t be here for another month)
with a cup of coffee in front of Good Morning Britain, cuddled up to the smaller
children until it's time to get dressed.
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| Watching this show should be illegal...it's a time thief! |
The four-year-old is now in (also free) playschool five mornings
a week, something which has left me at a loss; rattling around the house is a
strangely lonely experience and I’ve found myself slipping into some very bad
habits. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit I find myself most mornings standing,
open-mouthed, in front of the freak show which is Jeremy Kyle. I swear if this rather
depressing display of humanity was all I’d witnessed of the UK before arriving, I
would never have come, but my God it's hard to look away from the spectacle.
But I’m realising that there are many benefits to living
here. Yes, the council tax is an enormous pain in the arse, BUT as a result of this fee, I’m not
expected to provide school books – neither text nor copybooks – for the children, or even so much as a pencil case.
In addition, the boys are receiving heavily subsidised guitar lessons
(it works out at something like £6 per lesson) while the school lunches they
get are just £2 a day. This is wonderful for me - I absolutely loathe making school lunches, not least because I feel I should pack things their teachers would be impressed with (fruit, wholemeal bread) rather than what they'll actually eat (individual Cheerio bags, Fruit Winders) with the result they usually come back uneaten.
And then there is the NHS - oh God bless'em. Until now all I'd read about the
world famous National Health Service was the overcrowded hospitals, dogged
by waiting lists and with a reputation for poor practices and abuses.
When a couple of weeks ago the 10-year-old complained of
(and there’s no good way to say this) a swollen testicle, I took him to the
local GP for his opinion. Without hesitation he whipped out his notebook saying
he was referring him to the John Radcliffe hospital immediately.
Within a couple of hours we were watching 'Tangled' on a loop in the waiting room of the
children’s A&E before he was whisked up to surgery for an
investigation.
He was fine, it was a relatively straightforward procedure,
but I was gobsmacked by the efficiency and better, that the entire episode cost me nothing more than a little
worry and several cups of vending machine coffee. I also got a comfy bed beside
him in the ward for the night – a definite bonus considering our bed situation
at present. And despite the pain and slight damage to his pride - not to mention his balls - I think he
rather enjoyed all the attention.
Of course services – educational, medical or other – depend on
the area you live in and I have no doubt things would be very different in a depressed
urban setting, but I must report that our experience was a positive one.
So things are working out and the kids are happy. As for me, I’m casting about for ideas as to what to do with
myself. With the four-year-old in playschool five mornings a week I’m keenly
aware that I should be earning actual money (or at least break the Jeremy Kyle cycle). I signed up to a writing service
website which allocates writing jobs to freelance writers. I was hopeful it
would yield a bit of cash for writing dull blog posts on wood burning stoves or
car maintenance (the jobs are quite diverse) but tragically it turns out the pay averages at less than 1p a word, an amount even I won't work for.
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| I could so do this! |
Perhaps the Women's Institute is the answer although my knitting and jam-making skills are painfully lacking. Make that non-existent. Having said that I rather fancy doing a pottery course and becoming the next Emma Bridgewater; yes I can definitely see myself at a potter's wheel creating beautiful pieces. Or even bad pieces for that matter. Either way it's surely better than spending all day watching toothless men having DNA paternity tests, or screaming women being exposed by lie detector machines?
Well, just about...
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