Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong, in fact I wear it as a badge of honour much to DH's annoyance since he will be half way up a one-way road, with four lanes of traffic catapulting towards him, before he'll mumble ' I may have made a slight error here'. The way I see it, admitting to mistakes as soon as possible saves time later. For example, having lived in the Tree-house for almost two months, I am now openly saying it was a mistake . Yes it is beautiful: wandering out to the verandah on a Sunday morning -- coffee in hand -- to sit and watch the gentle sway of the eucalyptus trees while being serenaded by the haunting song of the magpies, is simply heavenly. But as I sit there dreamily imagining I’m Nicole Kidman waiting for her Drover to reappear (as in the movie  Australia – if you haven’t seen it, don’t bother, it’s rubbish), the fantasy is shattered by the sight of one-year-old -- red faced and determined – furiously dragging a chair up to the hand ...

It's safe to say that I was quite a badly behaved student in my school days. Attention-seeking, easily distracted and unwilling to follow rules, I lay the blame for this recalcitrance firmly with my father. During the mid-fifties -- when he was just a young man -- he was conscripted into the British Army where he spent three years following orders barked at him by -- as he would have seen it --Queen-loving Brits (not the band). Strongly republican and therefore anti-royalist, he despised the idea that he was serving the crown, and grew to hate petty rules, being intensely dismissive of those who willingly followed them without question. Although incredibly charming, his intractability extended to standing in queues for example, or signing his signature, or indeed paying fines which he thought to be unreasonable, and really if everyone acted like this, society would crumble into a sort of Hobbesian anarchy where life would soon become nasty, brutish and short.... I regret ...