Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I'm sitting on a mattress in the middle of my bedroom, surrounded by suitcases, boxes and deconstructed IKEA furniture, contemplating our next move. We're moving to the Bush and once more I am heading into a harsh, dusty and unyielding landscape, inhospitable to human life and far away from civilisation. I have a habit of doing this. Of course the difference is that -- unlike living in  RAK or Al Ain, which are not unlike the Pilbarra in terms of sand and rock -- in the bush I can't simply jump in the car, drive two hours down the road to buy some gold from a vending machine in a gilded palace, more's the pity. No, this will be like moving to a village in the Empty Quarter, a 16 hour drive from Perth, where my local shopping options are confined to an IGA supermarket. I'm really not sure how I'm going to cope with a life that doesn't involve hours spent mindlessly wandering around shopping centres, waiting to be seduced by things I don't need an...

A new problem has developed in our house; we can't stop the baby from swearing. It started innocently enough with him hissing  'I HATE you!' every time he was annoyed about something -- which was actually a little bit funny; there's something intrinsically hilarious about a three-foot-tall tot, with the face of an angel, spouting such venom -- but he's fast developing the vocabulary of a sharp-faced docker. What did I say? Strolling around Target with him the other day, he sat bolt upright in his buggy lisping ' You stupid bitch!' over and over again to anyone who so much as looked at him, much to the distress of an old woman smiling in at his pink, plump, ringletted-self. This has developed into him yelling ' Oh SHIT!' every time he throws something over the balcony outside (which is often, and in fact when we had our grass cut recently, a treasure trove was discovered down below -- kitchen implements, toys, electrical gadgets --  tos...