Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I realise I haven't blogged much over the past few months. I'm not really sure why this is. Perhaps living in the UK feels a little un-noteworthy - a little prosaic - after the exotic challenges presented by living upside down on the other side of the world where Christmas is in midsummer and July is a little chilly, or in a place where you are woken at 5am to the crackling sound of the Muezzin wailing the Call to Prayer as it splinters through the morning air. Is living here just too 'ordinary' to write about? Of course the answer is it's far from normal here, since in truth at this point I really don't know what 'normal' is - what is 'normal'? I still send the windscreen wipers hurtling across the windscreen every time I click on my indicators when out driving (did the same thing in Australia for three years - they drive on the same side but for some reasons the wipers and indicators are reversed). I still - after spending the first year...

(An edited version of this column appeared in Good Taste Magazine, Dubai, in April 2015) A text pinged up on my phone the other day. It was from my brother in Dublin. “AM SO BORED,” it read. Twenty minutes later another one: “AM HERE INSTEAD OF WATCHING RUGBY, NO JUSTICE!” Ten minutes later: “TEN YR OLD MURDERING A SONG FROM CATS!” These increasingly hysterical updates were the result of an afternoon  in a concert hall where his daughter's school was performing in a musical. He's not a heartless man, and dotes on his daughter, but let's be honest there are times when kids' performances can be trying. I know this intimately; with five children I've sat through countless performances, some good, some mediocre and some so bad you want to stick pins in your eyes - or clean the oven - anything but sit there for a moment longer. It's not necessarily my own children I object to watching (although there have been moments), after all I'm contra...