Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I got an email the other day notifying me of a date for my forthcoming driving test.  And despite the fact that I’ve survived three years driving under some of the most hazardous conditions known to man (UAE roads ) and lived to tell the tale, I must admit I’m not feeling too confident. You see, dear reader, let me say it out loud -- I've failed my driving test three times   -- and have a sneaking suspicion I’ll never pass.  Now when I say fail, please understand that none of the failures were actually my fault, but rather the result of petty jealousies, gross injustices and at times pure bad luck (or lack of planning as DH helpfully points out). The first time I failed I knew I was doomed to failure the second I laid eyes on the tester: a disappointed looking, middle-aged, balding man wearing brown nylon slacks and an anorak; the type who won’t be swayed by a coy smile or a thrust-out bosom (I tried) – someone who’s very demeanor spoke not of deep personal...

'Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.    I miss you like hell'  (Edna St Vincent Millay) I know I know, unusually sentimental for a slummy mummy, but life without DH is proving to be well,  lifeless . There is something most unnatural about two people who, having spent the past 17 years together, suddenly finding themselves living on separate continents, particularly when they actually like each other. Aside from the daily visceral agony of simply missing him, the idea that we are living our lives separately -- only coming together for brief phone calls and online chats, more like friends or siblings than husband and wife -- leaves me feeling extremely vulnerable, much in the way of a young mother who unexpectedly finds herself out and alone for an afternoon, without the bulwark of a buggy in front of her. In short, I am without my anchor...

I ate an entire ball of mozzarella cheese yesterday.   I ate the first half at lunch time; I wanted to eat the entire thing until I read the calorific content on the back of the package (over 500 calories) so I divided it in two and put the rest in the fridge.   However, the other half played on my mind all day and eventually after 9 o’clock (aka wine o’clock) I simply couldn’t help myself and devoured the second half along   with some lambs lettuce, cherry tomatoes and olive oil. I’m telling you this incredibly dull piece of trivia to demonstrate how bored I am at present; the idyllic fantasies I had entertained of renting a lovely country home surrounded by fields with grazing cattle and sheep, with a huge garden so the children could run wild, while I baked soda bread by day and wrote poignant insights at my fireside in the evening, has fallen slightly flat.  Instead of a buccolic haven, I find myself inhabiting a house on a small, run-down cul-de-sac, ...

I have little recollection of my time spent in college other than the odd vague memory of 'pound-a-pint' nights out and dozens of missed buses as well as an overwhelming sense that I wasn't up to the job intellectually.  My role among my far more intelligent circle of friends was that of dizzy joker who ridiculed the subjects, professors and ideology, dismissing it all as a dreadful waste of time and who on occasion was known to arrive in to lectures laden with (sale) shopping bags from River Island and Next. I once spent half an hour drunkenly explaining to my anthropology lecturer in the pub that his lectures were a complete mystery to me (of which my attendance was hovering around the 2% mark) and insisting that any course which centred on a text entitled 'The Accursed Chair ' must be a pretentious and pointless waste of time and energy.  The lecturer good-naturedly allowed me to continue in this diatribe before patiently explaining that the name of the bo...

So we're heading back to Ireland, at least for a few months, leaving DH behind to sweat it out in the sandpit they call Abu Dhabi. Predictably, trying to leave the UAE invokes every conceivable complication and at times makes me want to throw my hands up and shriek 'OK, I'LL STAY! ' out of sheer defeat. Normal things like trying to move out of a house here, no matter at what point into your year's lease you are, requires that you forfeit the remainder of the year's rent (which has cleverly been demanded in advance). Imagine that! Being a landlord here guarantees unlimited, undeserved and unearned wealth -- I should have bought a property here the second I arrived; DH wouldn't have had to work a day after that (and don't get me started on the sub-species they call estate agents -- suffice to say I've yet to meet one that understood the concept of fairness or reason, and I've dealt with them as both a landlord and a tenant). Of course the ...

So tomorrow is Saint Patricks Day .  It's also charity day in my children's school meaning that we have to provide our children with biscuits and icing ( eight-year-old boy ), cheap toys or cash ( nine-year-old girl ) and god knows what ( six-year-old boy ...I think he lost the letter) so they can set up stalls to raise money for a school in Africa...or something. Laudable as this is, I'd rather they used the cash raised to buy back the French teacher who was sent packing last year ('S ooooo, you've raised the fees and cut French lessons! Splendid idea!' ), or bring back the extra PE lessons, music lessons, art lessons, I could go on... Not sure how my suggestion might be received though, I'm just a paying parent after all. Still, it is a day where they don't need to wear a school uniform, something which always sends my pulse racing.  Whoever made the statement that 'school uniforms are so much easier for parent's ' don't actuall...

There's a joke that goes around:  'What's the difference between a racist and non-racist?'  Answer: ' Two weeks in the UAE'. When I first heard this joke I didn’t understand it but after over two and a half years in the place this makes total sense to me.   It's hard not to generalise about different nationalities when you're surrounded by such a wide variety of them - you begin to form an impression of them as a whole - often unfairly; notice shared character traits that tickle or annoy; identify idiosyncrasies: -like the inability of many Indians here in the UAE to drive properly for example.  Or be logical: -'Excuse me, can I use a credit card? ' I asked the Indian gentleman behind the counter in the mall.  -...