Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I didn't want to bring up the issue of living costs in my first post from Oz -- it seemed a tad  déclassé to mention money so early on; but now that -- five weeks in -- I'm on my second, I can restrain myself no longer. The cost of living here is ridiculously expensive, and for the first couple of weeks I wandered around the shops feeling like Alice strolling through Wonderland -- wide-eyed and bewildered -- since the prices seemed as fantastical as if they'd been dreamed up by the Mad Hatter and  March Hare themselves; over a pot of something far stronger than tea. 'A bag of apples? Nine dollars seems fair!' Having lived in three different countries, nay continents, in  the past 12 months, I'm well placed to make cost comparisons between them and I must say, the UAE wins hands down when it comes to being the most affordable for food, furniture, and of course petrol -  naturellement,  (although rent in Abu Dhabi borders on the farci...

I'll be honest, for my first few days in Australia I languished in the dungeons of despair and felt as if I'd landed in one, giant, flat, characterless suburb, punctuated by the occasional functional shopping centre or empty park -- the UAE with a better finish. And with nakedness.  Lots of nakedness.  It's curious; proper clothing seems to have been entirely dispensed with here, even shoes in many cases; and people walk around in shorts so tiny they barely cover their underwear; which I doubt they wear -- it's probably too much trouble... This, in my book, is definitely preferable to the ' please don't offend by showing any actual skin ' brigade who so militantly patrolled the chat forums and malls of the UAE to ensure that the disrespectful were promptly put in their place (some statistics: I was asked on four occasions to cover up during my three years in the UAE -- twice by local, be-hijabed women; twice by older, middle-aged, grey, English women). ...

Whoever wrote that a reunion is a little bit of heaven , didn't see the T-Shirt that DH was wearing when he came through arrivals last week. It was a polo shirt -- something I hate at the best of times -- but with a stripe; the sort you'd get in the grandfather's section in M&S. It was the wrong size, colour, shape, and made him look like he'd just wandered out of the milking shed after the morning shift. And so what was supposed to be a wonderful event -- a reunion after two months, the start of a new life beckoning, the one-year old who was now walking -- was slightly tarnished. By an ugly top..... By the time we reached the car I had to insist that he took it off, which he did after some harrumphing, and changed into something slightly better.  We have a tacit agreement in our marriage that I choose all his clothing, right down to shoes. He truly can't survive without me, at least sartorially. Or indeed in the whole present-buying arena. Which is why...

I've learned a couple of things this week.  The first is that should you lose your passport, check both your handbags, even if you think the pink one hasn't been used since long before the passport went missing -- because it is sure to be in there.  This can at the very least save on the cost of phoning the British embassy, Irish department of foreign affairs, The foreign and commonwealth office, all the garda stations in Galway, the local cinema, your favourite coffee shop and finally, your sister, who then in turn spends an hour tearing her study apart looking for your grandfather's birth certificate (needed if neither you nor your parents were born in Ireland). It also stops  you looking like an idiot when you have to phone everyone you know (to whom you have subjected to tearful phone calls all day long with tragic updates) to tell them, 'ha ha, it's ok, my life isn't over, I will be emigrating along with my family after all, it was in my bag all along, ...

I overheard four-year-old and seven-year-old boy's discussing me in the bath the other day. ' Mummy needs a man' said the seven-year-old  wisely as he poured a cup of water over his head. The four-year-old solemnly nodded in agreement, 'yeth' he lisped ,'cos daddy's gone'. They have a point.  This point was never more explicit than last week as my car glided to a halt at the side of the road, just off a junction, due to an electronic failure which I had been studiously ignoring for some days, despite the big red light on my dashboard flashing  'THE END IS NIGH!' . It was, as the poet says, pissing down from the heavens and for a moment I sat there, thinking, 'how can I solve this without getting out of the car? '  Had I been more attentive in the custodial duties of my mobile phone, I may have been able to solve it by phoning my mechanic, but sadly I hadn't laid eyes on it in days and it was no doubt languishing at the bottom o...

) I've just finished reading Caitlin Moran's brilliant new rant 'How to be a woman', which claims to be 'The Female Eunuch' , written from a bar stool.  It is absolutely hilarious, and addresses all the issues that modern women have to contend with, from periods, high-heels, abortion, childbirth, Brazilian waxes and what to call your vagina --  to the bigger questions of modern feminism (or lack thereof) and why it's fallen off the radar of late. In an age where more little girls want to grow up to be the glamour model  Jordan   -- whom Moran describes as 'Vichy France, with tits' --  than a schoolteacher or doctor, we have to ask ourselves what happened to feminism; where did it all go wrong? In a brilliantly simple excercise to ascertain whether you are indeed a feminist or not, she advises - "Put your hands in your pants. a) do you have a vagina? and b) do you want to be in charge of it? If you said 'Yes' to bot...

Since DH and myself are once again separated  by oceans, continents and time-zones (we will join him after Christmas), and without the all encompassing sorrow of hovel-house, nightmare neighbours or fears over DH's liberty, I find myself now free to focus 100% on being a demoralised single-parent. They don't! As I write, I am sitting in the cafe in Eason's bookstore, nursing a cappuccino, facing the self-help section, which given my current state of mind, seems appropriate. From where I sit, Louise L. Hay assures me that I can heal my life; Paul McKenna promises that he will make me sleep (not without wine he won't) and  Sherry Argov explains why men marry bitches (apart from Brad Pitt, generally they don't: Men are uncomplicated creatures and prefer women of a similar persuasion --insofar as is possible, what with them being women and all -- and want to marry a woman who will make his dinner, give him a cuddle and occasionally go down on him.  And if...