Departure blues

Perhaps it is the literature I am reading but I was dreaming last night that we were living in a different place.

My heart and mind are definitely on the move out of here. I am finding it harder and harder to feign interest in what is going on around me. My sister and her partner are planning to build a house (a mansion, really. Not bad for 2 non-professionals still under 30, but what do I know?) I do know that it strikes me as very Marie Antoinette - there are people in the world who are starving, who can't get a house, who can't read or write...anyway.

I have even started to take down my postcard wall (a staple in every house, hovel or cell-sized room I have lived in since I was 21). I wander round the house every so often and daydream about the garage sale I will have. I am even thinking about having a garage sale right now, just to get rid of the clutter.

Perhaps it is a good thing. I know it won't be easy to leave here, despite my boredom and frustration with the place. But unfortunately we have stayed here too long, tentacles of habit have wound their way into our hearts and lifestyle.

My daughter is also a lot older than I thought she would be when we left, and certainly older than she was at the start of last year when we moved to Alice Springs. She noticed the sudden disappearance of family then (her father also chose that moment to return to Scotland, so that added to her distress), I'm sure she'll notice it more this time.

Fortunately we will be going somewhere completely new that will fill up her senses and distract her. I think it will be best if I get a job quite suddenly and the departure process is fairly quick. Just like removing a Band-Aid - it seemed to work when we left for Alice Springs (I was phoned and offered the job on Saturday and we arrived by the following Tuesday).

Of course, it will not be the glorious departure back to Scotland that I have pictured in my mind over the past 3 and a half years, but it will be the beginning of that journey - with our final destination:

The background

While my daughter is napping I have a chance to fill in some of the (currently rather hazy) details...

Saoghalbeag is Scottish Gaelic for "small world" (saoghal = world/beag = small). I travelled to the UK, like so many other Aussies, on a working holiday maker visa in 2002. Before I even set foot in the place (Scotland) I knew it was where I wanted to live forever. 3 years of drecht weather, fickle boys, midges and being the Aussie outsider did not change this. 3 and a half years in exile in Australia have still not eroded my desire to live in the best wee country in the world.

http://www.scotlandistheplace.com/

http://www.visitscotland.com/

Anyway: why aren't we there? Well, immigration is a fearful enemy and so far none of my elaborately constructed plans to return have come to fruition. Not even the fact that I have a half-Scottish child will bend the ear of the British Home Office. So we have been condemned to exile in the blistering Australian heat - in a country where green frogs live in my toilet and cockroaches clamber up the walls at night! There are wasps and snakes and spiders in the garden (and sometimes in the house!) and the heat, did I mention the heat??

I will leave my frustration, rage, feet stamping and head banging to your imagination. So many times I have cursed the place (Scotland) and wished the dream to set me free so I could try to make myself happy with life in the Aussie 'burbs; with my 4WD, plasma telly and 6 burner BBQ...

Sometimes I can be slightly mulish and it can take me a little bit of time to notice the open window because I am so busy stamping my feet and shouting at the door that has just slammed in my face. (Even when I do notice the window I have sometimes been known to continue stamping and shouting at the door).

My daughter has just turned 3, and for a long time the idea of teaching English overseas as a way of continuing the travels that were interrupted when my daughter arrived has slowly been growing on me. It was fired up last year while we were in Alice Springs as the ESL kids were the brightest and best to work with - they didn't sap me dry with apathy as the local kids did.

When I finally started googling to find out a bit more about this Tesol caper I was stunned at how much sense it made ... (but I still gave the closed door a few more swift kicks before I started trying to clamber out the window.)