Cry me a river...

Apparently this is also Susan Boyle on a CD made a few years ago for charity. I hope it is her as it's amazing and now I can sleep at night knowing that she definitely has an enduring talent...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8r9lRJ6yHY

Stupid blogger won't let me embed.

Also a great song.

The school I worked at before heading over to Scotland produced a very classy version of Les Mis just before I left. It broke my heart then and "Drink with Me" became a wee anthem for Scotland after I left (probably because the Les Mis songs were all in my head when I first arrived in Scotland).

This one also strikes a chord: the dream

I Dreamed A Dream lyrics

There was a time, when men were kind
And their voices were soft
And their words were inviting
There was a time, when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they turn your hope apart
As they turn your dreams to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my dreams with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'd come to me
That we would live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from the hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

Read that, watch it again and try not to cry!

The dream

Heard about this a few days ago then finally saw a quick snippet on the news the night before last. Finally had the chance to check it out on YouTube last night and ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

Amazing. I have cried my eyes out each time I have seen it. Such an unlikely candidate by the world's standards, and the looks on the faces of the audience -that young girl rolling her eyes - and she just stood up there, almost oblivious, and shut them all up.

Over 20 million hits on YouTube and broadcast around the world. I hope that she goes on to great things. AND she's Scottish. Scots wa' hae! Alba gu brath!

The look on Simon Cowell's face! And that 'megatalent' (as described in the Herald!) Amanda Holden...lol! My favourite was the guy on the other end. At least he had the grace to be ashamed of his earlier thoughts. Ant n Dec were hilarious.

Oh SIMON!

Goes to show that even in the most unlikely of places...and how quickly we can idolise people with internet and gadgetry. Still, it is brilliant to see someone who doesn't fit the image blow them all away.

Go Susan.

Unemployment and filling the time

Have started my Masters of Education. I am going to be a Teacher-Librarian (or just a plain librarian it will qualify me for either).

So far:

LIKES
Learning about lots of whizzy fandangled cyberspace gadgets (finally getting an excuse to try out Second Life...as if the First One isn't busy enough)
Having an excuse to loiter in a school library
...and on the internet!
Getting in touch with others who are interested in the same things.
Hope: that I am finally on the right path and anticipation at the lovely library jobs I might one day have!

DISLIKES
Stupid, bloody irritating annoyingly offputting virus that latched onto my computer during a recent sojourn at my cousins. Perfect bloody timing! Everytime I logon to the net I get a Microsoft Error message which promptly shuts down the web. And I keep getting redirected to junk advertisements! I've never had a proper virus before so this is a whole new world of PAIN!
Having to READ so much guff. Some of the academic language they use in the articles we have to read is so POINTLESS and irritating!
Computer headache :(

I am happy to be on the course. It lasts for 12 months and at the end I will be a qualified librarian. The Masters will give me a few more points for the visa to get back into the UK but I still have to head back there before my 30th birthday. Which means teaching in Asia (or somewhere) is still on the cards.

The job I was looking at over the Summer did not work out so now I have to wait until the Aug/Sept round. Good thing is I can study this course from anywhere in the world, so I can still apply for jobs o/seas. Bad news is that apparently the economic downturn has caused many schools to put a freeze on recruitment. As my recruiters already consider me 'difficult to employ' this is going to make things interesting...although one recruiter did tell me that it may mean international schools will now be more open to one year contracts, which is FANTASTIC for me!

I've also read that in the UK school system, Miss M will be eligible to start proper school after her 4th birthday, which, unfathomably, is this September!

Happy Post

Have just scrolled through my (very) long list of other bloggers and revisited all of them to catch up on what they are doing (twas like catching up with old friends...even tho most of them don't even know who I am!). Also to get a wee bit more inspiration for my own blog...just like getting out of bed, it's been a little hard lately to keep motivated. The whole reason for starting the wretched thing was to share our travel stories with the world but alas, we are still sitting HERE so it's just not that exciting.

But...happy thoughts!

One blog of which I am particularly fond is silversprite. I guess because they pretty much embody my Ideal Life: living on a remote Hebridean island, working as a librarian as well as having a web based consultancy business...>sigh<>

All this is rather fitting as I am trying, desperately trying to apply for a teacher-librarian position down south (actually not that far...and not on the coast, which I am craving, but still - it's part-time and at this point in the quest for employment, why the hell not??)

I am the original bookworm. Bugger teaching, I should've studied to be a librarian in the first place. The only part I'm not sure I'll like is the cataloguing, but I did realise tonight whilst walking (first time in MONTHS but more on that another time) that the school librarian does not have to do school reports, they have very few classes for which they have to prepare (and even then the lessons are mostly the same thing "How To Use The Library") and discipline is not such a big deal because they don't see the students that often, the work is usually assignment based (at least in secondary) or fun (primary) and they get to choose new books to buy...

Not that I'm trying to be lazy and get out of the hard work of teaching...I just don't have the heart for it ... I hesitate to say "anymore". It might come back, but at present I do not have the zest required to teach full-time. The silliest things completely debilitate me. Plus I don't look into the future and see myself marking reports and sitting up stressing over difficult classes, rushing to staff meetings, coaching a sporting team, none of these things feature...

The Dream :) Haha...reality!

No job, no job, no job...

*sob* still no word on the job front, so this will be my fourth Christmas in a row where I have spent the holiday depressed and anxious. Last year I was wondering about Tasmania. The year before I think it was a job in Scotland. The year before it was a job ANYWHERE (I'd only been back in Noobah a year and hadn't yet realised that after a while, you get numb to the pain of being back here).

I have started to hate the holiday period. The hot weather makes me miserable and short tempered. Being miserable makes me eat. Eating makes me fat. Being fat makes me miserable AND irritated. I shout and rant and snap at my daughter but really I am angry at myself - FOR STILL BEING IN THIS SHITHOLE! For letting ANOTHER BLOODY YEAR GO BY.

I think the fact it is summer (a season I detest in this country) and the new year is coming and my birthday only a few short weeks after that...well, it all adds to the general gloomy atmosphere. Another Christmas here means another one NOT spent in Scotland. Another Hogmanay missed. Another year closer to 30 and still no closer to being back home.

I feel wretched.

There were a few jobs on the horizon and had I any sense and actually REMEMBERED what I get like during this festive season I may have signed myself up simply to escape this misery. Instead I am stuck to the computer, sweltering in the combined summer and electrical heat, plonking my daughter in front of endless streams of crappy Christmas television and searching the job pages in vain.

And isn't it strange how all the ghosts of job hunts past come back to haunt me when I get down and desperate? I've thought about New Zealand, I go back to the Tasmanian idea, then I think again of the northern NSW coast...and without fail I always end up on the job board of some Scottish council - just to check.

And every year I think that I cannot go through much more of this. I cannot stay here any longer...I might die. I cannot get any older here. How many more years do I want to tread water in this backwater country? How many years do I want to have to look back on and lament as WASTED?

Yet here I am again.

Random Scottish band has the answer

Alright, so I don't know why but somehow I expected finding a job in Asia was going to be fairly straightforward. Sure - there were extra issues such as making sure schools were not dodgy and trying not to head into locations with significant malaria risks or active civil war, but everything I read pointed to the plethora of jobs available, that someone with a B. Ed would be able to pick and choose, that I'd be fighting them off...

Well, in that sense I am fighting them off a wee bit, but that's because none of the jobs I'm being offered seem to FIT.

I don't know why I am surprised. This is the story of my life. Nothing goes according to plan. Nothing fits. Nothing that I actually, specifically HOPE or PLAN for ever seems to come to fruition. Remember that Midas story? Yeah, well at least he had things around him turning to gold. Everything I touch seems to turn to shit. Not that I want that to be my mantra or the motto over my life. Oh no. I don't ACCEPT that everything I start will fail - hell no! It makes me even more determined to succeed! So out I go, again and again, doing the same bloody...

Hang on a minute. Maybe it's BECAUSE I'm doing the same bloody thing?

No, no I'm not. At first I tried to go to Scotland. Then I tried to go to England. I tried every other country in Europe. I investigated Canada. Finally I started looking into the rest of Australia - I tried WA, Tasmania, even went to the NT. New Zealand cropped up from time to time (and again recently) and if I am honest, Scotland has been a constant throughout but has simply faded into the background at times. I started looking at ELT in Europe and now it is Asia.

Okay, so I am trying to do the same thing - get out of this arse of a town, but at least my method is changing! I've looked at studying, I've looked at teaching, I've tried other jobs, I've looked at running a business...Every river I try to cross, every hill I try to climb, every ocean I try to swim, every road I try to find...

Dammit just lost half an hour watching Runrig on youtube! >sigh<> I can't help it. I try not to listen to them, try to avoid any reference to the place because each time I think about it, it breaks my heart again. It kills me not to be there, missing day after day, year after year, the people going about their business, the weather changing...

This is definitely the long way round. I do wonder if I am crazy, thinking that I could possibly be so bold as to believe there was a place for me over there. Miss M is sorted - she's half Scottish so technically has rights. I just have a bunch of ancestors who turned their backs on the place and came...HERE.

Nice move, guys.

Sometimes I do start wondering why I don't give up. Forget about it. The place ain't that great anyway. It rains all the time. Sometimes it's grey for months at a time. There are more wankers per head of population than possibly anywhere, immigration don't want me, Miss M's dad lives there (this is probably the biggest deterrent, damn him) ... and it is just so bloody DIFFICULT to get there. All the hours of my life I have wasted and we are still no closer. And now we are going to go and spend 2 or 3 years traipsing around the earth to try in a sense to come in the back door - and who's to say we won't face a big boot for all our trouble?

It doesn't matter how I reason with myself. The hope won't let go.

Runrig ... again:

like shadows on the wall

you come and you go

through the streets

and the rain that falls down

on our sin

no more good-byes

forever this way

whenever the greatest flame in the world

starts burning

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

always in your eyes

a waking of souls

we gaze out on the road

that brought us up

to this place

the signposts never change

we'll go where they lead

whenever the day to break us comes

we'll not give in

this is our life, and our time

and nothing, is ever going to break us

now we're on our own

this is our place

in our lives

and no one

can ever change this moment

or pull this mountain to the ground

One more thing...

The whole purpose of this morning's blogs (when I really should have been getting dressed and ready to head to the library for Friday morning Storytelling and Craft) was because I stumbled across this (on silversprite's blog):

The Isle of Berneray e-shop. They sell such delights as a

as well as this (my personal favourite): a keepsake box adorned with a local black face:

and of course, the Berneray calendar. This is the single page version. You can also buy a 12 months calendar (okay, of course they're all 12 months but this one has a picture a month):

With all the drama going on in Kyleakin at the moment, it is refreshing to see a village who have embraced modern technology and are doing what they can to keep their home alive.

REALLY should be at the library by now, so more on Kyleakin at another time.

Other blogs

So...given that I was going to be a librarian in a place early convict settlers described as 'the mouth of hell', I thought a great name for my blog (down there) would be something along the lines of "the librarian at the end of the world" or edge of the world or ... you get the picture.

Google informed me that sadly, there was already a librarian at the end of the world and I would have to try harder. Of course I went for 'the librarian at the OTHER end of the world' but then not getting the job kind of got in the way of that blog.

So, who was this librarian at the end of the world? Imagine my delight to discover they were in Scotland! And the westerly islands to be precise! Given the name (silversprite), and the profession (librarian) I was (terrible generalisation) expecting an elderly man or woman with a twinkle in their eye. I am pretty sure this is not how silversprite would be described in real life.

Photo from silversprite also available in the Berneray 2009 Calendar

Anway: a plug for the blog if you have not already found it from my links to the left. Brilliant photos, interesting anecdotes from Berneray (island he lives on). There's also some IT speak that goes on which usually leaves me feeling hopelessly inept and old but hey, that's how I found out about Second Life before the Australian media...:)


Another brilliant, brilliant blog is Shauny's 'What's New Pussycat'. That one has been in my Favorites (sic) for a few years now. An Australian girl in Scotland - how could google not bring me this delight the day I got my computer and plugged in the ADSL??? And yes, that's pretty much how I found the blog. There's heaps more to Shauny - even the really old stuff (I am embarrassed that she has been blogging for YEARS and YEARS - and that I had not discovered it. I stupidly thought blogging was relatively new and that it had not been around when I was travelling, but NOooooo, I am just ignorant!) The pic is from a recent entry discussing the infamous British Washing Up Tub/Bowl.


Of course, there is Prague blog, which I think I've already mentioned. Found this one when I was looking into Tesol a couple of months ago. I really want to go to Prague now...but baby steps! I think it's called Delayed Gratification - I think it will be good for me to live in Asia for a while. And everybody says it is good to gain experience there. If I also manage to save some money these will both help in Europe where apparently you can't get jobs without experience and they don't provide accommodation and other perks that seem to flow freely in Asian countries.


And Angus keeps me abreast of Scottish politics...the only politics that have ever managed to make me cry, or even to capture my attention for more than 5 minutes. They may not let me vote but they will never take my freedom to pretend I did! (I won btw). He also manages to explain away many of the nagging questions I had after living in the Western Isles for a few months in 2004 (schools, ferries, windfarms...). Photo from recent entry discussing the axing of nearly 100 workers at a local fish processing plant. You can read it here.

There are others, but these are the main ones that have me rushing to my laptop instead of tending to my daughter...

Something good

I have been following Silversprite's blog for most of this year. I think I stumbled across it initially during one of my mad, "I want to be a librarian" periods. I still want to be a librarian but I can't commit to the postgrad study so maybe in a few years...

Ahh, I remember now - I had applied for a job in Strahan, which is a tiny place on the wild west coast of Tasmania. Cold, mountains meeting the sea, olden days buildings...heck, they are still using steam trains! The job was in community education - managing the local library and learning centre (yep, the job I'd dreamed of years ago back in Scotland). And whaddya know it looks just like Scotland. Have you seen how cheap house prices are in Tassie? It was perfect, just perfect! My mum, by chance, even happened to be visiting the village right at the time I was applying and being interviewed.

On that note, what a circus! It took WEEKS (possibly months - I initially applied in December, heard nothing until late January, early Feb and interviewed in February) for them to process the job applications. There were no less than THREE senior staff interviewing for the TEN HOUR PER WEEK post. Yep, 10 hours a week and all that drama. Not only that, but it took them so long to process the applications that I think I phoned twice to check the job had not been given to somebody else already, only to be told the panel had not even met to discuss it. Bearing in mind that when my Mum visitied the place in December (around the time of the job application), there was already a temporary staff member in there who told Mum that they were struggling as they had so few staff. Then interview lady tells me that they were also looking for people for nearby Zeehan and Rosebery (sp?) and would I consider those? I said yes to everything, took the interview (VERY stuffy and formal and except for Portree High School Interview the First the most excrutiating half hour I've ever endured).

So, I didn't get the job. It devastated me for quite a while. Not least because although the bastards advertised in November and applications had to be in by December, all their fluffing around did not produce a result until sometime in MARCH (and by the way, I was NEVER informed, which I thought was a common courtesy for people who reach interview stage). So, for those not in Australia, March is like October in the Northern Hemisphere. Both school and uni have resumed, so it's too late to get a teaching job or start a course. I was facing another long year of supply teaching when I stumbled across the Bremer Tafe Diploma of Community Services Management, completely misunderstood what it was about and spent a lot of money on hot air...but that vitriol will save for another time.

For now, I am talking about Silversprite (and may have been slightly distracted). I may have to start a new post...

A good reason for not getting the job in Strahan...look at the size of that thing!

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:

I went to the Library...

and actually took out a book on travel. Our netball coach gave us (my sister and I) LARGE Lonely Planet guides to Europe before we went overseas last time. Although most appreciated (as they are never cheap, despite being aimed at an impoverished target market), those bloody things lugged us down and caused all manner of catfights for probably a year before we ditched them at the hostel we managed, where they were likely stolen by somebody who I am satisfied to say will have regretted it before too long. They must've weighed about 5 kilos each.

Anyway...the problem with guidebooks is, although they are fascinating reading if you are dreaming of a life somewhere else, they date too quickly. And these days, when you can pretty much carry the internet round in your pocket, they are almost obsolete.

After I'd lived on Skye for a little while, I remember flicking through the "Isle of Skye" section in Lonely Planet and being infuriated by the inaccuracies and lame observations of the locals. I wrote to Lonely Planet and told them to sort it out. They brought out a new edition of Scotland and some of my changes were there but they didn't mention my name, which was a let down.

But I digress...

My daughter likes to go to the local Library a lot, which is great for me. They have toys and books there to occupy her while I read the paper, or drift through the aisles (usually the travel section), dreaming of our Escape. Never mind that the books never change (very small library, mostly stocked with Mills & Boon and audio copies of newspapers for the elderly), I have read Lonely Planet's "Scotland" about a million times.

The other day I decided what the heck, why not take the books out of the Library and actually read them? I picked up the Rough Guide to Travel Online, despite knowing that it would be hopelessly outdated and only serve to mislead me.

However, I was wrong. It has been quite useful. It has a whole page devoted to websites devoted to bird-watching holidays. It also has some info on single parent travel and destination guides.

I have been to them all and deleted those that are now in disfunction (so I am not always wrong!):

http://www.smallfamilies.co.uk/ (I like this one)

http://www.cyberparent.com/trips (bit old fashioned looking)

http://www.family-travel.co.uk/homepage.php

http://www.familytravelforum.com/ (looks good)

http://www.tinytravelers.net/ (part of the Family Travel Forum network; specialises in issues travelling with kids younger than 4. A great concept as it's true a lot of the other sites seem to have holidays and articles geared towards travelling with older kids)

http://www.gonomad.com/family/familyTravel.html (they even have an article on Ancestral travel in Scotland...points to them!)

http://www.themeparkinsider.com/ (not really my cup of tea)

I also found some more sites:

http://www.globalfamilyadventures.com/ (run tours to Costa Rica but possibly expanding)

http://www.sptc.org.uk/ (The Single Parent Travel Club - UK based)

At last! Some based in Australia:

http://www.holidayswithkids.com.au/single_parent_travel

http://www.byokids.com.au/

And this one is just plain weird:

http://www.parentswithoutpartners.org/ (this site must be US based - creepy pic!)

Still nowt on actually living abroad as a single parent, but the search continues...

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.)

Today is the day

Today I gave money to the Language Training Institute who are going to (eventually) grant me my TESOL certification.

Having spent the past 3 years and 5 months trawling the net, boring people witless and banging my head against brick walls trying to find ways of getting back to Scotland, it feels quite strange to be making plans to travel somewhere else.

It is scary, in fact. That little dream of life forever in Scotland has kept me chortling along through some dark, very dark, days.

Hell, thoughts of Scotland (Isle of Skye particularly) got me through 12 hours of labour.

Yes, that's right. There has been a small person following me round and calling me 'mother' for a couple of years now.

Deireadh, deireadh an Turas

The end, the end of the journey.

I suppose it's a good thing to start out with the final destination in mind.

This is it:

I can't sit around waiting anymore - it is driving me batty and making me bitter and cynical before my time.