Dawn of a New Day, Dawn of My New Country

We dropped 30 degrees the day we arrived in England. Singapore released us at a sultry 29 Celsius. Heathrow was making some effort at spring with 4°C and when we arrived in Warwick at around 10pm, it was one of the colder days of my life at minus one. Meanwhile, my family were sweating it out in an Australian 38 degrees. So, welcome to England, Anne.

But the temperature was not at the forefront of my mind.

I was realising that the forms hulking in the dark were those I would come to know as my own landscape. I recognised the cut of white road from the introduction to the Vicar of Dibley. (Oh yes, I know my England.) I remembered the delight I felt when I first drove through it some years ago. It said to me, “You are in here.” I had crossed from what exists somewhere to what exists here, to being a part of this existence. It is a weird sort of second-hand assertion of one’s physical location: If I am where I know to be England, then I am in England. It’s useful as an antidote to the disbelief of the good fortune of travel.

The next morning I awakened in England. Small birds chit-chatted. Their songs were flakes and tiny silver spirals twisting in the early light. This was my new morning soundscape; no longer the full golden-throated carolling of magpies.

I stood in sunshine and minute snowflakes. They were smaller than pinheads and most melted on contact with my windcheater. Just one was big enough to be discernible as a tiny star shape. Oh, the pleasure of that one flake. Rumour has it that snowflakes are six prongs of radial almost-symmetry with infinite variety but I had never seen one.  At the risk of sounding like a scientist crossed with a wizard, there is magic in verification.

I bought some thermals. For a while, I was too cold to undress to put them on but, my goodness, what a difference a layer of wool makes. I could really have done with my ugg boots and the thick woollen jumpers my mother has knitted me over the years but I cunningly put them on a boat that will be here in three months. I expected spring and got the coldest March in 50 years.

On my way out house-hunting one morning I passed a tree and made a note to return to it for photos. The following dawn, precious time ebbed away as I hacked at the windscreen with a footling piece of plastic which The BB had advised me was an ice-scraper. Scrape scrape scrape. Check the sun. Scrape scrape scrape. Check the time. Crikey! How do people live in such countries? Finally, I had a transparent windscreen. It was still pre-dawn when I arrived at my tree. I photographed until after sun-up with sheep and crows obliging. I had captured a little piece of the land, my new land.

In the process, my hands bypassed cold and went straight to a weird sort of hard, stinging numbness. “Welcome to our world,” I hear you northern-hemsipherians say.

Thank you. I’m here and I‘m glad.

PS I’d be grateful to hear which of the photos appeals most to you and how I might improve either the initial photo or post-processing. I am relatively new to this. Click on the small photos in the gallery to enlarge. Thank you.

 

Travelling With Steamed Pudding

My son made a brown Betty, a type of steamed pudding, for dinner before I left Australia for England.

These desserts were a staple of my childhood. They make one feel comfortable and comforted; the trials of life are, however briefly, soothed by the warmth and calm of such food. There is no ‘trying’ in the presence of a steamed pudding.

They bake in a covered bowl on a rack in a pot of boiling water. When the pot lid is removed, steam issues forth. When the cover of the pudding bowl is removed, steam rises. When the pudding is cut and laid in slices on a plate, steam wafts. This brown Betty of my son’s seemed to have soaked up some of the moisture. Rather than sitting pertly in fluffy slices, it slumped on the plate, moist and done in.

That’s how I felt when I exited the terminal at Singapore. I was the brown Betty in the steam of Singapore.

We Are All Undertakers

Moving house and country is outside the normal sphere of events and requires a certain constellation of people to effect a departure.

The final weeks are stuffed with gatherings of friends and family which in turn are stuffed with photos and presents and special meals and trying to make the most of every moment while dealing with matters from that other space one occupies – the tiny intersection between life in one country and life in another. I feel like I’m in a Diana Wynne-Jones novel where the worlds have overlapped for a brief period and I’m briefly occupying that transparent sliver before the worlds move apart again and I find that I have slid off with the new one.

And then there’s something else entirely.

In A Dark, Dark Wood There Was a Dark, Dark House…

You know the children’s story.

Similarly, the hot, hot land, house and room. We zoom in to the hot, hot desk at which sits a woman with a sheen of fine sweat. Metres away is a cold room where sits her husband. It would be an easy matter to join him, even easier to open the door and allow the cool to waft out. Why doesn’t she?

What Are We Leaving?

“Why are we leaving?”

The BB’s question was, this time, spurred by a conversation about the logistics of getting our goods moved from Australia to England.

As any mover will know, the timing of such a project is fraught. If your household effects go too early, you have to sleep on the floor of your empty house like a cave person; or acquire, then dispose of, sleeping apparatus; or commute to work from distant friends or family; or find a hotel. Going before your goods, is bravery or foolishness as you entrust the removal and everything else to others.

When confronted with the what-are-we-doing question, I have a variety of responses.

Sir Porridge’s Epic Journey…Day Five

After his fall yesterday evening in Norseman, Sir Porridge, AK, was lured this morning by other, more stable, conveyances.

See him up there on the hump?

Being of a scientific bent, he also wanted to check the claim that the roads were indeed large enough to accommodate the turning of a camel train.  A couple of men sitting in cars in the middle of the road were the only witnesses that it is indeed so. (The camels seemed pleased about the change of scenery.)

Sir Porridge’s Epic Journey…Day Four

Still full of vim after his days of hard travel, Sir Porridge, AK, was up early for a bracing sit and portrait on the Ceduna jetty.