SmallMonkey is in our bed after a bad dream. ‘…and then Stanley got into the car with me, and…’ ‘Who is Stanley?’ ‘Oh, he’s my pillow.’ Very nearly that, or some such nonsense, anyway, enough to properly wake my brain up (apparently it was Steve from Minecraft and Jake from Adventuretime).

Ours is not a huge bed by western standards and SM, while slender, is not the little bean he once was and the temperature in that room is 29C on a good night (unless you are in direct line of the floor-standing fan) and there just isn’t the room, any more, for the chance of sleep à trois, and so it is that I am now downstairs while the two boys are upstairs. Plus it’s raining loudly. So I’m sleepless.

On Facebook people are posting away in the UK. It’s 9pm their time, 4am mine. I could go for a run but, yes, it’s raining, and in any case last time I went for a run in the proper dark I had that stupid fall. My knee scars are now a nice nut-brown colour but I don’t want any more. Three hours until daylight. Pom pom pom. What about fiddling about with WordPress, or writing up the First Aid notes from that brilliant course here at the condo (thanks Jess), or tackling that stupid book again (haven’t gone into the cage and prodded it for ages, wonder if it’s still breathing?).

What about tiptoeing into the spare room and turfing out some of those mad old books like I keep promising? Don’t even need to tiptoe because everyone’s upstairs. Or I could fish around for flights for the next trip away. Nothing confirmed yet, though, no point.

Hot milk? One of my sleepy teas? Cheeky Baileys? Diet.

Actually, in condos it’s never really completely dark

In Singapore the car parks have little lights over spaces – green for vacant, red for occupied. I know you get a green light on some social networking sites and chat pages but I wish my Mac had something more advanced, where if you saw that green light you could have a cup of coffee with the person, share a late-night layer from the choc box in the fridge. Eat the toffee ones together. Am on that stupid diet though.

I might read, actually, I’m starting a course next week and it comes with a list, but I’ve been putting that off because it means I’ll have to start thinking about how much work it’ll be and we can’t have that, not in the middle of the night.

WordPress fiddling, then, and a cup of tea, then a run. Plan.

Is anyone out there?

In 1992 HRH Queen Elizabeth II, in her Guildhall speech, described the preceding year as one ‘annus horriblis’. As I recall she had, actually, just had a shocker of a year, full of things far more serious than the odd corgi with a leaky bottom. It’s a great phrase, nothing like a spot of Latin to give weight to words, especially when the words themselves look a bit manky. But if you’ve ever had one of them, it’s not something you want to repeat.

I spent the first few months of Small Monkey’s time here wondering whether my son was embarking on his own ‘horrible year’. I’m not a fan of hindsight so I won’t go back over the details: basically for him the move wasn’t ‘fun’ as promised, more of a shock – one that we hadn’t anticipated. New teach was tough, he didn’t like TheHeat as much as I always thought he had on previous trips out here, he missed his mates. Doesn’t sound like much but when you’re a boy of seven it can all add up, and the resulting tinges of depression made it a very tough year for him and a bit of a tough one for us too, in a way that I’ve not detailed here (because after all shouldn’t this be about me me me, right?). I dunno, I guess writing the words on here would have meant I had to properly deal with them instead of just complaining endlessly to anyone who would listen (er, thanks for that Everyone). In any case it was his business, not for the public; I felt hugely over-protective all year.

Hey though, what do you know? School started again this week and OK, a small reshuffle may have been demanded (after the debacle of last year I wasn’t going to settle for the wrong cocktail of ingredients), and a hurried rejig granted (reminding me so much of my own mum’s infamous trip ‘downtheschool’ on the one occasion I’d been put in a room with my nemesis) and an agreement was reached, and up the steps of the dirty white bus he went, courage levels boosted by a summer of love, and the house was once again quiet, bar the sound of over-protective nails being gently chewed.

What a change, for many reasons. Being established, liking his teacher, enjoying the work, realising the friends he made last year are a bit fabulous – a few days of all this has changed our house. How lovely it’s been every night this week when he’s paced back up the path, slightly sulky, wobbly tonight after dozing on the bus, pestering for snacks, complaining about homework, in other words behaving completely normally, aka ‘HowHeAlwaysDidBefore’. No terrified, wan expressions, no churning stomachs, sudden appetite loss, quiet sobbing at bedtime. Not once have I had to beg ‘PLEASE think of one good thing to say’, or bribe him with extra canteen candy, sit up with him late at night, tell him to man up*, promise him a puppy**, promise him next day would be better when in fact none of us knew if it would be. He won’t ever love school days, neither did I, and we’ll get the usual complaints, normal ones, but that’s all we need, and it’s so much more like it. God save the Queen.

*I did it once. I’m not proud. I was a bit tired…

**Yeah, kidding. A gecko, maybe

‘Enjoy a different birthday abroad,’ said D in her birthday card to me last week. Here’s a snap of the breakfast table with chiffon mocha cake (note the Southeast Asian ‘chiffon’ slant) and just at the back there you can see the birthday bill from our school bus company for next term. We’ve certainly never had one of those before.

The royal line-up of events I always organise for myself spanned the usual week (I’m Gemini, it’s always got to last longer than the royal coronation celebrations) but this year involved a Chinese reflexology treatment, Thai lunch and dinner at a rooftop restaurant looking out towards Indonesia. I even had a bit of a different birthday song (an extra ‘Happy Birthday’ instead of my name – that’s an ‘over here’ thing as well). I am looking for Chinese-themed thank you cards to keep the game going.

So D, you can be sure that I did have a bit of a different birthday abroad indeed and xie xie to all those involved. I’ll see you in a few weeks to do it the British way: put the kettle on.

This is Mr PC’s aunt, 73, from Ipoh. We visited last weekend, bringing the usual pile of chocolate (her favourite) and good appetites as the city is famous for food, especially chicken and rice (my favourite). Amidst the shameless gorging our trips to Ipoh always involve us persuading her to tell some family stories. Sometimes she would rather sit in front of the telly with the sound operating louder than a jet plane. Other times she is on form and we get some good snippets.

This last visit I taped her talking. As well as stories of her old dad keeping a lime tree and what it was like when her grandma came to stay was the story of her recent resignation from the legal company that had hired her for the past 16 years, for little pay and not much thanks.

Last November she decided she’d finally had enough. She waited until her salary had cleared, then put in a phone call from the local YMCA to check for the all-clear. The tape is a lovely memento, with our aunt’s slow nasal drawl, bursts of background laughter and a polite factual reminder of the correct year at one point, but this written account, slightly edited for fluency, will do:

‘I asked the girls “What time is the boss back?” and they said “Not until two o’clock,” so I went and got some iced Milo to hand out and rushed back in to the office with the ice creams and my leaving letter, which I left for them to give.’

She goes on to recount the letter that we would all love to have penned:

“I, Madam Tan Mei Ling, at my utmost happiness, hereby tender my resignation as from today 30 November 2012.”

Usually, she agrees, you would end such a letter yours sincerely…

‘But I didn’t, I just put: GOODBYE!’

This was the setting for our school Swim Gala today, a crisply performed two-hour splish-splash for Years 3 and 4. In the UK we used to have an old-fasioned sports day, you know the thing: blankets and buggies on the track up at the Heath. A tinny loud-speaker, extra layers and waterproofs, the dreaded Mum’s Race, Dad’s wheelbarrow and then all off to the cafe for lunch. Here we sat poolside and bellowed at the little fishes who either displayed surprising panache for their ages or, if they had forgotten their goggles like a certain SmallPrimate, zig-zagged wildly for 25 metres before coming home with mild sunburn. I enjoyed it actually. Especially not having to do the Mum’s Race.

Sometimes the fact that things are carrying on at home without us is a good thing. Today was UK Mother’s Day, arriving to rather muted fanfare in a country that won’t celebrate until 12 May. I’ve spent the last two mothers days missing mine so it was nice to be in a place where no one was paying the day much notice. Mr PC got his prompt the night before during a dinner party and sweetly sorted out a squiggly card, tea and toast in bed, both lunch and dinner out and several lacy mentions of love from SmallMonkey as the day wore on. Very nice thank you please.

I loved Mother’s Day as a child and it’s lovely that I now get crumbs in bed too. It’s a funny hallmark of a day, though: great if you have a mum, brilliant if you ARE a mum, rubbish if your mum’s dead and dismal if you never got to be a mum but always wanted to. I score 2 out of 4, 1 up and 1 down, so I get the sad missing stuff and the loved-up family stuff, which puts me in the halfway position of those of us who feel a little sad but love getting all the attention. This low-key Singapore version was ideal.

I don’t talk about Mum much on here. If you’re reading this because I twisted your arm on Facebook or shoved a link under your nose, then you won’t be looking to swot up on my old life, it’ll be the new stuff you’re after. But it’s Mother’s Day, though. So what to say?

Sometimes I think about her and sometimes she is just, simply, here. And sometimes she isn’t. She popped by earlier on but not for long. She visits at the strangest of times and not just for something as plastic as this. And she doesn’t ‘visit’ – she’s not standing in the kitchen with big sad eyes making a cup of tea. She’ll just suddenly be with me in a way I can’t describe, nor do I want to try. She deserves an entire library of words and that won’t and can’t happen here. Her brief drive-by today was clearly a gentle acknowledgement of the date – no doubt she spent a long time with my sister later on. I hope she did.

Everyone had a mother. Love to you all.

SmallMonkey has chosen his Extra Curricular Activities (ECAs) at school and blow me down if, after years of being uninterested in anything ‘craft’-ish, he has gone for stained glass and Chinese calligraphy. I find this selection a bit weird but whatever makes his homesick little heart happy. Fortunately Singapore has plenty of art galleries in which he can display his new talents and earn enough money for sweets at the school canteen.

SM loves the canteen – he now prefers me not to pack snacks so that he can ‘buy stuff’. I give him three bucks a week and that’s his lot: we are all happy about how much he loves this little slice of independence (and SM loves the end results), but I can see the dentist’s bill looming.

I have picked out my own ECA, too, started it last night. On Saturday I met a woman at a small dinner party who talked me into joining her school choir. ‘Its OK,’ she said, ‘just a bit of fun.’ And it seemed my mouth had its own plans that night because it immediately formed the word ‘Yes’ – I recall it as a slow-motion thing like in the films, a time-delayed karate punch of a response to a mad idea.

What’s odd is that I would never, in all my born days, arrange to meet a virtual stranger in a random school car park after dark and sing loudly in front of a load of other strangers (sober). I did time in school choir for years, have staggered about after various weddings doing the New York New York cancan, and played my imaginary air guitar in Lucky Voice Karaoke a few times, but vodka has always played a large part.

Well sometimes there just isn’t a hip-flask to hand, and in fact when your own reality has been turned on its head and the world is quite literally upside down then you can pretty much do anything you want, I am finding. Go on, ask me to do something bonkers: there’s a good chance I’ll do it.

Anyway I booked the cab (SmallMonkey suitably open-mouthed at me ‘going to sing with some strangers’) and took a chair on the end of the Alto row, and I’m very glad I did because the strawberry margaritas in the local bar afterwards were close to perfection. We might even skip the music bit of things, next week.

I feel different, and my knives and forks feel different too, when I hold them again after our five-week separation. Stands to reason, I suppose: if things have changed for me then the same will apply to everything else. We’re pulling stuff out of boxes and it’s all looking very good indeed, and perhaps it’s just that we’re so glad to see it all. How is it possible to be that fond of a spoon? And how come the bedroom dresser suddenly looks like something out of Celebrity Homes? Our home is shaping up and I’m so happy to be welcoming in the tea towels, so delighted to unpack my spotty broom and put up the shoe rack, settling the cutlery into the right drawers with care. These are our gap years, I find myself telling the metal whisk and a small white milk jug. Get ready for some adventures! I suppose I am not quite over the jet lag yet…