I was never meant to resurrect Partly Cloudy. It could have been seen as attention-seeking, like threatening to leave then not going, or waving madly just to get people to look. But then this summer happened, and writing one last post seemed like an okay thing to do.
It was when winter took hold last year, when we started wearing double-thick socks round the clock, that we dusted off the credit card and booked five weeks of summer for a trip back to the Red Dot, one year after our big exit.
We didn’t expect a royal welcome. We knew our first week would be full of tumbleweeds, as we landed just as all the expats flew out. Luckily, one generous family was still around. For over a week they budged up to make room for us as we emptied our bags across the top floor of their house in the very cool Joo Chiat area. Exploring this fabulously laid-back zone got us acclimatised nicely. By the time we had gone on some local travels and then flown back in again, everyone else was home. Then reconnecting began in earnest.
It was all very level. There were some retro moments, like rediscovering each-a-cup Pearl Tea and making an unplanned but lovely visit to the old apartment. There were some tight hugs hello and several watery goodbyes, but otherwise the days felt comfy and happy, like getting into bed after a long day. We had EZ Link cards and an existing bank account. Mr PC worked for three weeks out of the five, bussing into the CBD with a plastic bag of kopi-o, even getting in a Wednesday game of footie with the old crowd.
Jonah found his Bounce socks and hung out with friends in town. I had some loyalty cards to use up (latte and a gel pedicure, please) and found myself more adept at knowing the Singapore bus routes than the London ones. We dined out and ate in, went to the cinema, pottered in parks. Thanks to the kindness of yet more friends, we borrowed an apartment for the last two weeks so we could play house, hosting some meet-ups and using the gym, pool, balcony and tennis court as if we did it every day. It really was a case of ‘popping in’, delightfully familiar but at the same time so special. In fact just like our summer trips back to London only in reverse.
I’d wondered if the revisit might have been a bad idea: would the second departure, one year after that awful wrench, be damaging all over again? Jonah was fine at first. He only became a bit wistful during the final days of the trip, when ex schoolmates bustled about getting ready for the new year while he stood by looking on, still a few weeks to go before the UK summer closed.
I write this in London and, now we are ‘home’ again, I’m not sure where the boys stand. I suspect that if Mr PC lived in a parallel world he might prefer to take the Downtown line to work, instead of the Jubilee. But we are where we are, I’m an ex-expat and I can talk fluently about repatriation and transition. I know there is truth in the saying that it takes two years to settle, home or away. We are halfway through and that’s just how it feels: fine to be there and fine to be here, hard to leave and hard to stay. Is it possible to have two lives?
Yesterday – last day of the hols – Jonah and I chatted about something that happened at a friend’s house a few days back, or so I thought.
‘Who were we talking to?’ I asked him, and we ran through some familiar names until we worked out that it had been several weeks ago in Singapore, not here in London. The two lives are so familiar. They have blended together like a translucent screen over a picture, with groups of friends there matching up, twin-like, to the ones here.
We can’t and won’t do a big summer trip every year, and we owe it to ourselves to sit down for a bit and let the grass grow under our gel-tipped toes. But as my Mum used to say when she found something nice in a shop but didn’t want to buy it just yet, we know it’s there.
Until next time, Singers.
