Category Archives: Taking stock

Back in the hood

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Good job I renewed this site when the hosting reminder came up. It’s for Singapore matters only, and we don’t live there any more, so I considered letting it lapse. But our return this Christmas brought back the relevance of – and need for – a PartlyCloudy post, so here it is.

We left the Little Red Dot in 2017 and returned for a visit in 2018. That five-week return trip felt like closure, and did us the world of good. Since then a lot of ground has been covered and we are very much Londoners living in the Northern Hemisphere. So I didn’t expect, on our Christmas trip, to feel so at home so fast.

Singapore is mercurial in its changes, and a lot of building work had taken place as we emerged blinking into the sunlight on our first morning. But much had also stayed the same, like our beloved Botanic Gardens (point one on our to-do list), Henderson Wave bridge (made it there on the last day), concrete over-road passes with big jungly trees forming essential rain cover, efficient Changi airport whisking us straight to the cab rank, etc etc – all this stuff made us feel instantly at home. Here are some more things we loved reconnecting with:

• Commuting on the MRT felt so normal. Smooth, quick, cool, WiFi everywhere. No food or drink allowed, mind you, and no entertaining buskers, but those are also plus points. When riding the escalators we had to remember to stand on the left (and we’re now remembering to switch back).
• I do love the buses. Little things like tapping out as well as in make so much sense. They run in all weathers, including torrential storms but they’re very joggy, so don’t expect to sit down before they hit the gears.
• We made good use of the fiendishly cheap Grab cabs spinning us around Malaysia and Singapore to a backdrop of bluesy 80s choons, furry animals dangling above the dash. That’s my cab quota used up for the whole year.
• Food, glorious food should really be point 1. We are still dreaming of it (and working it off). Cheap eats, fancy seats, take-out, stay in, it’s curiously available in a way I can’t describe. Tangy south-east Asian scents wafting from every air outlet, brilliant food courts in almost every mall, offering food you actually want to eat. The whole country is a giant foodie playground and we could have spent a month tucking into kaya toast for breakfast, quick curry lunches, Crystal Jade, Tim Ho Wan, Ippudo Ramen, proper Din Tai Fung. Oh and the bread shops, cake shops, skewer sticks, nonya dishes – and airport snacks a speciality (Old Chang Kee, Kopitiam, etc).
• Shopping? Yes, but it’s a funny old thing: when I lived there I loved coming back to the UK shops. Now I’m here I love it out there. Singapore is a shopping city and not always in a brilliant way. Loads of plastic and packed-out malls on weekends. But how do I know? Because I was right in there, sorrynotsorry. Couldn’t hurt to hunt for a few bargains, like the third-off quilted cross-body bag and the bargain Bata sandals. And my suitcase didn’t split, result.
• Back outdoors and there’s those funny chunky up-and-down pavements with a tree in the middle, suddenly, or a railing over a drain, or a fence. On off on off up down up down. Good for the glutes. And the traffic lights that make the “peow” sound before the fast green countdown. Don’t dawdle, the roads are massive here and red comes round fast. I remembered my way around a few places as if I’d only left five minutes ago. Weird and not-weird all at once.
• Waiting at a crossing in the sun or sudden rain, forgot your umbrella, need water? You can find a 7-Eleven or Watsons on every corner selling those. And the one time an MRT didn’t have one (naughty Telok Blangah) there was an HDB over the road with shops at the bottom.
• A word about water: Singapore is 95% water (made up that figure but you get the idea) and it’s effortlessly drinkable straight from the tap, so ditch the plastic and fill up those water bottles.
• And HDBs, OK not always amazing, but such a great concept. A little round of applause here for convenient communal living (when it works, that is, not for the rubbish ones)
• Another shoutout for one of the best bits of Singapore living: toilets. Public conveniences are every-single-where. Everywhere. Such a great idea, but I guess you need the infrastructure to do that, and attendants willing to keep them orderly. Thanks, Singers, for being so practical.
• Clement winter weather made our trip more doable. Yes we had melty moments every day, but there was a lot of uncharacteristically breezy, sunny stuff going on, and a few coolish nights too (a parky 25 at times). I did find the heat tougher this time, no doubt thanks to a few more years on the bodyclock. When I lived here I prided myself on not minding the weather too much. For this trip the answer was: yes it’s hot – table inside, please. One bonus: western hair is a fluffy nightmare in Asia, but my thinning threads loved it. Bit more of that humidity and I’ll start looking like myself again…
• I’ll roll into one the giant palms on every corner, lianas in hedges, monitors and otters in the Botanic Gardens, cicadas ringing in the trees, and the simple joy of having warm bones (when it’s not too hot). But it’s more than that, the whole fortnight was a feeling of being at home in a place.

I now see our 2018 visit as a stamp of security, whereas this trip will go down as the one that confirmed how much we love the city. Grandpa came too, and loved revisiting the gardens and MacRitchie. Jonah loved every second of our roam around town, remembering familiar things, coming up with places to revisit, promising to return. Our tattoos (phoenix and monkey), which sometimes seem a bit twee here in the UK, made much more sense over there.

Expat are always, or often, aware of being a guest, but over time a sense of belonging can develop, and that’s in part down to the friends we make. Most of ours have left the building, but we enjoyed breakfast (Yien), lunch (Ai Lee and Angela), tea (Saori), dinner (Chessers), plus a night on the town for Jonah, and New Year rooftop fun for us (thank you Karen and Ian, and for the house-loan). Just the right amount of catch-ups for the time we had.

We did also include a trek around Malaysia, this time to Penang and Ipoh to meet up with more family. More food, more walks, night markets, daytime hikes, chilled nights with snow beer and chicken skewers, novelty shops, local temples, and an important visit to see John’s Aunty Rosy’s resting spot. We’ll be back to knock on the glass three times. A bonus for me was taking the train from Penang to Ipoh, really not much to get excited about, which is why I loved it, just so normal, notably efficient, clean and simple. UK transport routes – take note.

I used to write my travel posts while flying for 14 hours at 36,000 feet. This time, cruising home, I had an MA assignment to complete, a fellow student’s story to review, and a contextual statement to draft. And all with a seatback in my face. Definitely out of practice with the whole long-haul work thing.

We are just about the right way up – jetlag was tough. I’ve stopped playing the time game (‘five days ago I was…’). I don’t know what happened to our first week back but I seem to have written that assignment, drafted my statement, co-planned three webinars, and more.

And so 2025 begins, and we’re standing on the right, sleeping without a fan, wearing extra clothes to bed, packing the sun clothes away, passing credit cards over with one hand not two, thinking in snapshots of our two-week Asia fest.
Until next time, LRD.

A month in the country

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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.

There will now be a short intermission

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Writer’s block. First time in five years. The bin is full of scrumpled up introductions. That country cannot be put into words, it is just not possible, and since I have been unable to write real or imagined postcards I’ll stick up a few snapshots shortly.

Perhaps the writer’s block is also to do with Mr PC beginning the slow dismantle of the condo in preparation for his next big move, back to the UK and to our new lives.

So the pen is pretty dry this week. Talk amongst yourselves.

Fat lady to the green room

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In my second year on this island, while studying on a museum guiding course, a fellow student took umbrage at something I had written on an online profile – ‘Head in Singapore, heart in London’. A short and simple sentence but it really riled her. Maybe she thought it meant I didn’t like Singapore (her home town), that London was better? Maybe I did mean that at the time? I had found things tricky at first and at that stage I definitely hadn’t entirely ‘settled’, whatever that means. Anyway, ever since she took me to task I’ve been careful with the things I write on this blog, sometimes to the detriment of the tone; I’m aware that my posts often sound diluted, saccharin – I guess since our conversation I’ve not wanted to offend.

I thought then – and still think now – that my colleague’s comments were unfair. Not everyone adopts a new country so completely that they give up their old life, at least not that fast. And hark at her, so hugely patriotic that she would definitely have been unable to give her heart to a brand new country should she ever have been tasked with moving to a new city thousands of miles from home.

Life’s funny, because if she knew how I felt now she might be a little less brusque. Where do I hang my hat? The loyalty card has become blurred. Anyone who knows the old me knows how impossible it would be to surgically remove London from my system, but – amazingly for my old homesick self – I do now seem to have given a bit of my heart to this tropical life. The signposts are not pointing the same way as before.

Summer is coming, time for the annual whistestop tour of family and friends, and the fielding off of the ever-bigger question: when are you coming home? This summer, actually, is the answer to that. We’ve finally stopped dithering and got a pumpkin on order to take us all back from the ball – no doubt turning up late, or ‘dropping someone off first’, or going infuriatingly down the wrong bloody bit of Orchard Road until one of us texts to redirect the driver to here (whose clever idea was it to move into a road with a similar sounding one nearby?) I hope it goes to the basement as instructed and not the turning circle, because we’re going to have a load of bags full of, well, not glass slippers but plastic flip-flops by the tonne – tropical tat picked up over time that’s looking like a 20-foot container full. It’s finally happening.

I have heard myself voicing the reasons for our repatriation countless times, and those reasons all boil down to one thing – we had to make a choice, and the bigger bit of the heart won out, but it wasn’t a cut-and-dried decision at all. I can’t think about leaving Singapore without feeling a physical sinking somewhere deep within. I’m comforted by the fact that we’ll soon be up or down the road/motorway/trainline from the family and friends who we’ve missed so much, that we’ll be able to visit the dads, aunties, uncles and cousins in a short hop, even just chat on the phone in the same timezone. Also that we can finally settle into the pretty apartment on the pretty road that we’d only lived in for two short years before leaving to come here. But as for giving up my tropical lifestyle – my favourite friends and families, all the roads and parks and bus routes and office lunches and favourite coffee shops and warm nights out and beach trips and condo barbies and so much more – it doesn’t really bear thinking about.

A friend who’s good at summing things up recently summed it up. She wrote: ‘I’m glad you’re sure about coming home, and I think that it’s a positive thing that you’re devastated too. It means you’ve had a wonderful experience and that you’re so sure about where you belong that you’re still willing to walk away from what you’ve grown to love.’ I can’t read this back to myself without a dab around the eyes but I do feel it’s time to take that walk.

I will be very glad to be heading back to people like her, because not only does she speak a lot of sense, she’s great at drinking wine, and there’ll need to be a lot of that this summer. But before then there are lists to make, things to sell, farewells to plan, a spot more travel and a general closing down of the last five years. The fat lady is making a start on her scales and I’m hanging out backstage with Denial, who is fast turning out to be one of my best mates, and will hopefully be persuaded to travel back with us.

Book bag: Daunt Books, north London.
View: Duxton Pinnacles, Singapore

Everyone loves a good round robin

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2016:

Started off in England (with black tights, dark nights and woolly gloves).

Back to Singers landing with that view of tankers from above.

Jonah birthday, beaches, boats, a half term on Sri Lankan lands

(Top to bottom, east and west, curry/train/safari sands).

Leeches on a rice field school trip, jungle treks with family,

Seniors get a brand new building (posh canteen and Supertree).

Malaysia and Rosy lunches, birds, more curry, Dad comes back.

Sally, Lucy, Aunty Annie, Bintan with the condo pack.

Want to know about our trip to China? (Wo xihuan Zhongguo)

Tennis, diving, guiding, writing, swimming, sailing and piano.

Birthdays held on beaches or at Raffles scoffing fat high teas.

Book club wine club choir club football. Farewell parties out at sea.

Within all this a dark thread woven

Little bits of global poison

Nasty patches here and there

Straight to bin, no need to share.

Twentysixteen you have partied til dawn,

Now call for a cab, get your coat and begone.

Deposit your sicknesses, sadness and grief,

Bring on the new year, bring out the new leaf.

Take your B’umps and your T’rexits, your Syrian war

Your crashes, explosions – then please shut the door.

Back in the room

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Someone who shall remain nameless suggested, as I complained my way through the packing at the end of this year’s summer trip to England, that I should’ve sorted out our sons’ school shoes at some time during the “holidays”. How I laughed. At what point might I have found the time?
I write this on my first afternoon back in Singapore. I’ve had dinner out, done a morning at work, had lunch out (#lazylah) and, yes, bought those s*dding school shoes.
Thing is, there was a time when long-term expats would explain to me why they never did home visits any more. They’re tough. You zig-zag from picnic to pub, taking up people’s floor space with your exploding suitcases, refusing and then accepting endless puddings, having hurried farewells as you kiss the growing children on the top of their summer holiday heads and then waking up the next day and doing it all over again. Five weeks, five different beds, a million kisses goodbye and then a flight back through the night, holding back the inappropriate homesick tears at the end of the supposedly funny film on the flight, before hitting the heat of the taxi stand and having the first of a string of sleepless nights as your body struggles to right itself once more.
That’s the negative version. I concur, to a point, but I still think there is massive mileage in going back and seeing all those friendly faces, drinking all those cups of proper tea, getting all those bearhugs. The visit gives us all a large dose of happiness that stays in the system for a long time. Our 2016 version went a bit like this:
Cool air, late twilights, high blue skies, cups of proper tea, trees to climb, lawns, bacon, M&S deli, favourite old toys, trains, DELAYS, traffic, sirens, ROADWORKS, pub grub, festival fun, beach huts, car trips, park life, baths, chewing gum, fudge, familiar faces, bear hugs, gossip, scandal, the odd bit of appallingly bad news, more picnics, more bear hugs, much inexpensive but delicious wine, bus stop chats with strangers, thrift shop bargains, clouds that don’t burst, plates that are hot, more trains, washing up in old family sinks, neighbours who love you, kids playing nicely, curiously pleasing smelling laundry tabs, butter that doesn’t melt, more bloody ROADWORKS, intravenous familiarity and lots of love.

This year’s tune-to-wash-up-to, a bit tacky, goes to a hot road trip back from the lavender fields with Isabel, Chris, Cam and Georgie. Press play and clear the kitchen.

See you next time, Blighty

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Things I’ve noticed after 4 years in Sing

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The snails are huge.
The roads are long. FitBit city.
The escalators are high. Still can’t quite…
Does the taxi smell of lunch? That’s OK, it’s not your cab, drivers can do what they like, just remember that long drive + full stomach + hot weather = sleeptastic #avoidtheairportroute
Bubble tea = genius. Why did we not know about it before Singapore? Gong Cha, Each-a-Cup, Koi, we [heart] you.
It is hot. I tried to be all relaxed about this at first and I hated people saying: “Too hot for you, ah?” Well alright, yes, since you ask, yes it is hot. I give in.
You can have a good curry puff and a bad one. Know your puffs #killiney
Toastbox is actually fine for dinner #chickencurry
Cinema tickets are SO cheap! Dirt cheap. How can this be?
Mandarin will be something that I quite possibly won’t ever master.
No one will congratulate you if you say 你好 or 再见 (when you’re in England and a Spanish person is talking English, do you give them a bear hug for being clever? No.)
In Singapore, no one can see you trying out all the very fit sporty things. Result.
“Inside table, please” Did I really say that? Yes you did. It is hot.
Why does the milk never spoil and the bread never get mouldy? Do not ask that thing.
I don’t think “freedom” eggs does quite what it says on the box…
The business of being able to get to Indonesia or Malaysia and back in a day without having to get on a plane is something I will never fail to feel excitement about.
A country that’s the size of the Isle of Wight, yet east and west can seem as far from each other as Glasgow and London.
Going to school means getting on a motorway.
Time difference is better this way. I can start my day and be ready for all your messages when they start ping ping pinging at around 16:00.
There is crime. We just don’t see it, or choose not to, and the papers are *CENSORED*
I love the tankers, truly. And I always swim on Sentosa. But OK yes, #rubbishinthesea
Singlish is a language, a real one, with a dictionary. Why no one tell you this, lor?
Don’t feed the monkeys.
Don’t be mean to geckos, they eat mosquitos.
Don’t leave the plates overnight. Ants.
You possibly have had mycoplasma several times, you just didn’t know it.
Singapore is the unspoken theatre capital of the world, or on its way to being. There’s a seriously fast-moving drama scene out here, and I should be buying more tickets.
There is nothing on Starhub. NOTHING.
Plates will always be cold. And your food, often. And coffee lukewarm.
Go to the longest queue at the hawker.
If I’m a size 39 and would like a black pair, then trying on a blue size 36 probably won’t work, will it?
In department stores, don’t seek help if you need information on anything other than the thing the staff member is selling. Total mystery. DO YOU NEVER GO AND ACTUALLY SHOP IN YOUR OWN STORE, or is it just that you aren’t allowed to tell people the answers?
First World Problems can seem very real for us poor expats. Pop along to East Coast park and check out the view from time to time. You live somewhere a.w.e.s.o.m.e.
Buses run in all weathers, roads are built for buses, roads have proper bus lanes. #efficiencypersonified
If the MRT goes wrong, stand-in buses will immediately come and get you where you want to go.
Kids need travel cards, but travel is cheap.
Tagging on and off buses – inspired.
If five of us squeeze into a cab it is far cheaper than taking a bus.
If eight of us squeeze into a karaokebus then it’s not so much cheap as very loud.
There’s an emergency runway on the way to Changi – all those flower beds in the middle of that last long stretch of PIE? Portable.
Palm trees and lianas, right there by the side of the pavement. Now that’s what I call “hedge”.
Cockroaches chase you.
Buy the tissues off the old man. It is his actual job #pensionless
Have you had your lunch? You must.
I’ve yet to see (m)any homeless people.
Storms like whirlwinds, whiteout in five minutes flat with all the tall palms bent sideways, then twinkling and scorchio half an hour later? Bonkers.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: lightning makes noises.
I’m so often called ‘Lawson’ that I now quite like it. Surname first, always.
There is a reason that Changi is repeatedly voted best airport in the world, and that’s because it is.
This is Asia Lite, yes, but it’s still Asia and you’re not in Kansas any more. Respect the differences.
Great view? Cherish it, they’ll probably start the building work tomorrow.
On the construction plus side, the lifts usually work.
Get close if you want, but they might be gone in six months.
Singapore is very far from England. Still.

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Love thy neighbour

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Dust settles after the Brexit weekend. Here in Sing, with the online explosion of the divorce as backdrop, we’ve had another couple of days of saying goodbye to the exiters (Australian, English, Chilean-Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish, American). Jonah just had an end-of-term Scout party at a climb wall (English, European, Scottish, Other). I spent a while on the phone today talking to several people (Singaporean) to sort out this and that. Saw my doc (Singaporean). Chatted to the neighbour (French). Mr PC had lots of business meetings (Singaporean, English, Australian). Then Dad (Cornish) emailed as did my sister (Cornish-London).

Arriving at work this morning I found our office neighbour, a girl (French) from the company next door, locked out. I invited her to come and wait in our meeting room and she accepted, happy to sit down and start work. Then another one turned up (also French). Then a third one (French again). After some quiet chatting and bit of keyboard clicking, someone with a key arrived and off they went, with a grateful ‘merci’. A nice little vignette to start the day. Before Thursday 23 June this would have been nothing more than that – a happy episode – but instead it made me feel like a superhero, single-handedly propping up European relations and bringing the EU back together, soldering continents right there in our little office in central Singapore. Quite – simply ridiculous, as is the whole race-relation fiasco kicking off back home, brought about by a Referendum campaign that was supposed to have nothing to do with throwing actual people out of the actual country. Mr PC talks of his own Anglo-Chinese background, and how that felt living in Newcastle in the late 70s, early 80s. Nasty scenes that he doesn’t talk about much, and why would he want to? Are we going back in time?

Out here in Sing, rumblings of racial tension are muted but they exist. I’ve had first-hand experience perhaps three times in four years, not much, but enough to give me an idea of the horror and isolation that it engenders. In terms of the EU split, out here we are removed from the noise and the cut and thrust. I can’t attend remain rallies at Trafalgar Square or hang posters from my railings, I can only add my name to petitions, but I can do something at grass roots level. The boy that lives in our back bedroom – teetering on the brink of adolescence – is these days mostly sulky-with-headphones, but we still have about a six- to twelve-month opening before the teen door slams completely shut, through which we are allowed now and then access to his still spongy brain, to leave gentle reminders of social conduct. He attends an international school where the ethos is, of course, that everyone samples from the same smorgasbord, and although the school itself would admit that one size definitely doesn’t fit all, attempting to live and abide by shared cultural expectations is something that the kids have to navigate every day.

These days that’s not such an unusual thing to find in any big city school the world over, especially in London, my home county and one of the few that voted Remain. You only have to take a poll at most of my friends’ kids’ schools to see that these places are more international than the biggest international schools out here – and most of the children sharing the halls in those big inner-city London schools would call themselves British.

Today is the last day of the school year. In August it’s Y7 – homework tightens up a notch, there are lockers, more new kids, gaps where the leavers have left, a new building to get to know, a load more after-school activities to choose, a touch more sport, a lot more freedom (bus pass and WhatsApp phone? Check). And off he goes, one year closer to adulthood. If he grows up to be the sort of person that will make cups of tea for someone who is locked out, wherever they’re from, then our work is done.

Forecasting

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Dreamed of repatriation last night. Everyone is getting ready to go, ’tis the season, so no wonder that my brain should go into overtime about the mass exodus. But then I had a little think about the dream and realised it had actually been about our impending summer holidays. There was a beach, a row of huts and a boat – typical Southeast Asian weekend getaway, yes? There was a cool beach bar full of twinkly fairy lights and chatty people – Indonesia or Malaysia, for sure. And a big group of kids running in and out of the sea – sun high above and each of them wearing nothing but a pair of boardies, right?
But no. The huts were fishermen’s huts, wet-roofed and grey against a stormy backdrop; the beach bar turned out to be my Aunty’s kitchen (which actually isn’t far off a Southeast Asian holiday beach bar, but still…); and the kids were kitted out in mini wetsuits and lifesaving jackets.
How funny that my brain should automatically translate what I have now for what I will most likely be having in July – good ol English drizzly summer hols.
We had a nice time, though, and I came away with a framed painting. As you do.

Leap Year

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I can ask Mr PC to marry me (again) today. I can also wish my friend Scott a very happy birthday (married with two kids, he is just 9, or is it 10 years old). Today is Leap Year, the one time every four years that February has 29 days. I know exactly what I was up to last time round. I probably thought about all of the above at some point but mostly I remember very clearly that Mr PC had the day off work because something was being fixed in the flat. I was working at home as always, writing that novel that was never and will never be published (whispers: it was rubbish). The cats were probably being adorable and Jonah was definitely at school. It was Wednesday.

He had a playdate afterwards with a friend and, it still being the wintry months, it was after dark when I picked him up and started the long walk back uphill to home. I remember being unable to concentrate on his chatter as I led him along. This was because, at some point earlier that afternoon, my husband had stopped what he was doing with the flat to take an interesting phone call from work, during which a subject had cropped up that would change our lives forever.
I remember he put down the phone, came into the office room where I was thinking up another rubbish paragraph that would never be seen (whispers: it was really, really rubbish), and sat down on the couch behind me with one of those sheepish looks, as if to say: ‘stand by’.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Singapore’s come up again.’
And I turned around, ditched the Word document, and Googled: ‘S-c-h-o-o-l-s i-n-…’ etc.
Happy LeapYear anniversary Mr PC – four years but a lifetime of happenings. It’s been fun.