Seats 44D and 44E

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I’m writing this at 35,000 feet during a particularly bumpy spell somewhere over the north-west of India. We’re nine hours into a twelve-and-a-half hour flight (that’s the first one, the second one’s just a little transfer hop down to Sing) and I’ve not had a lot of sleep. SM has managed to doze off, with his feet in my lap and his head nudging the thighs of the elderly lady next to him. How he’s getting any is beyond me. For some time, hours possibly, a toddler a few seatbacks away has been howling, I mean really howling, which makes me think of how brilliant SM has always been on flights. I’ve spent the whole trip fixing his earphones, folding back the foil from his too-hot dinner, picking up his specs and extracting his toes from under the armrest as he wriggles in his sleep, but at least I don’t need ear-plugs.

I hate this enforced nighty-night time. The blinds are down and the lights are off but every time I shut my eyes and try and doze I get ticker-taping high-speed rabbit-voiced rewinds of the last month. Who said what is blurring, but when I sit down and think about it, all I really need to remember is that it was lovely. The last day (today, I suppose, or maybe yesterday) was spent just where I wanted it, high on the Heath with my family, looking down to the little red brick flats where I grew up with St Pauls and The Shard in the distance, notching iconic grey shapes onto the horizon. Up on Kite Hill we had the usual jolly crowd that a sunny day brings: kites flapping, a globe of dialects dotting the breeze, and – thrown in just for us – fluffy white seedlings blowing across the air as in some kind of arthouse film. Perfect.

Now I’m bobbing up and down on invisible wind mountains, I can look back down on the visit from a distance and try and pinpoint what it was to be a voyeur in my own land. ‘It’s not like this all the time,’ everybody told me. ‘You bring the sunshine’. They didn’t just mean it physically (we seem to always arrive in town just as the heatwave settles) but socially. We are spoilt when we go home, treated like royalty and carried (only ankle-high thanks to the slow drip of tea and cakes) from house to house on a wave of happy returns. I know it’s not like this all the time because I used to live here, and I know it’ll be back to basics when we return. Despite knowing all that I also know that it’s all just so nice that leaving again is going to be very hard.

Never mind. Trust bonkers old Singapore to give me no time to dwell. I’m not just sitting here high up in the clouds writing a blog post, I’m also sorting out a diary that is already looking like a mathematical riddle. Before I’d even got to Week Four of the trip the dates were inking themselves all over August: first night out, first weekend away, first coffee morning, a possible leaving do lined up, the next three major holidays organized, the next museum tour in the diary and a load of new work from Those Nice People Who Give Me Work. No time to lie down in a dark room feeling homesick.

Parting is such hugely sweet sorrow that this year’s was done briefly, and in various bits. During the final week I said the word ‘goodbye’ several ghastly times, using brisk armlocks rather than hugs and sometimes (Pudding family, for example) not even saying a proper goodbye at all. On the last day, last hour, even, Aunty kissed us on the pavement outside M&S then went to get her bus, waving us off until Christmas. Then Dad came back to the apartment, helped me squish the cases shut, dragged them down the stairs and stood on the pavement with us until the cab pulled up. Easter is a little longer to wait than Christmas but saying goodbye to Grandpa on a busy high street allowed for just 60 seconds of tight hugs and high-pitched trembly voices, and it also allowed me to crumple in private, tucked into the back of the cab with SM’s little hand on my arm, rather than stumbling through airport security blinded by tears like last year, which was not just embarrassing but also annoying because I couldn’t see what I was putting into the little x-ray trays. Next year I’m booking a morning return flight, because as lovely and winsome as that last day was, I know we all spent it quietly wading through troughs of sadness, a bit like trying to sip a very lumpy sad soup.

Breakfast is coming round, or lunch, I think. Someone just to my right needs help finding his headphones and the seatbelt sign has pinged again. Onwards.

NB: I’m such a Gemini. After I wrote this I shut down the computer, tucked it into my seatback, chose another film with a beach scene and started planning the next beach trip: sobbing with sadness one minute, choosing a swimsuit the next. Don’t listen to me. Ever.

PS: This post came to you from Malaysian Airlines flight M001 from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur and on to Sing. Still flying, still friendly and long may they last

Truth and lies (or myth-busting home visits)

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There’s plenty of talk about what it’s like to be an expat on home leave. Well, here I am coming to the end of my UK summer hols, so I’m now qualified to comment on all the quotes that get bandied about on what to expect when you go back home for a visit:

• ‘There’s not enough time’: True, there is absolutely not enough time.

• ‘Nothing changes when you go home’: Poppycock. Any old chat with the person pouring the coffee will reveal that everything changes, for both good and bad. Open your ears.

• ‘Next year I’m hiring a farmhouse in Suffolk and everyone can visit us’: What, everyone? Will you have enough bedding? Will there be enough wine? No, that won’t work for us, or for any of my family and friends apart from those who happen to actually live in or near Suffolk.

• ‘No one wants to know what you’ve been up to’: Partly true, partly false, but it depends on who you’re seeing, how much time you have and what the kids are digging up while you’re trying to chat. I have found most people are keen to hear about work and school, not the swimming pools, and I think that’s a nice reflection of the kind of life I had before we left and the kind of people my friends are. So that’s alright.

• ‘You can’t see everyone’: Very true. Apologies to Parrot, Michaela, Mr Laing (for the second year running), Louise, Pam, ohgodeveryone – and the Cornish lot too #sadandguiltyface

• ‘Haven’t you grown?!’: Yes, if directed towards my stomach, and definitely yes for the children, yes indeed, they have all grown so much since last year, and now I know why old ladies say that a lot. Amazing and a little bit scary.

• ‘I hate living out of a suitcase’: So do I, and that’s why I blow most of our home leave allowance on a rental apartment. Here we can recuperate, chill, allow our pants to spill out of that suitcase, and drink cups of restful tea in anticipation of doing it all over again the next day. An essential booking.

• ‘We spend our lives on trains’: Same here, but I quite like it. Yep, it’s exhausting and can be costly, but what a great way to pack in precious glimpses of my home country.

• ‘It’s hard to work out where home is’: Not such a big deal last year, very much so this year. I’ve got lost in London a couple of times this past month, which is bonkers, yet I feel completely at ease walking around my old neighbourhood. I find I keep referring to Singapore as ‘home’, yet the homesickness I feel for London is very strong this year. I can only see the lines becoming more blurred as time goes on.

• ‘Coming home is a great reality check on how lucky you are’: You betcha, and just to prove how grateful I am I’ll be in that pool before my cases are out of the [fast, plentiful and inexpensive] cab. And to the Sing friends I’ve made, I have missed you (and you, and you).

• ‘Leaving gets harder every time’: Immeasurably so. No-brainer. Sadface #heartemoticon #kiss

• ‘You need another holiday when you get back’: Vietnam? Check.

Home leave

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It’s 5am and I’m awake. I’m on the couch in the front room of our rental apartment. We’re making the most of Mr PC being back in Sing by having a full-ish house: BestFriend is stopping over for a few days just like old times and she gets my bed, with SM on the floor in the same room and me in the living room where, I have to say, it gets light fairly early and is noisy, looking straight down onto my busy high street, but it’s not that loud, or light. I can’t possibly still be jetlagged, can I?

Kids get overtired and can’t sleep. It happened to SM last night. There’s not a huge divide between the front room and the bedroom and we had the telly on loud and we eventually had to switch it off and just talk (again, like old times), but I’m not sure it was just the TV noise keeping him up. Over-stimulated, kept up late night after night, pumped up on playdates, maybe I’ve got a dose of that?

We are in Week Three, suspended somewhere between Arrival Adrenalin and the cosy entrenchment of faux repatriation. I catch myself referring to Singapore as ‘home’, which is nice, but at the end of each day we come back ‘home’ to this little temporary campsite high above the posh shops somewhere near our actual proper home. So there’s the limbo thing, I guess. We make visits every day and are high on caffeine and chatter, staying up late and doing it again the next day, but really, back to back fun is nothing we can’t handle.

As always I’ve an eye on the clock, tick-tocking slowly towards TheEnd, and I’ve also spotted yet another airline crash, buried deep in South-East Asian news so not as globally trumpeted as The Big One from last week. I can’t say it’s making me overly happy to hop on a plane in ten days time, but then Syria and Gaza dance across the news and I’m reminded that I could be living in a warzone. So that’s alright then…

No doubt about it, I’m definitely up. I think I’ll finish the article I am supposed to be sending any day now (just as well I’m awake and ready to write, then), and maybe after that I’ll heave my extra pounds around the block on a ‘run’ (hobble) while BestFriend and SM slumber on, and after that I’ll get some more caffeine on the boil in advance of today’s social antics. Sleep is so overrated.

Just a sec

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We’ve been in the UK for a week and I’d like to sit down and wax lyrical but I just can’t put anything into words quite yet. Jetlag was bad this time, that must be it. I know by now I should be ready to write a whimsical and poignant post about the pleasures of home, the oddness of returning, the gritty London streets and green fields beyond and the familiar chill of cool mornings against paling skin. More than anything, the sheer deliciousness of being back amongst old friends and family.

I’m mute, though. Said friends have kept pointing out, since touchdown, that we told them we’d be coming home about nowish and we’re not. As such, I feel like this is a rare and special visit that needs to be savoured and strung out, and that’s pretty much how it’s been. It’s been a case of full-on sensory overload since we landed, drinking in every last drop of all the people and places we’ve missed, and it’s only Day Seven. We sleep deeply but briefly, up and ready early each morning for more. I have tweaked the chubby cheeks of England, ruffled my fingers through its shaggy mop and cuddled it on my lap over endless cups of tea and proper pub measures of vodka and I’m still not quite ready to put all that down on paper, quite yet.

So I’ll be back in a tic. Top up, please.

#chinksglass

Postcards from the hedge

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Three sleeps. I couldn’t have planned the countdown to UK better: this has turned out to be one of the most frantic and busiest weeks I’ve ever had, and that keeps the butterflies out of my tummy. When I sit down to think about our trip I’m a popcorn pan of excitement. By turns, as if to trumpet its own treats before I leave, Singapore has unfurled a couple of funky local sightings over the past few days:

• large parrot riding on handlebars of old man’s bike (Victoria St, nr central library)

• massive and beautiful vine wrapped around street lamp (Loewen Rd, Dempsey)

• crazy red bird with dark blue rooster-type head ruffles (Sentosa Cove Village)

• jagged red clouds on morning run (corner of Commonwealth & Queensway)

Touché, Red Dot.

School’s out for summer

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Actually in our case it really is out for ever, because we’re moving to a brand new one in August. So brand new that building work is not even completed yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And so just as quickly as it started, it seems, Y4 is over and ten long weeks of summer stretch ahead. I’m not scared, I have plans, and with the help of these bookings, plus the month-long trip back to the UK, plus a little nip of vodka now and then – oh, and Vietnam in August – well, I think I’ll cope.

In amongst all this I have one eye on the horizon. SM is conscious that our visit here has been extended – not unhappy, just aware. I think we are all a little worried about his transition to the new school, because last time it was unexpectedly tricky and we’d all like a smoother move this time round. It’s been a mixed old bag of a school, and saying goodbye today to the place, and to some of the people, reminded us of what we’ll miss:

The lush tropical courtyard garden, the rolling green playground, the massive running track, huge retro outdoor pool with cantilevered roof, snake-fondled climbing frame, the red-toothed betel chewing gate man, rousing school songs, fab and utterly wonderful Y4 teacher, brilliant bus auntie and sweet paper airplane-making driver (not while driving, thankfully), plus the basic but essential plus point of relative proximity to home (apart from in a storm, when every journey in Singapore takes an extra hour). Most of all we will sorely miss SM’s Best Friend, who stays at the old school while we move on. As I type they are chatting over an after-school dinner like an old married couple; that’s one thing that will never change.

So then, the things we won’t miss: the mad elf outfit with balloon shorts, the stinky Glastonbury bogs, snakes on the climbing frame, bizarre lack of email system, odd tinted windows on the music classroom (WHY, I always wondered), marathon three-hour school shows with wobbly sound system and no cushions, unidentifiable lumps of gristle in the canteen food, lack of any trace of breeze on entrance steps, chilly welcome to the Y3 class – all that. No postcards for you lot.

I meant it when I wished the teacher well this afternoon, as I collected SM, Best Friend and BF’s Little Brother for the very last time. Stuffed into the back of a Comfort Cab with a year’s worth of classroom tat each, we waved to the man at the gate as we left, and I had a little urge, Ferris Bueller-style, to chuck all the bags out the window as we skirted Star Vista Mall until I realized that, well, if you don’t hold on to something tIMG_6366here’ll be nothing to fondly dig up later down the line.

So we’ll miss you, funny old school, and you, Best Friend (although I reckon we’ll see you more once we’ve left).

To be continued…

Flights of fancy

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This week has been all about diaries, with our UK summer visit in mind. In the frenzy of setting up the mother of all Excel spreadsheets, containing everyone’s school dates, work days, holidays, birthdays, credit account details, shoe size and eye colour, there is an underlying excitement about the upcoming trip, not least for the thought of the hours spent Doing Nothing on that long flight home. Turbulence is yuk, but Nothing is just lovely.

When I was seven we went on an aeroplane for the first time, me and my sister, and so did our Dad. I remember him holding our hands and making us skip with him (yep, skip) from the terminal building all the way across the tarmac until we passed almost underneath the big polished nosecone of the jumbo before skipping up the rickety steps on the side. There are some notable points about this little vignette:

Point A: This was Dad’s first time on a plane, and if I was seven years old that means he was 36, so that’s a whole 36 years before he ever flew (he says they drove everywhere: that’d be Europe, presumably).

Point B: we skipped across the tarmac which means we were on foot, no covered walkway or runway bus, just a happy stroll to this huge 737* and a tippy-toe up the side like a family of happy ants. Bonkers.

Point C: (and you had to be there for this one) I remember him being way, way more excited than me.

The same bloke is now an accomplished air traveller. In the last ten years alone he’s been to Malaysia, Kenya, Egypt, Japan, China and America as well as all around Europe and back again, and of course out here to Singapore three times. He wanders down to the gates unhurried, tackles turbulence with a scientific approach (another beer, please), writes chapters during the flight and steps off at the other end unruffled.

In the 38 years since our maiden trip on the big jet (to America, actually, to live, which is also why we were so excited) I’ve been around the block a few times, too, clocking up the bulk of that during these expat adventures, but no matter how many times I buckle up for take-off I never get over the sheer freakyness of air travel, that amazing technique of propelling bodies through the sky to get from one side of the world to the other. In honour of our imminent summer flight back to the UK, here are my top 10 reasons for why we should never be blasé about flying:

1)    You are flying: f.l.y.i.n.g

2)    You can walk up and down, look, while you’re flying

3)    The meals come in tiny little packs with tiny little puddings and diddy bread rolls, and on the bigger flights they are free, no cash required at all. Sometimes there is wine

4)    Sometimes there are goody bags (for the kids, yes, but even so)

5)    Sometimes there are free headphones, wee small tubes of toothpaste and, on really posh flights, socks

6)    The window blinds go up and down

7)    If you want another blanket, no problem, just ask the nice lady

8)    On the bigger flights there are TV screens showing all the films that you never got round to seeing: for free! On that maiden flight we were both given, my sister and me, a covered shoebox full of ‘Stuff To Keep Us Busy’ so yeah, we knew how to roll, but look at us now: plug me in!

9)    On very big ones there are inside stairs that you can climb, while at the same time actually flying: up and down, up and down. Amazing

10) They thank YOU for flying with THEM: amazing

We never fly posh class so I can’t imagine what that must be like, but I’ve walked through the cabin and I can see there are beds where you can sleep, which is again, yes, amazing, but why would you want to sleep when there’s so much fun to be had?

*Dad left me a note: ‘One detail: there were no jumbos in 1976; it was a Douglas DC8’ See? Totally au fait with the whole thing

Exit notes

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Some friends are for life, from the minute you say ‘hello’. Some never quite turn into old friends but are always friendly enough. Some friends accompany you on outings, some you might see just twice a year, some are for pints in pubs, some provide shoulders, some are for any old time, any place, anywhere… and then you move to ExpatLand and a whole new set of categories crops up. Worst of these, I have found, is ‘Friends On The Move’, a lonely section at the very back of my mental Rolodex that would have a dark label were it ever part of a real-life filing system.

Transience, that rotten nomadic chestnut, is a thing we expats truly hate about life in a foreign land, and of course it’s not confined to Singapore, it’s global. Hop on to any overseas advice forum and you’ll see threads on relocation, saying goodbye, how to cope with old friends leaving just as the new ones are coming in, expecting smiles and handy social maps. Farewells are a good life lesson in the long run but nonetheless tricky every time. It is far worse for the people on the gangplank, yes, especially as in many cases leaving is something that’s out of their hands. For those waving from shore, though, it’s not exactly a picnic either.

The latest of the leavers drew a standard bland-but-sympathetic response from me, when in fact all I really wanted to email back was:

“You can’t go, what will I do? Remember all the fun times? Wait, we never did karaoke!”

That message remains locked away in my virtual filing cabinet under the dark ‘departures’ section and safely converts, in emailed reality, to a simple sadface.

Ohnevermind: the world is small as well as round and we’ll meet again. To be honest, though, I’d prefer to meet you out here, in that new bar we always said we’d try, wearing the sun frock I got from that shop you told me about that opened just a week before you told me you were leaving. I kept a card for you… oh.

Bon voyage, then, and harden my heart some more #sadface.

Sundowner for starters

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10 steps to 10k (when you’re not a real runner)

1K       10.30pm, Singapore Flyer, 32C, clear skies – off we go! No warm-ups for me, I’m relaxed, in shape, feel good. Take my first jellybaby from the little bag Mr PC gave me – one per K for energy levels. That’s one tip I’m happy to follow. Little sip from water bottle, lid a bit stiff but prise it open with teeth, no probs. Staying hydrated, yep.

2K       This is so easy, the training paid off. There’s a breeze, the stars are out, we have perfect running conditions. Look at the view! Look how the cars are stopping for us! Wow, I love this town. My ankles are fine, my knees are fine, all good. Jellybabies working nicely. Glide past first hydration station, don’t need it yet. All good so far.

3K       Trotting past the walkers, getting a bit warm but nothing I can’t handle. Jellybabies are just so clever, I can really feel the power-surge as they melt in my mouth. Water bottle still a bit tough but can still yank it open with teeth, no probs.

4K       Out of my way slow-coaches, I’m a lean, mean running machine! Actually I’m a tiny but warm now, stop for an ice-cold 100+ at the next bench. But honestly, I’m a natural, why don’t I do this more often?

5K       Slightly bored now, and passing the time by looking at people’s shoes. Breeze has dropped and it’s all very sweaty now. Sweaty hair, sweaty calves, sweaty fingers. Can’t get water bottle open any more. Splash my jellybabies. Everything is wet. Uh-oh, hill…

6K       …bloody huge hill. Very hot. Surely done more than 6k, tap phone to check it’s working. Still no breeze and a million sweaty porkers all herded round the paper cups at the next water stop. The warmth in this running crowd is ridiculous. Need a wee. Jellybabies sticking together.

7K       Eyebrows sweaty. Christ it’s hot. And dark. Trip over twig, paper cup, walker. Jellybabies now just one big clump. Sporadic onlookers clapping politely in the dark, nothing like the drums and cannons at the start. It’s a nice gesture but I could make more noise opening a crisp packet. Probably snakes in hedge so can’t stop for wee.

8K       Another hill. Can’t breathe. Very hot. Stupid jelly babies, stupid water bottle. Find bin, throw it all out. Sweat coming out of eyes, dripping off nose. I smell of a farm. The whole air smells of a farm. Last water stop, chuck cup over head. Sound of band at finish line. Oh God, the finish line…

9K       …not the finish line, just a long bit of track that runs alongside the real finish line. Note to organisers: PUT THE END AT THE BLOODY END otherwise it’s just teasing. Can a person run out of sweat?

10K     Last few yards, proper clappers now, but ears full of sweat. Is it the finish line? Yes. Underwhelming limp under banner. Accept medal and banana. Find cab. Sweat. Divert to Daily Scoop and buy a lemon sorbet, wipe forehead with it. Limp to condo licking hair. Limp up stairs, limp into shower, put medal in bin, have wee, bed.

Woken at 5am by Mr PC coming in from marathon and also binning bag of jellybabies.

You told me so

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There, I said it for you.

I also changed my title page tagline, did you notice, because we are no longer on a ‘two-year’ Singapore sling. Having had a wrinkle in his otherwise unblemished career path, Mr PC found himself on an extended holiday late last year and managed to push the edges all the way up to now – but the party’s over, so back into the trousers-and-shirts combo he goes and the house will once more be quiet. We’ll miss him, me and SM – he’s worked out all the meal plans, played endless football after school, and although his break coincided with one of my busiest spells ever, he was a great companion on my days off when all I wanted was to hang out with someone familiar. A special thank-you sandwich in his lunchbox on Day One, I think.

But to practicalities – his accepting a new role in Asia takes our family away from the homelands for longer than we planned. We always used the ‘two-year’ rule of thumb as a benchmark but I think we secretly knew that it would be longer – as did all of you, because you told me so left, right, and centre. What could I say at the time? While Mr PC was already off to the airport and living out here faster than you could say ‘removalists’, I was back at the ranch wrapping cups in newspaper, crying, giving away old books, crying, rehousing the cats, crying again, attending the last school assembly, doing the drinks and parties, missing you all so badly already. Saying goodbye. “Two years” was breaking it gently. In fact, as you all pointed out back then, two years is not a long time.

Who are we kidding, we love it out here of course. It’s not for everyone, some can’t wait to head back to the chill and reality of their homelands, and it has taken the full two years for me to get over the sadness of the move, to really get into things, but I’ve found as much peace as I ever will, with a good set of friends, places I love, and plenty still to discover. So of course we want to stay, it’s been a group decision and in some ways we could have been back in London by now. Still, having not been given the chance to get properly stuck in, one of our family needs a second run-up at living and working out here and so life really is a mixed bag, on the one hand I’m so thrilled for Mr PC and all that his new schoolbag contains. On the other, the heart-wrench of homesickness has never been stronger than this week.

A local friend, when reading something of mine that mentioned how my ‘head was in Singapore but heart in London’ took offence and told me so. I didn’t think that was entirely fair: more than four decades of being in love with your hometown is not going to fade overnight. I’m not a London snob, I don’t believe it’s the best and only city in the world and I hate some of its seedier, more sinister corners and I don’t miss the dog poo, but it is my home and I will always be committed to the idea of coming back. I just have no idea when.

One key person will dictate this, to a certain extent – of course he doesn’t realise it, but our son has the world at his feet out here. He comes home from school and goes running off outside without me having to heave myself off the sofa. I don’t organise playdates, kids just wander up to the door and ask for him. When we do go out it doesn’t take too long to get anywhere, and there is that small business of the tropical beach at the end of the line: privilege in a capsule. What he is missing, though, is crucial to me: two grandpas and an aunty, old friends with connections that matter, the responsibility of living out his life in a tough city that you don’t get when bouncing around on the soft surfaces of Planet Expat.

I won’t say “two years” again, but I must say it’s a timescale I’m curiously comfortable with – my life since leaving college has fitted into weird two-year blocks. Until I gave up the journalism career ToBeAMum I had moved jobs roughly every two years, and the first four years after leaving, oddly, took the same shape: two years on writing courses, then two years writing the phantom book (the one that’s now in the bin), then these first two years bedding in out here. As I mark off the calender days until our summer break to the UK, I am trying to look a little further down the line and can imagine the next two years coming in a tidy package as well and I wonder what they will bring.

Of course these days I know better than to put a timescale on things…