‘I just want to be NORMAL!’ Alula yells at me as I’m driving her to school. ‘What’s so good about normal?’ I ask. ‘And anyway, what do you mean by ‘normal’? What is normal?’ ‘I don’t want to be the kid who has lived in London and then Bali and then here and then somewhere …
The UK reached a high of 16 degrees today, which necessitated half the population stripping down to shorts and T-shirts in the gloriously mistaken belief that summer had arrived. I sighed at the way the British* so wholeheartedly leap into action the moment the thermostat edges into double figures but conceded that it was perhaps …
Clutching my phone and hyperventilating, I call John. ‘Help,’ I whisper under my breath, ‘I need help.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘There’s too much gravy.’ ‘OK. What do you mean?’ I take a step back, banging into a trolley, and take in the full, eye-blistering, mind melting array of gravy options. I’m powerless, my brain pulling …
Alula started school last week in the UK. For the last four years she’s gone to school in the jungle at a school made entirely of bamboo with no walls, a farm, a giant crystal, a mud pit and where the school song is basically a prayer to mother earth. She has also been barefoot most …
I didn’t feel much in the run up to leaving. I think I was in denial. It was easier to just keep moving forward and not think about what we were leaving behind, but then in the last minutes I wobbled. Watching Alula say goodbye to her best friend was one of the most heart-breaking …
‘It’s time to leave Bali mummy,’ Alula declares as we walk out of Green School gates for the last time ever. She doesn’t mean literally. We’re not going for another three days but in her infinite wisdom Alula’s hit the nail on the head. It is time to leave. Though the feeling is vague and …
It’s ten pm. The lights are off. I’m sitting on the bed watching Mad Men. Beside me Alula splays in sleep, indifferent to the charms of Donald Draper. All of a sudden the soft sound of Jenga blocks tumbling over startles me. I hit the pause button on my laptop. It was probably a mouse, …
The psychic says yes, go. One of my best friends says no, stay. The other has a baby. My dad says come home. John says, do what you need to do. I don’t want you to be unhappy. Alula says, yes but not if I have to go to school in England. My gut says …
John and I are discussing over instant messenger the offer I’ve just had from a publisher to turn this blog into a book. In the light of the offer I’ve been reading back over the blog posts from when I first started blogging almost five years ago to the day now. I’ve been laughing over …
My heart is hurting. It’s aching in my chest. I feel a state of panic. Adrenaline coming in fits and starts. How can I leave this? How is it possible? What am I thinking? The days are like this at the moment. I make a decision to go. The next day I change my mind. …
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