My UK break is great fun, but there’s something very odd about being back in a country you used to call home. I’m sure everyone knows the feeling – it’s the same as going back to your university city or the neighbourhood you used to live in. Everything is so familiar and oddly distant at the same time. It’s like tangible nostalgia.
The thing that struck me hardest was how strange things weren’t: I felt as though I hadn’t been away at all. Coming home to my parents’ house, to James’s parents’, to old haunts and venues; it was as though I had walked out the door yesterday. I don’t know if I was expecting huge changes or anything, but I did expect to feel different, more alien perhaps, than I did. So little has changed.
Now I live in a large, cosmopolitan city I expected to be refreshed being back in a little country city where the fields are never more than ten minutes walk. It turns out I am not. Watching the local news, overhearing the local complaints in the street, it all feels so … parochial. I miss the busy city life and of course, the beautiful Sydney weather: it’s been rain rain rain since I arrived in Britain. I’ve been remarkably busy since I got back, but in the downtime I often find myself itching to get back to Australia and get on with my life over there.
That said, the highlight of my trip has been seeing my friends and family. The break might have been needed but more than that, the chance to spend some time in familiar company feeling like you’ve never been away has been the recharge I was after. I’m looking forward to coming home to my new friends and my new life, but this time with my old friends has been worth every second, and I’ll be sad to leave it again.
Let me start with belated Easter wishes for you all, and the usual apology for taking so long to send you news of our adventures. As you will see, we have been extremely busy of late. I shall try not to bore you with too much detail, but there’s a lot to cram in so pull up a comfortable chair, a cup of tea and a biscuit, and when you’re comfortable, we’ll begin.
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Dear Friends,
Sorry not being in touch sooner. I have received one or two reminders to get back in front of the computer and tell you all about Australia, but it has been a little hectic here and the more time that passes the more there is to say so it gets harder and harder to know where to start! Thanks to everyone for your kind messages after my grandad’s death – it was very difficult being so far away, but also easier in some respects and it was lovely of you all to send your wishes.
You can watch a BSL version of this, or read on. (more…)
As I said before, I couldn’t go back to England for my grandfather’s funeral. Instead I wrote a brief eulogy for my sister to read. The funeral was last night while I was sleeping and so, as my own little tribute, here is what was said:
It is said that grief is the price you pay for love. We are all here because we loved someone – a friend to some, family to a few; for me, a grandfather. I have known him all my life and although that’s been just a few years of his, he loved us like we had been there from the start. As a child I didn’t care about any of that, of course: I loved him because he would bring home chocolates in a paper bag, and empty the change from his pockets into my grubby cupped hands. As a teen, I was far too cool to talk to or about my grandparents, but I loved the dartboard he put up in the conservatory for us to play after school, (and I loved the windmill he put up in the garden for my cousin, too, though I was far too old by then to admit it). Finally, as a twenty-something I was too busy and too far away to visit as much as I wanted. Life gets in the way; it is the story of every family in the world. He would tell me off: “do you need a map, or do you know where we live?”, but he would follow my life through reports from my mum and the occasional phone call. He loved to hear about us, even if he would hand the phone straight to Nanny when you rang.
He was not perfect: he could be cantankerous, stubborn and he was not afraid to speak his mind, whatever the occasion. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and I’m sure some of us here have been on the wrong side of him when he knew he was right. These are things that live on in us all, as anyone who knows our family will agree: there is no mistaking the family traits we inherited from him. But if he was cantankerous, he was never malicious or unkind. If he was stubborn it was because he believed in what he thought, and if he did speak his mind he was never afraid to say that he was proud of his family, or that he loved to be around us. If grief is the price you pay for love, then it is a small price to pay for the great gift of having known him at all.
