Leaving Home

This is a strange and impersonal way in which to let you know I am leaving home.   

I am not running away with George Clooney, unfortunately (although after watching that boring pack of tripe Argo, I am not sure about his judgement as a producer anymore) or off to save some critters trapped in a well, like Lassie.  Instead our little quartet is leaving the shores of my beloved Kingdom for sunnier climes, two and a half continents away in the glass sweat fest of Singapore.
 
I have to inform you dear blog followers in this manner, as even though I have a mean spirited personality and a big cynical mouth, my heart is all emotional jelly.  I don't contain enough salt water to contend with discussions regarding our move in person.
 
How we got to this point is too long, boring and frustrating a tale and in retelling it, I will end up with a burst capillary in my eyeball caused by stress.
 
My better half has got himself a transfer to work in Asia Pacific and being a refined, culturally well rounded modern day colonial style gentleman he will no doubt excel at his job and fit in spectacularly like Mr Dean in Black Narcissus. 
 
The job in question is an opportunity of a lifetime for his career and our family and as we grow more long in the tooth, it is not an opportunity that will appear again, so therefore, should be grabbed at hungrily,  like the over fifties at a Marks and Spencer's clothes sale.
 
It will be another adventure for the children.  The ten days spent in Antigua were an eye opener to the huge advantages there are for children growing up in a warm climate with access to the wilds and the sea and in somewhere like Singapore, the great food, cosmopolitan culture and access to the rest of South East Asia and the South Pacific.
 
As for me, although always supportive of my other half's career endeavours, as he funds my weekly unnecessary interiors purchases, I have had reservations about this move.  On paper, no question, it is a must do and hugely exciting, but emotionally it is a choker.
 
Giving up work when I had the children left me with no real identity other than wife, mother and social irritant.  It took a few years, but with the kids at school and feeling so wonderfully ensconced in a nice neighbourhood, a warm school community and lovely local friends, I embraced my unworthy existence and began to enjoy my three pronged roles in life.
 
Being lonely in a foreign country, in unfamiliar surroundings, with children at school and a husband who will be travelling frequently makes me fearful.  More fearful, as I have heard being a predominantly ex pat community, people might try to befriend me and that is frankly, intolerable.
 
However, I think of my dear Mum who on losing my Pa still managed to pick herself up at a ripe old age (that I am not allowed to share) and move to a new town, live on her own and manage to make friends and form a weekly routine of socialising and activities.  All on her own.  I take inspiration from her and will remember her bravery at starting life anew without my Dad, when I begin a lame ass panic about leaving my home, my friends and my happy life in Guildford.
 
Yet, my Mum will be the main thing that I miss about home, along with TK Maxx and Boots, but I know she will be okay and her life is settled.  I can worry about her a little less.  I will miss her terribly, but only until she starts phoning me every day because her wireless connection has gone down and she has hammered on all the buttons on the keyboard like a monkey trying to break a nut, attempting to get it working again.
 
I will miss home. I will miss my friends.  I will miss what would have been for my little one on starting proper school this year and the fun he would have had. I will miss our life here.  Thank goodness for the wonders of communication as at least in this day and age I won't have to rely on a carrier pigeon to let those dearest to me know that they are in my thoughts, though we are oceans apart.

Yet, adventure awaits.
 
I apologise to you all dear friends for the manner of our goodbye but like Nanny McPhee, I don't like goodbyes. 
 
So, all there is left to say, to quote The Two Ronnies & Vera Lynn during their little known and fruitless collaboration, is it's Goodbye from him and it's Goodbye from me, until we meet again, some sunny day.
 
But if we do meet in the UK, until we meet again, some day.
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Note
The Midgets Grumbler Blog will take a ten to fifteen week hiatus while we get our lives and the kids packed into shipping containers for the two month journey across the seas.  We will ensure a tiger is in the container with them to keep things interesting.  The Blog will return when we are all sunny side up in South East Asia, unless that attention seeking lumpty Kim Jong Un hasn't blown it out of the water before then.  Farewell.

Holiday

I am converted.  As of 2012 and a glorious ten days in St Lucia I now worship The Lord High Priestess of not having to drive anywhere, carry no cash, feed not my own children as they will be feedeth whenever required, by someone else and bask in the heat with gentle breezes, that is the joy of the Caribbean islands All Inclusive get away.  My confirmation occurred these ten days gone after spending a similar sojourn in beautiful Antigua.
 
I never realised how sloth and gluttony were ambrosia for the soul.
 
Ten years ago, if anybody suggested a holiday by the pool in the heat near the beach we would have slapped their faces.  We were adventure travellers.  Climbing mountains, trekking great paths, exploring the great outdoors, sucking up culture, architecture, history everywhere we went, spending as much time in the earths most wondrous natural environments and going native. 
 
The years 1999 to 2006 saw the Elizabethan Golden Age of low maintenance living and high holiday spending and we were very fortunate to have the means and opportunity to pretty much see every place in the world that we wanted. Of course, this was while all our friends bought nice houses and we still lived in a cupboard.  But who cares!  We were young.

By 2006, we had exhausted our must see places list and had reached that point in our marriage where we were bored of each other and needed another distraction. So in 2007 as Hurricane Dean ravaged the shores of Hispaniola and Martinique it also brought us a bedraggled stork carrying our first child.  Number two arrived a couple of years later and with him came the European villa holidays. Preserve of the scared middle class parent.
 
I am not knocking villa holidays at all.  We had two amazing trips with our small people to Tuscany and Provence but five villa holidays and three cottages down the line and we were most certainly jaded with it all.  We missed the adventure which we were not brave enough to continue with the children and frankly going abroad to go to the supermarket, cook at home for King and Queen fussy, do laundry and drive around to see very nice churches and castles blah blah was frankly, not getting our freak on!  The banality of life was following us on holiday and was still costing thousands of pounds for the privilege.  We were in a rut.
 
So, we swallowed our holiday snobbishness and considered All Inclusive.  We decided on the Caribbean as they seem to have the art down to a fine tea, it was a comparatively short flight, so manageable with small children and was going to be dang hot in Spring.
 
I have to say, I don't think you can possibly love your children more when they are impeccably behaved on a flight and we have been so lucky as three long haul flights in the last two years have witnessed our little folk be applauded by neighbouring passengers for being so quiet and good.  We didn't even illegally dose them with Night Nurse.  Even the pilot didn't get congratulated for keeping us from falling out of the sky, but our two angels were the talk of the town.  Of course, five minutes later in the immigration line they turned feral again and all soppy eyed adoration evaporated.
 
I was asked frequently when talking about our holiday if we were putting the children in a kids club.  I am personally not a huge fan of kids clubs.  I believe for the irritating eights to the puberty riddled teens, they are wonderful in the balmy climate of the Caribbean as the children can get their highs from zip lining, sailing, kayaking, snorkelling, windsurfing and learning some wonderful skills.  For the under eights, the children tend to be kept in some sort of photographic dark room sticking pasta shapes to their eyelids, only to be let out twice, on an hour release for a disinterested swim and some ice cream. 
 
I don't want to put the children in kids clubs.  I know everyone says they make friends with other children, but if you have met my children, you will know they are socially inept, so with the exception of making a nice bead necklace, I don't see the point of keeping them stored away.
 
The main reason is because I enjoy my children so much on these vacations.  I am mostly horrid to them and vice versa for 355 days of the year so when I have ten days when I have nothing to do but wash myself and eat, our relationship blossoms.  The children are a joy to be with and I have realised how chores and routine ruin family life.  Anarchy is clearly the answer and I wish I was bohemian enough to do it but being a boring conformist I know after these ten days we will get back to the old routine of school, cooking, driving, avoiding chores and growing old before our time.
 
Boffins of childhood state that the early years should be based on play. However, this is only stipulated in the case of the children. What about the parents?  I think five years off from work, a maid and chef thrown in and a stint in the hot house at Kew Gardens would do nicely for harvesting well balanced happy children and parents.
 
Having petitioned the government for such a change in maternity and paternity benefits in the UK and not having had a response in the last two years, we will have to instead console ourselves with doing what is effectively an ultra-expensive pool holiday each year to be a happy family.  It is worth the price.