The Middle

The trip back to England was always going to be a bit of a hurried affair, trying to cram in visits to as many people as possible, but when my tenants handed in their notice at the end of October, I knew it meant that my 3 ½ weeks in England would be filled with running around trying to get new tenants and making sure the flat was up to scratch, as well as getting all my paperwork in order so I could apply for Permanent Residency as soon as I arrived back in Canada.

Sure enough the time we spent in England felt like a whirlwind and for every friend I managed to catch up with, there was at least one I sadly didn't have time to see. We stayed in Surrey for the first week, picking up a rather lovely Peugeot 308 hire car (1.6 turbo diesel, very nippy, highly recommended) a few days in, and managed to: show my flat to a couple of different people; go through some of the stuff in my garage; show Isaac the Weybridge & Walton locale; spend 8 hours walking around London; go to not one but TWO fireworks displays; meet up with my dad & step-mother, Ellie, Sophie & Dan, Zoe & Phillip, Claire, Rosie, Guy, Chris, Debbie and Jonathan.

London, whilst the dream destination of many a discerning traveller, was not really Isaac's cup of tea. He's not really a city person at all – his mother told me that when he was younger he'd get a headache just driving in their car towards Toronto – but I though he ought to see it, so we took the train into the city. We started off at Borough Market where I bought him a lovely free-range homemade burger, then walked up to St Paul's Cathedral, where we climbed right to the top of the dome, via the amazing Whispering Gallery. Then off to Covent Garden where we saw a string quartet play and looked in one of my favourite T-shirt shops, David & Goliath. Up Neal Street to Shaftesbury Avenue, along to Leicester Square, down to Piccadilly Circus before heading up Regent's Street. Throughout this whole trek, Isaac had maintained a perfect air of complete indifference, seemingly fairly unimpressed by London's environs. However, five little words changed all that: “This is Hamley's Toy Store”. A look of wonderment came over him and he immediately asked where he'd find the Lego – a quick check of the map revealed it was one floor down in the basement. With a hop, skip and a jump he found the escalator and, on arriving at the requisite floor he proceeded to run around like a five year-old on Christmas morning – awww. He found a Lego kit he wanted, one featuring a snowcat, and picked out a remote control truck he'd like too. Only the lack of £450 stopped us sending that one home for him...

All too soon it was time to get on a red London double-decker bus (another must-do for any self-respecting tourist) and head back down to Ludgate Circus, where we were due to meet up with the lovely Guy, Chris, Debbie & Jonathan for dinner. On the way however, we took a slight detour to visit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire of London and still looks pretty much as it did then – flagstone and sawdust on the floor an' all.

One other incident springs to mind from our time in Surrey. On the way back from picking up the hire care in Kingston, we stopped in at my friends' Zoe & Phillip's house, with their children Elliot (5) and Eva (2). Since Zoe, Phillip & I were nattering away nineteen to the dozen, when Elliot asked Isaac the magic words: “Would you like to come and have a look at my Lego?” he leapt at the chance. He took Elliot and Eva into the lounge to play and watch telly while I caught up on the latest gossip. A little later on, it was time for the kids to have their dinner, so when they came back into the kitchen to eat, Elliot brought some Lego with him. At one point he wanted to tell me something about his Lego but had no luck trying to get my attention, since I was still talking excitedly to Zoe, so he lent over to Isaac and asked “What's your mum's name again?” Isaac of course was laughing so hard he could hardly reply. I wasn't in the least bit offended however, since from Elliot's perspective, it was obvious that I was an adult who was chatting to his mum and dad in the kitchen, while my 'son' had come over for a play-date!

The trip up to Yorkshire involved a 3 day stop-over at Suzie's house – Isaac had of course already met Suze and her son Joey, over in New Zealand when they'd come over for Debbie's wedding, along with her ex-husband Simon who had been travelling with them (they're oh so terribly modern). Now however, Isaac also needed to meet Suzie's boyfriend, erm, Simon. We all got on well and it was great to hang out with Joey, who is hilarious.* He's very keen on cars and trucks – much to Isaac's delight – and can already at the age of three identify most of the cars on the road. In fact I was shocked when we stepped outside and he spotted our hire car he immediately said “Oh you have a Peugeot!” Isaac taught him that when you see a car riding on flashy rims, you have to say that it's 'balling on dubs', which he took to with great enthusiasm, though his dad had already taught him to say a car was 'pimping' so I didn't feel too bad. During our stay with Suzie in the Midlands, we visited Warwick Castle, in order to introduce Isaac to the ancient history England has to offer, and followed it by a hellish 2.5 hour journey home in hard rain and horrendous traffic, in order to introduce Isaac to what the Friday rush hour is like in England.

Finally we made it to Yorkshire just in time for a big family dinner for Toni's birthday. Jenny had done slow-roasted pork (Jamie Oliver's recipe) and all the trimmings, which was phenomenally good. Over the next few days we took Isaac into Beverley, over to York - where we totally failed to find a decent cream tea** to have and ended up buying our own in M&S and heading back to Benj's place to eat it - over to Leeds where we visited the German Christmas market and the museum and of course lovely lovely Hull. In between these trips I was frantically trying to find a new tenant for my flat, since my current tenants gave notice just before I returned home, as well as trying to get my paperwork for Permanent Residency (a.k.a. PR***) in Canada completed and organised, all at considerable and increasing stress-levels. We had Jenny's birthday to celebrate too, which involved an ice-skating trip, a visit to the cinema and a large amount of Chinese food,naturally.

Come the last couple of days at Jen's I was sat for 12 hours at a time in the same chair printing off and organising my PR application. It was horrible, but worth it as I was able to get it into good order ready to send as soon as we arrived back to Canada. Then we drove back down to Surrey in time to see my tenants out of the flat and spent the next couple of days living at the flat and getting a few things up to scratch - new vacuum, new ironing board, sealant around windows, fitting a new light and repairing an old one, new loo seat and a damn good clean all round - you know the kind of deal. I thought I'd found some new tenants who were keen but long story short a credit check and closer examination of circumstances revealed a very bad risk and we had to let them go, which meant I was heading back with no tenants lined up - very worrying. Thank God for my sister and my dad who were on hand to take over the search - I really can't say thank you enough guys! Quick final catch up with Sophie, Dan & Ellie, then come November 30th Dad drove us to the airport to catch our flight back to Canada. We were flying Air India, which fo some reason was the cheapest flight from London to Toronto - go figure - and had the best inflight food (though worst inflight entertainment) I've ever had on an aeroplane. But then you know how I feel about curry....


*Recently he'd turned to Suzie, apropos nothing, and said “Want respect? Use a condom!”
**and by decent, I mean clotted cream, not whipped, and plain scones, none of this horrible fruit rubbish.
***which is quite funny if you're a midwife, nurse or doctor, since this means 'per rectum'.

The End

I was reminded recently, by an avid reader of my blog (hello Oma!), that my New Zealand story lacked an ending – so here to correct that, before I go on to tell you all about England and Canada, is my round up of NZ:

I spent a year living like a hippy in a campervan with a gorgeous man; going where we pleased, settling down for a while when we liked a spot, moving on where we didn't. The van was cool as bro, and we worked nice casual jobs, none too taxing, taking advantage of everything New Zealand had to offer. We black water rafted, we Zorbed, we kayaked, we street luged, we tramped, we jet boated, we snowboarded indoors and out, we quad biked, we flying foxed, we hot pooled, we WWOOFed, we fished rivers and ocean and we sheared sheep. We saw hot boiling mud and sulphurous pools, we drove spectacular coastline, we saw beautiful mountains and amazing beaches. We saw old friends, and we met new ones. We had an incredibly hot summer when it should have been winter, and a fairly chilly winter when it should have been summer; we had a BBQ on Christmas Day and snowboarded on my birthday. We spent time lazing by rivers listening to Harry Potter audio books, watched power boat & off-roading competitions, tore down and cut up trees, blagged a whole campsite to ourselves and watched 4WD DVDs and movies a-plenty on my laptop. We saw kiwi birds, eels, wekas, wetas, penguins, albatross and glow-worms. We ate fish and chips on the beach. We were verbally abused by an old French man. We visited my first lap dancing club.

We learnt how to pick different varieties of apple, and learnt that we never ever wanted to do that again. We learnt how grapes were harvested for wine and what happens to them next. We learnt how to run a ski resort without computers, and how to do the banking for the whole mountain. We learnt that I hate sea-bound boats. We learnt that Isaac can't drink with the big boys. We learnt what an earthquake feels like. We learnt that mince & cheese is a surprisingly good pie filling. We learnt that the Kiwis don't know how to insulate or heat their houses. We learnt how to turn a campervan into a mobile disco.

We learnt what camping long-term entails and exactly what you need to survive comfortably. We hope we made things easier for the people we sold the van to, and we hope they're enjoying her as much as we did. We discovered that we were well-suited to living in a confined space together, and realised that other people might not make such good living companions. We found out what we missed when we were away from home and we planned what we were going to do in the future.

So all in all, our time in New Zealand was exactly what we hoped it would be. The country is spectacularly beautiful, as we hoped it would be, and the people are lovely. It is laid-back and remote; fun and exciting; friendly and relaxing. But would I live there?

The short answer has to be no. There were a whole heap of little things, insignificant on their own, which combine to tell me that I would be frustrated if I lived in New Zealand. It's very very far away, for one. I mean, Australia is big and brash enough that it can cope with being so far from everything else, but gentle little New Zealand feels very isolated, like no one else knows you're there, and if they do, they don't care about what happens to you. This is the very thing that makes it an appealing destination for many, but I don't think it's for me. Everything, especially food and electronics, seems very expensive over there – strange considering its proximity to Asia – and it wasn't easy to live on minimum wage and still pay for rent and groceries every week, let alone the odd treat. Television was largely rubbish and the internet is, as previously discussed many times, very expensive and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w which makes keeping in contact with home a frustrating experience. The houses, on the whole, are poorly insulated and very few have central heating, relying instead on plug-in oil radiators and the like which aren't always terribly effective and can bump up the electric bills to ridiculous proportions – I worked with a girl whose previous job was for the electric company, calling customers when their bills reached $1000 for the month to warn them, not an uncommon occurrence. Anyway, enough of the negatives.

That said, I wouldn't change anything about the last year – it was truly awesome. I couldn't have wished for a better travelling companion than Isaac, a better van than Jaffa, and for more amazing friends to visit and stay with; a huge thank you to Jude & Glynn, Big John Redcorn, Ben & Colanne, Sally, Ian & Debbie, all the Heaphys, Josie & Becky, Boz & Wendy, Justine & Barry, Jemma & Ron.