Park Life



The Parents in the newest addition to their property portfolio 


We have climbed mountains, been out for fancy dinners, met old school friends for drinks, explored parts of Hong Kong that even The Parents had not ventured, but the most exciting part of our trip so far has got to have been seeing The Parking Space. Regular readers of this blog will know that The Parents recently became the proud owners of their very own rectangle of concrete after renting their parking space for many years. They viewed a few but eventually settled on one with three walls bordering it, creating their very own little nook. It was an incredibly exciting day for The Parents when they finally signed on the dotted line and took possession of their little space and I was thrilled to be able to see it after all I had heard about this wonderful little piece of concrete. However, The Mother revealed to us as we were pulling in that the space itself was not actually the most exciting thing to see. You are probably now wondering to yourself what possibly could be more exciting than the ownership of a piece of car park. Well, the icing on the cake was the secret passageway The Mother had discovered to take them from their space to the door to the lift. I can’t say much more than that for fear that people may then flock to it, thus ruining the secret but it was pretty sensational.


So they now own a flat in Birmingham, two flats in Hong Kong and, the cherry on their portfolio, their very own half a million dollar parking space. I think The Mother may have aspirations to be a parking space tycoon as I caught her eyeing up other space adverts the other day. We’ll have to watch that – parking space buying can be addictive.

That's It For Another Year

So Christmas is over for another year and, like every year, we had a boozy Christmas Eve lunch with friends, attended the Christingle service at St. Johns as the only family without young children, took the Star Ferry across the harbour to see the lights on the skyscrapers, had a couple of cocktails in a bar to reward ourselves for being so holy, watched The Snowman and then went to bed uncharacteristically early on account of it being Christmas Eve – Father Christmas won’t come if we’re up, you see. Christmas began with the opening of stockings, followed swiftly by Bucks Fizz and honey-glazed ham on toast, phone calls to the Australian family (accompanied by more bubbles – they don’t really stop after the first glass at breakfast), present-opening, a light lunch of smoked salmon, canapés and cheese, a quick stroll around the harbour-front to walk off some of the booze and nibbles, a family game of Cranium (accompanied by accusations of cheating and a few raised voices, naturally – it wouldn’t be a family board game without it), evening drinks, more family phone calls, changing into evening wear, more present-opening, and then the big Christmas dinner. By that point we are well and truly done in and bed calls. It really is an exhausting time of year.  

Holidays Are Coming...

I’ve got that goosebumpy, butterflies-in-the-tummy, tingly, heart-racing feeling that comes with excitement that just creeps up at you from nowhere. The past month or so has been manic to say the least. An inbox full of work and numerous tight deadlines have lessened the usual month-long lead up of festive excitement to the big day itself. I simply haven’t had time to think much about Christmas, and unless you do it can easily pass you by in hot and dusty Karratha (hence the drive-by mentioned in yesterday’s blog). We haven’t done much Christmas shopping as there aren’t really the shops to do it in, there are no lights through the streets in the centre of town, and there haven’t been any festive plays or concerts.


However, the work is now done and we are preparing to fly off to Hong Kong tonight to spend Christmas with my family. And I have that feeling of soaring excitement, all jittery and hyperactive and manic. I was walking around in circles yesterday as I was too excited to stand still, at which point I made the discovery that it is incredibly hard to type when walking round in a constant loop – I don’t know how I managed to get any work done! So today will be spent packing, shutting down the house, putting masking tape on the windows in case a cyclone hits while we are away (you can’t be too careful during cyclone season here), and doing last-minute shopping. Hong Kong and Christmas, here we come!

Let There Be (Christmas) Light

The Husband and I performed a drive-by last night. Before you gasp in shock at the thought that Expat Wife and The Husband might be part of some sort of outback gang, fear not as it was not the sort of drive-by that involves bullets. We were armed only with Christmas cheer. Well, I was anyway. The Husband was a bit of a Grinch. We climbed into the car, put on a Christmas CD and drove to the top-placed houses in the 2010 Karratha Christmas Lights Competition. This appears to be yet another area in which Australia is actually closer to America than the UK – numerous houses in this little remote town, from which the majority of the population leaves over the Christmas period, can be seen from miles away, so bright and colourful are the lights decorating their exteriors. This is very much an American thing and I would have scoffed at it in England – bar some tasteful white lights strung around a tree, I think it’s tacky but that’s just me. However, in a scorching hot, dry and dusty town in the middle of the Australian outback, these outdoor displays really do spread some much-needed Christmas cheer. They are completely over-the-top, of course, but I actually think that’s really rather wonderful in a place that could be July all year round. There is no forgetting what time of year it is at those houses.


At the winning house, you had to peer very closely to see that there actually was a house underneath all the lights and accessories. Multi-coloured lights adorned every inch of the roof and the walls, the fence and the path; twinkling reindeer pulled Santa in his sleigh on both the roof and in the front garden; Santa offshoots popped up everywhere; a handful of snowmen lit up the grass. It was Christmas on steroids. We drove past the turn-off to find that the house was at the very end of a no-thru road which was jam-packed with cars and we would thus have to park up and walk down to it. The Husband was not happy about this – apparently he would deign to drive past the Christmas light-strewn houses but he did not want to be seen getting out and looking at them. There followed a very un-festive argument, which ended in us turning back and parking up by the house. We were not the only ones. Dozens of families had come to gawp at this modest house that, for a month or so, had been turned into Christmas Land. The kids loved it, as did I. I’m not sure his neighbours did though.

It's Just Not Cricket (this time the game, not the window-bashing insects!)

Not so long ago it felt very good to be an Englishwoman in Australia. Despite a shaky first day or so in the opening Ashes test in Brisbane, when I was repeatedly told by my Australian cousins (I was in Adelaide at the time) that they were going to “give it to the Poms”, we soon began to turn the tide. Having pulled up our socks and drawn the Brisbane test, we went on to annihilate them in Adelaide, something which must have been hard for my cricket-mad Adelaide family to swallow. I had left by this point but I can be pretty sure that they weren’t being so cocky anymore. And it felt bloody good. As has been previously pointed out in this blog, the Australians seem to have a strange inferiority complex when it comes to England – they always feel like they have to not only beat us but ‘take the Poms down’. They are so vehement about it, something that is reflected in the language they use – “we’re going to give them a drubbing”, “we’re going to give it to those Poms”, “we’re going to give those Poms a flogging”, “we’re going to put those Poms to the sword”... you get the picture.


When a traditional inferiority complex is combined with a deeply-entrenched love of sport, you can see why they love to beat us ‘Poms’ so much at any form of sport at all. Of course, by the same token, losing to us in anything from cricket to lawn bowls is more than they can bear. Generally the rule is that if an Australian sporting team is not winning, it is not reported – nothing will be said about it in the media, no-one will talk about it at work. However, if they are winning, that is all you will hear about. And thus has it been during this Ashes series. When they’re winning, it’s all over the new; when they were receiving a ‘drubbing’ there might well have not been any cricket being played in Australia for all we heard about it. Of course, it didn’t stop us from walking around with very smug faces. Unfortunately, our recent defeat in Perth has brought the Aussies out of the holes in which they were sticking their heads and the fighting talk has begun again. I am hoping and praying that we can “give it” to the Aussies in the next test, not because I particularly care about cricket, but just so that we do not have to be subjected to the Aussie swagger.

It's a Good Life After All

With the horror of the asylum seeker-carrying wooden fishing boat smashing against rocks in rough seas off Christmas Island playing out across our televisions this morning, perhaps it’s time to readjust my attitude to living in Karratha. It might not have made international news so I will recap: early yesterday morning a tiny wooden fishing boat carrying around 70 asylum seekers from Iran and Iraq crashed into a rocky cliff amid huge waves in one of the coves off Christmas Island, a tiny land mass in Australian waters housing a number of immigration detention centres. In recent years hundreds of refugees have attempted to sail to Australia for a better life, knowing that if they make it to Christmas Island, which is actually closer to Indonesia than Australia, they at least have a shot of being granted asylum status.


Yesterday demonstrated the huge dangers these people are willing to place themselves and their children to escape from their own countries and attempt to provide a better life for their families in a free and prosperous Australia. A camera caught the unfolding events yesterday as the boat was dragged into churning water and thrown against the rocks as if it weighed nothing. As it crashed against the cliff again and again, it began to break up, smashing the wood into smithereens. Men, women and children, some as young as two or three, were catapulted into the huge waves. The number of dead has not been finalised yet but the toll is already up to 28, with others seriously injured. Witnesses told of feeling helpless as they watched children flailing their arms in the air, trying to keep their heads above the water, trying in vain not to get too close to the razor-sharp rocks, screaming and crying for help.

I watched all this from the comfort of my spacious, air-conditioned, three-bedroom house, on my big television, while typing away on my laptop, in the very same free, prosperous Australia that these people are so desperate to live in. Whenever I or anyone else begins to moan about the flies, the isolation, the heat, the lack of things to do here, I will remember those people who were so desperate to come to this country that they travelled for hundreds of kilometres in a tiny wooden boat, risking their lives in the process. They would gladly swat away a few flies, sit under a scorching sun, find things to do amongst themselves for entertainment, work every day of the week if they had to, if it meant they could live in a country that offered opportunities for those willing to take them, that provided good education for their children, a country where they could feel safe and free from persecution. We really don’t have it so bad here. We are the lucky ones.

Time Travel

A few weeks ago I went to visit the family in Adelaide, a mere 4,000km away, across half of Western Australia and the great sweeping plains of the Nullabor Desert. When we heard we were being transferred to Karratha, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to see a great deal more of my Australian family, most of whom I hadn’t seen for ten years. I hadn’t bargained on the fact that Adelaide was quite so far from Karratha, or that flights would be quite so expensive. I have said it many a time in this blog before and I will say it again – Australia is a bloody big place! What further adds to the travel is the time difference – Adelaide are currently 2.5 hours ahead of Western Australia. It is a very odd thing to think that I am more likely to suffer from jet lag from flying to another part of Australia than I am from flying all the way to Hong Kong, which is in the same time zone as WA. I left the house in Karratha at 8.45am and arrived in Adelaide at 6.10pm. It took me an entire day of travelling to reach the neighbouring state. It is distances like that that a girl from the tiny island nation of Britain and the even tinier city of Hong Kong finds it hard to fathom.


I arrived at the airport feeling slightly weary, to be greeted with much chatter and hugs and questions from seven members of the family. And this was possibly the quietest part of my week-long stay. From then on I was bombarded by an onslaught of family from the moment I got up until the moment I collapsed into bed. It was lovely really but living up in remote Karratha, far away from any family whatsoever, it was rather a shock to the system. I just wasn’t used to the running around, the screaming, the constant need for attention – and that was from the adults! The Father’s side of the family is big and loud and dramatic and opinionated and it is always a circus when we visit but, to be fair, I am also loud and dramatic and opinionated so I can’t really comment. I had a wonderful time, chatting away to cousins who when I last saw them were not even teenagers and now talk about jobs and girlfriends and travelling. As the eldest of 15 grandchildren, I am sort of stuck in between the world of the aunties, uncles and grandparents, and that of the younger cousins, so I took it in turns to dip into talking about boys and school and university, and conversing about mortgages and insurance and children and careers. Sadly, I think I probably fit more easily into the latter category – I certainly seemed to be able to contribute to those conversations more easily than the teenage ones. I tried to relate to them but I fear that I may have come off as an adult desperately still trying to be cool and cling to her youth. I had no idea what some of the words they frequently used meant, although that could just be an Australian thing - that's what I'm going with, anyway. Oh dear, I am definitely getting old, which is something that my 5 year-old cousin obviously thought too - he guessed that I was 45. On that note, I am really not sure when next I will visit Adelaide and the teeming masses but perhaps I shouldn’t leave it so long next time or I will be assumed to be close to retirement age.

It's Just Not Cricket

We are in the middle of a cricket epidemic. I don’t know whether other houses in Karratha are facing the same crisis, or if they just particularly like our house, but it’s beginning to get irritating. At first the little critters were a source of amusement. In the evening, when we are lounging on the sofa after dinner, we will hear a thud. Followed by another a few minutes later, and another, and another. Occasionally we will actually be looking at the window when these thuds occur and will be witness to giant crickets face-planting the glass. They appear to be drawn to the light, not realising of course that there is a double-glazed window in between them and the Holy Grail of light. They just launch themselves into the windows and then bounce off them. As I said, at first it was funny, but after crickets crash into you windows night after night after night, they begin to make a bit of a mess. Cricket smears have started to appear most noticeably on the patio doors – I’m not sure what part of themselves they’re leaving behind but it’s sort of green and smeary. Not nice.


The worst (and perhaps most strange) of all is the baby crickets in our bath. Sadly, they are not jumping about all over the place and having a jolly good time; they are all dead, every single one of them. We keep the plug in the bath (you never know what might come crawling up the drains out here) so it is a mystery as to where they are coming from. There are whole crickets, pieces of crickets (wings, legs) and little black dots which I can only assume are baby cricket poos. It is very strange and very, very gross. We clean the bath and the next day at least a couple more crickets and body parts litter it again. I don’t know how they’re getting into the bath, I don’t know why they are all dead, I don’t know why some are whole and some are in bits. It’s carnage. Perhaps it is a mystery that will never be solved…

Neck, I Love You

Last night I discovered what it would be like to have no neck and it turns out that it is actually a pretty important part of our bodies. The neck gets a rough deal really. Most people consider it to be merely an appendage on which to rest our heads but when it ceases to function properly, that’s when you realise just how important it is. In the middle of the night, I woke with an excruciating pain down the right side of my neck, shoulders and upper back. Thinking I had merely slept on that side of my body in an awkward position, I attempted to move and immediately let out a piercing moan. Red hot coals were being forced upon my shoulders and the pain shot down my back and arm. The sound woke The Husband with a start. “Whaf ish it, whad ish it?” he asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a jumble. I could do no more than say “pain, hurts, oh, it hurts” and point to the area on which the coals were being jabbed. Of course, as it was the middle of the night and pitch black, he couldn’t actually see where I was pointing to and after several frustratingly inaccurate attempts to pinpoint the source of the pain he found it, touched it and I screamed again.


He turned on the light and attempted to get me out of bed and that’s when I realised just how important the upper back is too. It appears that we use our upper back and shoulder muscles to pull ourselves up from a supine position. I had never really thought about it before – you just do it automatically. Except right then I couldn’t do it and The Husband had to support me until I was in a standing position. It was primarily when attempting to swallow the three Ibuprofen capsules that I realised just how great the neck is. I couldn’t just throw my head back to down them. Instead, I had to perform a complicated and not wholly successful manoeuvre involving bending my knees and then leaning my entire body back in order to get them down my throat. After wandering around the room in a daze, trying to stretch out my neck, I was still in just as much pain but I told The Husband to go back to bed and I attempted to do the same and somehow get comfortable, totally in vain it transpired. I drifted off sometime around 4am and slept fitfully, waking later in slightly less pain but still unable to fully turn my head. I have spent the morning turning my entire body every time I needed to look to my left or right and it is really quite annoying. Neck, I will never undervalue you again.

Carol Singing and Sunbathing

Yesterday evening we were sat on the grass on an oval bordering the beach, eating a sausage butty and watching the sun set into the Indian Ocean, turning the huge Australian sky a tie-dyed orange, pink and red. What was slightly incongruous was that we were at the same time listening to carols being sung and passages from the Bible read. I don’t know how many years it would take me to get used to the fact that Christmas in Australia is a hot affair, that it is normal to be sat in board shorts and a t-shirt whilst listening to children singing Christmas carols. The event was entitled ‘Carols by Glowlight’, in reference to the fact that glow sticks were held as the carols were sung. It is too hot for carols by candlelight and, besides, the risk of a bush fire is too great to allow candles, so children and adults alike held glow sticks in the air. Luminous light doesn’t have quite the same effect as a flickering flame from a candle but at least parents didn’t have to worry about their kids setting their hair alight.


We started our Christmas shopping, Christmas card writing and mince pie baking on Saturday. With the air-con turned up, we sipped mulled wine as we listened to songs about snow and log fires and chestnuts roasting, and imagined that ‘baby, it’s cold outside’. Then on Sunday we lay out in the sun and roasted ourselves. If I didn’t decorate the house, watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, eat mince pies and drink mulled wine, it could be any time of year. I would do all of that anyway but it is especially important to be overly festive when somewhere like Karratha, or Christmas could pass you by altogether. Clearly other Karratha residents feel the same – as we were driving back from the carols by the beach last night, we spotted more than a few houses lit up like something from a bad American Christmas movie. You could see them from miles away, all gaudy multi-coloured lights flashing, giant Santas and snowmen grinning crazily from the roofs. We won’t go quite that far but it’s nice to see some people making an effort to be festive in the desert!

Bloodbath in the Kitchen II - The Return of the Bandages

What is with me and bloody fingers? Somehow it happened again – Bloodbath in the Kitchen 2, the sequel to the gory Bloodbath in the Kitchen where I slashed my hand open with a carving knife. This time, however, a glass imploded in my hand. I still don’t know how it happened - I went to pick it up and it shattered as soon as I closed my hand around it. I heard the high-pitched tinkling of glass breaking before I registered that my hand had just gone straight through it. A couple of seconds ticked by before the sharp pain was felt but my brain was working slowly and it was another second or two before I fully grasped what had happened. I brought my hand up in front of my face, saw the blood and experienced a strong feeling of déjà vous. Then I started to panic. I was all alone, The Husband was at work. What was I going to do?


I turned the tap on full blast and thrust my hand into the heavy stream of water, feeling guilty about the excessive water consumption despite my injuries – I have clearly been indoctrinated by the Australian water police. The blood would not stop, the wound looked deep and tears began to prick my eyes. My breathing became shallower, I was starting to go into shock. I needed to call The Husband but my mobile phone was across the kitchen, in sight but not within reach on the dining room table. I stretched over to the kitchen roll, grabbing it with my uninjured hand, and tightly wrapped my throbbing thumb, still managing to spurt blood across the worktop and floor. Thumb inexpertly bandaged, I rushed over to the phone and quickly tapped his number in but the call immediately dropped. I did it again and the same thing happened. Twice more the call dropped before it even rang and I started to panic further. I wasn’t going to be able to reach him, I was going to bleed out until my hand dropped off.

Crying, moaning, taking short sharp breaths, I tried to work out what I should do. Then the phone rang. It was The Husband. I quickly told him what had happened and he ordered me to wrap a bandage around my wrist to stem the flow of blood into my hand and keep pressure on the wound. “Just like before, remember?” he said, soothingly. I immediately began to feel calmer as I obeyed his measured instructions. He offered to drive home and take me to the hospital but I told him to call back in half an hour – if my thumb was still bleeding then, he should come back. I hung up, cleared up the blood splatters in the sink, on the worktops, floor and wall tiles and even continued with some work, typing one-handed, injured hand propped up on my head. As agreed, exactly thirty minutes later The Husband called and I delicately peeled back the padding on my thumb. “Oh thank goodness, it’s-“ was as far as I got before the blood started pumping out of the cut again, staining the kitchen crimson. “I think you’d better come back,” I said with resignation.

However, when he walked in half an hour later and unbandaged my thumb, the bleeding had miraculously stopped. He cleaned up the shallower cuts on a couple of my other fingers, before starting on Big Red. My thumb looked like the Michelin Man but it was going to be OK. I wasn’t going to lose it. What a day. This wasn’t quite how I wanted to spend the first day of the festive season but I suppose the deep red of my blood was at least a Christmas colour.