Saturday 10 September 2011

Things I’ve learnt this week

 

Warning – melodramatic Mum overload, I won’t be offended if you skip this post!! I don’t want to bore people too much with all of this stuff so I won’t link it anywhere, but if you stumble across it in your reader I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to read it!

1) Saying goodbye is really hard, no I mean really hard – I’d kept everything tight right up until Tuesday when it was time to head off to the airport. That final hug of farewell at the security gate was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done for my children. Trying to be strong, I’d skipped along for the past few months, merrily saying ‘oh it’s OK, he needs to get it out of his system, it’ll make him a better man’ and all those kind of clichéd phrases. What I probably wanted to say was ‘I don’t want him to go, I’ll miss him, is life so bad here that he has to travel to better it?’ or words to that effect.

 

2) Listening to football on the car radio (5 Live) is almost impossible! As a distraction we put the radio on on the way home from the airport. Neither of us really wanted to talk so it seemed the right thing to do. I just ended up with a worse headache than I would have had otherwise.

3) I can tell you what time it is in Melbourne without even thinking about it!! Oh how I hope that wears off soon, the urge to check my watch and wonder what he’s up to. After finding out that he slept for 14 hours (through the whole day) when he first arrived, I really don’t need to wonder what he’s doing – he is still on UK time body clock-wise.

4) Facebook is fab for that instant in touch moment (OK – I probably didn’t just learn that) to see the window pop up that says ‘Matt sent you a message’ was amazing at 7am yesterday! Really got my day off to a great start. I’m now wondering just how bereft parents felt when their offspring travelled to the other side of the world all those years ago and then had to wait for a letter to arrive – one day without contact almost broke my heart.

5) He’s not as macho as he thinks he is. Another window popped up last night when he should have been asleep. The chat was not so encouraging. He admitted to being lonely, he’s in a multi-bedded room in a youth hostel and he’s been the sole occupant mostly since he arrived. I think he had the vision of arriving to a thronging crowd of Brits who would introduce him to the Aussie life style and set him on his way for the year. After about an hour of chatting with John and Son1 and my cousin (who conveniently has relatives in Melbourne) he seemed to be a lot happier. I’m sure once he sorts out his sleep he’ll be fine – he’ll never meet anybody if he’s asleep while the rest of the town is awake and vice-verse!

6) I’m actually a lot stronger than I thought at the beginning of the week. Yes, my heart was broken chatting with him last night but I managed to find the resolve to encourage him to stick it out. I think my sensible head came into play rather than my emotional head. Hopefully things will settle for him or at least he will give it time before turning round and heading home, seems such a waste of an opportunity not to at least give it a shot.

(disclaimer – this is so not me!!)

If you’ve got this far thank you for reading and indulging my wittering!

Wednesday 7 September 2011

And the rain came down…

…just in time for our trip to the airport to see Son2 off on his adventures!

We’d had our own adventure before he left, he came ‘home’ on Sunday and bought all his bits and pieces back on Monday – so much stuff! And clothes – he only took one suitcase with him plus a back pack and the rest has been left behind.

The first suitcase split under the strain just as he finished packing, luckily we had a spare one in the loft which was a little larger!

The goodbye was inevitably very tearful but we didn’t want to prolong the agony so said goodbye as he joined the snaking line towards security. I hugged him tightly and said goodbye amidst tears and sobs and we left him to it. As we walked through Terminal 3 at Heathrow, people gave me the strangest looks – I wanted to ask if they’d never seen a mother saying goodbye to her son before! (Yes – I know they had know idea why I was there!)

Anyhow, with the power of the internet and the marvellous book of face, he sent a message once he arrived at Singapore to break his journey, some of which I’m going to share with you – simply because it made me LOL!!

LMAO had an interesting surprise when I woke at one point, the Singaporian(??) man sitting next me, thought it would be nice to lift the arm rest up and fall asleep on my lap, Hmmmmm.

At least he’s retained his amazing sense of humour!(You’ll notice I didn’t share the mushy stuff – have to let him keep his macho public image!)

He’ll arrive in Melbourne in about three hours – 24 hours after setting off on his journey but having effectively lost a whole day in time (it’s Thursday out there already!)

So in a year’s time we’ll be doing all of this in reverse – I can’t wait to stand at the airport with one of those huge banners to welcome him home – mmm – wonder what he’d make of that?

Friday 2 September 2011

I am winner–woo hoo!!

Last night while I was idly watching Twitter scroll by relaxing after a hard day at work, the following message jumped up in front of me:

Twitter: I need a title for BBCR4 short story about twitter. It's got libel, people not being who they say they are, and daytime TV. Ideas?

This was posted by the author Jojo Moyes, and I sat and thought for a few moments and for some reason the words ‘Between the Tweets’ popped into my head. So I replied!! Jojo replied that she liked it and would add it to her shortlist for submission to the BBC.

And, obviously the title of this post gives it away, my title was chosen!! So, you Radio 4 lovies out there, keep your ears peeled for the story with my title, coming to a radio near you!!

Oh – and I got a prize! A signed copy of Jojo’s latest novel – can’t wait!!

I’m off now to lie down in a darkened room to get over the shock (not really, I’m going to watch the football – come on England Winking smile)