On being back

I flew back to Melbourne on a one-way ticket a week ago.

Last February I visited for a month after my job 'finished'. I loved it - spending time with my family, reading, swimming - but I remember looking out the window as I drove interstate or caught the train to the other side of town to visit a friend, thinking I just couldn't see myself in Melbourne. I couldn't see where I'd live or what I'd do.

I was ready to return home to London.

Thanks to some vigorous encouragement by my good (writer) friend Amanda Saint, while she established and built-up Retreat West, I moved writing out of hobby status and got involved in the writing world. It started with this blog and Twitter (using Books for Dummies and a healthy vocabulary of swear words), as well as reading more widely, studying as I read (it was a good excuse for the time I spent doing it), and producing more and more of my own work.

By the end of 2013 I'd been to Word Factory UK and Spread The Word events, retreats by different fabulous people in Sheepwash, Exmoor and Portugal, and almost met my 25k word short story collection target.

And I'd decided it was time to move back to Melbourne.

Lots of things went into that decision, and yesterday while my dad was driving me to another appointment, I said to a friend how strange it is to look out the window and feel the thrill of being here. A sense of belonging again.

Tomorrow I'm going to listen to Lisa Dempster, Director of the Melbourne Writers' Festival, query a panel of experts on 'Writing Now.' Next week I'll be at The Wheeler Centre to hear David Vann and then I'm meeting at Writers Victoria to talk about volunteering with them.

And on Saturday I'm going down to a beach house where there's no internet. I'm going to read, write, hopefully throw away the crutches (finally) and fall into the salt water, and feel like I'm home again.

Last year was a significant one for me, and it feels now like it doesn't necessarily matter where I am, so long as I'm writing and around people who love words as much as I do. I can't wait to get involved with, and share my experience of, the writing world down here.

I'm in London still...

In the usual nostalgia that brews when I'm approaching a big change, in this case moving back to Melbourne after 5.5 years away, I've been listening to this song that a very dear friend played to me after I got back from 12 months university-graduate-backpacking 20 years ago.

My two friends and I flew to London from Rome in July 1994, ready to activate our 2 year work visa. We'd been travelling for 5 months in Western and Mediterranean Europe. We'd wandered from a month on a Greek Island through Turkey and Israel, taken a taxi into Egypt where we'd ridden camels and a feluka. I'd been worth 500 camels one day, and depreciated to 50 a month later.

In some ways the idea of settling in one first-world place, unpacking our clothes, and going to work seemed appealing.

We rented a 2 bedroom ground floor apartment in Wood Green. The rubber hose on our bath taps burst after a few minutes, scalding a foot. Coffee was drunk from our tin travel mugs, and we had a stash of glasses we'd stolen from happy hours in bars. We had a backyard but we couldn't see through the metre-high weeds. I registered with a few temp agencies and quickly set out in my Topshop suits.

On Friday nights my friends would go to bars in Shepherd's Bush and catch up with friends we'd made on Ios and at the Oktoberfest, and I started to stay in for some quiet space. I'd buy a cheap Bulgarian red and a piece of cheese from Sainsbury's, sit in the yellow sitting room listening to music and writing letters. When it was late enough to call Melbourne, I'd go to the phone box down the street and ring my friends.

I lasted six weeks.

I suggested to my friends we hit the road again. They laughed and started packing their bags.

Twenty years later I'm surrounded by piles of books, sorting out what to donate and what to take. I've got some possessions on eBay, my relocation is booked and the seat on my long flight is reserved.

My parents were here for Christmas, and after visiting me every year they realised they might not be back here for a while, so we plotted a busy schedule for their fortnight: Christmas Eve at the Royal Albert Hall, dinner at Nopi, Barry Humphries' farewell tour, salt beef bagels in Brick Lane. I went on the tour of the Houses of Parliament. I'm going to go to the V&A museum, the Everyman cinema, and ride the cable car.


It's sad leaving friends, the writing scene I've become so much more involved in, access to Europe and foxes in the backyard. I have parents, brothers and sisters-in-law, 8 nephews and nieces, good friends, a beach house and the MCG waiting for me…so…Hello Possums!

My walk with Autumn

Autumn and I decided to go for a walk together.

I said - Aren't we lucky, we don't have anywhere that we have to be.

Autumn was silent.

We walked for a long time and I remembered how Autumn can be a dramatic toddler sometimes. 

Autumn said - I can't stay here. With you. I'm sorry. 

Autumn left me last Thursday at 4.55pm. I felt the cold of the abandoned, but kept walking. We've been through this before but I'm not sure how many more goodbyes I have left in me. So I put my scarf on and walked underneath determined trees and kept pace with men with satchels and resolved that in fact it is for the best.

After a 5 hour walk I'd left Clapham for Arsenal. Autumn was fading. I felt that there was someone else just around the corner who may turn out to be more reliable.