Author: sandybarker

We the people…don’t always get it right

sandybarker

Two political posts in a row…

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In the aftermath of Brexit, I am still reeling. As a dual Australian-British citizen, I can no longer dream about or plan an extended working stay or a semi-retirement in 27 European countries. There are dozens of political, economic and social implications still to be revealed. And most seem like they’ll have the power to adversely affect my young nephew, who lives in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire with his parents.

Watching Brexit from the sidelines of Australia, I wondered at the tactic to leave this critical and vastly-complex decision to the public. I keep asking myself, ‘What was Cameron thinking?’ The Stay and Leave campaigns both seemed to target emotion rather than providing information, with misinformation combated with fear-mongering.

So, how do you let an emotional public, or even worse, an ill-informed or indifferent public to make such an important decision, particularly when you’re not even compelling them to participate? Isn’t that the job – the complex and critical job – of elected officials? Are there some things that should not be left to the public to decide? Is this the ultimate SNAFU in the pursuit of democracy?

This isn’t ‘should we have Daylight Savings or not?’ This is the future of a country, of its people and its geographical neighbours. This was too important a decision to leave to the layperson.

And in the aftermath, we’ve seen a wave of ‘Bregret’ – people who voted Leave, but didn’t really understand the implications. Or even worse, we are seeing people publicly shamed for gross stupidity of the ‘extra sunlight from Daylight Savings will fade my curtains’ magnitude.

What did David Cameron do when he decided to ask the British people to vote???

On Saturday July 2, Australia goes to the polls for a federal election. Unlike our American cousins across the pond, our dominant political parties don’t stray too far from the middle. We have slightly left of centre (Labor), slightly left of that (the Greens), slightly right of centre (the oddly-named Liberals) and slight right of that (the Nationals, who form a Coalition with the Liberals). It’s essentially Shorten (Labor) vs Turnbull (Liberals) and politically speaking, they’re much of a muchness when compared with the Trump/Clinton dichotomy.

The biggest divides between the (slightly) left and (slightly) right are around Education – both parties believe it is important and will continue to throw buckets of money at it, but they have different ideas of how to spend the money and how many buckets full to throw – and Marriage Equality.

Both candidates believe that we should have Marriage Equality in Australia. In fact, when Turnbull ousted (idiot) Abbott, many Australians watched with bated breath to see him make history and call for a parliamentary vote on the matter. We knew that given the chance, parliament was very likely to pass a law allowing men and women to marry their same-sex partners. You know, a basic human right.

But he didn’t. He said he would, but he didn’t. His party didn’t want a parliamentary solution. And, I have to say, as much as I was relieved to see Turnbull take over from (idiot) Abbott, he wants to be PM more than he wants to do what he knows what is right, what he believes is right.

Instead, if elected, the Coalition will hold a plebiscite. I had to look up what a plebiscite is. Essentially, it is a non-compulsory ‘vote’ at the end of a lengthy (and often ugly) public debate, and the result does not compel the government to act on it – even if it is in favour of Marriage Equality, which is ultimately what the Prime Minster supports. Ridiculous.

So, why? Why are we going to the expense ($160m) so we can debate if a group of people can have a basic human right? Again, this isn’t whether or not we should have daylight savings – something that has gone to referendum in this country – a referendum being compulsory with a legally-binding result. Why are we treating a right with less importance than a preference?

I read this incredibly articulate article today by Brian Tobin called, “Australia doesn’t need a plebiscite on same-sex marriage – Ireland’s experience shows why.” Tobin makes this point:

“Placing the rights of a minority group in the hands of the majority seems almost ludicrous. A sizeable number of the electorate could simply vote against same-sex marriage without being properly informed in the way elected politicians would usually be when legislating.”

Penny Wong, a prominent Australian politician who has a daughter with her long-term same-sex partner, has spoken out repeatedly about the planned plebiscite. Ms Wong says, “A plebiscite designed to deny me and many other Australians a marriage certificate will instead license hate speech to those who need little encouragement…Mr Turnbull, and many commentators on this subject, don’t understand that for gay and lesbian Australians, hate speech is not abstract. It’s real. It’s part of our everyday life.”

I don’t always agree with political and social commentator Alan Jones, but I agree with his response to the question, ‘why should Australian be wary of a plebiscite?’ “Parliament. We select 150 in the House of Representatives to represent those 22 million people on critical issues such as this.”

And this  is a critical issue. This is a human rights issue and subjecting same-sex couples and their families to the type of scrutiny and bigotry that a plebiscite will most definitely bring, is a human rights violation – particularly when polls have told us that the majority of Australians either support Marriage Equality or are indifferent.

We elect representatives to parliament to represent us and to make decisions on our behalf. It’s their job. And that is why I cannot vote for the Liberals on Election Day. In the matter of ensuring a basic human right for all Australians, they simply will not do their job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What it’s like being an Aussie in America during a presidential election

sandybarker

I moved from Sydney to Seattle, Washington in January 2009 – just in time to watch President Obama’s first inauguration live on TV. He had been elected by the largest turn-out of voters in American history, and for many people it was a signpost of a better time to come. The vice grip of the Bush-Cheney era, their warmongering and tampering with the world’s economy, was over. As I watched Obama take the presidential oath, I felt like I was letting my breath out after holding it a really long time. I wasn’t alone.

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Remember this hopeful guy?

Obama stepped in to lead the most powerful nation on earth, and it looked like real change was on the horizon. Early in his second year, he made this pointed remark about the Republicans’ economic policies:

“So after they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. (Laughter.) No! (Laughter and applause.) You can’t drive! (Applause.) We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch! We just got the car out! (Applause.)” – May 13, 2010

Over the months and years, I watched as the Democrats lost their seats in congress, and the president was left to lead a discordant group who battled his policies on every front. The hostile congress created an impasse; Obama couldn’t get anything done. And it was frustrating. He was frustrated. That charismatic smile was nowhere to be seen; in its place was a taut line of exasperation.

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Exasperated

And of course when Obama entered the next election to secure his second term, the Republicans jumped all over his inability to get anything done, all of his ‘broken promises’. A lot of people bought into that rhetoric. Other camps painted him with the ‘socialist’ brush, because socialism is a dirty word to many Americans – those people equate it with fascism.

I watched nervously, along with millions of Americans as his opponent, Romney, gained traction. On the surface, Romney may have seemed like a good guy – a religious family man who had worked hard to earn his vast fortunes – but his policies soon revealed him to be misogynistic, racist and classist. As well as wanting to repeal the law that gives women reproductive freedoms, Romney advocated trickle-down economics. This is the theory that if the rich get richer, their wealth trickles down in the form of more jobs for the poor. It’s been debunked by the International Monetary Fund and world-renowned economists, but try telling that to Romney – or to Mr Trump for that matter.

In the first presidential debate, Romney trounced Obama. It was as though Obama had given up the fight; at times, he just sat there and said nothing. It was terrifying. In the second debate, Obama showed up. This was the whip-smart, charismatic and likeable leader who’d won the last election.

At one point in the debate Romney carried on and on about a recent attack on an American embassy, and how the president had failed to call it out as an act of terrorism. Obama let Romney hang himself. “Go ahead, governor,” he said, and Romney started to doubt himself. The fact was that Obama had called it an act of terrorism, and Romney looked like a fool when the moderator corrected him. He never quite recovered and Obama won the debate.

Barack Obama And Mitt Romney Participate In Second Presidential Debate
“Go ahead, Governor.”(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

But that was just one debate in a series; it was one battle in a war. When Romney was secretly filmed stating that 47% of the country were what we’d call here in Australia, ‘bludgers’, his disdain for the working and middle classes of the American people was undeniable – and yet his polling remained strong. We’re seeing this phenomenon in the current election. Every time Trump seems to make a misstep, he gains more supporters. This phenomenon is both baffling and alarming.

On election day in November 2012, my partner and I watched anxiously as the polls closed from east to west. States were either designated blue (Democrats – Obama) or red (Republicans – Romney). It’s a complicated voting system, but essentially, it does come down to numbers. If you have the most votes in the Electoral College, you win. I knew that the states with the last polls to close – Washington, California and Oregon – were all expected to ‘turn blue’, and that as the most populous state, California, was expected to call a very close election one way or the other.

When the election was finally called for Obama I actually cried with relief. I did not want to live in a country – or a world, for that matter – with that man at the helm.

Seeing a presidential election up close, my biggest take away is that US elections are exhausting. And not just for the candidates – how do they do all of that campaigning? – but also for the people living there. As we’re seeing right now, the lead up takes more than 18 months. 18 Months! That’s nearly as long as our last Prime Minister was in office. Thank goodness for the daily doses of Steven Colbert and John Stewart to ease the tensions. Australian readers, think Shaun Micallif, Waleed Aly, and Carrie Bickmore, if you’re not familiar with Colbert and Stewart – clever, often hilarious, commentators who make the unbearable bearable.

I am watching the current election with as much interest as the last one, even though I now live in Melbourne, because as we know, whatever happens in US politics affects the rest of the world in countless ways. President Trump? Trump makes Romney look like the sweetest, most charitable and forward-thinking politician ever.

 

For Our Little Miss Lucy

sandybarker

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When you get a pet, you know that it is very likely that you will outlive them. You risk the inevitability of them dying sometime in the future, because you know that before that happens, you will have the wonderful experience of being a furrent.

We had our little Lucy for nearly 5 years and she died peacefully at the vet’s office yesterday afternoon because her kidneys failed.

We adopted Lucy from a shelter in Seattle in 2011. I had been asking Ben about getting a cat for more than a year, and he finally relented saying we could go to the shelter to ‘look’. I had an inkling that looking would turn into getting, so I agreed.

The shelter had a no-kill policy so there were dozens of cats to choose from. There was even an offer that day to adopt a black cat for free. We checked out all the black cats, but none of them were ours. Then 7 year old Lucy caught our eye because A) she was very pretty and B) she was a chill little kitty who was lounging at the back of her cage rather than meowing like crazy for our attention.

When we approached her, she stood up, stretched and turned around to show us her butt. We both laughed out loud. We asked to cuddle her and when we did, she purred loudly and rubbed up against us. Then Ben pointed out that she matched our living room rug, and we both knew we’d found our cat.

It was a big deal for Ben to agree to get a cat. He’d never had one before – he was a dog person – and he was understandably nervous about possible bad cat habits she might have – like scratching and biting, ruining the furniture, general meanness and/or indifference, jumping on counters and spreading cat germs, and worst of all, sleeping on his face. Lucy turned out to be just as perfect at home as she was in the shelter – she had no bad cat habits.

She was affectionate – in fact, Lucy was borderline slutty. She’d flop in front of anyone with a pulse who walked on two legs, begging to be petted. She would happily sit on laps, purring loudly, or do ‘halvesies’ which was front paws and head on the lap, back paws and bum on the chair, also purring loudly. She’d stay like that all day if you let her. She took to sitting on Ben’s lap, staring up at him adoringly, as he worked. And if you were drinking something while she was sitting on you, she’d want to sniff it, just to see what it was.

She was funny – she’d catch sight of her tail and stare at it as if to say, ‘what the fuck is that?’ Then she’d pounce on it and chase it around and ‘round like dogs do. Like me, she loved leather handbags and shoes, but unlike me, her love of them bordered on obsession. I can’t tell you how many times we apologised to guests who’d abandoned bags or shoes near the door only to watch our cat making love to them – the handbags and shoes, that is. She’d rub up and down on them and purr like a mad little puss. When I planted potted herbs on our balcony, she’d took to having a morning constitutional where she’d stop and smell each herb. I didn’t know at the time that I was planting a garden for her, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she thought. She also thought birds and cats on TV were real, and would go around the back of the TV looking for them.

She was a total cat – she’d watch birds playing on the balcony and make this weird sound – ‘ah-ah-ah-ah’. I’d never heard a cat do that before Lucy, but apparently, it’s very catlike. She was terrified of thunder and fireworks, and would run into our bedroom and shove her fat little bottom all the way under the bed. We’d have to coax her out afterwards. She would plant herself in the middle of the living room, stick her leg in the air and start licking her nethers. When we’d laugh – as we did pretty much every time – she would stop and look at us as if to ask ‘What?!’ and then continue. She loved to be brushed. It was one of the two words she knew – the other was her name. Until she got sick, she’d come when called. She loved the red dot, the feathered thing on the end of the string, playing with shoelaces (we used to say that she was helping us get dressed), and watching her favourite TV show called ‘The Back of the Red Couch’.

Lucy was fun to have around, loving and sweet, and she made us laugh. She was family and we will miss her. Here’s to you, Miss Lucy, and 5 wonderful years together.

 

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I’m hopeless at being helpless

sandybarker

catPatient

I am writing this one-handed and I’m wearing pyjamas in the middle of the day.

Eleven days ago I had a shoulder reconstruction and since then I’m sporting bandages on my left shoulder and a sling. I have at least 3 more days off work in ‘complete rest’ mode, and then maybe I can start back at work doing light duties from home.

I have pain in my shoulder and arm and it is different day to day and hour to hour – throbbing, dull ache, sharp at the site of my stitches, not painful at all. They gave me really powerful painkillers, but these make me nauseous, so I’ve been OTC-only for a while.

The shoulder pain was expected and actually doesn’t bother me as much as limitations imposed on me as a patient recovering from shoulder surgery. I mean, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of stuff, but I wasn’t prepared for how that would affect me.

I don’t like it.

I am getting better at asking for help as I get older, but it is still hard for me. It is not a pride thing as much as me not wanting to trouble others with my needs. It’s probably a little bit of a pride thing too, because I am fiercely independent and self-sufficient. I do know the limits of my abilities and at those limits is where I ask for help, but the limits have suddenly and drastically changed.

Things you can’t do when one arm is in a sling and you can’t get your bandages wet and you can’t really lean forward and it hurts if you move too much:

  • make a meal – even putting cereal and milk in a bowl – this is a two-handed activity if you’ve been doing it that way your whole life, and can go very wrong if attempted one-handed – in the mornings, I sit at the breakfast bar and tell my boyfriend, Ben, how many flakes to put in the bowl – I am usually chief cook in our home so it’s frustrating not to be able to whip up dinner in 10 minutes like I usually do
  • wash my hair – the 1000s of times I took this simple activity for granted! My recent hair washing experiences have included plastic wrap, masking tape, the laundry sink, and for the first time ever, Ben
  • putting my hair into a pony tail – girls with long(ish) hair, try it – or even just mime doing it – you can’t do it alone. Ben can now do a neat low pony, but we have yet to graduate to the more advanced messy bun
  • drying off after a bath – when you’re an adult, bath time should be fun or a luxury – at the moment, it is neither – it is solely perfunctory – I feel like an overgrown toddler, needing help to wash under my right arm and to dry my back and legs
  • typing – actually I can do this – it just takes a looooooong time
  • car doors and seatbelts – sure, I can open the car door one-handed, but when I did it hurt like hell – I realised how much that one action relays to my other shoulder, so in this condition, it’s best done by someone else so I don’t bust a stitch
  • opening jars, bottles, etc. – see ‘car doors’ above
  • washing dishes – see ‘opening jars’ above
  • walking – yep, walking hurts – you move a lot of your body when you walk, and here’s a shocker, your body parts are all connected! Ow!
  • carrying – you can can more with 2 hands together than with 1 hand x 2 – this means lots of trips when moving rooms – and see ‘walking’ above
  • working out – I know this is an obvious one, but daily exercise has become vital for my general wellbeing – it gets the kinks out of my body and my brain – I rely on the endorphins, I like being flexible and strong – it keeps the aches and the blues at bay
  • general chores and stuff you do around the house 50 times a day without thinking – I am bumping up against this one a lot

How have these limits on my self-sufficiency affected me?

If I’m honest, I’m a little blue. I don’t like being helpless. I am a doer. I get shit done. All I have gotten done in the last 11 days is read 4 novels, watch 3 complete series on Netflix, trawl Facebook and Reddit 3 times a day, and develop an excruciating headache that sent me to bed for 2 days.

And healing.

I am very busy healing, and even though my current state frustrates me, I know this is my number one priority. I must heal so I can get back to doing all the other stuff.

Very special thanks to my darling Ben who has become my left hand. And thank you to friends for visits and driving me to the doctor and helping me do stuff I can’t do by myself at the moment.

 

The hardest part is getting published

sandybarker

Writing a novel may seem like a big task. It is.

Start to finish, including chapter re-writes, incorporating feedback from trusted editors and reviewing the whole thing 3 times over, You Might Just Meet Someone took about 2 years. That’s 2 years alternating between intense labouring and equally intense procrastination.

You see, I love to write, but I don’t always feel like doing it. The majority of my job is writing – documents, training materials, reviews, editing – so when I get home from work, sometimes I don’t want to sit in front of another computer and do more writing. And of course when I get in the habit of browsing Reddit, watching Netflix or reading instead of writing regularly, it is easy to ignore the niggling voice in my head that says, “Sandy, this novel is not going to write itself.”

Well, it’s done now, and I have already started the outline for the sequel, but harder than writing and editing it, is getting it published.

Just like a novel doesn’t write itself, no one is going to knock on my door and say, “hello, I’m looking for a novel to publish. Do you happen to have one lying about in a drawer somewhere?”

No! It’s up to me. I have to get the word out!!

I need a publisher, or an agent, or both. Whichever one I get first will (probably) make it easier to get the other one, so I am working on getting a publisher and an agent at the same time. It’s a bit chicken and egg, really.

And you may not know this, but an aspiring author needs a brilliant book proposal, one that can be adapted for each potential publisher and agent, because they all want slightly different things.

Essentially, I need a detailed synopsis, a shorter synopsis, and a really brief synopsis – something that might appear on the back cover. Plus I need an engaging author’s bio which highlights my brilliance and my bankability, and to identify the target audience as well as competing titles – these are the books mine will sit next to on the shelf. Publishers and agents need to know what books are similar to mine – and in what way – as well as how mine is distinctive from other books.

I learned all of this from two incredibly brilliant women, Kerry and Jen from the Business of Books based out of Seattle. Between them they have written (and published) 40+ books, and because they both worked as publishers before they became authors they really know the biz of books. And they share what they know.

Publishing is a business and if I am going to make it my business, I still have work to do. Now begins the hard part.

 

 

 

Why Spectre Was a Giant Snore Fest

sandybarker

[Spoiler Alert!]

There’s no nice way to say this. Spectre is a silly and rather dull movie. Which for a HUGE Bond fan – particularly of the Daniel Craig era – is grossly disappointing. They say Craig is hanging up his Omega watch and bespoke suits and that they’ll be passing the Bond mantle onto someone else. Maybe that’s because this film was so silly and dull.

Let’s Talk About Sex

Bond has sex with two women in this film – the film’s first-ever Bond Woman, Monica Belluci, who is like a saucier, bedroom version of Nigella Lawson. Their scene was rather sexy – especially when compared with the nonsense that came later in the film – but there is absolutely no reason for it. She’s scared for her life, which Bond has saved, but she doesn’t seem particularly grateful about it, and I got the feeling she would have told him what he needed to know regardless of whether or not he’d stopped to check out her (incredibly nice) lingerie.

In fact, the sex makes him late for a VERY important meeting, which is the whole reason he is even in that part of the world. He’s being stupid – and Bond is not stupid. Reckless, sometimes, but never stupid.

The Bond Woman thing is a big deal, by the way. It is the first time in Bond history that Bond has seduced an older woman. Okay, Belluci is only a few years older than Craig, but still. And she really did rock that lingerie.

The other woman he has sex with is some blonde lady. I confess that I have yet to learn the actresses name, because she sort of blended into the background in every scene.

And of course she hates him when she meets him and sends him away and then he saves her life and she hates him some more and then they’re on a train, inexplicably dressed in the most beautiful clothes even though they’re most likely going to their deaths (cue the evil lair), and then they nearly  die, and then they have sex. In fact, they fight for their lives and then – both still impeccably dressed – they look at each other and say, “Now what.”

The ‘what’ is a cut-away edit to them tearing each other’s clothes off in a warmly-lit super spacious (i.e. non-existent) train cabin to SAXOPHONE music. Yes, really. And then of course she falls madly in love with him – not lust. Love. Good grief.

Bad Guys Always Lose

Christoph Waltz is the bad guy – this is a spoiler apparently, even though he is in the credits and all the previews, because for the first 15 minutes of his screen time, his face is hidden. This makes the big reveal – when Bond works out that the leader of this terrible faction is in fact his long-dead foster brother – a giant moment of tension and surprise. Only it isn’t. There is not ONE moment of tension or surprise in the whole movie – but I will get to that later.

Back to Waltz. I have seen him play one of the most horrifyingly evil basterds (sic) I’ve seen on films in years – (Inglorious Basterds, Nazi Officer), so he should be awesome as a Bond villain. Right?

Wrong.

He played the role as though he couldn’t have cared less. That’s not very scary. I’d say Waltz lost some credibility with this role – at least in my mind. And I adored him in Django – that performance leaves me in awe. Bleh.

Action!

There was some action, but nothing we haven’t seen done before – and better – in the Bourne films, the Mission Impossible films, Ronin, previous Bond films, The Italian Job, Fast and the Furious. Need I go on?

BO-RING! And having just re-watched Casino Royale, where that parkour chase scene at the beginning blew my mind again, I nearly fell asleep watching this film.

It was like watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles without the awesome script and terrific acting.

The plot

Is stupid. And makes no sense.

Fan Service

I heard that Spectre had a lot of fan service – these are juicy details there just because they will delight the fans. I was excited about this until I realised that most of it was directed at die-hard fans of the 1970s Bond films.

  • The Bond girl wears ridiculously impractical clothes for breaking into the evil villain’s evil lair, even though she knows she will likely have to run/fight for her life
  • Bond is strapped to some sort of torture device which makes no sense in the context of the plot (see above)
  • The evil villain has a white fluffy cat – yes really
  • The evil villain’s henchman doesn’t speak and he doesn’t die
  • There is a beautiful building on the top of a very pointy mountain
  • Bond never runs out of bullets but doesn’t carry extra ammo

Other Dumb/Annoying Things

  • When they destroy the evil guy’s lair – after the Scooby Doo-style confession of his giant evil plan – the destruction  seems to have no effect on the plan coming to fruition. This means that the evil plan needs to be stopped another way and that means the (stupid) trip to the desert on the train was pointless.
  • The style – the look – the feel – and the pace of the movie shifted drastically throughout. Sam Mendes couldn’t seem to make up his mind what kind of film he was making.
  • The (dumb) photocopied pictures of past characters in the finale. We’re supposed to believe that the evil villain is a BAZILLIONAIRE and he would stoop to using photocopied pictures? P-lease!
  • There were two secret hideouts for the same peripheral character. Que?
  • There were two bad guys and the second one was REALLY obvious from the outset. Why?

The good bits

  • The clothes were nice
  • The locations were nice
  • The Aston Martin was nice
  • Daniel Craig, nice to look at
  • M and Q and Moneypenny got some cool spy stuff to do
  • The theme song was rather nice
  • There were two (intentionally) funny bits – I liked those

 

You Might Just Meet Someone Chapter Two

sandybarker

On the flight to Athens, I was stuck in the middle seat between a husband and wife, one who wanted to sit by the window and the other who wanted the aisle. They spent the entire flight talking across me as though I was some sort of aeronautical soft furnishing. When I politely asked if they wanted to sit together, they scoffed. “Oh no, Love, we’re perfectly fine sitting apart.” I wasn’t perfectly fine. I was developing a tension headache, but they didn’t seem to care about that.

I figured if I was going to survive jet-lag, fatigue and my growing frustration with my seat-mates without having some sort of mid-air meltdown, I was going to need more tea. Tea calms me, tea revitalises me, tea is a miracle drink – tea drinkers will understand what I mean. Thank goodness it was a British Airways flight, because I knew they’d have the good stuff – proper English tea. I rang my call button three times during a four-hour flight and every time was to ask for more tea. This of course meant I had to pee twice, but I considered those few moments of silence a reprieve from Douglas and Sharon’s non-stop duologue.

By the time we landed at Athens airport, I knew every detail about their ungrateful adult children, their annoying neighbours – on both sides – and their suspicion of the newly re-elected government. Sure, I like to have a good whinge about things from time to time, like long-haul flying for instance, but these two took it to another level. I felt like writing to the IOC and suggesting that they add complaining to the Olympics. Maybe the Poms could finally win a haul of gold medals.

I made a point of losing them as soon as we got inside the terminal. I leapfrogged around other English tourists, striding purposefully towards immigration where I discovered two things: a massive queue and a slew of ridiculously handsome Greek men in uniforms. Apparently, the Greek government had hired a flock of Adonises – or is the plural, Adoni? – to man the immigration booths. This discovery made the first one much less annoying, and I waited patiently in line while appreciating some of Greece’s natural wonders. When it was my turn I handed my passport over and endured the handsome man’s scrutiny as he weighed up the Sarah in my photograph – slicked-back hair, no makeup and glasses – with the goddess in front of him.
As I met his gaze, I was glad I had kept the cabbie waiting a few minutes so I could tame my wayward curls into the semblance of a style and put on some blush and mascara. It’s not like I thought the immigration guy and I were going to run away together, but at least I didn’t look like a complete hag. My heart jumped a little at the sound of the Greek entry stamp being added to my passport. Then it jumped again when the Adonis smiled and welcomed me to his country. Moments in and I was already in love with Greece.

 

After being so warmly welcomed into the country, I found baggage claim, hauled my backpack off the baggage carousel, silently grateful that it had made the trip along with me, and headed through the doors into the transit lounge. The first thing that struck me was how hot it was. The second was the amount of smoke in the air; it looked like the transit lounge was on fire. Maybe I’d been a little hasty in declaring my love for Greece.

I mean the Greeks invented the wheel for crying out loud – and democracy! How had they not discovered air-conditioning or passed laws to ban smoking inside? I stifled a cough and peered through the haze. Spying an empty chair in a far corner, I made a beeline to stake my claim, which would have been easier had I not been lugging my luggage. I was too late. A different middle-aged British couple sat their duty free bags down on my seat, and then stood next to it complaining about how hot it was. Olympic-level whinging strikes again! Oh you dastardly Poms.

Changing directions, I headed to the nearest empty piece of floor. I plonked down my bag, and plonked myself down next to it, already starting to hate it a little. Why had I packed so much? Did I really need three bikinis?

I was also carrying a small leather backpack, which was stylish enough to be my handbag, and practical enough to be my day-pack. It had been a splurge right before I left for my trip, along with my duty-free Prada sunglasses. I regarded it lovingly, not caring if my backpack got jealous. Deep red-brown leather, brass clasps. It really was a thing of beauty. And, importantly, a handbag didn’t cheat on you with a slut from yoga class.

Four hours later – why did I think that a Greek island-hopper would depart on time? – I was seated in a very small plane next to a very large man who seemed to be turning into Kermit the Frog before my eyes.

“Sorry, ma’am” he said. Texan, I thought, identifying his origin from the two words – I’m talented like that. “I don’t usually fly on such small planes. I’m afraid I may need to get up to use the restroom.” Even in the throes of the worst air sickness I had ever witnessed, he was using his manners. Texans are so polite.

“Of course!” I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood in the tiny aisle. “How about I sit near the window, just in case you need to get up again?”

He nodded and then rushed up the aisle to the only bathroom on board. Poor man. At least it was a short flight. As I strapped myself into the window seat, I heard a chorus of ‘Oooohs’ from the other passengers. I looked out my window as the plane banked and there it was, Santorini, a crescent of rusty land in a sea of deep blue. It was stunning. I added my own involuntary ‘Oh’ to the voices of the others, as I felt a broad, relaxed smile spread across my lips.

“Sorry ‘bout that, ma’am,” I heard over my shoulder as the Texan sat down.

“Look,” I said, leaning back so he could see past me.

“That’s mighty pretty.”

I nodded in reply.

In just over a day I’d gone from the frenzy of three international airports to an idyllic island in the middle of the Aegean Sea. As we arced across Santorini on our approach to the airport, I could barely wrap my brain around how beautiful it was. The rugged red land contrasted with the brilliant blue of the sky and the stark white and creamy pastels of the buildings. It was so perfect, it took my breath away. By the time we landed I was practically hyperventilating.

Santorini’s airport terminal was kind of kitschy; it looked a Vegas hotel circa the 1970s. Not that I’d hung out in Vegas in the 70s – I was barely even alive then – but I’d seen enough movies to get that 70s vibe from the terminal. Inside it was cool and clean – that’s cool as in temperature, rather than hipness, although it had a little of that too. I noticed that everyone moved at a more leisurely pace than they did in the constant chaos of Sydney, as though someone had slowed a video playback just ever-so-slightly. I liked it.

My bag seemed to have gained even more weight in transit. I hefted it from the baggage carousel and said goodbye to the nice Texan. Emerging into sunshine, I waited in line for a taxi. And I didn’t mind – the waiting, that is. The island was already calming me. While I waited, I breathed in deep breaths of Santorini’s clean, briny air. It was the exact opposite of Athens’ air – or London’s for that matter.

Before I knew it, it was my turn. The taxi pulled up, the taxi driver got out and took my bag, stashing it in the boot, and I climbed into the backseat, giving him the name of the hotel I was staying at. These were all normal activities. And then we took off.

My state of Zen disappeared in an instant. Apparently, the taxi driver hadn’t gotten the memo about chilled-out island life.

The ride from the airport to the hotel was nothing less than a harrowing experience as we tore down narrow, winding dirt roads doing Mach II. The rugged landscape suddenly lost its appeal. In a crappy car going too fast, it felt more like I was in a car rally than on vacation. Only an hour before I’d been sitting in a teeny, tiny plane crossing the sea, and I’d felt much safer then, than I did in the back of that cab.

We pulled up at the hotel and I thanked Zeus that I’d arrived in one piece. I begrudgingly paid the cabbie and climbed out of the car. He retrieved my bag from the boot and before I knew it, he was gone, speeding off to the next fare, a cloud of dust in his wake.

I stood for a moment, regarding my location and catching my breath. I was in the heart of Fira, and with the amount of whitewash I could see, there was no mistaking that I was in Greece. I did a little self-congratulatory dance to celebrate being there. Greece!

Around me people ambled along the road, stopping to have leisurely and lively conversations with their neighbours. Across the road there were congregations at a handful of tavernas, each indistinguishable from the next to my uneducated eye. People sat at tables playing chess and cards, and smoking. Some drank coffee, some sipped clear liquid from tiny glasses. Ouzo, most likely. Laughter and chatter filled the air around me.

It occurred to me that it was the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. Didn’t these people have jobs? Maybe the whole town was on vacation. Like I was. I was on vacation. The realisation hit me again, a wave of wonderfulness. The giddy dance took over again without me having to conjure it.

I picked up my bag from the dusty curb and walked up the path of my hotel. Inside, the small lobby was cool and the scent of bougainvillea wafted in from an open window. A lovely woman, who spoke little English and had a warm smile, greeted me at the front desk. After a simple check in – I showed her my passport and she gave me a room key – she led me to my small, neat room. It was basic, but I didn’t need anything more. I was only staying for one night.

It did smell slightly like a toilet, but I’d been to Greece enough times in my touring days to expect that. The Greeks don’t flush toilet paper; it goes into the little bin next to the toilet. Just like air-conditioning and not smoking inside, some modern practices had escaped the modern Greeks. It meant that many hotel rooms smelled just like mine. It was a minor blip. I’d survive.

I wouldn’t, however, survive much longer if I didn’t eat; I was dangerously close to starvation. Well, not actual starvation, but my appetite was definitely robust. Two packets of airplane biscuits and a gallon of tea did not a balanced diet make. And especially not when there was Greek food all around me just waiting to be eaten.

I stashed some valuables in my room safe and packed my leather bag for dinner followed by an evening of exploring. Leaving the hotel, I eyed the tavernas I’d seen across the road on arrival. The crowds in two of them were thinning out, as though the jobless folks suddenly had somewhere to be. At the third one, chess sets and ashtrays were being replaced with platters of food, and it looked like it was filling up with local diners. I consider that good sign whenever I travel, because locals tend not to go out for crappy food.

I crossed the road and took a seat in the taverna at a table for two near the kitchen. The smells coming out of there were unbelievable. My stomach grumbled with appreciation. A waiter appeared and stood patiently while I tortured him with my terrible Greek. I started with ‘kalimera’ – good morning – before correcting myself. “No, sorry, kalispera.” He just smiled and spoke to me in English.

“Good evening. I am Dimitri.”

“Hello Dimitri. I need horiatiki,” I said, not even looking at the menu. I knew it would be on there, because it’s what we non-Greeks call a Greek salad. “And lamb, do you have lamb?” He gave me a funny look. Of course they had lamb. “And giant beans.” I love giant beans. It’s a dish, by the way. I mean, the beans are big, but it’s essentially a stew made with beans. It’s the second-best thing in the world after horiatiki.

Dimitri gave me a smile and a nod, and then he offered me some retsina to go with my dinner. Greek wine. I declined. I am what you might call a wine lover, and as a wine lover I can’t really abide retsina. “I’ll have a Mythos, parakalo.” Greek beer – much more drinkable.

The salad came to the table within minutes and it was truly a thing of beauty. It looked like it belonged on the cover of a foodie magazine and it smelled incredible. I piled up my fork to get the perfect first bite. As soon as it hit my mouth I groaned with pleasure, half-expecting to hear, ‘I’ll have what she’s having,’ from the next table.

I need to explain something important.

The Greeks grow the best tomatoes in the world. And I know that I exaggerate sometimes, but I mean IN THE WORLD. Add to the best tomatoes in the world, some freshly-made feta, super virginal olive oil, fresh fragrant oregano, Kalamata olives grown in luscious Greek sunshine, and all the other bits of goodness that go into a horiatiki, and you have the one thing I could eat every day for the rest of eternity.

The lamb and beans arrived next and the lamb was so tender I could probably have cut just by staring at it. The giant beans were particularly huge and the sauce was rich and tangy. I glanced around me as I finished off all three plates. The taverna was now full – a few travellers like me, but mostly locals, who obviously knew where the good stuff was.

The food had impressed me and then the bill arrived. I thought it was wrong, but Dimitri assured me that 14 Euros was correct – for three plates of food and a beer. I wished I was staying on Santorini longer; I’d have happily eaten at that taverna every night for weeks.

When I’d planned the trip, everything I read about Santorini mentioned the sunset to end all sunsets at Oia, which is a tiny town perched on the northern point of Santorini’s crescent. With only 24 hours on the island, I’d added the Oia sunset to my list, and when I mentioned it to Dimitri after I paid my bill, he kindly he wrote down directions – in Greek and English. Smart.

Armed with my mud map and a full belly, I set off from the taverna to find the local bus station and the bus to Oia. It wasn’t difficult – Dimitri’s instructions were perfect – but to call it a bus station would have been generous. It was a dusty square filled with dusty buses.

I bought a ticket from a man who sat inside a grubby booth by holding up one finger and saying ‘Oia.’ He had a cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth, which he managed to inhale from without using his hands. Talented. I picked my bus out of the line-up – using Dimitri’s directions again – and climbed aboard.

As I waited for the bus to leave, I watched the stream of people passing through the square. I noticed a tall guy in a baseball cap, hefting a large duffle bag and trying to get directions from the passing locals. No one was stopping and he seemed frustrated. American. I could pick an American out at a hundred paces. He was a pretty cute American too.

He was tall – over six foot, I guessed – dressed in long shorts and a T-shirt. The T-shirt was just fitted enough to see that he had a lean, muscular body. Dark brown curls peeked out from the cap, and although he was wearing sunglasses and I couldn’t see his eyes, he had a general ‘good-looking’ thing going on. I would have stepped off the bus to help him had I not already bought a bus ticket to the sunset to end all sunsets. Not that I knew my way around any better than he seemed to, but he looked like he could use a friendly face.

The bus lurched forward – I hadn’t even noticed the driver get on – and my last glimpse of the tall, cute American was him throwing his duffle on the ground and sitting on it dejectedly. Poor guy. I promised myself that if he was still there when I got back, I’d go talk to him.

The sunset was beautiful by the way. I don’t know that I’d call it the best in the world – I mean, I’m from Australia and we do sunsets spectacularly well there – but I enjoyed it, especially the atmosphere. Within the town of Oia, smooth, curved, whitewashed walls of some houses contrasted with rugged stone walls of others. Walkways and steps separated the homes, and yards were marked with either rock walls or white picket fences. In the warm milky light, whitewash took on the colour of cream. It was a quaint and quintessentially Greek town.

I found a little spot where I could sit on one of the steps and gazed westward, taking it all in. The cooling evening air was deliciously fragrant, floral notes mixed with sea air. I took a slow, deep breath. Around me were hundreds of people, and the atmosphere was abuzz with chatter while we waited for the sun to set. Then in a single unspoken moment the crowd quietened; it was time. The spectacle changed second by second, gold slipping into amber, then crimson, then inky purples and blues.

I could almost feel my heartbeat slowing down.

When the sun disappeared completely and the last rays of light retreated, the crowd applauded as though we were at the symphony and the concerto had just ended. I clapped along with those around me. When in Santorini…

Neil would have loved that, I thought.

What?! Where the hell did that come from? Who cared what Neil would or wouldn’t love? I didn’t. And I certainly didn’t need my mind ambushing me with such disturbing, random thoughts! All of the serenity I had felt as I watched the sun seep below the horizon vanished instantly. Bloody Neil. I got up, dusted myself off and followed the others up the steps and onto the road back to Santorini.

Thankfully, a bus was waiting at the same place we’d been dropped off, and I climbed aboard along with about eighty other people. No seat for me this time – it was standing room only – but the tightly-packed group was in good spirits. As we jostled along the bumpy road back into Fira, I held on tightly to a hand rail and tried to shake residual thoughts of Neil from my brain. To distract myself, I trained my ears to the conversations around me, listening to the various languages and accents.

I was glad when the bus depot appeared in the glow from the headlights. Exhaustion had set in – both physical and emotional – and I desperately wanted sleep. I stepped off the bus, oriented myself and set off for my hotel. And yes, I forgot all about the cute American.

Back in my room, I locked the door behind me, slipped off my already travel-worn clothes and put on my pyjamas. Still concentrating on not thinking about Neil, I focussed instead on the next day, the day I’d start the sailing trip, and damn it if those wretched nerves didn’t come flooding back.

What if I don’t like anyone on the trip? What if they don’t like me? What if this whole thing is a complete disaster?

“Shut up, Sarah,” I said aloud. I was annoyed with myself. I’d had a good dinner, seen a nice sunset, and suddenly random thoughts of doom and gloom were sending me into a spiral. I had to change tack.

“You need to get organised, Sarah,” I said out loud, and I was right. I love getting organised; it is to me what meditation is to other people. I knew that if I put things in order, I’d exorcise the demon nerves. It’s my tried and tested method of crisis management, particularly if the crisis is made-up.

Except that when I emptied my bag out onto my bed, I made a sickening discovery. My wallet was gone. I frantically ran my hand around the inside of the bag, but it was definitely empty. I sifted through all the things on the bed – hat, diary, pen, camera, lip balm. No wallet.

It was gone. Suddenly, the crisis was real and not drummed up from my imagination.

But how had I lost my wallet?

I reviewed the past couple of hours out loud. “I had it at the taverna, because I paid for dinner. Maybe I left it there? No, because I also paid for the bus ticket and that was after dinner. Do I remember putting my wallet back in my bag? Yes. Did I have it when I took my camera out of my bag in Oia? I think I remember seeing it then.”

That meant that I’d lost it on the bus ride back. But I hadn’t taken it out of my bag. I hadn’t even opened my bag. Oh my god! Someone stole my wallet from my bag. While it was on my back! I started crying as the panic kicked in. “Fuck!”

Realising I was wringing my hands, I stopped and shook them out. “Okay, think Sarah. What was in the wallet? What do you need to do?” I willed myself to breathe, slowly, consciously, in, out. I stood in the middle of my room and closed my eyes. The safe! Of course, I had put valuables in the safe before I went out. I rushed to open it.

I took out a credit card, a wad of cash and – thank god – my passport. That meant I’d lost my other credit card, about 20 Euros and my driver’s license. “Shit.” I was going to need my driver’s license to rent scooters on the islands. Well, maybe they would let me rent one with just my passport. It was Greece after all, and they weren’t exactly sticklers for that sort of thing. At least the thief hadn’t gotten my passport.

I tried to remember who was around me on the bus, but I hadn’t registered any faces. We’d all been packed in there so tightly and I’d watched out the front window of the bus most of the trip. I sighed and sat on the bed. I needed to call my bank in Australia and cancel the credit card. I was grateful that although my room smelled like a toilet, it had a phone.

After two aborted attempts to get the international operator to put through a collect call to my bank, I finally spoke to a person who could cancel the card and send me a replacement – to London, where I wouldn’t be until most of my travelling was over. At least that was something, I supposed. I did have my back-up credit card, the one with the ridiculously exorbitant fees for taking out cash and spending in foreign currencies, but at least I wasn’t completely stranded.

I hung up the phone and laid back on my bed. Exhaustion had devolved into full-blown fatigue. I flicked off the lamp and watched as the light seeping in from the street outside danced across the ceiling. My body was exhausted, but my mind was on high alert. I wanted sleep, but instead I lay there for a long time wondering what else could go wrong. Sarah’s travel curse had struck again.

 

I woke suddenly, not knowing where I was, and smacked the crap out of my travel alarm to shut it up. God, I hated that thing. I looked around the room and recognition seeped into my fuzzy brain. I was in Santorini. A smile alighted on my face.

Then I remembered I had been robbed the night before and the smile vanished.

It had been a restless night. Falling asleep had taken forever. And then there was the nightmare. I was lying in my bed in Sydney in the middle of the night and backpackers were robbing my flat while I pretended to be asleep. No prizes for guessing why I dreamed that.

Dread washed over me as I recalled the details of the dream, and then again as I remembered the moment I’d emptied my bag onto my bed the night before. “Oh Sarah!” I admonished myself out loud. “Put your big-girl knickers on and get over it. Everything is going to be fine from now on!”

Surprisingly, giving myself a good talking to was actually effective. Ignoring the fact that I was now talking to myself on a regular basis, I threw back the covers, showered in my smelly bathroom, and got dressed in a flowery blue and white skirt and a white top with spaghetti straps. I had a big day ahead of me and some bad luck to turn around, and I wanted to look good. Plus, the better I looked, the better I felt. What is it that they say? Fake it ‘til you make it?

I tried to make some sense of the mass of curls on my head, but they refused to behave. Sometimes my curls want their own way, and sometimes I just have to let them have it. I opted for what I hoped was a sexy-messy ponytail and called it good. Then I looked in the mirror and told myself again that everything was going to be fine. I’d spend the morning sightseeing, have something to eat, and then meet up with the people from the sailing trip in the afternoon.

An hour later, I’d had a basic breakfast on the go, a sweet bun of some sort, and was deep in the heart of Fira’s labyrinth of walkways, exploring. Okay truth be told, I was shopping. Not that I’m one of those women who lives to shop or anything, but there was something cathartic about buying myself a new wallet. I also found a beautiful beaded bracelet for Cat. But wanting to see a bit more of Fira than the insides of shops, I stowed my purchases in my beloved bag and escaped the rabbit warren of stores.

There’s a walkway that runs along the ridge of Fira like a spine, and I followed it south. A whitewashed campanile and cupola soon stood out high above the tops of other buildings, and in moments I was standing in front of an enormous church. Its imposing façade comprised a dozen archways either side of a long covered walkway.

From touring days, I knew not to go into a church in Greece with bare arms, as it’s considered disrespectful. I didn’t have anything with me to cover mine, so I had to settle for admiring it from the outside. It didn’t take that long. It was big, it was impressive and it was white. It was also a church and being in Greece, I was bound to see another hundred of them before I left the country.

Even more spectacular than the architecture was the view behind me of the caldera. I walked over and cautiously perched on the low, wide stone wall – also whitewashed. I peered out over the town, marvelling at how it clung fearlessly to the cliff face. It was an exquisite sight.

The town below was dotted with several bright blue pools, each surrounded by beach umbrellas. I could see white-clad waiters making the rounds to sun-loungers, delivering cocktails. Rich people, I thought. That’s where the rich people stay.

At the bottom of the cliff, I could make out the old port. From there, a stream of donkeys ferried people back up to the top of the zigzag staircase. For a moment I considered a donkey ride, but then I looked down at my outfit and decided against it.

“Where are you from?” I heard from behind me.

Somehow I knew that the voice was directed at me. I turned and saw that its source was an extremely handsome man in his late forties, sitting on a bench about fifteen feet away. He was wearing a linen suit and smoking a slim cigar, his whole look a throwback to a more elegant era. He regarded me while he drew from the cigar, and for some reason I felt compelled to answer him. Maybe it was because of his eyes, which crinkled around the corners. I liked crinkling eyes.

“Australia.”

“Of Greek ancestry?” I couldn’t place his accent, and I could always place the accent, but I guessed that it was somewhere in Europe.

I felt a twinge in my stomach – the good kind – as he watched me.

“No.” It wasn’t the first time I had been asked that. Greek, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Lebanese. I always considered questions about my heritage to be compliments. People didn’t ask you if you had a specific heritage if they meant to insult you. Imagine someone saying, “Are you Greek, because they’re all so ugly, just like you?”

He smiled, and the crinkles intensified along with my twinge. I regarded him back, somehow flooded with self-confidence. “You’re very beautiful,” said the extremely handsome man.

I tossed my sexy-messy ponytail and allowed a smile to play across my lips. “Thank you,” I replied, not flinching under his deliberate stare. This was some advanced flirting. I was quite proud of myself.

“Have lunch with me.” It was a statement, not a question. Smooth.

“Maybe,” I said, as though I was actually considering it.

“I know a very nice place around the corner. Excellent seafood. Ellis, it’s called. We’ll eat, have some wine. And you’ll tell me where those beautiful looks come from.”

My brain had a quick-fire discussion with itself. Stay? Go? Skip lunch altogether and spend the afternoon making love with this beautiful stranger? I was flattered – of course I was – I’m a human woman with a pulse and he was gorgeous. Reason won out, however. It would be time to meet my tour group soon.

Or maybe I was hiding behind reason, my confidence merely bravado.

I started to walk away, but called over my shoulder, “Perhaps.” I wanted to leave it open in case I got around the corner and changed my mind. He was super sexy.

“Two o’clock. See you there.”

And then I did something incredibly cool. I faced him, and walking slowly backwards blew him a kiss. Then I turned and walked away. How awesome was that? I’d never done anything like that – well, not for a long time, not since touring days, but that was a whole different Sarah. It was fun to tap into the sassy girl who once got up to no good. I hoped that he’d watched me go. There was a little pep in my step as I continued my meandering exploration of the town.

When two o’clock came, I was not having a leisurely seafood lunch with a silver fox who wore a linen – and I wasn’t off somewhere making love with him either. Instead, I was back at Fira’s not-so-charming bus depot. This time, however, I had my backpack as well as my little bag, and no instructions written in Greek. All I knew was that I needed to get to Vlychada Marina within the next couple of hours to meet my sailing group.

After a false start – I got on the wrong bus and only realised when I heard all the tourists around me talking about Red Beach – I sat on what I hoped was the right bus awaiting a departure that was going to be sometime in the next 45 minutes. Apparently in Fira bus timetables are merely a suggestion, a loose approximation of a schedule. ‘Greek time,’ it was called.

While I waited, I thought back over my day. It had already made up for the previous night’s theft. After my encounter with the silver fox, I walked down the wide zigzag stairs to the old port. It was a tricky exercise, because of the donkeys. When they are not taking people to the top of the island, they are lined up along the stairs, with their asses out. I don’t trust any equine creatures I don’t know, especially when I have to navigate around their behinds. I can report that made it to the bottom without getting kicked in the ass by an ass with its ass out.

The old port was bustling with activity and I spent about half an hour watching people arriving on little wave-jumpers from the cruise ships. There seemed to be a specific clientele aboard those ships, and from what I saw I didn’t think cruising would be my kind of thing. I’d need to age a few decades and make a shitload more money for a start.

I’d planned on a quick lunch before I headed to meet the people on my trip, so just before one o’clock I took the funicular to the top of the island, and set off for my little taverna. I’d left my big bag at the hotel and could pick it up after lunch on my way to the bus – a perfect plan. It was also perfect, because I got to eat that delicious food again.

My attention was drawn back to the bus when a skinny middle-aged man wearing a tweed cap jumped on board, sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Just as the bus was pulling away, I heard a cry of “Wait!” and guess who literally jumped onto the bus as the doors were starting to close? Not the silver fox – I doubt he would be the type of fellow to run for a bus – but the tall, cute American in the baseball cap.

You Might Just Meet Someone Chapter One

sandybarker

This is chapter one of a novel I have written. Feedback is welcome.

Chapter One

I woke up stiff and achy. I was pretty sure I had the beginnings of jetlag even though I was still in the air. It was that wretched mixture of queasiness and exhaustion. I hate flying long-haul. Let me correct that. I hate flying long-haul in economy. Flying across the world when I’ve been upgraded to business class is awesome. I can highly recommend it. But this wasn’t one of those times.

I checked my watch. I had slept – if you want to call it that – for five hours. That may sound like a lot on a plane, but I’d started counting when I left Sydney 26 hours before. There was still two hours to go before we landed in London, but I knew I had no more sleeping in me. I was annoyingly wide awake. I yawned a big, ugly yawn, the kind I usually reserve for solitary moments. It was one of the few benefits of sitting in a cabin full of people I’d never see again once we landed.

I stretched my neck from side to side and pushed my palms into my eye sockets. My eyes felt like they wanted to be anywhere but inside my head. I dug around in my seat pocket for eye-drops, tipped my head back, and irrigated the poor things with soothing coolness. Resting my head back on the seat I longed to be in a bed – any bed – even a camp cot, and I hate camping. I just wanted to be lying flat so I could stretch out my aching muscles. I certainly did not want to be cooped up with all those strangers in a ridiculously uncomfortable seat, breathing that stale, nasty air.

Yup, I’d definitely woken up on the wrong side of the plane.

Still, crankiness was easier to deal with than the other thing on my mind. I was anxious and I had been for the past few weeks. Not about the flying. I’d flown enough times to treat a patch of turbulence with indifference, but when it came to the thousand and one other things that could go wrong while travelling, I was in full-blown neurotic mode.

To be fair, I had a reason to be anxious. Those thousand and one things – I’d experienced every single one of them – a flight delayed so long I’d had to sleep on the airport floor; flights cancelled altogether; missing hotel reservations; a stolen wallet; a suitcase that disappeared in transit; a suitcase that showed up a mangled mess and spilling its contents on the baggage carousel; malaria! Okay, so it wasn’t actually malaria. It was a slightly less insidious parasite, but it still knocked me on my ass for five days when I was supposed to be hiking the Inca Trail.

I looked out the window at the passing clouds. Whatever was going on, I should have been excited about the amazing trip I was about to embark on. I was on holiday! After an overnight stay in London, I was going to Santorini. That’s right, the Santorini of Greek island fame. So you see, in the big scheme of things, I had very little reason to feel so sucky.

Thank the Greek gods that my sister lived in London. I was thrilled I’d get to see her before I went to Santorini. I’d missed her like crazy. Plus, she’d tell me not to be such a drama queen, which I desperately needed to hear. I really didn’t want to start my holiday with a rash of nervous hives.

Catherine – or Cat, as I called her – had moved to England fifteen years before, aged nineteen. We only saw each other in the flesh every couple of years when she came home to Sydney or I went over to London. I knew that she would ease my worries – real or imagined – with a good hard dose of tough love. It was one of the many, many reasons she was my best friend.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and within a couple of hours of waking up, I’d had my breakfast of congealed eggs and cold toast, washed my face with a moist towelette, cleared immigration, and was waiting at baggage claim for my backpack. I was normally a suitcase kind of a girl, but I’d brought a backpack because the brochure had said to. Apparently, there wasn’t much space inside a yacht.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? The trip would start in Santorini, and then I was sailing around the Greek Islands for nine days. Not by myself – I don’t actually know how to sail a boat. The skipper would be doing the sailing, and there’d be some other people on the boat, but most importantly there would be me – on a yacht!

As I watched bag after bag pop out of the baggage shoot and tumble down onto the carousel, my nerves were replaced by something much better, excitement. I felt it bubble up inside me, as it really hit me that I was going to Santorini! In Greece! And then to a bunch of other Greek islands that I couldn’t remember the names of!

I could see myself on the bow of the yacht wearing my tangerine bikini and duty-free Prada sunglasses – which both looked fantastic on me, by the way – the wind whipping through my hair. I’d be like Leonardo DiCaprio – the king of the world! Well, queen anyway. Princess, at the very least.

Finally after a millennium, my bag appeared. Good thing too, as my yacht fantasy was devolving into something out of an 80s video clip. I grabbed for the handle, fumbled with it a bit, and then lugged it off the carousel. It wasn’t very big, but it was filled to the brim with the perfect Greek Island adventure trousseau: the obligatory summer dresses, the obligatory bikinis, and the obligatory Bermuda shorts, flowing skirts, cute tops, sunhat – all of the obligatories. I was a travelling cliché and I didn’t care. Did I mention I was going to Greece?

I dragged the bag over to one of the airport trolleys, swung it aboard, stacked my handbag on top and headed for the ‘Nothing to Declare’ exit. The only think I had to declare was that I was going sailing in the Aegean, and I didn’t think that the Customs agents gave a crap about that.

Cat was waiting on the other side of the door behind the silver railing. She and I look almost exactly alike, except that I am 5’6” and she’s five foot. She’ll say she’s 5’ ¾” but she’s not. And she got the good hair. Bitch. It’s the only thing I hate about her. While I’m stuck with masses of curls – the really curly ones – she has thick cascading, chestnut waves. Like I said, bitch.

She ducked under the railing, even though I don’t think you’re supposed to do that. “You’re here!” she declared, throwing her little arms around my neck. I stopped pushing the trolley and returned the hug. We stepped back and regarded each other.

“You look fab!” I declared, tears in my eyes.

“You too!” she lied.

“Like hell I do. I just got off a 28-hour flight. I look like crap.”

“You’re right, but that’s nothing a shower and a good night’s sleep won’t cure. Come on.” Then she took over pushing my trolley, which was probably a good thing because Heathrow is busy even at the slowest of times and I wasn’t up to running the gauntlet. I followed obediently as she parted the crowd with a series of slightly-rude, “Excuse me’s.”

Back in her flat, my hair wet from the best shower I’d ever had, a cup of tea in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other, I sat on one end of her couch while we caught each other up on the previous two years. Of course, we’d emailed and Facetimed – we weren’t estranged or anything – but those things are just not the same as actually being together.

It was a new flat since the last time I’d last been there. She lived with a guy and a girl, and apparently the guy was never there, always away on business or something. I was immensely grateful for this arrangement, because it meant I could sleep in his bed rather than on the couch. Still, even the couch was better than sleeping in an airplane seat.

The girl, Jane, would be home later, and Cat had planned for the three of us to have dinner in. She said she was cooking and I pretended to be excited about it. Beggars cannot be choosers. Still, after four meals of airplane food, I would have been happy with baked beans on toast, or even just the rest of the chocolate biscuits.

“So, tomorrow you fly to Athens and then what?”

“I pretty much fly straight to Santorini. The lay-over in Athens is a few hours and I thought about sightseeing, but knowing me if I left the airport I’d get caught in a Greek traffic jam on the way back and miss my island-hopper.”

“Probably.”

“Thank you so very much,” I replied my voice thick with sisterly sarcasm.

“I’m just agreeing with you. Sometimes you have shitty luck when you travel.” Sometimes. Understatement of the century. Still the excitement won out.

“Cat, can you believe I’m totally going to Santorini tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jealous.

“But listen, when I first decided to go, I read all the brochures and about a zillion online reviews and then I booked it. And I was really excited for a while, but it’s been months since then, so after a while it stopped feeling real, until now, until today. I can’t believe I’m really going!” I grinned at her, and then I stopped. “I’m not being too obnoxious, am I?”

She smiled. “No, I’m happy for you. Really.” Not so jealous after all.

“I wish you could come too.”

“So do I, but there’s no way I could have gotten time off.” Cat was a teacher like me, but while I was on holidays, her school year had just started.

“Probably for the best. As you said, I have shitty luck with this stuff. Maybe you’re escaping a huge disaster of a trip.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, every time I travel somewhere, things go wrong. Look at last time in Peru! Plus I won’t know anyone, and…”

“Sarah, a little bad luck does not a disaster make. And besides, you used to run tours – long ones – for fifty people. You know how to make friends.”

“I know, but…”

“But nothing. The occasional bad luck aside, you’re you. You always manage to come out of whatever life throws at you. You’re a very capable traveller, and you’ve been around –” I threw her a stern look. “You know what I mean, I mean you’ve literally been around. You’ve been practically everywhere. You’ll be fine.”

See? Tough love. Plus, everything she said made sense, but still…

“That’s true, but what if it’s just completely horrible?”

She laughed at me. I probably deserved it. “It’s not going to be horrible. It’s going to be amazing, and you’ll probably meet some really cool people.” Then she hit me with the one thing I didn’t want to hear. “You know, you might just meet someone.” And then she gave me that look.

And in that instant, my sister, my best friend in the entire world, joined the ‘poor Sarah needs a mate’ pity party.

“Did you really just say that?” I asked, shooting what I hoped were fiery daggers from my eyes.

“What?” She feigned innocence.

“You know exactly what!” I didn’t think it was possible, but her eyes got even bigger. “Do you know how many people have said that to me since I booked this bloody trip?”

She shook her head, her eyes like saucers.

“A bazillion!” Okay, so sometimes I tend towards the hyperbole. It was probably more like twelve, but in my world, that’s a lot.

“Oh-kay!” she retaliated. “I didn’t realise it was such a sore point. I hope you don’t meet anyone, especially not anyone who’s good looking and makes you laugh – especially not an all-round great guy. I hope all the men you meet are old and fat and ugly. No! Better yet, I hope there are no men. I hope you sail around the Greek islands with a bunch of middle-aged lesbians! I hope you go to Lesbos, and are surrounded with lesbians!!” She pinned me down with a so-there stare, and after a beat we both fell about laughing. My laughter then turned into a yawn.

“How’re you doing over there?” she asked.

“Good!” I replied with more enthusiasm than I felt. She looked dubious. “Okay, I’m shattered, but I need to stay up and get on European time. I’ll be fine. The tea’s kicking in.”

“Okay, so how about some more tea then?”

“Yes! Definitely more tea.” I drained the last of my mug and handed it to her. She took it into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

With her back to me, she asked “So, as long as you’re staying up for a while, do you want to talk about it now?” She turned to face me, looking mildly uncomfortable, like she was holding in a fart or something.

“About what?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“Neil.” I was right. I didn’t want to know. Neil was literally the last person on the planet I wanted to talk about. I would have put having a lively conversation about Hitler, or Stalin, or even Idi Amin over talking about the sack of shit I had called my boyfriend for the better part of a year.

“Not really.”

“Oh. Okay.” I could see the disappointment registered on her face. I could also see her mind working. “It’s just that…well, we never talked about it.”

She was right. I hadn’t wanted to talk to anybody about what happened with Neil – not my closest friends – not even Cat. It was just so humiliating.

“True, but…” I hesitated. But what, Sarah? But, please don’t make me relive it all now when I am so exhausted that I would rather stick a fork in my eye? I thought that, but what I said was, “Okay.”

She brought fresh cups of tea back to the couch and pushed the plate of chocolate biscuits towards me. She knew me so well. “So, what happened?” She folded her legs under her and looked at me expectantly.

“Well, Neil was a dickhead and it took me far too long to do anything about it.” I took a bite of a chocolate biscuit.

“But why did you stay with him?” That was a question I’d asked myself a thousand times. I swallowed the hard lump of biscuit.

“I really don’t know. Pretty much from the beginning, there were all these alarm bells going off in my head. And I dismissed them – time and time again. I pretended that it wasn’t weird that he wouldn’t see me during the week, or that he refused to meet my friends, or that he hated me telling him anything good that happened to me.” Cat’s brow furrowed. “You know when I got promoted to head of department?” She nodded. “Well, I told him about it and he said – and I quote – ‘Well, thanks for telling me. Now I feel like shit about myself. Nice one, Sarah.’”

“He did not!”

“He bloody did. And I still didn’t leave him.”

“Jesus. And who was this slapper that he cheated on you with?”

“A friend.”

“Hardly. Do I know her?”

“No, she was a new friend – from yoga – or at least, I thought she was my friend.”

“But, how did they meet?”

“They were both at a barbecue at my place. And I didn’t think anything of them talking to each other most of the night. I was just happy that he was finally meeting my friends. Apparently, it started right after that.”

“How did you find out?”

“I suspected something was up, because he was acting way weirder than usual, so I did something I never thought I would do – something awful.”

“What?” I could see the suspense was killing her, but I had never revealed this detail to anyone before. I sucked in my breath through my teeth. “I hacked into his email account.”

“Oh my God! That’s brilliant. How did you do that?” I laughed. I loved that rather than judging me, she was impressed that I’d done something so sneaky.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly hacking. I tried guessing his password. And I got in.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Second try. It was his footy team.”

“What a stupid idiot.”

“Yep. And there was an email trail of the whole thing. Months it had been going on – and get this, the whole time she was telling me to my face all about this new guy she was seeing.”

“Utter bitch!”

“I know!” I bit into the biscuit and chewed furiously; Cat was literally on the edge of her seat. “So, I confronted him about it, and he lied to my face and told me not to be ridiculous. I just looked at him – straight in the eye – and said, ‘I know for a fact that you’ve been fucking her, you lying cheat. That little slut can’t keep her legs or her mouth shut. So, this is over. Never contact me again. Oh, and I hope you catch her chlamydia.’ Then I left his place and that was it.” I shoved the rest of the biscuit in my mouth.

“That’s like something out of a movie.”

I nodded and swallowed. “Well, I did practice it a few times before I went over there. I knew he would deny it. Some of their emails to each even said how dumb I was for not knowing what was going on.”

“Oh, Sez.”

I started to tear up. I chanced a glance at Cat and she was looking at me as though I was a wounded puppy. I looked away and blinked the tears from my eyes. I wasn’t shedding any more tears for fucking Neil.

“He’s a stupid bastard!” she declared.

“Yes, he is. But I haven’t told you the best part. After I broke up with him, I kept logging into his email so I could watch the aftermath. And boy did it get ugly. He accused her of telling me and she denied it, he asked if she had chlamydia, and she was outraged. He called her names, she called him names back and eventually she told him to fuck right off. So in the end he lost both of us. So, yes, a stupid bastard.”

“And you were with him for what, a year?”

“Close – it was about ten months, but I still can’t believe I stayed as long as I did. I haven’t seen him since, though, so it’s all good. I booked this trip the week we broke up.”

“Well, I’m glad you booked this trip – no matter what drove you to it.” She paused, “Sez, you deserve way better, you know that, right?”

I smiled. I did know that, yes. I knew that I deserved far better than to be cheated on by every man who I had ever called my boyfriend, starting with my high school sweetheart and ending with Neil the dickhead.

“Anyway, I’ve kind of sworn off men since then. I just want to be on my own for a while. I’m not sure how long ‘a while’ is, but for right now, I think that’s best.”

“Oh.” She looked surprised, which after everything I had just told her, surprised me.

“I’m happily single.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or me.

“I’m sorry about what I said before – about you meeting someone on the boat.”

“It’s cool. I know that you’re just looking out for me.”

“And your vagina.”

“And my vagina? Well, that’s disturbing.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need my sister worrying about my vagina. I may have sworn off men, but my lady parts are just fine, thank you.”

“You’ve sworn off men? Entirely?”

“Well, not forever, but just until…” Until what, Sarah?

“Until what?” See? Even Cat wanted to know.

The thing was, I didn’t know myself what I was waiting for. I only knew that I wasn’t interested in meeting anyone. In fact, the thought of meeting someone new was utterly exhausting. And I had no idea when I’d be ready – or if I ever would.

A wave of fatigue hit me, sucking up my last ounce of energy. “Hey, would you hate me if I went and laid down for a bit? I can barely keep my eyes open.” I could see Cat mentally noting that I’d dodged her question.

“Of course not,” she said, letting me off the hook for the second time in as many minutes. “I changed the sheets in Justin’s room, so you’re all set. What time’s your flight in the morning?”

“Pft. Stupid o’clock. Six, I think.”

“Well, I’m a hundred percent sure that I’ll still be asleep when you take off, so it’s highly unlikely I’ll be up when you have to leave here. Want me to order you a car to Heathrow?”

“Sure. If I leave here at 4:15, will that give me enough time?”

“Should do. I’ll book it for you. I’m sooooo glad it’s not me.”

“You know, I’m just going to go lie down for an hour or so. I still want to meet Jane and have dinner with you guys.”

She looked at me with a knowing smile. “Sure, Sez.”

And that was the last thing I remembered when my horrid travel alarm intruded on my coma-like sleep at 3:30am London time. It was a good thing that when I went to lie down, I’d set it just in case. I tried to figure out how long I had slept, but I knew it didn’t matter. I felt even worse than when I woke up on the plane the morning before. I needed a hot shower, then a bucket of tea, and I only had forty-five – make that forty-three – minutes until my car arrived. Crap.

I only made the driver wait for five minutes, which I thought was pretty good considering how disoriented I was and how horrendous I felt. We made it to Heathrow in record time, as it seems that sometimes London does sleep and it’s at 4:30 in the morning. The sun was just lightening the sky as I forked over a small fortune in pounds to the cabbie. Then it was just me and my backpack and the behemoth that is terminal one of Heathrow. The nerves were back. I don’t know why on earth people refer to them as butterflies. They felt more like baby elephants to me.

Humbled. Exhausted. Replenished. Gratified.

sandybarker

“How was it?”

I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked this question since I returned from Cape Town, South Africa just over two weeks ago. It’s a perfectly valid question, as I was doing something quite unique. In February, I spent two weeks with 12 others from around the world, working with small children in the township of Vrygrond, as part of the 2015 Pearson Global Assist Fellowship. In the mornings, we worked in pairs and threes in one of the many crèches in and around Vrygrond, that are supported by the organisation, True North. In the afternoons, we gathered at True North’s community centre, where we partnered with Pearson South Africa to deliver a 2-week literacy program for 5 and 6 year-olds.

The 2015 Fellows (Courtesy of Romeo Ramirez)

For the first few days after I returned, I was fighting horrid jetlag and trying to catch up on the hundreds of emails that had filled my work inbox in my absence. The question was wasted on me then. “How was it?” ‘It was exhausting,’ I wanted to say. It’s been over two weeks since I landed in back in Melbourne and I feel like I am still catching up on sleep. However, ‘exhausting’ is not a satisfying answer for someone who wants to hear that it was amazing and life-changing. Initially I trotted out the usual clichés, just to hold everyone at bay until I could wrap my head around exactly what it was. At that point, I just didn’t know. I remember saying to my room-mate sometime in the middle of the fellowship, “I know there is a lesson to be learned here, but right now, I just don’t know what it is. I hope it will reveal itself when I’m home.”

And it has. Now that I have stepped back from it and have had time to reflect, I feel I can answer the question with greater depth: Exhausting, humbling, replenishing, amazing… Still, listing adjectives just doesn’t do the experience justice, so I will attempt a better response to the question here.

“How was it?”

Humbling

Most of the people I met had so much to give – their time, their experience, their laughter, their wisdom. I sat down with people from True North and Pearson South Africa who are literally saving the world, one school, one crèche, one child at a time. Their work matters. Their work can mean the difference between a child being protected and educated and fed, and being left out in the world to fend for themself. I worked side-by-side with teachers who are acutely aware that just beyond the lilac-painted fence of the crèche, there are knife fights, drug deals, prostitution and domestic violence – all on a regular basis. These women are educated, intrepid, and respected, because their work is noble and their work is hard.

The crèches in Vrygrond – and the extension of Vrygrond called Overcome, where I worked with fellows, Romeo and Esther – cater for babies through to 6 year-olds. The children are under the care of the teachers for up to 10 hours a day. They eat breakfast there – a tasteless rice gruel – and lunch – a protein-enriched rice. The children nap, play, draw, read stories, sing songs, and learn basics like shapes, colours, letters and numbers. In many ways, these crèches are just like any other childcare centre, except that they do all this with few resources, no sewerage, no electricity, and in a place that can be extremely dangerous.

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Lunch: rice with protein
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The play area for 45 children

Exhausting

The creche where I worked is called Little Lambs and in Overcome, there are no paved roads like in Vrygrond. The crèche has no electricity, a corrugated iron roof and walls to match. On the days when it is hot outside, it is even hotter inside. 45 children are packed into three small classrooms, and the children share the same toileting facility – a handful of non-flushable ‘potties’. The teachers use a port-a-potty, which takes up a large portion of the cemented play area.  Water trickles from two taps – one on the front wall of the crèche and one in the ‘kitchen’ where the children’s meals are prepared. When children are given water to drink, they share the same four or five cups, each taking turns and waiting for their classmates to finish. The cups aren’t washed in between children. The children are told to wash their hands after toileting and playing outside and before they eat – yet for washing, they all use the same bucket of water which is replenished only once a day – and there is no soap.

When I arrived each morning, I would set up an activity at one of the small tables, and the children would rotate to me in groups. Others worked on puzzles or crafts. There was a constant chorus of, “teacher, teacher, teacher,” as each child vied for a moment of my attention. After the table activities, they had a 1/4 of a piece of fruit and played outside on the rectangle of concrete. Then I’d usually read a story and sing songs with them – ones that had actions, so we could work on coordination and memory. ‘Incy-wincy Spider’ became an instant favourite. And there is nothing sweeter than hearing a group of children sing, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…” Then it was usually time for lunch. Before the meal, the children put their hands together, bowed their heads and sang, “Thank you, Father, for our food, many, many blessings, Amen,” to the tune of ‘Frère Jaques’. I suppose that they are blessed – or a least, fortunate – because although they often came to school in the same clothes several days in a row, and they may not have had an evening meal the night before, there are about 1500 children in Vrygrond and Overcome who aren’t in crèches at all.

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Play time for the babies’ class

The classroom I worked in was for three and four year-olds. Admittedly, they were a challenging group in the first few days, but they grew to learn that I didn’t put up with naughtiness and only paid attention to well-behaved children. ‘Time Out’ was my closest ally in the first few days, and I channelled the Super Nanny every time I said, “No. That’s unacceptable.” The naughtiest child in the class on day one – Daniel – was one of the oldest and biggest children in the class. He was loud, aggressive, and a bully. After the third Time Out in about 20 minutes, his teacher removed him from the room and took him in with the babies. He hated that and begged to come back to the class. For some reason and from then on, he worked very hard for my approval, and thrived when he was given important tasks, like handing out rice to the other children.

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Making puppets. Daniel in the centre.

We had two trips to the nearby park over the two weeks. To say that I was nervous about taking 3 dozen children through the dusty streets of the township to the park, was a gross understatement. Firstly, as strangers in the township, we fellows were not allowed to walk around outside the crèche without an escort by someone from the township – or someone from True North. Simply, we were not safe on our own, and we got more than a few sideways glances as we chaperoned the children from one place to another. Then there was the aforementioned violence, drug deals and prostitution. It wasn’t as though those activities rolled to a halt because the local pre-school was on the move. And there was the fact that the children had very little road sense; we spent most of the journey corralling them off the road as though we were herding naughty little sheep. Once at the park, they were fine. They ran and ran and ran – something they couldn’t do within the small confines of the crèche. By the time we got back to the crèche a couple of hours later, they were ready for a nap, and so was I.

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Snack time at the park: Teacher Geraldine hands out 1/4-pieces of fruit
The park
Heading back from the park

Replenishing

As a person who has opted not to have children of my own, I am sometimes asked if it’s because I don’t like children. That’s not why – and the reason why is a whole other blog post, so I won’t go into it here. The thing is, I love being around children. I loved being around these children. My time with them exhausted me physically – and even mentally at times – but it fuelled me emotionally. And what I learned from these little faces, was that it doesn’t matter where you go in this world, kids are kids. When I would sneak into the babies’ room – ’cause they were irresistibly sweet and affectionate – they would smile and reach their chubby little hands up to me. They loved clapping and singing, just like babies and toddlers anywhere, and they giggled with delight when tickled. And they craved cuddles, which I happily obliged them with.

The older children were funny, cheeky, inquisitive, and each saw themselves as the centre of the universe – just like any other group of 3 and 4 year-olds. They love being read to, cuddled, praised, and to sing. They wanted attention, affection, and someone to kiss it better. Over only two weeks, I went from a stern stranger to someone who could make them smile with just a wink or a silly face.

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With the cheeky little cuties – the bigger the smile, the cheekier the child

Gratifying

In the afternoons, we returned to True North’s community centre, where we each worked with two children on a pre-literacy program developed by a team at Pearson South Africa. The aim of the program was two-fold: to determine how much impact the proposed literacy activities could make in just 8 sessions (of 2 hours each), and to introduce a reading resource specifically designed for children who lived in townships. We worked from four newly-developed books, and the illustrations were just incredible. The children instantly engaged with the accurate representations of their world. Vrygrond is a place where most books they read are cast-offs, and are often irrelevant to their lives or inappropriate for their age group. It was incredible to watch their delight as each new page was revealed.

My two were called Trizza and Clever. Trizza was shy at the start of the project, but by the second week was comfortable enough around me to show her bossier side. She was extremely bright and sometime lost patience with Clever, who was slower to master the given tasks and concepts. Clever was a kind and warm child, gregarious and a leader on the playground, but I wondered if his moniker would set unreasonable expectations for him throughout his life. He struggled with some basic literacy tasks, but I admired that he never quit. He was often among the last in the room to complete a task, but he always wanted to finish. By the end of the two weeks, Trizza demonstrated an enhanced ability to recall details and sequences. Clever, who began the fortnight by roughly turning pages, creasing and tearing them, learned to respect books as something precious, and how to turn pages carefully. They were both excited to be given their own take-home copies of each of the four books. “Who are you going to show your book to?” I asked each time they got a new one. “My mummy and my sister,” Trizza would say. “My daddy!” replied Clever. Both of them smiled with pride at having something special to share with their loved ones.

Trizza and Clever
Trizza and Clever

Enjoyable

It was mostly hard work, but it wasn’t all hard work. After preparing lessons for the following day, we gathered to drink wine and talk about our lives back home. We told funny anecdotes about loved ones, and learned the names of each other’s children, best friends and significant others. We exchanged job descriptions, because although we all worked for Pearson, we had a diverse range of roles. We debriefed about the highs and lows of our days, laughing and crying in equal measure. Half of us got sick: colds, food poisoning, and a mystery illness which seemed to combine the two. We shared gifts and goodies we had brought from home, teased each other relentlessly, gave dozens of supportive hugs, danced to Madonna, and drove each other crazy by hogging the bathroom or using up all the internet.

Over the two weeks, we became a sort of mismatched, semi-dysfunctional, supportive, infuriating, and endearing family.

Over the 17 days I spent in Cape Town I also got to catch up with some dear friends who live there – 2 couples I know through previous travels. I managed several early morning workouts and yoga practices, which were particularly memorable because Cape Town sunrises are so breathtaking. Over one weekend, we all went sightseeing (organised by the fellowship) and wine tasting (organised by us). We were taken out to dinner several times to lovely restaurants, and I must say, South Africans do incredible seafood, and have an extensive (super-affordable) repertoire of delicious wine. And, after the fellowship wrapped up, four of us did an overnight safari at a private game park (this must be saved for its own post). And, most happily, I made some dear friends, including my roomie, Jenni, from Texas and my crèche-mates, Romeo and Esther.

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Roomies
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Romeo from Mexico – my crèche-mate

So, how was it?

It was something I will remember my whole life. I know how fortunate I am to have such an incredible opportunity.

FRIENDS

sandybarker

friends-tv-show

When FRIENDS burst onto the scene in the mid-90s I devoured it with an appetite I hadn’t had since TV shows were named after addresses in California. Of course, I wasn’t alone – it was a juggernaut. It was refreshingly funny, it was aspirational, it was Seinfeld for Generation X. I can still watch any episode and laugh out loud; it’s my go to viewing when I am stuck on a long flight and all the movies are rubbish.

And while so many people were saying, “I wish I had friends like that,” I actually did. My uni friends. I loved the show back then, because it depicted the types of friendships I had in my 20s.

We were a theatre crowd. We smoked socially, precociously kissed each other ‘hello’, and we danced until the wee hours, sweaty, grinning, wrung out and happy. We had sing-alongs where someone played a guitar – yes, really. We were poor, so we shared plates of chips, our beds – mostly just to sleep – and our cars. Someone would always let you crash at their place or give you a ride. We drank gallons of tea and instant coffee, and ate Vegemite toast for breakfast, capping off impromptu sleep-overs. We sipped on cheap wine – Chardonnay and Cab Sav – thinking we were so sophisticated. I remember a stint of gin and bitter lemon on hot summer nights.

We fell in and out of love with each other, and crushes changed almost weekly. We were beautiful and talented, self-conscious, eager, brilliant, and naive. We discussed important things with the passion and youthfulness of those who had only just discovered Marx, and Freud and Steinem. We still are beautiful, talented, and brilliant, by the way.

We numbered more than 6, but our large group was fluid and many of the friendships forged then still run deep today. The others are there, vibrant in my thoughts, nostalgic bursts of happiness. We have struck out into the world, spanning all continents bar one (I haven’t heard any news of old friends taking up residence in Antarctica – yet). We have become parents, partners, spouses, actors, teachers, writers, intrepid business owners, corporate wizkids, and culinary geniuses. We even have a real life Ross and Rachel who married in a glorious beachside wedding in the noughties, and now have two gorgeous little boys. And there are other lovely couplings from those days who have made lives and families together.

I freely admit to having the hugest crush on Ross – the one on TV, not his counterpart who married my best friend from uni. Ross was thoughtful and loving, incredibly smart, and sexy as anything; the man rocked a turtle neck. And the very best thing of all, is that in my late 30s, I met a guy like Ross. Only he’s also got the wit of Chandler. So, in other words, I hit the jackpot.

I love my uni friends – from afar when we’re apart, via Facebook (which for all its criticism, is my tether to friends around the world), and when we’re sitting down to coffee, or sharing a decent bottle of wine, or eating a great meal. It feels the same. The laughter is still deep, the love is still strong, and they are so very dear to me.