Lost in translation

I’ve always wanted to speak other languages.

At the end of primary school, when each member of my class got to pick a book as a reward for making it through the last seven years, I scouted the position of the French-English dictionary the day before we had to make our selection and headed straight for it as soon as our teacher said ‘go’.

Over the next four years I struggled admirably to convert a West of Scotland accent into a French one, until I was told if I wanted to study geography at higher level, I would have to drop French – one of the more ridiculous policies enforced by my school.

I kept up the French at night school for a while, then switched to Spanish as I considered it more compatible with the guttural sounds my voice naturally produced.

For the next seven years I worked my way through evening class after evening class, finally getting a university diploma and a degree of fluency that allowed me to discuss Basque politics and water shortages - if at a basic level and very, very slowly, in an accent more Greenock than Granada.

Husband and I talked of moving to Spain at some point in the future. The company he worked for had links to a government organisation in Seville, and each year one employee got the chance to move there for 12 months. But if my other half had been lucky enough to be selected, what would I have done for that year? Despite my ability to wax lyrical in Castillian about whether Gibraltar should be returned to the Spanish, I knew that as a professional writer my career options in Spain would be limited. I certainly couldn’t work as a journalist or PR person, writing in Spanish. I’d have to get a native speaker to check everything I’d written, wouldn’t I?

Well, I would. But anyone who has travelled knows that not everyone is so conscientious. I’ve seen examples of poor translation all around the world, and my recent trip to China was particularly outstanding in that respect. From the ‘No Striding’ sign on a railway platform to the ‘No Leaning’ one on a shopping mall bench, it wasn’t always entirely clear what the authorities were on about.

So I’d like to offer my services to overseas governments and industry. I will read the text you have had so carefully translated for your signs and pamphlets before you spend your hard-earned cash getting them produced.

I will tell you when the language is almost-there-but-not-quite-close-enough:

I will tell you when you’re ruining your chances of any native English speaker ever buying your clothing:

 

And I will tell you when I have no idea what you were trying to say:

Or maybe I won’t. Because much as I hate our beautiful language being abused, correcting these mistakes might just take away some of the fun of travel.

Down under out east*

I’ve been a bit quiet on here lately so I thought I’d post an update so all my regular readers – hello mum and dad! – don’t get worried.

I’m actually in China at the moment, which is a fascinating and crazy place but one which has a bit of an issue with social media…so no Facebook or Twitter. WordPress, surprisingly, is permitted, but I am too busy to blog. When I get back, however, I’m going to take this site off topic for a few posts and share some of my experiences with you. But for fans of my regular rants about Perth, don’t fret – normal service will no doubt be resumed at some point!

* I am actually still in the same time zone as Perth so this heading isn’t terribly accurate but you know what I mean…

Fashion backward

I’m not known for my sense of style. No-one will ever ask me for fashion tips. I’ll never appear in the Sunday Times Magazine summing up my personal style in two words*.

I do actually adore clothes, just not generally so much that I let what I wear get in the way of more practical considerations. I love funky shoes, true; but I also love to walk everywhere so end up alternating between flat sandals, Converse All-Stars and Merrell walking shoes. I look at my trendy colleagues with envy; but resent spending money on work clothes so tend to choose more classic officewear that will span the seasons.

So why, when fashion isn’t that much of a concern for me, do I spend so much time thinking about it in Perth?

It’s probably just homesickness in another guise, but I have really struggled to get used to clothes shopping in Australia.

In the UK, I was a chain store girl. But what chain stores we had to choose from! Top of the list was H&M, which allowed me to indulge my love of the quirky for minimal cost. Miss Selfridge kept me in casual tops with interesting features (I’m a big fan of unusual sleeves and pockets), and I was enjoying the previously-rather-staid Marks and Spencer and Next, which were beginning to really up their game around the time I left.

There are several Aussie chains that I suspect think they are a kind of down under H&M. Cotton On and (the horrific) Supré spring to mind. But there’s no originality in their goods, and with the hugely inflated prices we suffer in Australia I just can’t bring myself to buy. They would probably claim I’m not their target market, but I missed the memo about having to restrict yourself to Witchery and Country Road‘s oh-so-boring and oh-so-expensive beige creations when you pass 30. Myer and David Jones do their best, but they’re no match for Debenhams.

Locals tell me that city centre chain stores are not the way it’s done here. All the best clothes come from suburban boutiques, they say. That may be true, but when one of the biggest proponents of that theory used to turn up to work in…well, let’s just say outfits that weren’t exactly my style, I began to have my doubts.

Maybe I’m foolish to expect things to be as good as back in Blighty. Our isolation and smaller population must have an impact. In the UK, the sheer quantity of merchandise available meant that with some clever styling, you need never see anyone in an identical outfit – even if it was purchased from a store with a branch in every high street. Here, I spotted others wearing my first Australian purchase – a maxi dress from Just Jeans – numerous times within my first few weeks of owning it.

The weather has an influence too. Is it really any surprise that in summer, the shops are full of denim shorts and vest tops when the temperature doesn’t drop below 40 for weeks at a time? 

But understanding those factors doesn’t help. So while I continue to ask for suggestions for stores I might like in Perth, I shop online, and look for any opportunities to buy European.

I left space in my suitcase when I travelled to Sydney recently, knowing that Gap had recently opened a branch in the city and Top Shop had a concession in trendy store Incu.

Gap was a huge disappointment. Yes, I appreciate that they are known (in the northern hemisphere at least) for their jeans and in a Sydney summer it must be hard to sell heavy denim trousers to shoppers, but only two styles to choose from? A range of candy-hued cotton crew-neck sweaters didn’t have me reaching for my wallet either.

Top Shop was better. Its concession in Incu’s Paddington store is clearly aimed at the fashion-forward crowd. A pair of dogtooth woollen shorts caught my eye, as did a long-sleeved chiffon blouse, but I frankly don’t have the kind of social life that requires such things. And woollen shorts should really be worn with opaque tights and boots, but unless you really crank up the aircon, you can only do that for a few weeks a year.

I’m heading to China in a couple of months, and will be spending the last few days of the trip in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has eight branches of H&M and the same number of Marks and Spencers. Let’s hope there’s also somewhere that sells suitcases, because I think I might need an empty one.

* Although, for the record, they would probably be ‘clean’ and ‘comfortable’.

Love it or leave it?

Some years ago, my husband and I bought a brand new house on a modern housing estate in Lancashire. He had been transferred to an office in Manchester, more than an hour away in rush-hour traffic; the long daily commute necessitated a low-maintenance home near the motorway.

At first the house seemed great. Yes, we missed the character of our previous home – a turn of the century terrace – but the new one was so much bigger and easier to look after. There were no draughty floorboards to trap the dust or walls covered in 1970s woodchip to strip, then glue back together with Polyfilla. Friends and relatives envied the tranquility of the estate, which was occupied largely by very nice young families.

But after a year, we had had enough of the easy life. The distance from any kind of activity began to grate. Our featureless home was boring, and we felt cut off from the real world. We sold up and ploughed our money into a magnificent but dilapidated sandstone villa in an old and much more lively part of town. Not long after we took our search for the perfect city life to Bristol, a bustling, vibrant cacophony of a place.

I now realise that for me, Perth is the Australian equivalent of that modern housing estate. It’s modern, clean and shiny, safe and unthreatening, and for many people, the ideal place to live.

I’m trying my best to love it, I really am. I take advantage of what it offers. I have bought a kayak. I cycle to work. I go to open air concerts and use public barbeques. I’ve met some truly lovely people who I hope I will be friends with for a long, long time and I love my job. I don’t regret moving here for a second.

But the truth is, I miss the chaos that results when you put too many people into too small a space. I miss old buildings that are a bit shabby round the edges. I love Perth’s climate, but I miss real weather. I miss being able to go out for a meal at 10pm and shop seven days a week, including the evenings, if I want to. I worry that Perth’s isolation increases intolerance and find that my political and ethical frameworks are challenged all the time, be it by newspaper articles like this or the rampant desire for stuff displayed by so many people whose main aspiration seems to be to own a McMansion with multiple cars in the garage and a massive TV in every underused room.

I’ve always felt like this, but I’ve largely managed to suppress it until I visited Sydney last week. I don’t think Sydney is the perfect city by any means, something even the people who already live there seem to acknowledge. Maybe it’s the fact everything in Sydney is a bit older, that there’s less money around to clean it up or that the humidity simply makes the dust stick, but the city is undeniably grimy in places. The public transport system is, frankly, a bit of a mess. The traffic is a nightmare, and I suspect I would abandon the idea of commuting on two wheels if I lived there, despite the council’s efforts to make it a bike-friendly city.

But the trip was enough to start me thinking about whether Perth is the right place for me to be in the long term.

Maybe the car stickers that are all-too-common in Perth are right: I should love it or leave it. Only time will tell which it will be.

Another post about friendship

I knew the minute I decided to move to Australia that it would alter the friendships I had in the UK; how could it not? But I had high hopes of maintaining most of the relationships I’d built in Preston and Bristol, albeit from a distance. I left Britain with a selection of VOIP providers installed on my computer, and looked forward to taking advantage of the technology that makes emigrating so much more feasible for those susceptible to homesickness. For months my emails back to Blighty would be signed off with a cheery ‘Get Skype!’.

But not many people did. While I fire up Skype and Messenger most evenings and weekends, the truth is they’re not used that often outside of the regular Sunday night call to my parents. Most contact from British friends is restricted to a few emails a year, the odd comment on Facebook or Twitter and the very occasional Skype conversation, organised meticulously weeks in advance to work round the time difference and other commitments.

There are some real stars – one friend in Bristol emails me religiously every Monday morning, which I appreciate so much, and an ex-boss of mine is great at responding to the pleas for conversation I make on Facebook from time to time when I tire of talking to my husband. I really do value each and every contact, no matter how brief or infrequent.

But I have accepted that people back home have moved on without me. Who can blame them? I’m the one who decided to leave, and let’s face it, I probably wasn’t the best friend in the world even when I lived in the same town. The eight-hour time difference is a pain, and if you’re not online most of the time like me, it probably is a bit of a faff to get on Skype.

In terms of making friends here, I am definitely past the must-say-yes-to-everything-or spend-every-non-working-hour-at-home stage, so Mum, if you are reading this, don’t worry – I’m fine. But my confidence was knocked by a couple of potential pals moving away within months of our meeting (although one may be coming back – yay!) and when I do meet someone I think I might get on with I often hold back rather than suggest doing something in case of rejection.

In that, at least, I am not alone; I stumbled across this blog post and as you’ll see from the comment I left, it really struck a chord with me. Like my fellow blogger, I’d really like to make one or two friendships here that would last the distance. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, I suspect it may not happen – although I remain hopeful. It’s number one on my list of new year’s resolutions.

And while I am working on that, I will keep waiting for those calls on Skype, and will be grateful for the friendships I do have, here or overseas, for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Merry Christmas

I’ve never been too keen on Christmas.

I don’t believe in God, so its primary (though often forgotten) meaning is lost on me. I’m not a huge fan of rampant consumerism, so the spend-fest that so often marks the season makes me feel a bit sick. And I’m naturally a bit miserable, so the jollity expected from December 1 onwards is frankly quite stressful.

Don’t get me wrong; my childhood Christmasses were fun. But they were more about watching the Coronation Street Christmas special than anything else. When I married, and started spending alternate years at the in-laws’, I was slightly astounded that they ate while Jack and Vera (RIP) et al were doing their thing in Weatherfield. How can you enjoy your sprouts knowing that Don Brennan is going to try to end it all (1996) or that Deirdre Barlow is about to get it on with Dev Alahan (2001)? Actually, I think I prefer sprouts to thinking about the latter.

So if I found it hard to feel festive in the UK, you can imagine how hard it’s been here. As I write, on Christmas Eve, it’s 33C outside and I’m wearing shorts. There are Christmas decorations up in the city and indeed in my lounge, but the bright sunshine makes the lights almost impossible to see. The breeze from the fan swishes the tinsel on my tree, erected mainly to remind me that it is not, in fact, July.

Last Christmas – our first here – we went to the beach, which I believe is an obligatory activity for all new immigrants. I fussed with the sunscreen, whinged about being too hot and felt self-conscious in my bikini, secretly wishing it was cold enough to wear my usual December uniform of opaque tights and warm dresses. We took photographs of ourselves, smiling on the sand, and ate ice cream to cool down.

This year, who knows? We might take the kayaks over to Penguin Island. We’ll certainly Skype the folks back home and have a laugh at the snow that’s brought Britain to a halt these past few weeks, while bemoaning the environmental and financial cost of running our aircon here. Despite the rising temperature, I’ve insisted on cooking a roast dinner; not turkey, but lamb, in a kind of blend of UK/Oz culture. For now a seafood barbeque is still a step too far. It’ll be lonely without Corrie, but in time we’ll create some new traditions, I’m sure.

Perth-onality

So I’ve finally made it in Perth. After 14 months of desperately trying to fit in, to find my place in the city scene, I’m in. And how do I know this? Because a picture of me has been published in the social pages of the West Australian.

There I am, on page 8 of the Style section, the Out and About page, grinning like a crazy woman. Oh, and look – there I am again, this time from the back, seated at a low table, enjoying a chat with a local newspaper editor.

The event was a Christmas party thrown by Perth PR firm PPR. It’s widely regarded as one of the hottest tickets in town. Invitation only, and always spectacular.

Problem is, it’s always fancy dress, and I hate fancy dress. I haven’t donned a costume for party purposes since I was a child, apart from one wholly unconvincing attempt to emulate the woman from The Matrix at a sci-fi house party in Preston. As it basically involved wearing black and carrying a raygun, it wasn’t too stressful.

This year’s PPR theme was Arabian nights. I set off for the fancy dress shop with a heavy heart at the thought of having to wear a costume, only slightly lightened by the prospect of being part of the in crowd for a night. A green and gold vision in polyester was hurriedly selected, largely because a) it went with the green jewel I wear in my navel and b) it was the only outfit that even remotely fitted me and didn’t make me look too much like an extra from an Arabian-themed porn movie.

I’d just about come round to the idea of dressing up when I realised, on collecting the outfit from the store the night before the party, that the harem pants I thought I’d hired were in fact just pants – black knickers, with a rectangle of green fabric hanging in front, and another behind. One slightly crazed phone call to the shop to check that they hadn’t accidentally given me the wrong costume (‘It says pants on the receipt! In Australia that means trousers! Not pants!’) I managed to salvage the situation and my modesty with a pair of black footless tights. As the outfit required a bare stomach, there was already going to be plenty of flesh on show. I need a reputation in this town, but hooker wasn’t the one I was aiming for.

The day of the party, I ate nothing but salad and drank nothing but water, so conscious was I of getting my stomach out in front of a roomful of strangers. If I’m going to look stupid I might as well look thin and stupid, I thought.

After a taxi ride during which I threatened to fire my friend and workmate Hayley if we arrived to find we were the only ones in costume, we arrived at the venue to be greeted by (real) camels and a glass of champagne – and fortunately for Hayley, more sheikhs than you could shake a stick at. We were just tucking in to some middle eastern delicacies when the photographer from the West approached. As we hid our name badges for the shot (it might have been a party but it was also a networking opportunity) I quickly reminded Hayley that I do not have the photogenic gene and therefore she shouldn’t get her hopes up about appearing in Out and About, even although she is one of the prettiest people I know.

But a few days later, there we were on page 8. I felt a bit guilty. I’d found it ridiculously easy to get Australian residency, and now I’d made it into the social pages without trying. There are people in this town who have made it their life’s work to get into Out and About. You see them at opening nights, pouting as hard as they can as the photographer walks past. I’ve honestly never bothered, and in fact recall my amazement on opening the West when I first arrived and realising that they still carried pictures of people at parties. They did the same thing in some of the papers I worked in – but that was rural Scotland, 20 years ago. Perth was a big modern city, wasn’t it?

Still, the reaction from colleagues reading the paper over morning tea was amusing, and the low resolution of newspaper pics means I don’t actually look that bad. And now that all of Perth has seen my stomach encased in green and gold, there’s probably nothing left for me to be embarrassed about. Ever.

The piano

I always knew I would inherit my dad’s piano. A dark wood Knight K10 upright, it had been part of my family for as long as I could remember. Only my dad and I had ever shown interest in playing it; only my dad ever showed any talent.

I did inherit the piano, prematurely. My parents had moved to a small, modern semi-detached house, where the thin walls made my dad scared of playing loudly, even although the neighbours never complained. He bought an electric one and a set of headphones, and soon was entertaining only himself with Greig’s Piano Concerto and other great works perfected over 40 years of practice. The ‘real’ piano became an attractive, if redundant, piece of lounge furniture.

So when I moved to a large house in Bristol with a wall seemingly created for my inheritance – out of direct sunlight, and not attached to the neighbouring homes – a van was arranged and the piano duly delivered.

But then the move to Australia came up. ‘What will you do with the piano?’ was one of the first questions my parents asked. I assumed it would come with us, and it did. Packed into a wooden box, it travelled to the other side of the world, where it found a new wall seemingly created for it in our rental home. During a coffee break, one of the removal guys made it sound better than I could ever imagine. The piano was home.

But then we found the apartment. Once again, ‘What will you do with the piano?’ was asked. It’ll be fine, I said. I’ll stick cushions down the back and play quietly. Look, there’s a space for it by the door. I’ll order these ridiculously expensive castor cups from Germany which people who have Steinway grands in their New York (or indeed, Seattle) apartments use to stop the noise travelling to the flat below.

But in reality, the piano wasn’t a great fit for the space in the hall. While convenient for laying car keys on, it stuck out just a little too much. The stool had to be kept to the side, and ‘playing it quietly’ turned out to be harder than I thought. The castor cups never arrived and I felt uncomfortable inflicting my Grade 1 battering on my neighbours. I bought an electric one, just like my dad’s, with headphones, and every time I walked past the real one I thought guiltily of my husband’s face when I had insisted on bringing my ‘inheritance’ halfway round the world.

So the decision was taken – it had to move. The only logical place was a spare wall in the study, round two corners and down a corridor from its original position. It’s only a few metres, but it took hours. The castors have never been brilliant (so my dad told me afterwards) and we ended up having to shunt it along, sliding it along off-cuts of carpet to protect the floor.

With no burly pals we could call on to help us, it fell to my other half to do the heavy work and manoeuvre it round the urban living equivalent of a hairpin bend. At one point it just wasn’t budging; stuck in the corridor between our living and sleeping areas it simply refused to move, no matter which way we pushed or pulled. But finally we – or more accurately my husband – did it. We got it round the corners and into the study.

And that is where it’s staying. If I ever decide to sell it, the buyer will be responsible for getting it out, but I like to think one day we may end up living in a house again, one with a perfect piano wall.

For now, I’m concentrating on learning to play (on my electric one), in the hope that improving my playing ability will make up for the expense and the trauma this beautiful instrument has caused since I’ve owned it. I’ll never be a virtuoso, or even average, but it’s not just about talent. It’s about the appreciation of classical music I was so lucky to have been given as a child. It’s about the challenge of trying to learn something that is actually bloody difficult – even if that something is only a simplified version of a Scott Joplin tune. And yes, it’s about the regret I feel at not having had the patience as a teenager to stick at the lessons, but also about the pleasure of knowing that even when I’m too old to cycle and kayak and dance, I’ll still have the piano.

A faceful of flies

A few years ago I was driving along a motorway in Lancashire behind a flatbed truck carrying gravel. Without any warning, the back gate of the truck flew open and a wave of stone chips washed over my car. At first, I couldn’t work out what the noisy cloud I was suddenly driving into at 70mph was. It was a surreal experience, and not a very nice one.

On a bike – at least when on a cycle path – there’s very little chance of you encountering a faceful of airborne gravel. But as the weather warms up, it seems there’s a Western Australian version – flies.

They hurl themselves at you, landing on your clothes like festering polka dots. They bounce off your sunglasses and on occasion sneak behind the lenses to rest on your eyelids. Unpleasant, intensely irritating and not at all conducive to the pleasant mood I usually find myself in when travelling on two wheels.

Breathing with your mouth open even the tiniest bit can mean an unplanned power snack of fresh mosquito – an added hazard and a very real one, particularly if, like me, you suffer from hayfever.

I’ve developed a special breathing style for when the flies and my blocked nose are at their worst. In a version of the technique used by swimmers, I dip my head to breathe in through my mouth, then raise my head to breathe out. I sometimes employ a method used in Pilates, known as blast breaths, where I force all the air out of my lungs at high speed – blowing away any bugs that have chosen to land on my lips.

It’s only going to get worse as it gets hotter, which in a Perth summer, it inevitably does.

Riding with my fly net under my helmet is probably not a practical option, but I could be tempted by a bandana wrapped round my face, bandit-style. And no matter how annoying the flies are, cycling still beats sitting in a car.

A frockin’ good cause

I’m going a bit off-topic here but it’s for a good cause.

My friend and colleague Freya is raising money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation by wearing a different frock every day of the month for Frocktober. She’s blogging about it so I thought I would send some of my readers her way, hopefully with their credit cards in hand!

I’m fond of a frock myself and have even made a few. I do hope you appreciate this picture of me in one of my less-successful creations. It was beautifully made – just ridiculous to look at. It has since been dismantled and is likely to be turned into a plain skirt at some point soon.

Trust me, all the dresses Freya has worn so far are MUCH nicer than this one, so she deserves some sponsorship for the effort she’s made. Get over to Freya’s Frocks and get giving.