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…

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Back on the bike

When I started this blog, I was just about to leave a job in the city (about 6km from home) to move to a better job out in the ‘burbs. That meant I had to give up my four-times-a-week commute by bike and everything that went with it – the refreshed feeling I had when I got to my desk, the slightly more toned thighs, the smugness created by not polluting the atmosphere with petrol fumes and the right to talk to men in tight lycra about panniers and head winds.

Or so I thought.

It turns out my new commute, while considerably longer, can be done on two wheels.

Heartened by surviving – even enjoying – a couple of longish leisure cycles round the city, I decided to try riding to my office one Sunday, just to see if it would kill me or not. The plan was to train it back, but Transperth’s rules and regulations on where you can take a bike and where you can’t were just too complicated. So my husband and I set off on the trip, not at all sure if I’d manage to ride the whole way there and back.

We pootled from our apartment to the cycle path, had lunch on the green outside my office, and pootled back. I’ll not pretend it was the fastest trip ever, but I DIDN’T DIE. Although I did almost keel over when I discovered afterwards, thanks to the wonder of Google Maps, that a journey I thought was around 14km each way was actually 20. I’d just done 40km and DIDN’T DIE.

The following week I carted clothes into work, cleared out a drawer to use as a locker, got the security code for the bike storage cage, bought some sexy padded shorts and – here’s the clever bit – told everyone I was going to start cycling in. I’ve never been one to back out of something if there’s the slightest chance that I’ll be ridiculed for doing so, so I had no choice. I was getting on my bike.

Still not entirely convinced that the fact I DIDN’T DIE on the Sunday try-out was a fluke, I’ve started gently. Evening engagements meant I needed the car or to get back home quickly for most of the first three weeks, which was probably a good thing. So I have been riding in one day, leaving my bike at work overnight, training it back and in the next morning, and cycling back on day two.

On the days I ride in, I do feel more awake. My thighs are benefiting and the smug feeling is definitely back. The opportunity to chat to the lycra brigade hasn’t arisen yet but I have had a couple of cheery ‘good mornings’ from fellow riders, which is more than I ever get driving down the freeway in a country where it’s rare to even raise a hand to thank a fellow driver for letting you merge. The benefits are obvious.

A pleasant spin-off has been that even this paltry effort by most cyclists’ standards has resulted in a weird admiration among colleagues. While they might snigger at my padded shorts, they seem genuinely impressed that I’m doing it (although there is a chance that they’re just surprised I haven’t died yet). One is even talking about cleaning up his own rusting racer and giving the cycle commute a go.

But two one-way trips a week isn’t enough. So from next week, I’ll be stepping it up to four one-way trips. After that, I might even manage to do a return trip in the same day. I don’t think I’ll ever lose the feeling that I’ve accidentally meandered onto the Tour de France route as I pootle along while ‘proper’ cyclists whizz past at twice the speed, but I can cope with that.

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Happy anniversary

A year ago yesterday, I landed in Perth from the UK to start my new life. I’d only visited Perth once before, and only very briefly as part of a two-month trip through New Zealand and Australia. A surf life saving competition meant every hotel in the city was booked up so my husband and I stayed in a guest house in Quinns Rocks for two nights and just passed through to the centre en route to Fremantle. The city made no real impression on me and if you’d told me then that within six months I’d be packing up my perfectly nice life in Bristol to move here, well, frankly I would have laughed.

While we had often talked about retiring overseas (New Zealand and for some unknown reason Costa Rica being the destinations of choice) my husband and I hadn’t ever really considered Australia, at least while we were still working.

So the speed and the ease with which our emigration from the UK happened was a bit of a surprise. Someone mentioned that an ex-colleague of my husband had moved to Oz. We googled him, his name came up as the contact on a job advert, my husband said: ‘I could do that’, he applied, and got it. Within a few weeks our house was sold, we were getting quotes for shipping containers and flights, and were too busy to really think about what emigrating would actually mean.

It was certainly very different to the experience of many immigrants here. For a lot of people, moving to Australia is a lifelong dream. And while you’ll be hard pushed to hear anything other than a British accent in large swathes of the northern suburbs, not that many Brits actually manage to make the move. For those over 30 who want to live here permanently, Australian visas are a bit like passes to an exclusive nightclub. If your name – or at least your profession – isn’t on the list, you’re not coming in. We were lucky.

For me, the timing was good. I’d recently instigated a review of my section at work that I knew would lead to my own job disappearing, probably to be replaced with a more senior post that I wouldn’t get. I’d become disillusioned with a job that I enjoyed, but that was so stressful at times that it damaged my physical and mental health. The dance group that had been so crucial in helping me settle in Bristol, and which had provided me with a great set of friends, had disbanded and my social life had taken a blow.

I needed a change – and had I stopped to really think about what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to make it.

But the decision was made, however rashly, and now I have survived the first year. I’ve even enjoyed it most of the time. Every day brings a new challenge, whether it’s meeting new people or working out what shoe size I am. I rant a lot (I always did), but in reality the list of issues I’ve faced is pretty pathetic. I had a job I didn’t like for a while and I once went to a party where everybody ignored me. Oh, and I’ve found it really hard to find decent baking potatoes. True, I’ve not made any close friendships yet, but I seem to know an alarming number of people in this big country town already so I am sure that will come in time.

Of course I still get homesick, or more accurately, people-sick and shop-sick. I’d kill for a curry at the Sheesh Mahal with Katie and Marc, and I find myself fantasising about walking through Debenhams in Broadmead: in through the cosmetics section, up the escalator to ladieswear, Red Herring straight ahead, Dorothy Perkins through to the right, Top Shop and Oasis to the left…

But I’ve survived this far, and discovered I’m much braver and much more resilient than I realised. So this weekend I will be raising a glass of Margaret River’s finest SSB to a spur of the moment decision that has (mostly) worked out. Cheers!

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Feeling trapped

Australia is a pretty big place. There aren’t many people in it. And I know hardly any of them.

So why has claustrophobia been such an issue for me?

It started in the medical sense. Not long after moving here, I took a tour of the submarine HMAS Ovens at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle. Only a few months before, I’d visited exactly the same kind of sub in Sydney.

While I knew I was not cut out for life hundreds of metres below the surface, I found the tour fascinating – not least the tales of the submariner guides, who I admired for their even-tempered nature and ability to cope with a complete lack of privacy for months on end.

But it had been a temperate day in Sydney. In Freo, the thermometer was reaching 40C and still unused to the scorching weather, I hadn’t drunk enough before entering the metal tube.

I was fine most of the way through, but near what would have been the end, I found myself pressed into the curvature of the sub to make sure everyone on the tour could fit into the space. Without any warning, my vision blurred and my legs gave way. Fortunately my husband caught me before I hit my head on anything.

A few weeks later I found myself at the caves at Yanchep National Park. It was another hot day, but I had water and wasn’t going to collapse again, surely? But as I stood with the other tourists in the large ‘entry hall’ of the cave, I felt panic rising in me. I didn’t faint this time, but it was close. I took the tour, but made sure I always stood in the most open space I could.

Worried I might have developed another ailment to add to the tinnitus that joined me on my arrival in Perth, I forced myself to visit Calgardup Cave near Margaret River a few months later. I felt apprehensive as I descended into the dark, but seemed to cope better as it was a self-guided tour. I knew if things got really bad I could take my torch and head for the exit, no questions asked. I was fine.

But back in the city last week, a packed train ride home – the result of industrial action by Transperth drivers – brought on the by-now familiar feeling as my train pulled into Esplanade station, where many of the CBD’s office workers board for their commute home to the northern suburbs. Fortunately I only had to breathe deeply for a few minutes until the train reached Perth, where I got off, leaving a single person-sized gap for dozens of waiting commuters to try to squeeze into.

It makes sense to me that I might feel a bit anxious in confined spaces. Being trapped is a pretty rational fear, as far as fears go. But I have been surprised to find I’ve had similar feelings when space is not in short supply. I felt it when we rented a flat in North Fremantle for a couple of weeks. We hadn’t yet bought a car, our bikes were still in transit and there was nothing of interest within walking distance – just more and more houses and busy roads. Not even being able to pop out for a pint of milk left me feeling horribly trapped.

And recently the feeling has returned. Unable to get a straight answer from the Department of Transport on whether my current driver’s licence – which states that I need visual aids to drive – is still legal now that I can see perfectly, I’ve been using public transport to get to work, and relying on my husband to drive me around at weekends, with my bike on standby for emergencies. But Perth is a sprawling place where often cycling is just not practical, Transperth is less-than-perfect outside of rush hour, and my husband is not always available, so I have not always been able to get where I wanted to go. The ‘problems’ not being able to drive caused me were trivial: a sudden urge to buy fabric to make a dress had to be ignored; a search for new summer sandals delayed. But it did prove to me why West Australians are so attached to their cars. You might be in one of the most sparsely-populated places on the planet, but without your own transport, it can feel as claustrophobic as a submarine.

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