and they all lived happily ever after.....
22 July 2013 | Moffat, Scotland
Catherine
I nagged and nagged my children to finish the last page of their diaries but, once they left Australia, it was official. They were on holiday and I was no longer their boat-school teacher. Hence, no need to complete their diary. I guess when they look back, in years to come, they won't be wondering what happened after Australia. They will remember, as they recall to their grandchildren, that they moved to Scotland and resumed a 'normal' life.
It was a comment left on my blog, asking if our boat was for sale, that has prompted me to do what my children refused to do and write the concluding chapter.
I miss writing a blog. When I got lost walking a dog and had to cross a river at 11pm to get home, I could have been thinking 'this is silly; no-one knows where I am and it's getting dark.' But instead, I was thinking 'this is one for the blog!'
Notice the phrase 'getting dark.' At 11pm. That surely is an indication we have re-located somewhere norther than we were before. In Australia, it would get to 6pm and BAM! It was dark. No wonder so many people took to the beach at 5am. That doesn't happen here in Britain, believe me. But we are enjoying long evenings in the summer sun. So all you Australian doomsmongers who were questioning our sanity in us returning to Scotland, I say to you: It's been sunny and gorgeous since we came home a few months ago. And, whilst the mosquitoes have been replaced by midgies, we have swum in lakes and climbed mountains (OK, only the once and my muscles are still killing as a result) and we have not been stuck indoors whilst the flood waters rise higher and higher and we get more and more miserable.
And isn't the weather a reflection of your general outlook in life anyway? When it's sunny in Britain, everyone grabs the opportunity to do something lovely, fully appreciating that it might not last. And in the winter when it snows, there are some lovely hills to snowboard down. Of course, we've met the never-happy types who are moaning that it's too hot, in spite of the fact that they were moaning about the fact that Britain had the longest winter since the ice-age only four months ago. We try not to surround ourselves with that type of person. Because they are also the types who will tell us that we won't get a job in this climate (not that one, the economic one) But we'll prove them wrong; just watch.....
The kids settled into their new school for three weeks before the summer holidays, which gave them enough time to learn some new names and obtain a few playmates over the holidays.
And for now? We are enjoying our fix of green instead of blue. We don't miss the sea just now. We are enjoying forests and rolling hills and gardening. We are seriously considering a dog. And the best thing about living in rental accommodation has to be that when the toilet broke two days after we moved in, we didn't have to open up the pipes and fix the problem ourselves. We called the landlord and he called a plumber. What's not to like about that?!