Here I Am

We have been painting.

It is quite physical and at the same time meditative.  Also hugely satisfying to paint over the stains left from a time that went before.

We are re-decorating our house, yet it also feels in some way like we are re-decorating our life.  The scars and stains we know exist, we have lived through the mess.  Now we are starting out fresh.  On a clean page.  An exciting new chapter.

The colour palate is, quite unsurprisingly, white.  Who would have thought white would come in so many shades.  That light from different angles can make the same shade change so dramatically from room to room.  Surely there is something metaphorical in that?

I want it bright and cool with a splash of colour here and there.  A happy space.  A haven from the urban chaos and long winters to come.  A welcoming family home.

The repetitive up and down of the roller on the wall provides a space to think, and of course, in covering over what went before, my mind comes to pass over what has been and gone.  Back and forth.  Up and down.  Covered now in a thick layer of paint.  Not without a little sweat and pain and irritation.

Will we even remember what it looked like before?  With time it will become harder to recall the details.  New life and memories will be breathed into the space, upon the clean slate.

When you leave a place for a long enough period and have the opportunity to return and see things through different eyes, with a fresh perspective, it is not necessarily going to be a more favourable outlook, but fresh all the same.

For me this time round, returning to London, it is like coming home.  I could never have imagined I would say that about London.  Yet its noise and dirt are surprisingly soothing.

It is nice to leave a place and come back to find it has improved, evolved.  We tend to feel that when we travel and return it is us that change, and we grapple with our new relationship with self and place.

I live in an area of London that is gentrifying.  Yet it is doing so in a way that doesn't feel exclusive.  There is a mix of cultures and colour and age to keep it vibrant.  Its new breed of residents fight to maintain and enhance its sense of community. Fighting the multinationals to keep it local, encouraging and supporting the creative force and spirit.  Whilst I have been away attending my own inner battles this place has also kept moving and expanding its outlook.

For us, upon our return, the community welcomed us.  We are a part of the tightly woven fabric upon this small part of the Greater London tapestry.  We felt both warmed and slightly taken aback.  It was proof that time invested is returned.

It is not going to rally around like a small country town, the weak do get left behind.  I was weak and I was broken when I left, and etched into the old paintwork were all those years of toil.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to heal in the land of plenty, my home land Australia.  This gratitude I will carry always, and I wrote about it recently here.

I did learn that loneliness and depression are not symptoms of place.  We can feel a deep void even in paradise.

Paradise can also become a little tiresome.  A little like retiring from life.

For us, this place has a constant palpable heartbeat.  By choosing to live here we are in someway more alive.  Perhaps via osmosis.  Sucking up and drawing on the collective energy, the transient force of such coming and going.

I feel alive again.  No longer in transit.  I am not waiting to be or to go.  I am here.

Grateful For

Today I am grateful for finally getting myself together and completing a little project that's been hanging around for a good 6 months now.  It feels good to finally accomplish a plan.

I bought this sideboard at Vinnie's at least 6 months ago.  I bought it home whereupon it sat in the driveway under the porch for about 3 months making the house look like a junk yard.  I then managed to move it into the garage where it has been for the last 3 months.  In fact it had become the start of a pile of things earmarked for a garage sale. I had practically given up on my creative pursuit to turn this ugly duckling into a swan.

But I don't know what happened.  I had a sudden burst of energy and commitment to the project.  I ceased the day and just got on with it, and I virtually didn't stop till today.

And because everyone loves a before and after photo. Here they are.

BEFORE

 

AFTER

A few little tweaks to go.  I bought some beautiful bone handles for the door and drawer on eBay. The drawer is a bit tricky getting in and out so might need some sanding.  If anyone has any tips let me know.  My inspiration came from here.

So get up and just do those projects you've been putting off, you will be grateful.

This is part of Maxabella's blog hop. Check it out.

Adventure is Life

When I left London in July 2009 it was dramatic to say the least.  I don't think it was unexpected but it was certainly fraught with concern.  A broken marriage and an uncertain future.  I hope the next exit is a little more graceful.

I watched as my house, my family home, was packaged into 72 pieces of freight.  Bound for Australia.  A land abounding in natures gifts, of beauty rich and rare, with golden soil and wealth for toil.  Home after 8 years in Europe.

We left Sydney in early 2002 with 2 suitcases and a 14 month old baby boy.  We took off on an adventure telling our family and friends we didn't know how long we'd be, could be 3 months could be 3 years, we said.

We spent the first year in Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain.  It was a magical year.  I like to say we did that thing people dream about doing when they retire, except we did it whilst we were young and vibrant and full of spirit.  We rented a beautiful apartment in the old Gothic centre of Palma de Majorca.  The Gothic part of Majorca is one of the best preserved in Europe as it did not experience any bombings during the wars.  The apartment was in fact a spacious studio furnished very simply.

Studio interior

The tiles were over 200 years old.  It had 3 french doors that opened overlooking a square with a fountain and a number of little bars and cafes on the edges.  Little Jack would spend hours peering out  over this scene from the balcony.  

balcony looking towards Gothic Church

Ours was the only apartment in the building.  After struggling with the original heavy wooden door, we had to climb an old winding stone staircase to reach our apartment on the 3rd floor.  It was really very charming, if a tad exhausting especially with an armful of shopping and toddler.  On the top floor was a terrace that enjoyed views across the rooftops of Palma and terrific sunsets.

Jack in the Plaza Mayor early one Sunday

An idyllic year in Majorca.  Sometimes I worked for the local film studio producing commercials for companies from all over Europe.  Other days we'd go to the beach or explore.  Brad, who at the time didn't have a European passport nor could he speak Spanish, spent his days with young Jack and developing his photography.  He'd shop at the local produce markets each morning and make delicious simple meals in the evenings. 

Meals were often shared with our friends late into the night, in true Spanish spirit, followed by endless rounds of cards.  There was an all night bakery just down our street where the baker also sold wine and beer and cigarettes (and we suspect a few other things).  We were some of his best midnight customers.

The weather turned and my work slowed down and we decided to take a look at big scary London town.  Brad was itching to work.  We arrived on New Years day 2003.  Brad got work straight away and I reluctantly agreed to stay for 5 months.  I was pregnant with Lucien and I didn't fancy having a baby in London.  I'd been there in my early 20's and it was a struggle, I'd hated it.

For the first 2 months the three of us shared a double bed in a mate's house out near Heathrow.  I remember lying in that bed looking out the window as the jumbos lined up to land, wheels out like giant bird claws ready to grip the earth.  It snowed.  Each day we'd trudge into the centre and scour for a place of our own.  It was really rather miserable.  But an adventure all the same.

Eventually we found a great flat in Islington.  Top floors, sunny and bright.  Brad got more and more work.  The spring buds started to emerge and the sun shone occasionally.  The city was alive.  A hub of culture and art and new discoveries.  Life was good.  I decided to have my baby in London.  It ended up being one of the hottest summers on record.

Seven years went by and with them brought another baby, our darling little girl Suki.  We made many wonderful new friends and we bought a house.  We travelled around Europe and made several trips back home.

Our house in winter

Our garden in the summer

It was a struggle living off one wage.  But we managed somehow.  Then I lost my Mum in 2004.  The phone call you hope you'll never receive when you are away from home.  After returning to Australia for a brief stay we went back to London.  It was home.  I was supported by friends and wrapped up my wounds in the anonymity of big city life.  London was my Mum's town too.  So I weirdly felt closer to her living that life.

A favourite photo of Mum in Trafalgar Square

However, over all those years we always struggled with our position in London.  We struggled with calling it home.  Like a broken record we'd discuss where we wanted to be, where we ought to be, where we could be.  Eventually we saw a life coach.  Amongst many of the things I quote from that meeting she said we had to choose a hemisphere and stick with it, because if you don't make roots then you never live your life fully in the place you are.  We had made roots without even realising.

Things stand out to me now which offer up some clues.  We'd often spend weekends away in Devon.  We'd usually drive back to London at night to avoid the traffic and let the kids sleep.  When I'd see the big road signs lit up with our headlights,  I always felt a great sense of excitement that we were going to LONDON, and that was our home.

Sidmouth, Devon

But I struggled with an unhappiness exacerbated by grief and post natal depression.  I blamed the environment, the cold, the grey.  It's true these things don't help but it was deeper than that.  And when we feel so broken we want to go home, to the place we feel nurtured.  Back into Mother's arms.

South Coast, NSW

The beauty rich and rare has been a great help.  A big blue sky can make a huge difference to how you approach the world.  Wealth for toil.  Well yeah.  It's been hard work to be sure.  I do feel wealthier in spirit.  Restored.  The kids have been able to know what it means to be Australian.  Maybe it's a curse we are bestowing upon them also, this heart in two places thing.  I like to think however, that they are lucky.  They know a lot about the world already.  From Europe they came here.  The peaceful small beach community.    But they will also know a busier life where many cultures mix and anything is possible.

We'll go back to London later this year.  I don't think it is our permanent place.  In fact I am not sure we have one of those.  I now think that this is us.  Hearts and feet in different places.  Global wanderers.  We'll be back in Australia.  Maybe sooner rather that later.  Nothing in life is permanent. We only have this moment to enjoy.  And what is life without adventure?

What's with the Kookaburras?

Travelling up to Sydney from the south coast of NSW, my Mother and I stopped into an antique warehouse in the charming township of Bowral in the Southern Highlands.  I share my Mother's love of old things, antique jewellery was her passion. She'd once had an antique jewellery business, Greentree Antiques,  housed in a corner of an old theatre in Windsor.  A cavernous and magical place filled to the brim with the most fascinating objects.  A place you could spend hours and still not feel like you'd seen it all.  My sister and I would get lost in that theatre during school holidays.  Upstairs there was an area which was off limits to the public to house the overflowing horde.  It was, of course, the most intruiging place of all.  There was a heavy dusty theatre curtain that drapped across the stairwell to stop customers going up.  We would sneak up there whilst nobody was looking and spend hours trawling through boxes and admiring obscure curiosities.  It was here we once happened accross a box of vintage erotic photography.  We'd never seen anything like it in our lives, little eyes popped out of their heads, we swore ourselves to secrecy and emerged unusually sheepish from our regular adventures.  That old school erotica is still so much more exciting than the modern adaptions.  It was an era when less was more, the imagination was allowed to create the fantasy.

That day, with my Mother in Bowral, was probably the last time we mooched about an antique shop together.  Some months later she was gone.  I'd been searching for little bits of Australiana to take home to London, it had been the general theme of my holiday purchases.  It was in that antique warehouse in Bowral that I came across an old painting of three kookaburras sitting on the branch of a gumtree.  A little rough and a little damaged but framed in a beautifully carved wooden frame.  I fell in love with its rustic Australian charm and had to have it to brighten the walls of my dark basement flat in London.  It would be a little reminder of our sunny roots.  Mum had always been a brilliant business woman, clever and charismatic, I called in her help to negotiate a good deal.

That painting has adorned my walls ever since.  It's a symbol of so much more to me now than my Australian heritage.  It represents family and memories, respecting the past and taking care of the future.

The kookaburra is a family orientated bird living in small units with the older generations taking care of the youngest.  The famous kookaburra laugh is both a greeting and a territorial warning, but once one group starts off it seems the whole neighborhood will join in, often just as the sun is rising or setting.  I like to think that both ends of their day are marked by this calling to one and other, a good belly laugh enjoyed with family and friends.

Where I currently live in Australia we have a family of kookaburras in our backyard, they seem so confidently assured and majestic in their domain and I feel somehow that we have become a part of their family too, so intently they keep watch over us.

So why have I called my blog Kookaburra Laugh?  I felt like life with a family of my own was constantly throwing up a variety of amusing and often challenging situations.  At the end of the day it's often a case of: if you don't laugh, you'll cry.  I prefer to take a leaf out of the kookaburra's book.