Wayfaring Stranger - as in...

..travelling through this world alone...That bright bright land, to which I go...I know dark clouds will gather round me, and I know my way be rough and steep... The beautiful fields lie just before me.

...the lyrics of Natalie Merchant's ballad stops me in my tracks, still and always.

I have companions along my way yes of course, close ones, treasures. And yet, there's an element of solitude in every life. Making my ways around the globe, through many lives, often a stranger. In the French way, like foreigner, not the English way like strange/weird/unknown. I've been one of those all my life: since I said eggs-eier at the age of two in England, learning my first English words.

Then to Malaysia, thankfully learning English there from another fair-headed girl who lived across the road, and in a Montessori pre-school. On to Australia, where at 7, I was told I must know about Hitler 'because you're German'! More strangeness. A childhood of wayfaring with my family, travels overseas to relatives and new shores across Asia and the Pacific, unlike many Canberra children at the time.

Then Sydney, making my way into adult life. Travelling again, now more to Asia between work and studies. Never making the gap year trip, never taking a big flying leap into the true unknown, always aware of needing to provide for myself, make something of myself.

Often a stranger, speaking German in Europe to avoid obnoxious Australians, French in Thailand to duck under the radar of the Germans or Australians there. Speaking all three with a cousin on a road trip through Vietnam, just to entertain ourselves and others. Because we could.

Then more ways, across Australia, with a new husband, then two surprising boys - treasures, perfect, so different though we made them both. Travels as the wife of a medical student, student life for him, motherhood and full time work for me. And a big decision to take it all to Newcastle, to settle, be responsible to our family. Another new start, a house, a garden, and always this restless stranger-self. Always from here/not from here.

And always the music, always songs, always searching out new tunes for the soundtrack of my life. Afro Celt Sound System, Buddha Bar, Natalie Merchant, Michael Franti. Again now, in Ireland, searching for new sounds. Kila. Michael McGoldrick. O'Death.

Launching

So, after more than a year of saying 'I-wanna-be-a-blogger', two more years of reading, looking, cruising and reading this online explosion, and possibly 158 days of noticing or thinking something which I could launch out here, I'm up on my wobbly blogfeet.

Observations about relocating a family from Australia to Ireland, about rich travels on the mainland, about the oddness of life in contemporary Ireland (that's most days, sure), about life with a shiftworker, about the temporary transformation from modern working mother to modern traditional homemaker! And also, observations about the experience of returning to Europe, born in Germany, but lived oh-so-many years in Australia: an exploration of roots and how they twine through my life, and the lives I helped create.

Oh and there's some oddball blogging going to go on until I catch up the many posts I shoulda made online, but in fact they made it only to my journal. Realtime blogging to commence soon.

A record of this bigger-than-ever year, for friends, family: including my own two small treasures, for the time they might want to read about their big year too.

It's worth it!

This going to the gym, battling with constant demotivation, tiredness, setbacks. It's worth it.

Skiing this week, (and how that even sounds) for the FIRST time ever, I was able to keep my legs and feet going in the same direction. Keep my breath, keep working on the cross-country piste in the clear sunshine, just long enough to see if I could get the hang of it. And get up again the next day, do something with the boys, sled a while, run across the field to get the cars and move them again, and still be ok at the end of the day. This sounds small, but is an achievement - I could NOT have done this for a week, 6 months ago.

So that's great motivation to go back, and go even harder, just keep going. Just when I'd thought it was all going nowhere. And I'll need a harder programme again too. My Painterwoman friend is blunt: if you're not seeing results, you're not working hard enough. Go back and crank it up to 8! Do more reps. Think of being in labour - it's not called labour for nothing, she says!. So this is not called a workout for nothing...

I'm not thinner, sad, but I DO have more endurance, more power. And a calmer mind, more able to deal with all the rest of the pieces which are now my life.

Life with a Shiftworker

We're getting used to this now. I know the week must be the night-shift week (ie 7 nights straight), when:

• LMM physically dreads going to work for the weekend ahead. The worst shift is 2200-0900h, 1800-0400h is much better;
• I stay up late most nights alone, too late, and end up dog-tired too. It's as if I'm staying up in sympathy, but that's dumb, because I get to sleep in the bed all by myself, which should be nice for a change;
• I shift clothes and stuff into the boys bathroom so I can shower after the gym quietly;
• I harass the boys to be quiet in the flat, or trawl around town trying to stay out as long as possible;
• A bleary-eyed man sends sms from the bedroom seeking tea and sympathy;
• I'm starting to hoard the clean clothes by about Thursday, planning the packing for 3 for the week ahead - washing and sorting outfits so we're ready for the next trip;
• I'm packing in the early evenings of the weekend, while staying out as long as possible during the days: passports, the right gear, the right bags, what else don't they need, empty the fridge?
• We pour the boys and LMM into some plane on the Monday and go.

The week after, it takes until about Wednesday for him to function again and the holiday really starts. We've used this week for something really good and new every month. This time, it's off to ski in Austria. Flying into Munich, oh we're in the swing of it now - and a car to collect straight away at the airport! And the switch into German won't be hard, it's only been a month. Accommodation organised by cousin, who changed accommodation at the last minute, to ensure we'd get plenty of snow. Exciting stuff - and so easy, we're here, used to eachothers' ways on holidays now. But yes, much the easier for us, having them there.

Next time Turkey, after that France! On our own then.

Blown Away in Amsterdam

Winter weekend, my ONLY weekend without children, away away. Very excited as I pack - a 40th birthday party, a weekend in Amsterdam, not much money to spend, but time, precious time alone! I intend to get to the birthday dinner, maybe spend a bit more time, but then take days for me, to wander and discover what it is I actually look at when I don't have the Bean and the Pumpkin at my every step.

Well. I got sick. The weekend became something quite different from those expectations. Got more than I bargained for. I guess.

Picked up at the airport by BigX, and there's another old friend, just in from Canada too!. Wow, I'm going to trip down Memory Lane this weekend! Whisked into town, past canals in whipping rain and wind, to my hotel: like the brochure, up incredibly! steep short steps to the rooftop room, it looks over the canals and those incredibly picturesque Amsterdam houses alongside. Those steps have to be walked to be believed. (I remember that the first time I was in Amsterdam, in '95, I thought I'd landed in a complete dive, on account of the steep steps. Not so.) Off to a GREAT Indonesian restaurant, of course!, and then BigX's wife also joined us, fresh off the road from a meeting in Germany. Oh this is Europe now. Wonderful. This is just how it is - you get excited about other stuff when this is the baseline of your experience.

Then, I got sick... Woke up at 3.30 in the morning, CONVINCED that it was 8am, got cranky when my breakfast didn't arrive, wrote in my journal mad night thoughts, then looked at the watch again: 4.30am! Howling wind outside, screaming around the edges of the roof and across the canals below. Couldn't sleep. Dreadful guts. Cloudhead.

So the weekend became instead about turning 40 - we're all about there now - and evaluating the First Half. Planning the Second Half. Others in the group had made some concrete actual changes for their Second Half - I admire that, need to apply that sort of time-horizon to my own life. Steps to take now to secure the Second Half? The First Half had so much experience and roaming and discovery in it. Wonderful trip down Memory Lane, and also very real now experience of a great city, wonderful place.

Everywhere there are people on bikes, the most incredible types of bike-contraptions. A Bucks-Fizz is a transporter, for children, even under plastic, or dogs or shopping. LMM would love this human-scale city, this physical vibrancy in the people on account of much cycling, the Nine Streets shops, Albert Cuyp market with tonnes of the food we want to eat, not just the Irish selection-by-distance..and multicultural, people from everywhere. Just, how do you get to work HERE, without any Dutch, without being married to one, or descended from one?

I DID NOT stride across the city in glorious solitude, speak to attractive strangers in bars, or shop for a precious, personal treasure for life. I DID reflect on this group of friends, fellow travellers, my cohort, and that we're all at a similar place - much perspective, much left to do. And that we are not alone: there are lots of people with mixed marriages (in the sense of coming from different countries) different roots. All of us travelling the globe, comfortable in lots of places, drawing rich lives by being slow-mo-mobile, adding languages and possessions to suit the country we're in. And good it is.

A Day on the Prime Meridian

Greenwich. The name already stops me dead, after filling me with lo-o-nging for years. I just wanted to be there, stand on that zero point, where all space is measured from, in a way.

I first read 'Longitude', by Dava Sobel, a few years ago, but saw the Jeremy Irons TV show about it even longer ago. And living in Australia, a country which is founded in part on a reliable clock, just gives the place a very personal resonance for me. One of the earliest clocks was given to Captain Cook, on his trip to watch the Transit of Venus in ?1770 - he was considered a good seaman, someone you could trust with a clock, someone you could trust to take readings of longitude with it.

So, onto the train to Greenwich on a pale, bare Sunday morning. The Bean reading the Tube stops, the Pumpkin climbing the seats, me just humming at the prospect of making this pilgrimage on my personal map of the world.

Across the grounds of the Maritime College, into the Maritime Museum. Wowowowowow. Passing through the Titanic, opening cupboards on the marine uniforms, the Pumpkin wondering where the person talking about their uniform got to before he could open the door to see them. Nelson's coat, complete with hole from the day he died. Maritime histories of slave movements, waves of migrations in red arrows around the globe. My journey is part of one of those red arrows too. Shiny propellors, ship decks, a lovely cafe ( I could paint my walls that colour, stand a palm like this in my house!) and a playground - what more could we want. A toilet, poor Pumpkin has the trots, the same intense kind which Bean had over Christmas in Stuttgart, cramping. I get snapped with a statue of Captain Cook, only right. We toil on up the hill, to the Observatory. I feel I've reached a summit. More toilet stops.

And then, weaving with my boys and the queues, past the telescopes, the rooms inside, to the octagonal observing room, the living quarters and the clocks themselves. It IS a pilgrimage: I pay silent respects, and could cry for how moved I am to be with them: H1, H2, H3. The Bean is fascinated by a great interactive display, the Pumpkin heavy in my arms. I sit in the semi-gloom, the Pumpkin sleeps, the Bean opens and shuts doors, I reflect on this journey to this point in time. It is something I wanted, not about them, but made the more precious to be doing it with my two treasures, made so far away, over on 171 or so, not 0 as here. I feel triumphant as we ask another tourist to snap us right on the line, our feet on the Sydney point. We made it! Maybe the ancient mariners felt like this when they thought they'd fall off, get lost, run aground - and then didn't.

A loud, freezing, BRILLIANT high point racing on the ferry back to Tower Bridge. The boys screaming at the loud rushing water, me snapping, laughing, roaring at what IS possible for a mother to do with her young boys, at where it's possible to BE. Away upriver, along the old wharves, past the docks, past the new Canary Wharf stockbroker sheds, along the way they came back in after sailing bout the world, there's the Tower Bridge, the Gherkin, the Tower of London.

Did I tell you boys, I nearly fell out of a window there, before I was even two? The circle turns. The day ends with more Tube travel, a show - Marianne Dreams, more Tube travel, dinner with friends, a hooge day, but wonderful life.

Making a Winter Fair

The school has changed its format for the midwinter, Christmas, event. This year, it's to be a market like a European Christmas market, with entertainment, food, things and the traditional room for the kids to sell off their own old toys before Christmas. It'll be held in the school, on a Sunday and the hope is that more fathers and parents who might not often be at the school - will drop by.

In a burst of nostalgic rightness, I volunteered German christmas baking, and telephoned Omi for her recipes. Baking delicious aromatic spices when it's dark and cold outside, perfect! Not what I'd ever do in Australia, part of this whole year's thang. A delightful book arrived full of Swabian gutzl-recipes and history, with Omi's handwritten recipes (and margin notes re the costing of same!), some of aunt M's own recipes with her very pragmatic, hilarious notes. Treasure. So I set off and baked a practise batch of something. One day, The Pumpkin and his small friend O made a round of 'staghorn buttons', with currants for button-holes, the dough rolled in cinnamon. Great. And icing the cutouts was most of the fun.

Then, in an interminable meeting one evening, it became apparent that there were just too many biscuit bakers already underway. So, in an easy sideways leap, I went savoury. As is my want. I decided to do three relishes, which could conceivably be part of an Australian christmas dinner, and might be interesting here too: caramelised onions, a pineapple chutney from Queensland and watercress pesto. Relish Australia is born.

The boys cried on the sofa - as I sliced enormous Spanish brown onions on 3 evenings, and spent hours caramelising them with sugar and vinegar in Stephanie Alexander's recipe. Somewhere, there is a photo of my mascara running black down my face, and a big wide, winter-white skinned smile!Our little room ponged of onion for days! LMM chopped cashews and watercress all over the kitchen, green specks, and I whizzed them with garlic, olive oil, parmesan and lemon. A search of ABC North Queensland's site gave me a recipe which worked well with tinned pineapple from South America.

With an enormous vase of eucalyptus leaves on my table on the day, I was one of the few savoury types (!) in a room with divine cakes, pastries and miles of gorgeous biscuits. Crepes from Madame I. The day was a flurry of people, conversations, children, the crowd all really into this event. The Pumpkin had a sleep with his narni, under the table; the Bean scooped a pair of moon boots. And Relish Australia sold out by 1pm.

Update: There have beeen frequent winter walks along the Dinosaur Park, aka Lee Fields, with the Bean on the moon boots, the Pumpkin oh his pedal-less bike, me with i-pod, walking briskly! We are approached about the moon shoes every time, they're an absolute cracker.