IT'S COMING!!

I feel like a person in a Jaws movie. You know the scenario. There is someone quietly sitting in a boat. The water is tranquil and calm and the person is happily going about their business. And then the music starts and the camera pans down to an underwater shot where a ferocious shark with rows of gleaming white teeth is circling and getting closer.

Well that is kind of like how it is for me right now.

Only I am not worried about any sharks. I am worried about winter.

Now for those of you from cold climes you can stop reading now as you will just be laughing your head off at my wimpy attitude. Others can keep reading.

The fact is that I come from a warm weather place. Stick me in Hong Kong or Delhi and I barely break a sweat. I spent three weeks in Spain where the temperature hovered around the high 30's and low 40's and I lived in jeans…comfortably! All around me, other people were turning tomato faced with heat and were red and shiny.

Stick me in a UK winter though and I suffer.

Lack of sun, lack of warmth and even a lack of light all makes me feel profoundly chilled.

Last winter I struggled through with an English boss who let me huddle besides the small heater that she brought in for me despite the centrally heated office.

I wore spencers, singlets, vests and thermals. I experimented with thermal sock liners, with possum wool socks and with cashmere socks.

Leather shoes, boots, thinsulate boots.

Nope. Still cold.

My boss and work colleagues got used to seeing me sitting in the office in my overcoat and hat … all day.

So right now, I look at the weather man with utter foreboding. I am hoping that things may have improved this year as I have had time to acclimatise but who knows.

And it is not just the weather which is worrying. It is also the rhythm of life when it is cold. When the weather is balmy, people go out. They linger in cafes, stroll along the roads and amble down country lanes. When it is cold though everyone huddles at home. It is kind of like living in a country of bears. Everyone pulls up stumps and hibernates over the winter. No one goes out and here, where I live, even the restaurants close down for the winter as many of the smarter and more astute restaurateurs pack up and head for sunnier climes.

One of the women at the school that my children go to hates the winters here so much that she leaves the country for three months every year. Now this is fine if you are rolling in cash but for the majority of us, this is a luxury we can't even contemplate, so I will be sitting tight and suffering on my own. I will be eating low glycaemic food (as apparently it keeps you warm as well as being very good for people who live in low light areas). Instead of enjoying fresh fruit, I'll be tucking into a bowl of hot porridge each morning.

I have ordered my sheepskin boots and stocked up on things that I can happily hibernate with - I am teaching myself chain mail, I have bought a kit on tapestry and can now knit and crochet. I will do all my photo albums, organise my cupboards and write Christmas cards. I will study my French language books and practice calligraphy. I am thinking about soldering something but if it entails going to the garage I'll have to give it a miss.

Winter might be lurking out there but I am armed and ready!

Bring it on!

NaNoWriMo!

I am in the middle of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month and am about half way there in terms of a first draft. I am also about three quarters of the way through another novel about Hong Kong and the goal is to have both drafts completed by the end of the year. The difficulty is juggling work with children with gym with home with friends.

At the end of the day a glass of cold white wine seems somehat more appealing than sitting in front of the computer.

Reading - November

I am currently reading a book by Julian Barnes -"Arthur & George" which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2005. It is an interesting, albeit a quite dry, read and I am about a third of the way through. The review says it is gripping and thoughtful. I am still waiting for the central plot of the story to be revealed. Perhaps soon.....

Alpha male on a cold, wet day

The weather here is miserable today. Cold, grey and wet. Slushing through water on the way to work was dismal but at least now everyone seems to have turned their central heating on and inside is warm, if steamy!

Spent the day today in meetings being nice to some people that I would rather not be nice to at all. You know the sort. They don't make eye contact with everyone in the room and have strange ,wet handshakes.

I sat next to this guy who worked very hard at doing this whole alpha male thing, pushing his papers over my side of the table, putting his coffee cup in front of me and stretching his legs out all over the place.

Ugh.

Disengaging

Am I disengaging from this posting? Someone asked why I had been keeping such a low profile lately - I thought it was just because I was busy but they thought I was disengaging because we will be moving on soon.

Maybe I am.

Part of me has in the back of my head the fact that it doesn't matter if I don't talk to so and so because in six months we will be gone from here.

So who cares what they think.

Corporate Wives Prayer

Found this on the internet and thought it worth quoting:

Heavenly Father, look down on us your humble obedient expat wives who are doomed to travel this earth following our loved ones through their working lives to lands unknown. We beseech you, oh Lord, to see that our plane is not hijacked or doesn't crash, our luggage is not lost or pillaged and our overweight baggage goes unnoticed.

Give us this day divine guidance in our selection of houses, maids and drivers. We pray that the telephone works, the roof does not leak, the power cuts are few and the rats and cockroaches even fewer.

Lord, please lead us to good, inexpensive restaurants where wine is included in the meal and the food does not cause dysentery. Have mercy upon us Lord if it be the latter, make us fleet of foot, to make the loo in time, and strong of knee in case we have to squat. Also give us the wisdom to tip correctly in currencies we do not understand.

Make the natives love us Lord for who we are and not for what we can contribute to their worldly goods. Grant us the strength to smile at our maids, even though our most treasured dress resembles a rag or they take bleach to clean our well-admired Persian rug.

Give us divine patience when we explain for the hundredth time the way we want things done and Lord if we ever lose our patience and thump them, have mercy on us for our flesh is weak.

Dear God, protect us from so-called "bargains" we don't need and can't afford. Lead us not into temptation for we know not what we do.

Almighty Father, keep our husbands from looking at foreign women and comparing them to us. Save them from making fools of themselves in nightclubs. Above all, please do not forgive their trespasses for they know exactly what they do.

And when our expat years are over Lord, grant us the favor of finding someone who will look at our photographs and listen to our stories, so our lives as expat wives will not have been in vain.

Amen

Corporate wife?

Someone just asked me what a corporate wife is and I was so surprised that I couldn't think of an answer. It seems so obvious and the word is so familiar that when I had to define it I was flummoxed. I guess to me it is someone (me) who has married a career professional and who now has to adapt to certain things - long hours, travel, entertaining, socialising, being an asset to your husband's career.

In many other jobs you have little or no interaction with your partner's employer - as a corporate wife, I have to relate, entertain, impress, socialise, accommodate and adapt to demands by my husbands' company.

Think Stepford Wives!

Who am I?

Ok. The title says it all really. We are one of those global families that pack everything up and move on to a new posting on a regular basis. And we are coming up to our next move in five months. So this can be my countdown to the next move. Currently, we have no idea which country we will be moving to or when but I am pretty sure we will be moving as Mr Banker's contract comes up for renewal in May. Is this a good thing? Right now it feels like it is since we have been living in the UK for over two years. And, although it has been great being close to Europe, I can't stand the weather here.

It is just so utterly grey.

Raining, gloomy and damp.