Sunday 1 July 2012

This time it's personal...


I ain’t no hippy and I ain’t really no new age cosmic space cadet or to be honest a believer in much more than you make your own bed. Kym is, I’m not.  But some weird shit’s been going down over the last few years and it’s freaking me out a bit. 

For those that know fuck all about me I’ll give you as brief a summary as I can.I am English, I mostly grew up there (Army parents, some shuffling) and I am currently 43 (only just). I met my wife 14 years ago and we’ve been married 10. I’ve travelled a fair bit in search of surf and along the way I have tried my fair share of most things. Some I have enjoyed more than others, shrooms, weed; and some I have not enjoyed at all, actually, only one, smack. There’s only one I still enjoy regularly and that’s alcohol. I think the reason I’ve told you this is relevant because (a) It shows I’m not averse to sampling new things and (b) I’m not stupid enough to let them become a necessity and can be objective about altered states of mind. We planned/plan to have kids but a major fuck-up in 2004 and then nothing until a miscarriage in 2010 brings us to where we are now.


Wise decisions at young ages put us both in the fortunate positions of being home owners with small borrowings even before we met and as a consequence, put us in a position to be able to choose to live somewhere warmer and with better surf than the UK. Australia was an obvious choice. Fuck flying. We’d done enough of it already, so a plan was hatched to drive here. We set off in April 2009 and arrived in Australia in March 2010 19 countries later. In September while staying in Perth Kym (that’s my wife) miscarried. We carried on around the coast heading for our original destination, the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and looking back, this is when things started to get… well, weird.

At friends in Victoria en-route we browsed rental sites for ideas on where and what we should be looking for on the Sunny coast. On that first look we spotted an old Queenslander (timber, stilted, single storey) surrounded by woodland with a fair rental price. We liked it so much I emailed the agents. We were still 6 weeks away and they suggested sending a friend around to view it and make an application. We had no friends on the coast.  Kym was so convinced she wanted it that she printed a photo of the house and pinned it to our dash. The date the house was to become vacant was delayed by 6 weeks.

We got the house. The view from the deck at the rear is almost identical to the view from our old cottage in England (we didn’t have kangaroos hopping about though). Our container was pulled from storage in Brisbane and we made it our new home with all the stuff shipped from the UK. Kym walked straight into a job hairdressing and I after a brief interview while out surfing I started work as a painter. 


All good, but it doesn’t end there. I bought a car and ended up playing squash Monday nights with the bloke I bought it off. One day he didn’t turn up so I asked one of the 3 blokes playing on the next court if he wanted a hit. His name was Gary. His mates name was Gary. It was both their birthdays that day. The 3rd bloke fortunately was only a Tony. I’ve never played with the car guy again; it’s now 3 Gary’s and Tony. One day Tony said he was a man short for his Tuesday night doubles so I went. I was introduced to Mike and Wayne who, it turns out, is married to one of Kym’s clients Yvonne. Wayne organised a dinner where I got to meet the missing player who was called Dennis. My regular partner back in the UK was Mike Dennis.

I bought a surfboard on eBay from a guy called Josh. It was made by a local shaper called Bart. I snapped it. I rang Josh to get Bart’s number to see if he could repair it. I ended up getting on with Bart (getting on, not getting it on you perverts) and over the course of the next year, along with a few ding repairs, I got him to shape me a new board. He then asked if I could paint his house which I duly did and whilst painting his house realised how busy he was. Bored of painting and with work drying up anyway I decided to make a big leap and ask if he would employ me as a trainee. The day I went to ask him Josh was there. I had not seen Josh since the day I bought that board off him. Bart gave me a job.  

We have a cat, he chose us when we went to an animal rescue centre to get one. He had already been named. His name is Victor. This is my Mums nick name for her partner of 25yrs Chris who passed away 5yrs ago.


One of our favourite people Ketut at 39 has been unlucky in love. He lives on Bali and a couple of years ago met an Australian girlfriend and married her recently. Her name is Michelle she is from Coolum on the Sunshine coast and we met her for lunch and she is lovely.


It’s not all good shit mind you. Most of it for sure but the odd shit weird thing happens too. One of my dearest friends had to have major brain surgery in the UK last November. The surgery didn’t go well. Kym believes butterflies can be the souls of people who have left us. On my way to work one morning a beautiful tropical butterfly flew straight into my windscreen. My very first thought was ”I hope that’s not Martin” in that instant my phone rang, it was Kym to tell my Martin had passed away. 


We have decided to seek help with a fertility specialist, we have unexplained infertility. The company offered us a choice of 5 specialists on the coast for referral, Kym went with one of the two women on the list. On our 2nd visit with her she noticed we live on the same road. Not only the same road… she’s our neighbour, separated by a large field. We begin IVF this week. 



Maybe it’s time I started believing.