My detox diet

On the weekend I read something that resonated. Written by Caitlin Moran, a funny and slightly crazy journalist I have come to love, it was one of her more serious columns. She wrote about her first panic attack and the simple tool she now employs to deter them. She erected some barriers in her mind and when her thoughts begin to encroach any of them she quickly tells herself - loud and clear - to SHUT UP. And it works.

Style Notes

A while back I told you how apprehensive I am about bidding my beloved UK newspaper farewell. With just seven days to go these concerns are reaching fever pitch, particularly about reacquainting myself with the Australian papers. See, after I wrote last time, I made a discovery that does not bode well.

My long-time favourite, first-page-I-turn-to, column in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend, is no longer featured. After 12 years Maggie Alderson, the woman behind Style Notes, is no longer standing at the back of the weekend magazine to entertain and educate me on a Saturday morning. I find this very sad and hope this is not an indictment on the magazine's editorial direction. Time will tell.

Why I’m not saying sorry for the F-word

In recent weeks I have felt inspired. Genuine, physiological, goose-bump inducing, heart-lurching, mind-racing inspired. By three people.

First was Michelle Obama speaking to a group of 12-year old girls from a London school where the majority of pupils are anything but advantaged. Mrs Obama met the girls on her first State trip to the UK and on her recent visit brought 30 of them up to Oxford for the day. I watched on television as she mesmerised these young girls with her candour, sincerity, humour and vision.

Atypical ambivalence

I am feeling uncharacteristically ambivalent about my birthday this year. Narcissistic as it seems, normally I quite love the 21^st of June. I like that it falls in the middle of the year and to be truthful I like presents and I love cake and my own birthday ranks quite highly as an excuse to treat myself to both.

By this stage, ordinarily I'd have bought a few little things under the guise of it being a birthday treat and at least ordered one (or three) slices of a cake I'd otherwise try to resist. This year? Nothing. Not even a lipgloss. I ordered a muffin today but it had no icing so it can hardly call itself a cake.

Selling cars is not my cup of tea

Following my unfettered success as a receptionist at the helicopter base, job offers flooded in from all over the Thames Valley. Everyone wanted to employ that pregnant Australian lady who loved franking the mail. Ok, that's a lie. No one wanted to employ me but I did love franking the mail.

My next temporary assignment was to a luxury car dealership for five days. The agency and I were both under the impression I was being hired to man the reception desk, which was not strictly true. A young English girl welcomed me to the fold and suggested I take the seat beside her at reception.

Public Declarations of Affection

This post comes with a warning. The following material is a little judgemental and possibly inflammatory. On the whole they're not things I aspire to be. Most of the time I deliberately avoid being both but not today. Read my rant at your peril.

The day of the Knights

Well you'd never guess what happened to me today. I spent the day at Windsor Castle, witnessing the incredible spectacle that is Garter Day, and afterwards charmed the Duchess of Cambridge so much that she has asked me to be her very first Lady-in-Waiting. We met, we clicked, she came right out and asked me to come on board. Perhaps it was my understated enthusiasm? Or my quiet wisdom?

Could this be it?

In my little world tomorrow is a truly exciting occasion. I've been deliberating over posting about it now or waiting until it's happened, but I just can't resist telling you.

For one thing, I'm bursting at the seams and need to channel my excitement somewhere other than my wild imagination which is already leading me down all sorts of strange paths. And, when I write this blog I imagine we're having a conversation, albeit a rather one-sided one. But, using that analogy, since we speak so often I figure it's almost deceitful not telling you ahead of time. If we were conversing all the time there's no way I would leave this information out.

A rude reception

A combination of factors including pregnancy, a dearth of jobs and a glut of overly qualified accomplished candidates (at least that's what I'm still telling myself) meant I was unable to secure permanent employment when we arrived in the UK. After months of rejection letters I joined a temping agency. Oh the joys.

And the winner is…

Mr G. He who was formerly known as My Husband, will now go by the name of Mr G. Thank you for all of your suggestions. Special mention to Anne for proposing the winning tag.

It's sufficiently anonymous to meet *his* privacy requirements, non descript enough to satisfy my one stipulation (must not make readers nauseous - Joyce this is where McDreamy sadly falls through) and it's perfectly fitting. G is my widely used nickname so Mr G makes great sense.

I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it myself. Astonished, even, when I consider how much I love the other Mr G. For anyone unfamiliar with Summer Heights High, this will make no sense. It's a television series that was created, written and starred in by an Australian comic genius Chris Lilley. I wasn't alone in finding the series clever, hysterically funny and searing. 

Mr G, a painfully self-important music and drama teacher who walks the unlikely line between being utterly revolting and completely endearing, is a character from the show that I particularly love. He's constantly looking for students with the triple assault - who can sing, dance and act - a combination he is very vocal (and boastful) about possessing himself.

The parallels between that Mr G and my Mr G are - fortunately -minimal. I certainly couldn't imagine marriage with the former. And, between the two of us, my Mr G and I don't even come close to achieving any of the other Mr G's trinity of skills. But the Mr Gs share this - my adoration, an ability to make me laugh and now, a name. Mr G it is.

Naming rights

I am married. Not a defining point of interest and if you've visited this blog before, or you know me, you know that already. So why am I telling you? Well, the man I am married to does not want to be named here. He's fine with being included but unwilling to be identified by name.

In real life (as distinct from my dream life where he and I attended The Wedding together) he's not a clandestine kind of guy but he has a pretty limited profile on the internet and he prefers it that way. I'm dismissing, of course, the possibility that he has a rampant online life I'm not aware of, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. For one thing I highly doubt, in the nicest possible way, he would know where to begin.

So my husband with the limited internet profile is now, ironically, married to a girl who blogs about her life which, less ironically, overlaps significantly with his. You might think this would create some tension but surprisingly it doesn't. Or it hasn't yet. Except, that is, on the matter of his designation.

I hate writing "My husband" all the time. I think it sounds pretentious. Like I'm making a big deal about the fact I'm married. Or worse, that he is a person I refer (or, worse again, defer) to in capital letters, My Husband.

Now this wouldn't be a problem if I didn't mention him in my blogs or if he didn't read them because then I could just by-pass the matter entirely and call him what I like. Neither is possible as my life's not far reaching enough to garner material without his *secret* name popping up from time to time and he makes good suggestions when reading my drafts, which he does religiously, so there's no hiding from it.

So, what to call him? We've brainstormed possibilities without reaching consensus (translation being I suggest labels which he rejects immediately). I proposed The Student, which he disliked and in a few weeks' time will no longer be accurate. He probably would approve of being called Chief Editor or something of that ilk but I'm not putting that on the table.

I'm not mad on the usual blog monikers for spouses – Mr Not Another Blogging Mother is too long, DH denotes Darling Husband which strikes me as worse than My Husband, and I especially don't like My Other Half. The expression that is, fortunately, I really like the man we're talking about. I just don't know what to call him.

Any suggestions? Lovely readers who know precisely what his *name* is, I ask you kindly not mention it. If you do he might divorce me and that's a big weight to carry on your shoulders. Only kidding but it's his one proviso so be creative.

Three ingredients

After sharing my angst with you last weekend, quite a bit has happened. For a start I uncurled myself, dug my head out from the sand and experienced an unprecedented burst of energy to tackle the administrative tasks I'd long avoided. My denial finally made way for reality.

Flights home are now booked, our belongings are packed in boxes ready to be collected for shipping tomorrow, farewell drinks have been tentatively arranged and best of all, it seems, I have a job. The job I had and loved looks to be mine to have and love once again. At least for a while.

This is my dream scenario made even more dreamy for hearing the news while roaming about Rome. Immediately I felt an enormous wave of relief. Cathartic doesn't begin to describe it. As I explained to you at length – which, incidentally, is how I explain everything – leaving my job to move here was more difficult than I'd envisioned. On hearing, the worries and fears I've harboured dissolved. After what feels like a long time in the wilderness, I will enjoy employment once again. And for me, this is as good as it gets.

From the outside this might not seem particularly revelatory. I'm not unqualified, I have good degrees and I've held good jobs before so why has employment felt so out of reach? Probably in part because of the way I am but I also don't think I'm alone in finding my prolonged period of time out of a workplace scary.

For better or worse, a job is an anchor. There are times when it's liberating to be freed from one – annual leave in particular – but being out of work, even voluntarily, presents difficulties.

Many of the friends we've made here are doing post-graduate study. Unlike some they're not pursuing academic careers.(Such is the novelty of an employment history to some long-term students here, one good friend who worked in Sydney as a Federal judge's associate and in a law firm for several years, was even approached by fellow students in her course "So we heard you've had a job! Tell us about that?")

They're here to gain credentials to boost their professional lives, however they unfold. They were inevitably well-qualified people before they got here and will leave eminently more so, but even they worry about employment. Not in a indulgent, woe-is-me fashion but sincerely because it matters.

For all their work and drive, for the sacrifices in choosing to come here, for the career decisions they've deliberated over, the energy they've expended in earning their qualifications - will they find a satisfying professional outlet? Is there a job on their horizon that matches their skills, motivation and desires? Of course there are and they will find them but the limbo period in between is still complicated.

A few years ago my dad read a book that our family has subsequently adopted as a quasi mantra. The author, an American psychiatrist, concluded from decades of clinical experience that "happiness" is best attained with three essential ingredients: something to do, something to love and something to look forward to.

Obviously this is not a precise science – happiness is too subjective and fluid to be contained in any single box – but I think his theory is sufficiently flexible to reflect that. Something to do need not be a paid job. It's as simple as having a task or purpose upon waking. Looking after a child, taking care of a pet, writing an assignment, helping a friend move house – literally – something to do.

Certainly my many months without that reinforced the magnitude of the first pillar. Without it, the other two are not nearly as pleasing. I'm rarely resolute but on this I am. It seems incontrovertible that we all need something to do to be happy. However you choose to define that. See, even when I'm resolute, I'm not.

But, content, I now am, because I'm returning to a job that I know goes a long way to completing the trinity of my happiness.

Roaming Rome

Today I successfully completed what could fairly be described as a black run in the parenting arena. I survived - and enjoyed - a day roaming the streets of Rome alone with my daughter. ALONE. BY MYSELF. In itself I think it's one of my greater accomplishments. But when you add in cobbled streets, no highchairs, a foreign language, no changing facilities and very little bearings, you can see why the outing earned its black status. Against the odds we had a wonderful time. Without any tears. At least not mine.