I have been doing things!
You will be glad to hear that I have been creative and successful in this creativity. I finished a painting to the point I have managed to sign it! I started it well before Christmas and I am so pleased with how it turned out! However I have no idea where it’s going or what I’m doing with it now I have painted it. Alas, woe, etc.
Does mean I have started another painting! When I’ll finish this I don’t know but I’m still glowing from the success of finishing the first one. I never finish anything so this is a good thing for me.
I have had an absolutely fantastic weekend. It truly was the first weekend of the new season, spring has sprung and I can smell summer just around the corner. Napoleon has gone back home – Dad came and picked him up and I have made the decision to not buy a new car for a few months yet. Or until I moved further away from work when I actually need a car. But anyway, I digress.
Dad came over for a few days and while Friday was spent looking at the car and working out the next steps for it we had breakfast with Jacko at the Liberty Grill in Cork, before dropping him at the house and heading out around the coast for a little drive where we stopped in Crosshaven for lunch at Cronins Pub. The evening was topped up with a few bottles of Corona and good food at the Ambassador Hotel in Cork City. Jacko then picked me up on his way home.
We then met up for a late breakfast on the Saturday, after a little error in communications Dad actually turned up at the house before me and Jacko had got up! Many thanks to Bob and Sinead for fielding that one for me. We headed into town for lunch at The Continental and ate far too much. By this time it was getting close to departure for Dad so there was a quick clean of the car. The mirror was fitted and one last coffee before he was sent on his way.
The Sunday was nice and calm, with breakfast at The Coffee Pot before heading to Blackpool shopping center to pick up supplies. We ended up getting in the car and driving to the pet store and B&Q and bought some more fish, some plants and curtains. It was a disturbingly domestic day for all involved. But our bedroom does look freaking awesome now.
Getting into work on Monday and people were complimenting me on my fresh-of-face-ness, and generally all round looking well. Which could have been a combination of both having walked and bussed to work, and a brilliantly long, relaxing weekend.
Finally, on my road to becoming a better writer (not really a published one… few steps at a time here people) I’m reading a book that Scarlett Speaks bought me for Christmas. Though a little over the place the book does have some very good points and ideas for how to get yourself writing and I now follow the author’s blog for further tips and tricks! Go see over at Ariel Gore! Highlighters and sticky book marks are in full force on my copy at the moment and when I can afford it (and justify it) I would love to work on one of her workshops.
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The time has come…
Napoleon is going to be sold. It is a good thing because he is going to my Dad after The Van died last week. The Van hit his quarter of a million miles, then had a massive electrical failure and stopped working…! Napoleon will be going back to the UK in about a month after I can work out how getting him reregistered over there works and transferring ownership.
It does mean however, that I need a new car. So Autotrader has a few Aston Martins up for sale – but the interior in the model I’m interested in is awful. In all seriousness I’ll be downgrading. I’ll not have a car like Napoleon for a long time. Good bye heated leather seats. Good bye climate control. Good bye six speed manual. Good bye 1.9 ltr DCi. But also good buy host of problems on the car because it has all the bells and whistles!
I would like a Ford Focus. However my budget doesn’t stretch to that. However I could easily buy an Austin Mini… And I am not kidding I am super tempted to get one. The only thing that is stopping me is safety. I would be killed driving it anywhere other than the city. And in November, when the lease is up and we move out of the city I’ll need a car that can handle motorway driving for work every day. And a tiny little Austin Mini 1.3 petrol is going to struggle with that. But I really, really want a Mini…!
The other options in the mini hatchback category are the Suzuki Swift, the Ford Fiesta, Opel/Vauxhall Corsa and the Skoda Fabia. However I am then limited again with getting a 2008 or later model for tax reasons. But on the smaller petrol engines I can afford to go later. I need to purchase from a dealer for parts and labour warranty and I need to be able to pay in cash in one hit.
The main thing here is as much as I would love to buy a MG Midget or Austin Mini because I can afford to NOW – will it be affordable in the future when I need to drive longer to work, or longer out to the shops on windy roads in the middle of winter…?
Dads resolution to his issue was a car he could run into the ground and then sell in a year for a new car. One that was a good size and good for the motorway driving. My issue was selling my car for a smaller one. Part of that has been sorted, I just have to work out the buying of the new car!
I’m excited! I wonder what I’ll get at the end of the day? Not an MR-2 like my brother though…
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Going on adventures…
It was a new day and you couldn’t get more of a new start than me, my car packed to the gunnels and the doors of a ro-ro ferry creaking open to a foggy Irish morning. I was the first off and it was the first time I had driven on a ferry in my own car. I had a one way ticket, my dad was with me helping me with the move over and in the back of Napoleon were my worldly goods and half a tonne of sensible things that my mum had bought me from Tescos the weekend before. This was the start of an adventure. I had decided a few months before that my job was more important than anything else; in this life money is the only thing that makes the world go around. And as sad as that realisation is – it is a reality. I had taken up the offer to relocate to our Clonakilty offices and work there. Not only leaving my home but leaving my country.
Here I am now, nearly two years later and I’m still getting over the culture shock. It wasn’t the first time I had moved; London and Wales had come before the trip to Ireland. And I had since gotten over the fact that when I leave life does continue and no, no one really cares that much about how I just bought toilet paper from a new and exciting supermarket called Dunnes. My blog is here for that, I don’t think anyone would want to subscribe to my newsletter… But you better believe it would be an awesome newsletter, with images and everything.
Fact was, people cared that I got on OK but not enough that they wanted a second by second ticker feed of what I was doing in my new home. I had ultimately made this decision to leave and start again so hey, good luck to me. It was a fun adventure (and I hope it continues to be one for years to come) but what were my friends to do? Stop everything and tell everyone that their friend moved to Ireland isn’t it crazy-and-omg-look-at-all-these-photos-and-look-its-an-irish-cowisn’titallsodifferentfromhere? Nope, the carried on and so did I.
The thing is I would have had less of a culture shock had I moved to Sub-Saharan Africa. Sort-of-English-Speaking doesn’t always equal seamless transition when it means moving to another country. And my goodness was the culture shock like a brick to the side of the head. Moving isn’t just difficult because of the logistics involved. As a sort-of-member of the EU I have it easy in that my passport enables me to live and work in a variety of different countries without so much as a by-your-leave. But leaving the UK means leaving the awesome Pound Sterling and entering the Eurozone. And with that comes a whole host of problems. But then those are all over come quite simply by working, its the other, not so subtle and obvious things that tend to creep up and surprise you when you relocate.
I miss routine, rules, legislation and people sticking to things. I miss having things in place to protect me and everyone being on the same place. The “no bother” attitude is fine when you’re on holiday but gets very tiring if you want anything done, and anything done right first time. It’s that and a whole host of social faux pas that add up to the culture shock. Essentially it comes down to the fact the western world is not the same. We can’t be classified under one term, each country is different. Even the ones that all bastardise the same language. I’m a stranger in a strange land, and I’m learning, but it’s still different. Same language or no.
It’s an adventure, it’s new and exciting but just because you can buy Cola and talk without a phrase book it doesn’t mean you can still be you and expect to get along. Insulting people is far too easy and at the same time you’ll find it incredibly lonely- especially when it seems a whole country gangs up on you just because you’re from somewhere else.
It puts so many things into perspective when you move countries. Even if it’s just a country a few hundred miles west from your home one.
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