All posts tagged: family

This Woman’s Worth

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I am the daughter of a working-class housewife and a middle-class small business owner. I was born in the 70s and grew up to believe that hard work for fair pay was as much a woman’s right as it was a man’s. I worked hard at school and didn’t question progressing to university. My first job was, at age 11, delivering newspapers to half the village before school five days a week, for which I was paid £5. I progressed to waitressing at the village pub and revelled in spending my hard-earned cash at the Metro Centre twice a year. I think I was one of the last cohorts who enjoyed a free higher education and graduated with a small overdraft that I bounced in and out of as I stepped into a career. I didn’t go home after I was 18, so I always had a job, or two, to pay the bills. In fact, since I was a papergirl there has only been one year when I haven’t earned money. That was the …

A Quiet Mind, Who Can Find?

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One of the things I struggled with the most when we lived in New Zealand—and this is going to sound crazy—is life being so easy. I know, what a ridiculous thing to say. It’s true though. I don’t mean that we spent our days sipping cocktails, staring at beautiful views without a care in the world. Actually that last bit does come close to what I mean. You are so far away from the rest of the world on this beautiful, hardly populated island, safe and secure, that you don’t have to worry about the rest of the world. Yes, the bills are high, you still have to do maintenance on your house, teenagers are hard to live with wherever you are, but the things you have to care about are only in your world. Other people’s worlds rarely interrupt your day. Right now, I wonder how I thought that was such a bad thing as I feel like I am drowning in cares and woes. Our dog has developed some kind of cyclical diarrhoea …

Coming along for the ride

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The first time we emigrated to New Zealand, we were a family with a nine-month-old and two-year-old. Those babies were an extension of us and apart from the 36-hour flight, which was either sleeping or non-stop Peppa Pig, nothing really changed for them because their whole world was us. It was easy; we move and they come with us. Even when we moved them at five and seven and then again at seven and eight (my maths is fine here, they are 18 months apart so depending on what month it is, they are one or two years apart), it was relatively simple. Yes they had to say goodbye to friends, family and familiar things, but at those ages, as long as you have Mum and Dad behind you, you’re brave enough for anything. The biggest challenge I remember were when we came back to the UK in 2017 was being introduced to the school zoning system and having to literally argue our case to the local authority so both children could go to the …

When the novelty wears off

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I remember in the month before we emigrated to New Zealand for the first time, back in March 2012, I used to get such a kick out of telling people we were moving to the other side of the world. The day before we went, I was in Tesco’s and the lady on the checkout asked, ‘Are you doing anything nice this weekend?”. It was so much fun to say, “Yes actually, I am moving to New Zealand.” I loved telling family and friends, because they were shocked, but in a good way. Pleased for us getting to do something so out of the ordinary and curious to see up-close how the whole emigration thing works, not least because NZ is a very pleasant place to visit. It was quite an out-of-the-blue decision.  Neither of us had even holidayed in New Zealand or Australia.  When I was younger, I was obsessed with the States and Gareth probably imagined living in Ibiza, but “down-under” had never featured.  We were going to go for a couple of …