Bridgetsmusings’s Weblog

It’s mid May and the plane (from Melbourne via Dubai)  is due to land in Birmingham in five minutes, but there’s still no sign of life on the downward camera operated by the touch screen in front of my seat.  Just cloud and drizzle. Three minutes before landing, I finally glimpse terra firma and my beloved green fields. The captain announces it’s 12 degrees outside – this is 5 degrees lower than the autumn day I left behind in Melbourne! I hope my mother has brought a coat for me.

I smuggle my Melbourne-ripened lemons through customs – not without a flutter of guilty nerves. I am confident that I have not introduced pests into the UK and Mum will enjoy a slice of Meyer lemon in her G & T. I see her waving among the sea of people. She is clutching a thick, blue fleece.

In the car on the way  home, I notice drifts of cowparsley everywhere and chestnut trees with their confetti-like pink and white candles. It all feels hugely familiar, normal even. I recognise the motorway landscape, road signs and the profusion of long-haul lorries from the UK and all over Europe.

I am perhaps a bit of a chameleon, but back on English soil, I slot right back in as if I have never left or been anywhere. When I am in Melbourne, that is home and Britain recedes into the background. I am clearly operating to the ‘when in Rome’ rule.  Either that, or I have a split personality and am a divided-loyalty-Pomoz?!

Mum’s house is cosy and warm with its double-glazing, Aga cooker, carpets and pretty soft-furnishings. Roses are blooming outside and bluetits, finches and robins feast on nuts and seeds in the bird feeder. It’s all rather reassuring that time appears to have stood still.

We have fish pie for supper and it’s delicious. Cooked only as Mum cooks it with a mixture of smoked and white fish. Again this feeling of cosiness.  I relish being a daughter again and bask in maternal cossetting and pampering.