Sunday Blog 205 – 19th October 2025
When we pulled into my suburb in Perth, on the drive home from the airport 19 days ago, my heart sank. It was all over. Ireland, Italy, France, Greece. Focusing on writing. Honing my European driving skills. All over.
Such a whiny baby. How could I even give myself a moment of self-pity for living in one of the best places in the world? Sigh.
And yet, here I am.
My childhood was particularly stable, with mature, kind parents and a home that was an institution, a suburban fortress of respectability and consistency. Our home was filled with books; including the one with the Monday’s Child nursery rhyme. I was born on a Thursday, and therefore, apparently I had far to go.
Travelling to Europe with my family as a fourteen-year-old transformed me. It set in motion an unquenchable desire to return to Europe. From teen to adult, I was fixated on making the journey back.
I finished school, worked for two years, got a degree, all against the persistent drumbeat of desire to move to London. I well remember from that time the scorn I meted out to friends and colleagues who didn’t have travel experience or aspirations. And envy as I watched my Perth friends come and go to London. But I wanted to have a degree and professional skills under my belt before I made the big move. I wanted to work somewhere other than a pub.
And so I was the advanced age of twenty-five before I moved to Europe in 1990. I still have the diary entry written at Moscow Airport, waiting to board my plane from there to London. FYI, Aeroflot was the cheap airline of choice in those days.
Diary Entry. Moscow Airport, 14th June 1990
I’m not as excited as I should be… I’ve had such wild dreams about this holiday. I’m hoping it will (now I think of it) slough the layer of apathy off the layer of calm, and allow me to look many fears in the face: physical fitness, singing and music, language fluency, my career etc.
But I suppose the closer I get to the destination, the more I mistrust romantic notions of a clean sweep. I am, after all, still the same person, even the 14-year-old who last trod on the moving walkways of Heathrow.
Spoiler alert, my physical fitness remained at the lower end of the spectrum, although I did start doing yoga in London in 1995. I still am fluent only in English and never pursued music with any seriousness.
The career though, that bit went well.
I lived in Europe from age 25 to 34. I’ve been back in Perth now for 26 years. I still haven’t given up on fluency in French. In fact, right now, I’m plotting a longer trip to France, to immerse in the language as well as pursuing new book projects.
Can I still feel the traces of the 14-year-old that first trod the moving walkways of Heathrow in 1979? The ambitious 25-year-old who returned to conquer in 1990? The 34-year-old solo mama who returned from Europe with her baby daughter in 1999? Underneath it all, do we ever change as much as we think we do?
Well, it’s true I’m more world-wise, and I would consider myself bolder, more willing to take risks and challenge myself (case in point, driving on the right hand side of the road). Yes, perhaps I have, as Joan Didion said, lost touch with the people I used to be.
And yet. The pull of Europe. That’s stayed the same.
