Work Work Work

It is so depressing having to go back to work after two months of sitting on my butt doing whatever I felt like doing at the time. So from today (apart from next week Thursday and Friday when I have my eye operated on) I will be working 7 days a week on into the unforeseeable future. That is SERIOUSLY DEPRESSING but seems better when its all for a good cause I guess.

So for now its save every penny that I can get my hands on so that I can pay off the damned credit card and visa and have some for when I return to Namibia as a backstop. And then, providing all goes well, I will be able to open my own business and not have to work for anyone! Sounds like heaven, we can only hope that it happens.

I have all the normal worries - well, are they normal??? I'm leaving my family and a British passport to have a life that I would like. If my relationship goes wrong then I have nowhere to return but to South Africa, which I don't want to do. But then again, I don't want to be in England either really, except for my family ... And then, if this relationship doesn't work, what am I going to do with myself?? That would be a serious let-down. What if he turns out to be a very different person from the one I know when I get there to live permanently? What is it going to be like living so far away from my family? I am going to miss my parents and my nephews and my brothers and sisters and have no communication with them other than email.

I will also be living in a place that is predominently Afrikaans and German, of which I am crap at both. The German community does not welcome outsiders in with open arms and so that will be hard, particularly when opening your own business as well. I will need to learn the language - I did actually book myself on a German course last year and at the last minute the college cancelled it due to not enough people going for it. Can't win really.

So here I am, off to work with a load on my mind and not quite sure where to start ...

Back in England ...

... And guess what ?? Its raining!!!! What a surprise! Since I landed last Week Wednesday 6th August, we have had a few hours of sun here and there, followed by more rain and more clouds and more rain ... Although I did spend a week in Jersey and although it rained there too I think they definitely have better weather overall.

Anyway, so here I am after spending two months in Africa (Mid-winter in Africa I might add, where I sat on the beach and got a tan) and I am wondering what on earth I am really doing here. The weather is miserable 90% of the time, and 90% of the people are miserable too - makes for great days, I tell you! Nothing like loving the place you live!

After much deliberation and discussions, I have decided to give up my British passport and return to Namibia permanently. I don't want to settle in the UK permanently and so I think that even though I have been here for so long and my family is here, its time to make my own life. So as soon as I can get things organised I will be packing my bags and moving.

In the meantime, I need as much cash as I can get and so will be working two jobs 7 days a week - starting tomorrow! I didn't realise how lazy I'd become ... ha ha, don't I wish. So for a while its going to be lots of hard work for horrible pay, but for themoment it will have to be done. Hopefully it won't take long to get organised, or no doubt my plans will change again ...

I am off to enjoy my final day of freedom ....

Family

Is a very strong word, and should mean a lot to everyone. It means that you have those people close to you that will know you forever, that will always back you up, always look out for you, be there when you break down, be there for the good times and the bad times.

I always thought that my family was crazy and dysfunctional in a weird and funny way, and it wasn't until recently that I learnt just how much my family mean to me and how good it is for us to be as close as we are. Yes, we fight, we disagree, we don't always get on, but they are still my family and they always will be. I would do anything for any one of them.

My boyfriend that is here in Namibia, the one that I am with now, has made me realise just how important it is to have a family like mine, that I should appreciate them and love them for what they are, and not push them to one side. You see, he doesn't have what I have at all. It is a long and dramatic story, but he has never known his father at all, his grandmother raised him and his mother is not very well. He is not a son, it is like he is the father and his mother and grandmother are the children that he has to look after. It doesn't seem that he had the time to be a kid, to experience a normal life like I did. Seeing now the life that I had with the family I have, I realise just what my parents did for me.

In light of this, this week I did something which maybe I shouldn't have. To be completely honest, this is something I didn't think through at all. I got up on Wednesday morning, and decided that I was going to find his father that he had never met officially as his father - apparently he had tried to see him a couple of times. I had the night before asked for his fathers name, not 100% sure what I was going to do with it.

So I got up, and I found his father on the Internet, and I rang his offices. As he was unavailable I got his email address and emailed him - within the hour I got a phone call. Knowing now that they both wanted to meet, and by a complete miracle his Dad would be in Swakop that very night from Windhoek, I phoned my boyfriend and broke the news to him. I have to admit, I was missed completely when God was handing out tact, so it came out quite bluntly, I didn't intend to be so blunt, but the job was done.

Needless to say, we met with his father last night, Thursday 26th June. I think Pandora's Box has been opened.

African Sun

Is currently not so strong at the moment being the middle of winter, but hey, I have to say, its currently whipping the UK's summer hands down. At least here we have sun every day, and it is still possible to tan ...

We are currently sitting on the West Coast of Namibia in a little town called Swakopmund. We were in Windhoek for a week and then decided to come tothe coast as there was an opportunity here for a contract on Rossing Mine that is both interesting and pays a bit extra, so here we are at the coast.

It is really pretty down here, a real tourist town, but because of that everything is kind of stupidly priced, but it is a lot of fun being by the beach and in that atmosphere. I am in my 3rd week of being here now and time is flying, as it does, so soon it will be time to get on the plane and go home again bot for the meantime I want to enjoy it here.

I will soon be posting some photos on Picasa - as soon as that is done I will blog the link and keep updating it. The albums will be dated so everyone can see what we're up to. Today, however, I am off to sit on the beach and enjoy the sun!!

Ugh!!!!!!!

I've done another crazy thing. Seems I need to sort my head out and stop doing crazy things or I'm going to old and still running around not wanting to settle down. I just want the perfect job, and the perfect life, and I don't want it to be in this country. You would think that it wouldn't be hard to get that right, but hey ho, apparently it is!

My job working for the Press Office is great. I love some of the people I work with (you can never love everyone you work with), I love the cars we deal with, I love getting to drive them, I love the prestige of the job, the journalists, the Events, everything. So I handed my notice in two weeks ago. I finish work on the 6th June. I don't have another job, I don't have much money saved at all, so I thought I'd fly to Namibia for two months.

I finish work on the 6th June. I will then cane it down to Gatwick Airport SOMEHOW, haven't worked that out yet, and get straight on the plane. I will stay in Namibia for two months, get some peace and quiet, I might work a bit if I feel like although finding a job might be difficult lol, otherwise, I'm just going to chill. Then, after looking into things there for that time and getting to know the country a bit better, I'll make my choice of whether I'm staying here or I'll go back.

On my return flight on the 5th August, I get off the plane at Gatwick at 5:55am, hang around the airport for a while, and then get on another plane at 10am for Jersey to go to a wedding. Talk about cutting it fine. I haven't told the bride this as she may have a heart attack - control freak - and doesn't need to worry about anything else for the moment!!

On return from the wedding, I can then either get another job, or go back to college full time. I really want to go back to college, and my parents have agreed to help me out, but the problem with this is even though I am at full time college I still need to live, run my car to get backwards and forwards, pay insurance, have a phone, things like that. So that might not actually work unfortunately. So I guess I get a job - maybe in Brighton - and stick out another year in this country if I choose to. In winter. Yay.

Life is a journey, and apparently its not about the destination, but how you get there. So as we only live once, I can surely keep on doing stupid things!!

Beautiful Pictures

Snow Snow Snow

This was the view I woke up to on Sunday morning. Having faith in the Met Office, as we all do, I really didn't expect their wild ravings about snow to be at all true. So, when woken up by a crazy cat yowling at my bedroom door, I didn't expect anything different. So I dragged myself out of bed, opened the door for her to come in, and climbed back in bed.

She was not impressed. She gave me a dirty look and stalked around my room angrily for a while, whinging and this odd thing that sounds like a cross between a meow and a purr. Fine. I got up.

What she clearly wanted me see, as I stumbled toward the bathroom, was the blinding white glare coming from outside my sisters bedroom window. I did a double take and woke up very fast. Snow like this has to be one of the most beautiful sights. Everything is transformed into a perfect landscape, clean and white and beautiful.

There is a field next door to my sisters house, so after getting dressed I took a walk to the shop with my camera and started taking some photos. This seemed like the scene out of a movie like 101 Dalmations when all the puppies are running through the farmlands and hiding from the baddies.

So, I got myself together, trying to avoid a frantic cat as she stayed under my feet the whole time, whinging and making her funny noises but refusing to follow me outside. Thinking about it later, she probably was dying for a pee and had nowhere to go as her usual spot was under 6 inches of snow, bless her.


Well, after trying not to feel too guilty about leaving her alone with nowhere to hide from this stuff that had taken over her garden, I got in my car - after taking half an hour to get it out from underneath its blanket - I headed off to find my nephews.

The roads were awful. Either they hadn't been gritted at all, or there was simply too much snow to make much of a difference, and as there hadn't been that many cars on the road, I took a relatively slow and careful drive. The countryside was absolutely beautiful, so stopping to take photos and getting flipped off by irate drivers as they stormed down the roads with no appreciation for the beauty all around them really didn't bother me that much.

My car did some smooth skating around a few corners, down some lovely country lanes, to reach my Mum's house as she had the boys. They have to be the best fun in the snow, as they have the kind of thrill that onlychildren can from this kind of event.

They were, as expected, completely thrilled by it all, and i found my Mom, Dad, and Ethan and Aaron in the back garden building a snowman - what else do you do in the snow??


Bless my Dad, his attempt at a snowman wasn't great, so I though I would try have a go at making a real one. "You have to roll it" Says my mother. Well, two hours later we were still rolling until we could roll it no more it was so heavy. We rolled, and packed it down, rolled, and packed it down, until we just had no strength to roll anymore. We then smoothed him down, got loads of clean snow all over him to make him all perfect, and did the same again for the head. Boy did it take some time. But the end result was quite good for my first real snowman:

Then his head fell off.

Granted, it was only a couple of hours later and the sun had come out, there was quite a strong breeze etc, and we clearly had not given him a decent neck!

Friend v Boyfriend

I broke up with my current ex 13 months ago, when I met my new boyfriend that I have mentioned before - the one that keeps trying to get into the country and can't ...

Today, I rang my ex. We are in a difficult situation. He wants to be in this country and is happy here, I am clearly not. Sadly, he is here on my visa and if we notify the customs officials to this problem he will have to leave. I, having that stupid thing called a conscience, don't want to make him leave when he is happy here and has made a life for himself. Sadly, this means that I can't leave either. If it was just me, I would be out of here at a moments notice, blink of an eye etc etc.

So today I rang him to say that I needed some time out, and as this might possibly affect his visa, I wanted to check with him and make him fully aware of the situation I am. Due to the things that have happened in the past year, I am struggling with stress, anxiety and depression. I had decided that life was too much for me and I wanted out of the little hell hole that I live in and that I have made for myself and Africa was the place that I wanted to be. I was considering going back for 3 months to suss it out, get my head sorted, and trying to figure out what I wanted from life and where I should go long term. I was and am still convinced that England is not the place for me.

However, after talking for an hour and a half, the cell phone starting to burn up as it was completely over worked, he really tried his hardest to put things in perspective for me. Take one step at a time. Don't panic now over things that might not happen, or won't happen, or can't happen. Do one thing at a time, think about one thing at a time. When that thing is done, move onto the next one.

This all makes perfect sense. I also rather bluntly asked what I should do about my current situation. My so-called boyfriend in Africa, that I have seen for 3 months out of 13, cannot come here. Do I give up getting a British passport to have happiness now? Although, as my ex pointed out, what if that happiness fails in 10 years, or 2 years, or 5 years? What happens to me then? Will I be stuck in a country that I cannot leave if Africa goes bad as it seems to be doing almost daily? My family are all here in the UK except for a few aunties and uncles etc that are still in South Africa, so what if the opportunity for me to come and go as I please gets taken away by a government that hardly seems to know whats it doing at the moment?Is happiness now worth more than a lifetime of problems or possible unhappiness?

After all, how do you know that a relationship will last? You can build dreams and hopes to your hearts content, which we have done. You can wish for everything in the world, you can be sure that you want that person and will want them for the rest of your life, but life seems to have other ideas and can change at the drop of a hat.

So do I sit with patience, thinking that all good things come to those who wait. Sit in a country that I dislike, in a job I dislike, with people that I dislike, getting caught up in the twisted little nets of issues and drama's that come with living too close to people that you work with, socialising with them, see them every day of your life ... until you're ready to kill them all??

I know what my heart wants to do, and I know what my head thinks I should do. The problem is, which one should you live by, your head or your heart?

Shit Happens

Well, so much for Only a Day Away. Life really has its ways of knocking the air out of you so harshly it takes you some time to get back on your feet and be able to breathe again.

Friday didn't work out as planned, to say the least. He was sent back. Deported. Booted out. Never to return to this damned country, and I don't blame him in the slightest. For reasons that were not valid, simply because the United Kingdom, this First World country that we live in, expects everyone that flies in the door of wanting to stay here and abuse the system, simply because it has let every asylum seeker and terrorist do just that, it now picks on the poor innocent people that have no intention of staying here at all.

The stories that he told me of how he was treated in the hell hole of Gatwick Airport by so-called immigration officials are disgusting and horrific. They have made me sure that this is the last country I will ever want to live in, and I am now making arrangements to leave this hole. They can stick their British passport where the sun doesn't shine and go to hell with it. I wouldn't stay here if you paid me.

It amazes me that this country can get away with treating people this way. That they allow terrorists to walk in the door and make examples of innocent people. They push up the costs of visa's so that the poor people that try and stay have to fork out a fortune, almost a month's salary, just to be able to stay, when all that does is enable them to let another 100 asylum seekers in and support them when they don't work and then send them on holidays to the country they are claiming asylum from.

This country is a joke, and a horrible one at that. I would rather be in Africa with all the crime and murder than here on the whim of the arrogant shits that run this country.

Tomorrow is Only a Day Away...

Well, Time really does fly. Look at it, its already March and we have 272 days til Christmas. 9 Months. Hmmm... I need to start shopping!

Over and above that, there are a number of pressing matters in my life, of which most happen tomorrow lol ;-) I have such a knack for planning that tomorrow is going to be a fairly busy day. Let me explain.

I will be getting up at 4am, throwing on some clothes and driving to Gatwick Airport, which is 89 miles away and a good hour and a half. I will be late, which means my guest will be standing on the side of the road waiting for me. This is partly because I dislike getting up early intensely, and partly because I will be borrowing a tank from work and won't be able to park in the car park, so there is no way I will be early as I will not be taking a Navara into a multi-storey dinky car park that doesn't give you space to move in the smallest car, nevermind a car that's about 7 foot long. So tomorrow if you see a black Navara caning it down the motorway its because I didn't wake up in time and am now VERY late.

On top of that, its not just anyone I'm picking up, it is my so-called boyfriend - although you can hardly call it that as for the past year we have spent more time apart than we have together - actually more like 7 months apart and 3 together - it is now 13 months in total. So, earlier in the week, I lost my temper and bought a ticket for him, which means he has no choice but to fly, and if he doesn't, I would fly there and murder him, so his prospects were slightly grim. So he is finally arriving - what a surprise. The last time we saw each other was over Christmas, so it has been a while.

Then, after caning it back up the motorway, I have to throw him off at home and keep going to my Mum's house and follow her into Banbury so she can get me free parking in the city centre - I have to write the Life in the UK test tomorrow. Of all times to choose to write it - or alternatively to decide to drive to Gatwick - it would be at 9am on a Friday morning. If anyone has written it or will soon be writing it - honestly, what a load of crap. I spent a lot of time on the political section as that I knew nothing about. Well, when siting at work asking my English / British colleagues the questions that they were meant to know as having lived here all their lives, and they knew none of them, I really did laugh.

I then continued on to ask them a variety of other questions - and guess what, they didn't know! So if a British person that has lived in the UK all of their lives does not know the answers to these things, why should I?? Yes, I realise they have to understand that we can understand English and read, write etc, but there must be some kind of way to test us that is not a complete inconvenience to everyone.

On top of that, it is costing £34 in cash (which I completely begrudge) and a book that cost £10, as well as many hours wasted learning about the different percentages of people living in the UK, I really am quite angry. It is a waste of time, money, effort, and on top of that I have to take time off work to do it, which certainly didn't impress my managers in the slightest.

So, after completing the test and hopefully passing (if I fail I will die of embarrassment) I then have to cane it back to work - still driving the tank down narrow country roads now to get back to work - and spend the day there organising the fleet, at 5:30pm I will finally be able to make my way home and enjoy a peaceful weekend (hopefully anyway). I am very sure that something will come up at the last minute to ruin my peaceful plans.

Anyway, off I go!!