The Last Post.

As we say in the blurb that heads the main page, "We have enjoyed living in London & especially Shakespeare Gardens far more than we ever imagined we could". 

That makes leaving so much harder than we expected it to. 

At the time of writing this it is late on Monday night, 4th November. We fly out to New York on Thursday afternoon. The house is now all boxed up and more than half the boxes have gone. The walls and floors are bare, the cupboards empty and the place echoes. We are finishing off those last minute things that we should have done days and even weeks ago - Mark is writing this post and transferring data to 'The Tablet' to take with us, while Sally does last minute tasks. The kids are being fairly patient through it all. 

It has been a busy few weeks - nothing like when we left Canberra three years ago however. Of course it feels like both yesterday and a life time ago. For Sally & Mark it does seem like yesterday but for Aisha and William it has quite literally been a large part of their lifetime. Both of them have grown so much while they have been here. They came here as little kids and are leaving with a much broader outlook on the world.

Of course leaving Canberra in 2010 was hard, especially or the kids.They were leaving the only home and school they had known and all their friends to go to the other side of the world.

Last day in Canberra 2010.

Day 1 London.

But....... 

There is so much to say about our three years here it is difficult to know where to start. Sally's work has been a huge part of our lives and the reason for us being here. She has worked very hard and will miss the job and her colleagues very much. For the children, much of their time has revolved around school where they settled in, did well and made friends they will miss. But for all of us, it has been our home, our neighbours and our street that have made a good posting very special.

Mark's 50th.

Pommy Bastards ! 
Our kids that is. 

neighbours come to dinner...
& have to make it themselves 

farewell party

We love our suburb and the tube.

Oct 2013.....did the sign shrink ?

Jan 2010.

Of course our street is amazing, as is the very nearby Cherry Tree Wood.

We have home delivered milk in glass bottles with cream on the top that is so thick the milk wont come out.

Our vegie men at the station not only sell great fruit and veg but are great people too.

There is also Pete the Fishman who supplies the wonderful salmon and oysters many of our guests have enjoyed. The guys at the 'Orange Shop', the men at Midhurst butchers, the friendly lady at the cheese shop and many more who all combine to make a real community here. 

Much to his surprise, Mark really enjoys English Ales - but not when they are warm. They come in a wide variety of interesting brands - fursty ferret, Old Bob, Bad King John, Old empire, speckled Hen. The list goes on and on. 

Our garden with the gum tree ( it had better be here when we come back James & Helen !), cherry and apples trees.

We love our house

with its great kitchen, very un-British open plan and extensive use of glass. We thought having two dishwashers and two ovens was silly but......

 

If we could, we would buy it.

The kids loved having their own rooms for the first time.

1st night in Shakespeare Gardens.

Getting to know Mark's Auntie Mary has been great.

The first meeting with Mary.

Like our street in Canberra,  Shakespeare Gardens is a cul - de sac. Great for bike riding.

Will takes a final ride. 

Of course London is a pretty amazing place, despite what Mark may have thought before arriving in 2010.

The Royal Wedding. 

going to the Jubilee river pageant. 

HRH

Olympics.

We have had some wonderful experiences.

The notice.

Afternoon tea at Westminster.

We have had some amazing weather

And we have done so much it is impossible to refer to it all now.

You'll just have to read the rest of the blog !

Below is a copy of the speech that mostly Mark wrote but that Sally read at our farewell street party.

Sometimes the gods do smile upon us all.  The fact that our family is here today is due largely to them

We almost didn't come to London and we definitely shouldn't be in this house now.

Our last posting to Jakarta finished in 2000 when we came home with a 6 month old Aisha. Sally vowed that Jakarta would be our last posting. The work is hard and the hours long and we had moved into a new phase of our lives.

After doing a short term mission to Christmas Island in 2010, however, she caught the posting bug again.  When she applied for soon after, it was with the thought that, as she had been out of things so long, she would not succeed this time and would just use this application round to get a feeling for what was being looked for so she could apply again in a year or two.

For that ‘exploratory’ application, Cairo was at the top of the list, followed by Ho Chi Minh, New Delhi and other similarly exotic cities. London was not on her list. Along with a number of other posts on offer, we had briefly discussed it and dismissed it (having been here 20 years ago as a backpacker on a budget, Mark’s feelings were along the lines of ‘it’s just like here, but with worse weather and worse food.  We'll end up in one of those dreadful ‘Coronation Street’ houses with no garden and the kids will get stabbed because everyone carries a knife !!!!!)

Sally only added London as a last minute impulse, very late the night before the application was due. She neglected to tell Mark…..

A few months later, after a very convoluted departmental assessment process, we sat around our dining table with an 11 year old and a 9 year old.  We told the kids that the announcement would be made in the next few days and that, while we thought the possibility was very, very remote, we MIGHT be offered a job overseas.

Where could we go they asked? Sally went off and found the application and handed it to Mark who started to read through the list.  Cairo, New Delhi, Saigon, Shanghai, London ….. London !!!???

William will tell you what happened next. 

"Dad said 'If mummy gets the posting to London she can go by herself and we will stay here and get another mummy' ”

 It was a slightly tense night that night.

The next day Mark was in front of his class teaching when his office phone rang. It was Sally. You’d better sit down she said. He didn't   I got a posting she said. To London. He sat down then. Mark rarely swears.

We had 48 hours in which to accept or turn down the offer. We slept little, talked lots and very seriously discussed turning it down. Apart from Mark’s concerns about London, we knew would be taking the kids away from the only home they had known to the other side of the world. Add to that the post was to be taken up in just 10 weeks. Most officers get 18 months’ notice. We had a ridiculously short period of time to get ready.

In the end, Sally wisely noted that if we did turn it down and stay in Australia we would might still be happy, but would always wonder what we would have done with three years in London.

So we said yes.

We made it to London, but, only just. In the time before we left, Mark went on leave to co-ordinate, Sally did a 5 week preparation course, we renovated the kitchen, took 2 weeks of the already planned 3 week trip up north, returned to Tasmania for a week to attend a wedding Sally’s brother and partner pulled together in 7 weeks so we could be there, sold 2 cars, shipped the Range Rover, found schooling for the kids, packed up and rented out the house. We literally ran out of the house on the last night. As is the case now, our neighbours were a huge help to us.

Aisha will tell you about that last night.

Our last day in Canberra was a hectic one. I have never seen so many boxes of clothes, food and bags of rubbish going in different directions in my life. When we finally left the house at around 9pm that night, it was with a general feeling of relief that everything was done. 

Just after we drove down the main road however, mum realised she had lost her ring.

This was not just any ring. It was the ring that Dad gave Mum the day I was born, that held the diamond that he’d bought as an investment aged 18. Remembering all the boxes and bags that had been chucked out that day, we turned back home with a feeling of dread, knowing it would be a miracle if we found it. With the car headlights on mum, in tears, started searching the driveway in the bucketing rain that had started 2 weeks before. William, Dad and I went inside and started looking everywhere.

After just 5 minutes, Dad found it, up against the cupboard skirting board in the kitchen.  We decided that this was a good omen, that the gods were smiling on us and that everything would be fine in London. 

The kids had toast for dinner when we got to the hotel after 10pm.

At 7am the next morning at Canberra airport we saw John McCarthy who had been our Ambassador in Jakarta.  We had had no contact with him for 10 years. Sally went up to him, ‘Good morning Ambassador’. ‘Hello Sally, how are you?’ he said. It was a large embassy and we didn't have a lot to do with him whilst there. How he remembered her name after 10 years is beyond us.

He told us we would love London. We came away from that conversation feeling as if we had just had our posting ‘blessed’ by him. That, combined with finding the ring meant that we boarded the plane feeling London was meant to be, and we would be ok.

In Singapore we wondered if we would make it because you had that big snowfall at the start of December that closed all the airports, except Heathrow where we landed in snow.  We got to our apartment in Kensington where we stayed for about 9 weeks.

During that time the kids started school and Mark trekked up from Kensington High Street to Woodside Park each day. He spent about 6 hours a day commuting with 4 hours of that being just sitting, or more often standing, on a tube. In between that he walked the length of the high road from Totteridge & Whetstone to Highgate going into every real estate agent to see what was on offer. "Not much" was the answer. The market was tight then and it was the run up to Christmas. In the end, after giving our details to about 25 different agents, only 4 kept up contact.

We nearly missed out on this house. Someone got in before us.  With the go ahead from Sally’s boss, but without permission from Canberra, we offered a higher rent. Much to our surprise, the agent was reluctant to accept the higher offer!! It took several nervous days before we knew that our offer was accepted and that we had successfully gazumped – something we felt very uncomfortable about at the time.

As we have told friends and family back in Australia many, many times, we couldn't have chosen somewhere better to live if we tried. No place is perfect, but this house, this street, the park where Will spends a large part of his life, and this area has come to feel so much like home that it’s ridiculous. 

We love it here. The high street with Ali and his brothers in the Orange shop, the veggie men - Terry and Darren, outside the train station, Pete the fishmonger, Johnny the Irishman who always has a happy hello in the park. Muswell Hill with all its fabulous shops, including the all-important charity shops Sally has spent so many hours and pounds in. 

We've loved the opportunities that London has given us – the travel, the history, the amazing heritage that we have been able to access all over the UK and Europe, the theatre, the fabulous tube and a far greater understanding of the country all 4 of our parents grew up in. Three precious years to get to know Mark’s wonderful Aunty Mary.  But we knew before we came here that these would be a feature of the posting.  What we didn't know is what we would find by living In Shakespeare Gardens – a community of clever, interesting, good people – a community that we have been able to become a part of.

In 2012, just a few weeks after our last street party, we found ourselves dealing with health issues far from home, without family support and without an understanding of the health system here.  Some of you were going through similar times yourselves and it felt like fate had brought us here for a reason. You rallied around, provided strong and tangible support and helped us come through.  We will never forget this and have so much to be thankful for. 

If we could, we would stay. We would love to stay, all of us. We have seriously looked at the various possibilities. In the end though, we have come to terms with what we always knew – that this was a three year posting. We owe it to our children to get back to Australia where they can be with family and friends, where they can get back into their sports and activities, do well and then make their own decisions about the future. We owe it to ourselves to go back and finish up the next few years of work so that we have pensions to see us through retirement. 

We leave with heavy hearts but with a real sense of achievement at all the things we have packed into an amazing 3 years. We leave with memories, but with young adults who are now confident, more worldly wise and independent. We are leaving behind neighbours who have become real friends, but with friendships we are confident will stand the test of time and distance.

We wish you all the very best for the future.  Please stay in touch and please keep us up to date with Shakespeare Gardens happenings.  Send us your children – ‘Working Holiday Maker’ visas are available until they are 30! Come for a visit Down Under yourselves – Australia is a big and beautiful country and is somewhere you all must see if you haven’t yet.

But don’t worry, if you can’t make it, we know that someday, hopefully not too long away, we will be back!    

Aisha shows the flag at the Hatfield house battle proms.

 Thankyou to everyone here who has helped make the last three years so very good.

You have given us so very much that will stay with us all -especially Aisha and William.

We will miss you.

Mark, Sally, Aisha and William
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(published from NYC where all is going well. Stay tuned for some mini blogs as we travel and as we are able!)