The Last Week

Learning@home does not go well. We try half-heartedly for a day or so, at least while it is too wet to go out. For speed I do one or two of the assignments myself. It is easier than keeping two boys to the grindstone when their younger siblings are getting in the way. I am simultaneously trying to get the house ready for the movers and pack separate suitcases for Bali, Cornwall and Scotland. It all becomes too much. I write apologetic emails to their teachers and when the sun comes out we go out to play. I want our last memories of Hong Kong to be fun ones.

We go to the Steps in Central where each of the children chooses a fancy dress outfit. We wander around the Botanical Gardens, look at the lemurs, the flame red birds and the statue of King George VI. (He looks like a King, says the three year old. Where’s his Princess? She asks. Shall I be his Princess? ) Stanley Market one last time where the children spend their Hong Kong dollars on Stanley-Crap and are over the moon.

In our last week I finally discover where to buy my preferred brands of shampoo, conditioner and moisturiser. After 10 months here, my local knowledge is starting to count.

14 girlfriends take me out for a farewell dinner. All goes well until the sensible ones retire at 1.30am and the hardcore move on to partake of vodka jellies, frozen margaritas and gin. Our ring leader continues to insist that we have “One for the road” and every time I beg for mercy she insists, “You can’t go home! We’re all here on your behalf!” I have vague memories of fending off random blokes in Lang Kwai Fong but the cry of “Leave us alone! We’re forty year old housewives with 17 children between us!” does not have the desired effect. We resist the invitation to pole dance and get into conversation with two insolvency accountants and a pair of charming young Dutch consultants. Young enough to be our sons! At 4.45am I stumble into a taxi with my neighbour leaving the others still at the bar.

My neighbour has lost her wallet and my eyes are in crisis. Ever ready to take the natural consequences of my own excesses I am up at 8.30am to play tennis. Blinded by the sun, I have to retreat and make an appointment with the GP who refers me to an ophthalmologist. A toxic reaction to the antibiotics I’ve been taking for conjunctivitis, extreme over-exposure, tiredness, dryness and Ceratitis have sent my eyes into painful spasms. I have turned into a mole. It is either time to seek out some cool dark soil or else go on holiday.

We do the farewell party at home. Our last Saturday in Hong Kong also happens to be my 42nd birthday. The latter is easier to celebrate. We spend Sunday on a junk with friends watching the children leap from the top deck into the sea. Even our five year old leaps while the three year old bobs about in what she refers to as her submarine (aka rubber ring) in the sea. These last days are tinged with sadness. We were just beginning to feel we could grow fond of Hong Kong.

Then the packers are upon us and they show no mercy. We scuttle about, trying to pack and pull out stuff we’ll need for the holidays. Stress levels are running high. The children slip off to the pool to avoid short fuses and within only a couple of hours half of our home is packed and stacked in boxes in the huge room we have lived in these past ten months. That was my Hong Kong dream, the Pioneering Accountant comments wryly.

I just want to leave. In two months it will all arrive in London and I will unpack my Hong Kong summer clothes just as the English summer is drawing to a close.

We retreat to a hotel, the same one I stayed in each time I flew out with the boys for school assessments last year. It is the first time I have slept in this hotel without suffering from jetlag. We order room service and share a bottle of Champagne with a friend. Then we watch some Wimbledon and see how in SW19 the skies are cloudless blue and the great British public is turning lobster red under a rare summer sun.