The Last Post

She never did wake up. I flew back from Bali two days later. A scan revealed she’d suffered a devastating stroke during the operation and would never recover. I might be at her bedside but she would never know me again.

At Singapore airport I was overwhelmed with the need to buy her a present. I see a grey haired lady from behind and mistake her for my mother. My heart leaps. It’s all been a bad dream.

I numb myself on the long flight to London with films, books, music but in between the grief washes over me in waves as I remember why I’m going home. Mummy! I want to scream.

In China my 88th post would have been an auspicious place to end my blog as our Hong Kong adventure draws to a close.

Instead I am writing in Oxford where, in the early hours of this morning, my brother, his partner and I held our beloved mother and each other as we said our farewells and comforted her as she slipped gently away.

Mum had been so excited about our return to the UK and the cruel irony of her untimely death has left me winded with disbelief.

She will not have read the last three posts of this blog; the blog I started so she could keep up with our news. She often told me how much she loved it, the stories of her grandchildren, the insights it gave her into our Hong Kong lives. It made the worlds apart seem just a little closer.

So to the memory of my beloved, selfless and ever-loving Mum I dedicate this blog and the writing of a year spent ever so regrettably Worlds Apart from a wonderful Mother and a devoted Granny.

R.I.P. JSN.
Sunday 28th June 2009

The Last Day

On our last morning in Hong Kong we awake to grey skies and an email. My brother has been trying to reach me but we are no longer at home and my mobile contract has been terminated. Our mother has been rushed to hospital where she has undergone six hours of surgery for aortic repair and a bypass operation. She has not yet come round and is breathing with the help of a respirator.

Questions crowd my mind: how, why, when? Will she come through this? My brother is calm but tired when I reach him. It is after 1am in England and he has waited up for my call. He has been at her bedside but there is no development.

Thank God we are going home. Via Bali! Do I abandon the family and head for home, scuppering the holiday we so badly need? Or do I assume she is going to come through and save my strength for nursing her when she comes out of hospital? In my heart of hearts I know my mother would hate to be the cause of a disrupted holiday. I also know I will be consumed with guilt if I never see her again.

With all six of us squashed for one last time in one of Hong Kong’s red taxi’s the Pioneering Accountant takes a call. The landlord of the house our London tenants were moving into has reneged on his acceptance of their offer and has accepted a higher bid elsewhere. If they can’t move out then we are back to square one with nowhere to live.

I speak to my brother again on the way to the airport. There is no further news. The hospital is not concerned. My brother agrees there is little point in returning just yet.

We leave Hong Kong in the rain. It’s always easier to leave a place when it’s raining. I have a heavy heart. It has not been a good day.

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.

Trouble in Xi'an

It seemed fitting to draw our China adventure to a close, as it began: with a visit to the Terracotta Warriors. A year ago we scraped in at the last minute to see the exhibition at the British Museum of 20 or so of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi’s terracotta army. The remarkable figures made such an impression on us that we promised the boys we’d see The Real Thing during our stay in Hong Kong.

The news that we were leaving gave the trip an added sense of urgency and we booked a trip to Xi’an for our penultimate weekend in Hong Kong. That was of course before anyone had really heard of swine flu.

On the plane we were required to fill in entry forms and health declaration forms. They hadn’t given me enough so I went in search of the stewardess. “May I have three more health declaration forms please?” I asked.
“We’ll be landing in 14 minutes.” came the reply. Oh, roll on my return to a country where I’m understood some time before the 37th time of asking.

Our temperatures were taken on the flight. When we landed we were kept waiting in our seats for half an hour before a medical inspection team arrived to take temperatures for a second time, this time in the ear, a slow business as the sterile cover needed replacing for each passenger. Rather unnervingly the whole process was filmed by a security official. Again our temperatures were normal but I grew concerned when a stewardess approached and questioned me because our daughter had been coughing during the flight.

It was true. She had had a cough and I’d taken both her and her five year old brother to be examined just a week before. He’d had bronchitis. She’d had slight cough but not swine flu. They both got better and then she got conjunctivitis so we were back a few days later. Again no swine flu. Indeed that very morning she’d split her lip and we’d been up to the Adventist Hospital where again she’d been screened. Still no swine flu.

I was keen to impress upon the stewardess that there was no cause for concern. It was just a residual cough but nothing infectious. In fact our daughter had noticed the stewardesses looking at her and had even hammed it up a bit. She was, I assured them, perfectly healthy. The stewardess appeared to be satisfied. Queuing in the airport, however, my husband, with our daughter in his arms, was hauled out and told to take a seat to one side. We followed and sat with him, feeling dejected. It was already after 9pm.

A medical officer in full body armour and a fierce looking security guard were sent to interview us. Talking at us from behind her mask I could not hear the questions. “I can’t understand you with that mask on, can you take it off please?” I began in an irritated tone. “Careful,” urged my diplomatic husband, “Now’s not the time to rile them.”

We felt like social pariahs. People were starting to stare. They took the three year olds temperature for a third time but wouldn’t tell us the result. They asked us why she was coughing. We explained repeatedly. They disappeared to consult one another. They asked us for evidence of our visits to the doctor and the hospital. We had none. They consulted again. And then they announced they’d like to place her under observation in hospital for two hours. It was almost 10pm and our hearts sank. We begged for mercy. We appealed to their common sense. The medical officer was moved but her more bureaucratic male colleague was not.

“We’re only here for one day,” we explained, “We would never have brought her had she been ill, please don’t do this to us!” I think they suspected us of having filled up our daughter with Calpol to mask a higher than normal temperature and they expected to see her temperature sore as the medicine wore off. Instead, after much grovelling they allowed us in on condition that we phoned the medical officer to report on our daughter’s condition the following day. We agreed, feeling we’d escaped lightly.

We reached the hotel at 11pm and the boys decided, as we finally got ready for bed, that this was the moment to start a fight. Kept away from school by the A H1N1 virus and kept sitting on an aeroplane for far too long they started an argument about which beds they were all sleeping in. Fidgety and argumentative since we’d left home, the bed incident was the final straw. There were tantrums, rages, sulks and ganging up on the youngest brother. It took ages to settle and in the end my husband slept in the boys’ room to keep them from further acts of aggression.

Saturday was our much anticipated trip to the Warriors. We were short of sleep and in bad humour and not inclined to be tolerant of our children. At breakfast a charming American complemented me on my four beautifully behaved children. I thanked him and joked about selling him all four. To make matters worse, I’d woken with a raging eye infection that left me blinded by Xi’an’s glaring sunshine and a UTI which kept me running in search of China’s ghastly loos throughout the day.

The Warriors were breathtaking and despite the sensation of the British Museum’s own beautiful exhibition it was the sheer size and volume of the 1974 discovery that took our breath away. One of the four farmers who discovered the first terracotta remains as they were digging a well is still living and sits inside one of the great halls signing books about the Terracotta Army. And by sheer coincidence, the Powers That Be in China had chosen that very day, June 13th 2009, to restart excavations on Pit One for the first time in 24 years. The Press were there and we even saw the archaeologists at work. Conveniently a terracotta head had already been unearthed. I was sceptical. It seemed like quick work for a morning and was inclined to think it had been planted for the Press.

It seems that quarter of a century ago the Chinese did not have the technology to preserve the soldiers’ paint as they were removed from their 2,200 year old tomb. The paintwork faded within weeks and in the end they stopped their dig and covered up parts of Pit One, only a fifth of which has ever been excavated. Thousands more of the terracotta soldiers are believed to be underground. Since then technology has been developed in Bavaria to preserve the ancient paint of the underground warriors as they come to light so work can now resume.

I was struck by the sophistication of Xi’an’s civilisation. The warriors were constructed 200 years B.C. at a time when we were still living in caves. Evidence of chromium plating technology has been found on the bronze weapons unearthed from Emperor Shihuangdi’s tomb, technology that was first used in Europe by the Germans during the Second World War.

Returning through the airport on Sunday, it seemed that the sights of Xi’an had not been enough to quell the general restlessness. In their experience, not ours, airports are a great place for boys to run, play-fight, kick-box, swing from barriers, shin up poles, clamber on ledges and run the wrong way up escalators. What else can a younger sister do but copy?

Just as we queued for security our little girl spotted a climbing opportunity too good to miss. A wooden stand was set up full of bottles, both glass and plastic, displaying examples of liquids that had not been allowed through security. In the twinkling of an eye the three year old slipped off to scale the stand. Just too late I turned to watch in slow motion horror as, hanging from the top, she tipped the whole thing down on top of herself, pinning her body to the ground where she lay wailing in a puddle of broken glass, cherry brandy, beer and Cointreau. To add to the spectacle of our humiliation the whole scene and my subsequent fury was only observed by hundreds of fascinated Chinese as they too queued for security. at that moment, I rather wished I’d given them to the American gentleman after all.

Much to celebrate

And so it came to pass that a local girl fell ill with the H1N1 virus AKA swine flu, passed it to her brother who took it to school where eleven of his primary school class mates fell ill resulting in the swift declaration by the Education Bureau on Thursday that all primary schools would be shut with immediate effect from tomorrow (Friday) for two weeks until 25th June.

We leave Hong Kong on 24th June so for my kids that was it. Instead of worrying about closure, end of term parties of saying goodbye to their mates they came home, high fived each other and danced around the living room to “London Calling” by the Clash, rather appropriately I thought.

This is the news I’ve been hoping for. Now we don’t even have to go through the motions of going to school there’ll be Worlds Apart style home education: Ocean Park to see the red pandas, museums, hiking and the beach with a bit of music practice and swimming thrown in. Apparently the children are supposed to be doing learning@home via email but I suspect we may find our computer has mysteriously gone on the blink. It’s not as if they can do much about it after all, we’re out of here.

The only fly in the ointment is that the Hong Kong skyline project, for which we have built THIS: was due in on Monday. Which means we have cut out 680 round windows for nothing. Darn.

I am so tired. All friends appear to be determined to have just one last dinner/lunch/night out. My husband and I (how regal that sounds) are being more sociable than ever before. We can’t keep it up for long but at least now the prison camp has closed we’ll be able to have a bit of a lie-in.

This week also saw the extraordinary U-turn of Clarabel’s new Ma’am who rang me on Monday to say six weeks after offering her the job she was having serious doubts about taking her on. I sighed, wondered why she was telling me and not Clarabel and realised we only had two weeks in which to find Clarabel a new employer. Fearing Clarabel would be devastated I sat her down and explained that we might need to start searching again. Clarabel said simply it was probably for the best as their existing helper had told her she would be their seventh second helper in 18 months. Within three days we had three interviews lined up for her whereupon the new Ma’am turned around and said she was very disappointed that Clarabel had let her down. She would have been a wonderful addition to their family and what a shame she couldn’t have told her herself. I’m still reeling at that one.

I’ve saved the best til last. Our tenants went back to look at the all-singing-all-dancing house my husband saw last week and decided they would take it after all. Which means, dare I say it, that in August we move back to our very own house on Putney Common. Yippee! The fact that our new open plan large scale Hong Kong furniture won’t actually fit into our narrow, small-roomed London town house is beside the point. We’re going home.

Rollercoaster Ride

The Pioneering Accountant returned from London on Saturday afternoon. Just a few hours later an email arrived with the news we’d been hoping for: our London tenants had seen another house they liked and their offer had been accepted. The way was clear for us to move back into our own house in August. We could hardly contain our delight.

We started to plan: what to get out of storage, how to reconfigure the children’s bedrooms. My husband suggested we put in new floor boards throughout the ground floor. I was keen to paint over the purple wall our tenants have installed in one of the bedrooms. In my head I had already re-hung all my pictures, bought a dog to walk on the Common à la Jilly Cooper and was enjoying catching up on local news with friends and neighbours.

Our minds were racing with the excitement. This morning at 3.30am we were wide awake and talking through our plans, our hopes.

As we got up my husband checked his Blackberry, as is his wont. An “urgent” email had been sent at 11.30pm last night, long after our Hong Kong bedtime. Our tenants had changed their minds and had withdrawn their offer on the new house.

The disappointment hit us like cold water. The prize of returning to our own house had been within our grasp. To have it snatched away is bitter indeed. We have spent the day sighing and grrrrrring through gritted teeth. The frustration is tangible and the roller coaster of hope raised, then dashed, almost unbearable.

We are now back to square one. We have no house to move into and no further opportunity to view prior to our return. Whilst our tenants are, in principle, prepared to move out, I am starting to fear they will find fault with every other rental property in SW15. I’m also beginning to suspect the rent must have been too low if nothing else in their budget is as nice. My husband, on the other hand, foresees a scenario in which we rent another house for a year and a month later our tenants find something they like and move out of ours. Let’s hope that for once he’s wrong.

Candlelit Vigil

I did go to the Tiananmen Square vigil. It didn’t rain and Victoria Park was packed with people holding candles, their flames cupped in paper cones. The crowd was quiet and attentive. At a given signal everyone sat down like obedient children at a school assembly. At other times all the candles were held aloft. They looked like silver tulips nodding in the wind. Songs were sung and speeches heard. Applause was polite, respectful and the atmosphere attentive rather than rousing. All of it was in Puthongua. It was the only time I had ever attended a mass rally without understanding a word of what was being said. And yet it was surprisingly moving just to be a part of that collective demonstration. An exhibition at one end of the park displayed names and photographs of some of Tiananmen’s victims with an appeal by the Tiananmen Mothers’ group. Many mothers of the dead who came together in their search for truth and justice are now in their 70’s and 80’s and are still under surveillance by state security in Beijing for their perceived role in the 1989 protests.

One announcement was made in English. In 1990, at the first anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre 100,000 people gathered for the first candlelit vigil in Victoria Park. Yesterday at the 20th anniversary vigil, the announcer said, there were 150,000 people attending. I was glad to be one of them.

Updates

We leave in three weeks time. Gulp. And I have done NOTHING to prepare except sell six dehumidfiers. Actually I am quite pleased even with that. Not a single box is packed, not a cupboard sorted. I appear to have let go of my control freakery and have gone to the other extreme of not giving a damn. But that’s a Gemini quality. Or else I’m in denial. Moving? Us? Noooo! Some mistake shurely. My attitude is that if my Hong Kong days are numbered, I ought to be out there enjoying myself and not worrying about sorting out the nonsense.

The five year old is a lot better. Post tonsillectomy he doesn’t snore any more or gag on his food which is something. He is now eating more and has gone back to nursery. But his voice has changed. It’s now higher and a bit nasal and I miss the big, deep booming voice of my little boy. When I hear the new high one it makes me look up and think, who’s this stranger at my table? More worryingly he definitely hasn’t stopped coughing. OK he may just have a cough. Perhaps it’s linked to Hong Kong’s appalling air quality. Perhaps it’s not a bad thing we are leaving. So we’re back to square one and off to see the doctor tomorrow.

How I abhor school projects! The 10 year old has returned from school with the “Hong Kong Skyline Project” and is expected to produce a scale model of a Hong Kong building. He has chosen to do Jardine House (aka House of a thousand a***holes!) where his paternal grandfather used to work. Take a look at this and guess how I’ll be spending the weekend….

Earlier this year the eight year old came home with instructions for an Egyptian project that would have challenged anyone twice his age. He was expected to build an Egyptian artefact, place it like a museum piece in an appropriately decorated shoe box, write about it and draw a map showing where it had been excavated. Marks would be taken off for evidence of parental assistance. My son chose an obelisk as his artefact. It could have been a lot worse, but show me an eight year old boy that could make an obelisk without parental assistance. So I helped a bit but tried to make it look like I hadn’t. I needn't have bothered. The resulting Y03 “Museum” was nothing more than an exhibition of parents’ fabulous Egyptian creations. Only one or two children had heeded the instructions and had produced rickety cornflake packet exhibits that were quite frankly substandard. As I went around I lavished praise and attention on those who had clearly done it all on their own. And then I asked some with breath-takingly perfect exhibits how they’d made a part of their model. “I don’t know,” said one, “My Dad’s an artist and he did it when I was asleep.” Don’t you just love children for their honesty!

An interesting development arose yesterday on the house-hunting front. Apparently our tenant is racked with guilt at the thought of this poor dispossessed family of six having to return to London without being able to move back into their own much loved house. I don’t quite get the guilt: we did sign a contract after all. Anyway, our managing agent thinks they might actually consider moving out. It’ll cost us of course, it always does. At the same time, the Pioneering Accountant who is currently in SW15 looking for a place for us to live come August, has found a house which he says makes ours look like a hovel and is going to get the managing agent to take our tenants to see it. We’ll sub the difference and pay their moving costs. They’ll also be able to extend the tenancy on the bigger place whereas we will be throwing them out smartly come August 2010. And if they don’t take the sweetener, we will move into the palace ourselves. My husband has described the new place in tones of such rapturous praise that I’m starting to hope the tenants stick to the letter of the law so that we can have it instead. All of a sudden I’m not to keen on my lovely home being described as a hovel, nor in fact on living in one.

Oh, and I've been given a lovely award from Brits in Bosnia (whom I'm fairly sure I've met in a previous life) for which I thankfully have to do nothing, except say thank you Brit!

VI IV – Remembering Tiananmen

Twenty years ago today troops and tanks entered Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations that had occupied the Square for 7 weeks. In the violence of the crackdown hundreds, possibly thousands of people were killed and many more were wounded. It is unlikely that a precise number of Tiananmen’s victims will ever be known.

Hong Kong is preparing to commemorate the anniversary with the annual candle lit vigil in Victoria Park this evening. They are hoping for as many as 100,000 activists to turn out although the bad weather forecast could lower the numbers considerably.

“Activists and former students who took part in the protests 20 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square will give speeches at the rally, interspersed with traditional remembrance songs and the laying of wreaths,” reports the South China Morning Post this morning. “The highlight will be a speech from Xiong Yan, formerly one of the 21 most wanted protest leaders who fled to the United States in 1992 and on Saturday stepped on to Chinese soil for the first time since then, when he entered Hong Kong.”

"A massive crackdown was launched on weblogs, websites and Fanfou, the Chinese generic version of the Twitter micro-bloging service. Authorities declared a 2national internet server maintenance day" covering most major online networking websites. The maintenance would take three days, they said." What a coincidence! What timing!

Hong Kong Security chief Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong has stated that exiled Tiananmen dissidents are not on the Immigration Department’s surveillance list ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

So how would he explain the fact that only yesterday Xiang Xiaoji, a former leader of the student protests who has spent the past 17 years in exile in the US was denied entry to the city and was put on a flight back to New York? June 4 student activist Wuerkaizi spent last night in a restricted zone at Macau airport after being denied entry to the city and Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot was also turned away recently.

The US consulate has intervened and stated that Washington “regretted the government’s decision to block Mr Xiang’s entry, particularly in the light of the city’s well-known reputation for allowing freedom of expression.” Meanwhile HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has made himself unpopular with the controversial suggestion that people should make an “objective assessment” of the events 20 years ago in light of China’s economic development.

Bah! Quite hard to be objective when people you love and principles you stand for have been shot by troops or crushed by tanks. I find it worrying that Xiang Xiaoji was allowed into Hong Kong for the 10th anniversary commemoration in 1999 and yet ten years on, the authorities have turned him away. Does that indicate that Hong Kong is growing less liberal as it leans more and more to Beijing?

In a statement Xiang Xiaoji said the best way to honour the Tiananmen dead was to continue the fight for democracy on the mainland. Hong Kong’s annual commemoration of the protesters made the city a beacon for democracy in China.

I hope that will continue to be the case. And as I write I’m considering I ought to dust off my own radical student past and go and be one of the 100,000, even if I do get a little wet.

Photo credit: AP Jeff Widener

Wednesday Morning Hikes

I’m going to miss my weekly hike. Starting at 7.15 each Wednesday morning we have hiked through all weathers. I joined the group in January and it was cold enough to wear several layers plus a lightweight jacket. We’ve walked our weekly route through rain and fog, sometimes unable to see more than a few metres in front of us. I like it that way. Whilst you don’t get to enjoy the view you also don’t see the steep steps rising up and up ahead of you.

Now it’s getting hot and humid. Even the lightest clothes cling uncomfortably. And yet we persist. Always the same route, it takes us an hour and 40 minutes. There are those who walk faster, go ahead, others stop to catch breath and gulp water.

We talk, more or less out of breath, as we climb the many concrete steps. All current or one time GSIS mothers we have lived through the dramas of the school’s planned move to Ma On Shan during campus renovation, fierce parental opposition, a proposed attempt to replace the Board of Governors and the eleventh hour solution of an alternative decanting site on Hong Kong Island. It’s a social walk. Perhaps if we didn’t talk so much we’d walk faster.

There are ten or so who hike regularly but it is rare for everyone to be there, usually there are between four and seven walkers. This morning there were four of us and we walked through grey cloud, chattering like sparrows, unable to see far in any direction. Just as we made it home the heavens opened. We had a narrow escape.

Waking early on a Wednesday I always regret having agreed to go. The others are expecting me and will be waiting. I hate the thought of those rugged steps that rip the breath from you and make me curse and gasp. But when you return to the bottom you can finally stop knowing you’ve done your body a good turn and it’s over for another week. It is shortly after 9am, the morning lies ahead and you are exercised and bursting with feel good hormones. It’s a bit like banging your head against a brick wall: fabulous when you stop.

Two weeks ago there were only two of us: me and the super fit B who had a baby only five months ago. Had I not been there to slow her down, she would have skipped up Mount Butler like a mountain goat.

When we reached the top B was not even slightly out of breath and had barely raised a sweat while I was beetroot red and puffing. Every Wednesday we see the same Chinese man practising his Tai Chi. It is possible he walks up every day but we can only vouch for Wednesdays. This time, as the views were clear he offered to take photographs for us. I had my camera with me but he looked at it disdainfully and suggested using his and emailing us the pictures. Not sure I wanted to give out my email address to this charming stranger, I declined and said my camera would do fine.

So here we are, B and I atop Mount Butler with views over Hong Kong harbour and the Southside behind us. And in case you didn’t realise, I’m the red faced, sweaty one under the hat next to the gazelle that is my fit friend.

Shenzhen

Shenzhen was one more place I was keen to see before we leave. To understand why you must try and appreciate what Shenzhen is to Hong Kong: Shenzhen is fake paradise, the land of cheap copies, cut price tailoring and Made in China all within an hour of Hong Kong Island. Whatever it costs in Hong Kong it will be a tenth of the price in Shenzhen.

Shoppers head over the border from Hong Kong in their thousands, armed with empty suitcases, wheelie shoppers and huge bags. The first time you go, it is hard to imagine what there is to get excited about. Seen from a distance Shenzhen is nothing but an ugly urban sprawl of concrete skyscrapers. And yet everyone talks about it: Have you been yet? When are you going to go? Whilst fundamentally sceptical that it would hold any appeal for me I was keen to see for myself, if only to gain the moral high ground and dismiss it all as worthless rubbish.

We headed for the border by car: two Shenzhen virgins, one relative novice and a veteran. We parked and took the MTR just one stop before buying our visas, having our swine flu health checks, passing passport control and walking across the border into….. a five storey shopping complex.

I had expected it to be filthy, dangerous and over-crowded. I expected there to be vendors pawing and clawing at me to get my attention and more importantly my business but I hadn’t expected it to be so much fun.

We headed first for a tailor and showed her a few things we’d considered having copied. I was non-committal taking the view if I left empty handed it wouldn’t really matter. If I found something fabulous then I might be swayed. The tailor took us to the fabric market, an Aladdin’s Cave of material. And bit by bit my high-minded resistance was worn down. Beautiful fabrics at RMB 25 a metre - £2.50! Add £20 for the cost of a tailor made dress and it’s a no brainer. Take your pick, why stop at one?

And of course the same thing could be said for bags, shoes, watches, jewellery. It’s hard to imagine the quantities and, dare I say it, the quality of the goods on view. Vendors call out, Missy, Missy! in anticipation of your interest in their shop. They usher you in and sit you down on a plastic stool, hand you a catalogue of designer bags to flick through. That one, you say, or Have you got Prada? And a man will disappear round the corner or rummage in a large hold-all and suddenly produce a large proportion of the latest collection of whichever designer you called for. In one shop when I explained what I was after, the man removed a panel in the ceiling and shinned up to retrieve a plastic bag full of the items I had described.

It becomes addictive. The atmosphere and the bartering go to your head and you start to justify absurd purchases on the grounds of their absurd prices. It’s a good policy to arrive with a list, to know your budget and to stick to both.

I expected to be tired, I expected to be bored. In stead I left feeling I’d had a great time, enjoyed every minute and picked up a couple of really good bargains. Of course the real test will be when I unpack the parcel that arrives next week from the tailor. It’ll be interesting to see what my copied dresses look like and if it's really true that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys….

Photo Diary

I shouldn't be here. It is 10.30pm on Sunday night and I am already short of sleep before the new week has even started.

The Pioneering Accountant has just left for a week in London where, I am hoping, he will find us somewhere to live. Without him and his unfailing ability to rise early each morning to get the children up and out, the coming week is going to be hard work.

And yet unrecorded days in these last hectic weels are like pearls slipping from a string. Once lost they are gone for ever.

So in brief, my week as a photo diary:

Tuesday. We attended the Beijing Evening at the ten year old's school. The children put on a wonderfully entertaining performance which included ribbon dancing, kung fu, sketches, singing and drumming. The trip had clearly been an amazing experience for all. I was close to tears as I watched my eldest boy reenacting in Mandarin a scene of bartering with traders at the Great Wall. He's been at this school for just over a month and yet seemed totally at home. We on the other hand snuck in and sat at the back for fear someone might actually notice us. Our stay is so fleeting that I am almost embarrassed to be seen at all and shy away from meeting other parents in case the lunacy of our brief stop-over is revealed.

Thursday. A public holiday - the Dragon Boat Festival at Stanley. We stood for hours on a jetty waiting to be transported to a junk from which to watch the races. It was cold and windy and when we finally got to the front of the queue we began to have second thoughts as the pier heaved dramatically on the choppy water. Clambering from ferry to junk was perilous. The ferry men assumed those with long legs could bridge yawning chasms of black water between the bobbing boats while small children and bags were tossed into the waiting arms of ships' hands on the moored junks. We saw some races, nibbled cold pizza and made a quick get away on a passing speed boat, arriving at the beach just minutes before the heavens opened. It was one of those events you have to do once. Once will do, however.

Friday. There was no school for the eight year old so he and I enjoyed the rare treat of a morning together and went and nosed around the Police Museum. It wasn't thrilling for him - lots of old photos and masses to read - but I loved it and lost myself in Hong Kong's history and the long running battles between police and the Triads.

Saturday. Our eldest was again at the University in Sha Tin so we drove off to discover Clear Water Bay. We found an enchanting beach, small, clean and relatively empty and sat on the sand while the three others stripped off and swam in the waves. It was hot and sunny and both of us were thinking, Damn, it would have been nice to have a bit more of this.

Sunday. Sailing for the two older boys on Middle Island. After lunch we packed suitcases for the PA to take to London full of stuff for our UK summer - sweaters, raincoats, wetsuits all of which we'll need before our sea freight docks. I remember doing this in reverse last summer, packing suitcases of stuff we'd need in Hong Kong before our container arrived. We ended the day with friends at Shek'O and ate supper at a round table for 11 with all the children chirruping with excitement.

As we arrived home I reached for my handbag to get the keys. No bag. Flashback of putting it on a wall behind the car while I loaded the boogie boards into the boot. Shek'O is a good half hour's drive from us along narrow winding roads. It is about as far away as anywhere on Hong Kong Island. And at 8pm on a Sunday night I had no desire to return. Except for the fact that my bag, passport, wallett and camera were all sitting there on a wall. At least I hoped they still were.

I drove fast with anxious thoughts of what I would do if the bag were not there. Where to start looking? The PA had to leave at 9.15pm so I didn't have much time.

It took me 22 minutes to get there. I was having fantasies about a F1 Hong Kong Grand Prix as I drove. And as I drew up to the space we had parked in but an hour earlier I saw my dear old bag waiting for me on the wall. Hallelujah!

Driving myself, crazy

The other day, in one of my blind panics that involves propelling the Flying Sofa around Hong Kong, and never quite managing to go the way I intended, I realised too late that I was in an Autotoll lane for the Aberdeen Tunnel. Realising my error, I drew up and, to show willing, feebly waved my HK$5 out of the window. There was no one to take it. The whole point of Autotoll is that the booths are unmanned. Instead, a large bus loomed into my rear view and honked impatiently. I had no choice but to cross the red light and drive on. When I got home I related the story to my eldest son who gasped and said, You’ll have to pay a fine Mummy. It’s about HK$5,000. I hoped he was wrong.

I have no GPS. If one exists for Hong Kong I could have done with it. An all too familiar scenario is to be driving along a busy expressway with a vague idea of where I am going but little idea how to get there. Up ahead I see a flyover crossing my road some 30 feet in the air. I recognise that I need to be up on that road but I have no idea how to join the dots.

In the early days I felt quite proud of myself for seizing the bull by the horns and getting behind the wheel of my car. One ex-pat earned my scorn with her admission that she didn’t drive on the left. Another that she was only prepared to drive in certain parts of Hong Kong. Me? I’d go anywhere – mostly unintentionally. As for arriving I was usually late, shaking with fright and bathed in sweat.

Just a couple of weeks ago I spent over an hour trying to find the way into Bonham Road via a spider’s web of Midlevels crossing roads, flyovers and underpasses. In desperation I phoned the Pioneering Accountant in the office and begged for help. With assistance from Google maps he talked me through it. When I finally hit Bonham Road I had to turn left. The address I needed required a right. I gave up in disgust and drove home.

By hesitating and dithering I have discovered parts of Hong Kong and the New Territories I had no intention of visiting. Each outing in the car has been an adventure and each time I went wrong I was sure I wouldn’t make that particular mistake again. Others maybe. The children quickly grew accustomed to my predicament and learnt to ask as a matter of course, Are we lost Mummy? Good gracious me, no! I would insist. We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Yes, Mummy, the last time we were lost.

The real dramas took place on journeys to the furthest reaches of the New Territories where the 7 year old was learning to ride. I took to following the school bus so we could learn the way. The bus driver was incredibly speedy and was armed with the requisite Autotoll. I had a hard job keeping up with him as he shot through the tolls whilst I fumbled for change and waited for the four cars ahead of me to find theirs too. On one occasion, the bus long gone, we took the wrong exit and found ourselves stuck in a tsunami of heavy goods vehicles heading for the border. I could hardly swing a U-turn whilst hundreds of one-way freight trucks bore down on me and yet we didn’t actually want to go to China. I nudged my 7 year old out of the car and told him to make sorrowful faces at an official. He returned to the car with a guard who arranged to have us led out of danger under police escort and flashing blue lights. The 7 year old was thrilled.

I taught the children how to use the “Maps” function of my iPhone. Sometimes we’d arrive at our destination without incident and with a degree of luck. Sometimes the battery ran out en route and left us floundering about in tiny back streets. But mostly I ended up snatching it from whichever incompetent was in the passenger seat and trying to read directions while I missed turnings and started to snap. And very occasionally but quite inexplicably, the road we were mistakenly following would turn back on itself and filter us onto just the route we’d been hoping for.

Once I’d got over barking at map reading minors it finally dawned on me that we could never actually be that far from home. Even in Kowloon you can see landmark buildings on Hong Kong-side. At best you will recognise the signs to where you want to go and at worst you’ll end up in a tunnel you didn’t mean to enter. But keep going long enough and you usually end up back where you started.

And when I grew over confident about where I was going I was stopped for speeding. The fact that I had neither HK I.D. nor driving license with me did not look good. I tried to explain to the baffled policeman that my driving license had been submitted in support of my application for a Hong Kong license. He in turn explained to me I was due to get three points and an on the spot fine of HK $450. I was busy being very polite while reaching for my wallet when he suddenly announced he was just going to give me a verbal warning and let me go. Your case was too complicated for him to deal with, crowed my HK passenger. It’s ex-pat women like you that the police are most afraid of as they always stand their ground. You got away with it!

A letter came recently headed Evasion of Toll. It stated that on such and such a date my vehicle had travelled through the Autotoll booth of the Aberdeen Tunnel without a valid toll tag. My hands began to shake. A driver who fails to pay the appropriate toll in full commits an offence, the letter continued. Please arrange the Total Outstanding payment as below within 14 days. Bang goes my fake Birkin, I thought to myself, I’m about to spend it on a fine. I looked again. The Amount Outstanding was given as HK$5.00 – the tunnel fee and not a cent more.

Take away the cost of the postage stamp at HK$1.40 and I think you’ll agree that a bargain tunnel crossing at HK$3.60 is something of a result.

When Mother does not know best

The prolonged spell of clear, sunny weather that has seen us lounging on beaches, eating outside and in the pool every afternoon came to an abrupt end this week with amber rain and thunderstorm warnings.

Whilst past weekends have seen us exploring the New Territories while our eldest learns to “Be a Storyteller” at HK Chinese University in Sha Tin, this week his teacher cancelled and the only NT excursion was to bring the five year old and me home from hospital. The boys’ sailing course at Middle Island was cancelled due to rain warnings and we found ourselves facing the prospect of a loooong weekend inside.

So what jollier prospect than to ride one of Hong Kong Island’s double-decker trams from end to end and see the sights?

This was the view with the window up.

And this was the view with the window down, little better and we got wet.

The children grew quickly bored (can’t think why) and we only made it to one end before giving up and heading home. I spotted Hong Kong’s Central library and an interesting looking market at Shau Kei Wan (neither of which I shall have time to appreciate) and marvelled at the steep sides of the escarpment that rise above King’s Road east of North Point.

The five year old is in considerable discomfort. He is eating virtually nothing now that the novelty of ice cream, milk shake and fresh smoothie has worn off and he grows visibly thinner by the day. He has stopped snoring and is sleeping for England but his breath smells vile and he is unusually quiet and still. To me it is clear he is weak from lack of food but nothing will induce him to eat and I find myself at a loss as to what to do. So much for mother knows best.

As rain pours down the windows and drips though the air con vents into the kitchen we play Carcassonne and Pictionary for hours between whizzing delicious fruits up in the liquidiser to tempt the ailing patient. He takes a sip, announces he’s full and his siblings gulp the rest.

As Sunday draws to a close, we have almost survived our confinement when WW III breaks out in the playroom. Son 2 has offended Son 1 in some way involving misuse of a piece of Pictionary paper. He gets clobbered by Son 1 and screams like a stuck pig. How many times in the last two days have we appealed to our eldest not to resort to violence? No-one is prepared for the pent up storm of fury released in a family deprived of fresh air and exercise for two days. The ten year old’s fuse has been lit and after he lands me a passing thump I too go off like a firework.

The Domestic God spends hours trying to reason with Son 1 whilst I state that it is being too soft on him that has created the monster that holds us all hostage with these outbursts. He's ten for goodness sake, what will it be like when he's fifteen? For the second time today I don’t know what to do so I put him outside the back door until he can be more civilised. It is no longer raining: you’ll be glad to know there are limits to my cruelty. However, it is the fear of mosquito bites that drives him inside repentant, apologetic and keen to make amends. We have a big hug and a chat and the whole family ends the evening listening to him playing his trumpet like an angel.

Quality of Life

Some months ago, frustrated by our youngest son’s inability to stop coughing and concerned that Hong Kong’s poor air quality might be responsible, I took him to a doctor. It was a visit that merited a World’s Apart post on the differences between seeing a GP here and doing the same in London but like many things that never made it to the pages of my blog, I didn’t quite get round to it.

Suffice it to say, I rang up, was offered a choice of appointments for that same afternoon, took my son along, was seen immediately and was given medication by the in-house pharmacist. I was then presented with an eye-wateringly large bill for all that convenience.

The doctor thought his problems might be bronchiole. I imagined a future held hostage by asthma or allergies. She also mentioned that he had unusually large tonsils and referred him to an ENT specialist, just in case.

Last week in the waiting room of a new town hospital in the New Territories we were the odd ones out. Every other person was wearing a surgical mask. Then a hospital orderly appeared and handed us each a mask so we shrugged and put them on.

The five year old wondered why we had to wear our masks and I explained it was because of swine flu. He then pretended to sneeze and I got the giggles. Not only did we look absurd but you can’t hear what anyone is saying from behind your mask so you pull it down to say, I’m sorry, what did you say? and then presumably pass on all your deadly germs in so doing. I put my sun glasses on and the five year old laughed and said I looked like a gangster.

The South African Consultant looked down my five year old’s throat and declared they were the largest tonsils he had ever seen.

He then explained that a tonsilectomy could improve our son’s quality of life. The golf ball sized tonsils that are currently clogging up his throat may be responsible for his tiredness, for his bad tempers, for his snoring, for the constant coughing and throat clearing, for his lack of appetite and general lack of energy and possibly even his unusually deep voice, although I’ll actually be sad if he loses that too.

I had thought it unusual that my five year old still requires a two hour nap most afternoons and had wondered how he would survive a full school day on our return to London but it was a relief to know there might be a solution to hand. As for the bad tempers, I had thought he had inherited that from me, so I was relieved about that as well.

You don’t need to decide now, the Consultant told me.
I’ve already decided. How soon can you do it?

So it was that we checked in to another Sha Tin hospital yesterday morning. Far from being apprehensive, the five year old was excited at the prospect of being rid of the tonsils that bother him so much. He had spent the last week asking, how many days until I have my tonsils out? He was so delighted to be told, Just one more day now, that his little sister asked if she could have hers out too.

We were shown to a private room (thank you Mr Bupa), covered with schmaltzy images of Pooh bear and Mickey Mouse. Clouds of pastel-clad nurses wafted in and out with papers to sign and questions to ask. They took his blood pressure and bought him toys. We read and played together and finally more nurses arrived to dress him for surgery. On the trolley he laughed and joked with the orderlies who couldn’t quite believe how cheerful he was as they wheeled him to theatre.

In an anteroom I too was gowned up with a shower cap on, another mask and slip on covers over my Birkenstocks. Don’t try it at home; it’s not a good look! My boy laughed again and we went into theatre together. Only when the anaesthetist put the respiratory mask over his mouth did he decide the game was up and attempt to struggle but his lids grew heavy and I was shown out.

Waiting outside I reflect that this is the second time in his short life that my five year old has gone under general anaesthetic. He was 16 months old and we were on holiday on the island of Amrum off Germany’s north west coast. He took sick and began throwing up. Instead of getting better he was flown by helicopter to a mainland hospital for emergency surgery for an intussusception of the gut during which they removed a Meckel’s diverticulum and whipped out his appendix. It was a long operation and I wept buckets of anxious tears as I waited for him to be returned to me.

This time it’s over within thirty minutes. I am ushered in and he’s coming round, disoriented and in pain. The nice South African tells me it all went well and that he took out his oversized adenoids as well. Then, in case I don’t believe them, they hand me the adenoids and tonsils in souvenir plastic pots and we are returned to our Disney room.

The patient is doing well on a diet of ice cream and DVDs. He is exhausted but after an overnight stay we are home and looking forward to that increased quality of life we've been promised.

A space at the table

My big boys have been away on school trips.

Last week the eight year old went on camp to one of the outlying islands in Sai Kung National Park. They went abseiling, cooked their own food and built rafts. Then to test the seaworthiness they put their teachers on the rafts and sent them floating across the South China Sea, or to the bottom of it. They were away just two days and one night but returned happy, dirty and bitten by sand flies.

This week the ten year old has been away on a five day trip to Beijing with his school year group. The night before each of the boys departed I sat up late hastily sewing Cash’s name tapes onto all their clothes. My mother used to do this for me when we lived in London. Now that it’s my job I always leave it to the last minute. I think I’m in denial, hoping she might pop in at the last minute with her sewing kit and settle down to help me out.

So, for seven days now we’ve had just three children at our table. It has been unusually quiet and there is a yawning space where the fourth child normally sits. That is not to imply that the absent child is the noisy one but the dynamic has changed and the children are exploring their new roles within the revised subset.

Our eight year old says he likes being the eldest. He is flexing his big brother muscle and trying on the bossy hat on for size. He even slept one night in his brother’s top bunk. On the other hand he has taken to coming upstairs to join the Little Ones at bath time when the absence of his elder brother means he has no one to lark around with while he gets ready for bed.

I keep thinking I’ve forgotten someone, neglected to collect a child from school or an afternoon activity. Having three is relatively manageable and yet we all miss the absent one. The remaining three come home from school or nursery and ask where he is, forgetting momentarily that he is away, really away, not just for an afternoon or a day.

Before he left he turned to his little sister and said, Can I have a hug, please? I think he knew he was going to miss her. Or that she might change while he was gone. When he returns he too will have changed. He’ll be that much older, cannier, a little more mature. I’ll want to hug him to me and tell him how much we missed him and perhaps he’ll feel it too but want to show us how well he coped without us. And in this way one more of the many tiny threads that bind him to us will have been cut as he sets off on his way to independence.

Hurtling towards the finishing line

As time gathers pace, we race headlong towards our departure date and our days are packed. There are last visits to old haunts and first visits to new ones.

Whilst I should have much to write about I’ve hardly the heart to blog. I want to be out there living it, doing it all. I am gathering the harvest of our year, drinking it all in and in considerable danger of overdoing it, bingeing on last experiences.

We’ve been by junk to a fish restaurant on the tiny island of Po Toi. Arriving windswept and starving, the only guests, we ate our fill of crab, prawns and deep fried squid with garlic and butter running down our chins as the mosquitoes gorged themselves in turn on our legs and ankles.

We’ve enjoyed a late night foot massage with friends sitting in a row in huge cinema-style armchairs with the four masseurs before us in intimate consultation with our feet. The other three relaxed so much they drifted off to sleep while I grew more and more animated and wanted to chat and comment on the news items appearing on the big plasma screen above us.

I’ve been to the Mandarin Oriental Spa with the gift voucher I was given by girlfriends as I left London last year. Their idea was for me to be pampered in Hong Kong after the stress of moving. Little did they or I know I’d use it just as the stress of moving back starts to bite.

We’ve been to our favourite shabby Chinese and Thai restaurant at Shek’O and afterwards lay on the beach in the sun with friends while the children boogie boarded in the surf and our youngest built sandcastles at our feet. I swam out to the diving platform and beyond to the shark net which arches around the bay and then grew nervous as I neared my target for fear of meeting a shark nosing up at me on the other side of the net.

Our daughter has started ballet lessons with her Friend. She calls it bally and wants to go every day. It is a rite of passage for her and for me. As my youngest child and only daughter she brings leotards and gossamer skirts to our male dominated family for the first and last time. She skips about plucking stars from the sky and shows me how she makes happy feet and sad feet. Will her feet be sad to leave? I wonder. Will she miss the first friend she’s ever had?

We joined a team for the school Quiz Night and managed not to disgrace ourselves. A raffle was held and my husband threw in his HK$100 note in disdain announcing he’d never won anything in a raffle, ever. He won the only prize: two bottles of Absolut Vodka, a box set of Luxe city guides, a Coach handbag and a handful of gift vouchers for Hong Kong stores and spas which I am now charging about trying to use up before we go.

And yet the words are drying up. My eyes no longer see with the curiosity of the newcomer. My observations are neither fresh nor witty.

As I move through Hong Kong I stare wide-eyed about me, trying to burn the image onto my retina, hold it for always, as we have known it. For, should we ever return, Hong Kong will have changed, moved on and renewed itself several times over. That is its very nature and our Hong Kong will be a place of the past.

Miracle Cure

I’ve been so worried of late. So much to do, so little time. Nowhere to live, nowhere to hide.

No matter, I’ve found the solution. Botox. A glass and a half full of botox injected into my brow and no one would guess I’ve a care in the world. It’s more addictive than chocolate. And less fattening. And the children think Mummy is less cross. Magic.

The tiny needle-wielding Doctor talks with energy about his range of miracle skin cures. I yearn for them all. Whilst I would guess he’s the same age as me, on the Doctor's brow there is not a wrinkle to be seen. I think he practices what he preaches, but I could be wrong. Last week when I visited the Temple of Dermatology he told me that Caucasians are more animated than Asians and talk with more expression. I think that was his way of explaining kindly why I have so many more wrinkles. Or of denying that he’s had more botox.

They’re all at it. The Plastic Surgeon who sewed up my daughter’s head has a red velvet cushion on his desk. It is embroidered in gold with the words “Botox saved my marriage”. He too is smooth and unlined. I want to ask him about it but I fear five more minutes in his consulting room may double the bill.

When I go with my daughter to have her stitches removed, the trauma of the day she was sewn up is still too fresh in her mind and she refuses to climb on the operating table. In the end she relents only if I agree to lie with her. We snuggle up, my arm stretched out above my head to prevent me from falling off the narrow bed. I become aware that someone is stroking my hand. I look up and realise the Plastic Surgeon has taken hold of my paw in the mistaken belief he is comforting my daughter. I wonder if I should say something or pull away. Before I can he notices his mistake and is flustered with embarrassment. Even the botox can’t hide his discomfort. I laugh, but only to myself (fewer lines) and briefly wonder if I can use this little episode to sting him for a free shot of my favourite drug.

Is was THAT big!

Great ripples of excitement were felt yesterday afternoon.

Next door’s helper was in the yard when she realised that the rope-like thing coiled around the railings at the back of the house was actually a large brown snake snoozing peacefully in the warm afternoon sunshine. She called security and the men came and hassled it off the fence whereupon it slithered along the back path and disappeared into a hole. Which has now been blocked.

Our helper saw it go and told us it was a big one, about 6 ft in length. She also said it was venomous. And that her grandfather and two of her cousins died as a result of snake bites.

They’ve been clearing overgrown bamboo on the steep bank behind the houses and the speculation is that the snake’s usual habitat could have been disturbed. We are advised not to come in via the back path until they can be sure the snake is not going to make a habit of hanging out on the railings.

But the real tragedy is that those of us who have barely seen a snake outside of the Cotswold Wildlife Park never even caught a glimpse of it.

And so the myth lives on; it was (spreads arms wide) THAT big.

UPDATE: the doormen rediscovered the snake today taking cover in the drainage gutter. They poured boiling water over it to kill it and then invited us to go and view their bounty which had by this time reached 8 ft in length.

Our slithery friend was rather a pathetic sight after his ordeal and felt hot and wet to the touch, a bit like boiled snake I suppose. I was of course disappointed to find he was not an inch over 4 ft, so not actually THAT big after all.

Somewhere to live

I confess the heart has gone out of Wife in Hong Kong. As I surveyed the children’s rooms this morning with a view to a pre-move clear out I asked myself, What’s the point?

A year ago, as I packed boxes and put stickers on our stuff indicating “sea” or “store”, I did so with a certain amount of gusto as I looked forward to our New Adventure.

Now as I contemplate yet another move the only emotion is a vague hope that our search for a home in London will not be quite as drawn-out as the search for a home in Hong Kong.

One year ago with only a couple of months to D-Day we lost out on the house of our dreams. It was a shabby bungalow in Shek’O, overlooking the golf course and the sea beyond. It had a lovely garden with a swing and a pool. I could see my kids there, totally happy in Hong Kong. We set our hearts on it, paid the deposit and got ourselves proposed for Country Club membership, an irritating and costly prerequisite of the tenancy since neither of us play golf.

Then the landlord started to agitate. We were on the waiting list for the Country Club but way off the top. Our contract was from the 1st of June and yet we would not be allowed move in before membership was confirmed. Our only option was to pay a huge sum to jump the list. Spread over three or four years, it could be regarded as an increase in the rent. We were about to bite the bullet when it became clear that the Country Club would not reveal when our membership might come up for discussion, regardless of the list-jumping fee. It could take up to a year. And then there was no guarantee we would be accepted. The money was non-refundable. We needed a place to live. We started to foresee a situation where we were paying rent on two properties. With sadness we let the house go.

The Pioneering Accountant left for Hong Kong in mid-May. His number one priority was to find us somewhere to live. He called home. I’ve found us a place. Will you come out to give it your seal of approval? I think he was just missing me but I went all the same. My Ma-in-law took the kids and I flew to Hong Kong for one night. The house was fine, only a small garden but it was right on the water, had a large roof terrace and a shared pool. It was in Stanley, just minutes from the beach. I envisaged my children there and gave it the thumbs up. Shek’O would have been a long schlep to work, to school, to the shops. No doubt it was all for the best.

We paid the deposit and I returned to London. Frequent telephone contact between Putney and Pacific Place, where my husband was lodged in a serviced apartment, revealed that all was not well. He hadn’t heard from our new landlady. She was away in China. She was not returning his calls. And then, without warning, without comment, the deposit cheque was returned by post. We never heard why.

With only weeks to go we had nowhere to live. There was no more time for another trip, the decision was out of my hands. The Pioneering Accountant told me later that there was barely a rental house or apartment in Hong Kong he hadn’t seen. He signed the contract in a hurry, desperate not to lose a third house. The previous tenants were moving out at the end of July so it could be ready for us by mid August. In the meantime we took a second serviced apartment and made do for two weeks while we waited for our sea freight to arrive. I saw our new home for the first time just days before we moved in. It was perfect. The Pioneering Accountant had done us proud and we had somewhere to call home.

In a few weeks time the Pioneering Accountant leaves for London and will, amongst other things, be looking for a house. So far we have lost out on three. We are either too far away for quick-fire negotiations, are not able to move in within two weeks, or else are an unattractive proposition for landlords looking for a long term let. It all sounds horribly familiar. I can only hope my Old Man hasn't lost his touch. Keep your fingers crossed.