The sky is wider in Australia than it is in Britain. I know it sounds strange, but it's true. Here, it stretches so far in all directions, and there is no way you could ever touch it. In Britain, it lurked reassuringly close, like a grandma-made woollen rug wrapped snugly around the shoulders. The Australian sky keeps a dispassionate distance: a perverse and callous bully-friend, granting and withholding favours on a whim. Or, to see it another way, the sky is limitless, and freedom objectified. A parent without rules. On a day like yesterday, it is a hazy washed out blue, like weatherboards baked in the sun. Today, she is smoothed over with clouds, grey and wet and benediction. Tomorrow, when the sun is out again, the paddocks will turn green.
Home now for what? Six weeks? Seven, I think. Hardly seems it could have been so long. The holidays spun past in a blur of purple Christmas tinsel, and green and red and yellow fireworks at midnight. Annie May and Owen and Rob kept the backpacker in me alive for another few weeks as we lost ourselves on the streets of Sydney, and found ourselves sipping James Bond's cocktail in a revolving bar. At night we feigned sleep, four people to two-and-a-half beds, trying not to wake each other. And then they went home, and I had been back for a month, and I had meetings with lecturers, and I chose an honours topic. I started working on the weekends, and reading articles about male impersonators in the music halls. I bought more clothes than could fit in a back pack. I have the best futon bed in the world (or at least in this house). I'm house-hunting, and thinking of three more years (at least) of study. Now I feel like I am "back".
So what is it I miss? Is it just the freedom that I had? The lack of responsibilities and the answering to no one? Going where and when I liked? Or do I miss the land? The way the little stone villages curled protectively around their churches and castles? The history that leaked out of everything and got on your trousers and made your hands dirty? The echoes of neglected centuries just left lying around? Is it the walks and the shows and music and the accents? The ridiculously quaint outdated ruling class? The clothes? The shoes, oh my god the shoes. The cold. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss the cold. And everything I just mentioned, and everything else. And I miss you. I even miss the Chavs.
I think I will be back one day. I can't imagine a future for me that doesn't involve it. But I'm here, now, and I'm "back". And you'll be hearing a lot more from me, I promise.
It rained today. Tomorrow, the grass will be greener.
