If life is a series of highs and lows, a significant low was last Monday night, when I had that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach as I listened to snatches of a phone conversation between No.1 son and his father. The words, ‘accident’, ‘hospital’, ‘burns’ and ‘operation’ have an immediate chilling effect…a week on and many phone calls later, progress is being made, but I am noticing how far away Cyprus is from the UK and how frustrating communication can be when you really need to be there. One of the worst afternoons was spent in a phone shop, talking on a helpline and trying to get texts through to certain UK mobiles. Farmer boys excelled themselves last Monday, as they both made appearances in different A&E departments, their sister was warned about not making it a hat-trick.

So low points and injuries apart, there have been some highs as well. The last of the items to be unpacked were our bikes, which we eventually re-assembled last night. This involved re-attaching brakes, turning handle bars and fixing pedals…and this took some time. I did a great job of holding the bikes steady while the Major did all the main repositioning and adjustments – phew! After several false starts…flat tyre, no pump, no thing that attaches to the pump, no helmet, saddle too high – we set off just before sunset and toured the village slow time. Cycling past houses you see a lot more that driving. There were glimpses of families sitting down to meals outside with the table all set and Grandma carrying out a tray of glasses. Little painted bungalows, with doors wide open, revealing paintings of saints on the walls, heavily draped furniture, pots adorning terraces and tumbling with pink, blue and orange flowers. The men smoking on the tables at the bar on the corner, all gave us a long hard stare – that must have been the Major’s lycra! But a high point was watching a stunning pink sun slide behind the mountains in the distance, framed by fields with rolls of hay and the pine trees across the road. It’s good to be here.

Banking is also a very different experience here in Cyprus. When we arrived to open a new account at the little bank in the village, we were greeted by our unforgettable bank manager. While an amenable chap called George filled out the onerous forms on-line, the manager offered us a bowl of juicy plums from his garden. Delicious. Ah, then there was a series of jokes..mostly about priests! Each time he returned there was a new one. Then, as the minutes ticked by, he wandered out to the kitchen to make us coffee himself. Here the thick black coffee comes with a glass of iced water on the side…but he hadn’t finished there were more jokes – actually quite funny ones too. Then we were treated to the liquor….made from some kind of oranges. But only a single miniature glass – this is strong stuff. I have never been made to feel so welcome at the bank! Barclays eat your heart out – the Cypriots know about hospitable banking. I know what you’re thinking. Crisis…what crisis?

Ants are a bit like terrorists. They work in teams but often can’t be seen and you have to be in a state of constant vigilance to stop them attacking.
I am becoming very ‘ant aware’ after 7 days in Cyprus. But it’s a constant battle involving sweeping and wiping up any crumbs or particles of food which may drop (hello cleaning therapy – thought I was done with you), then wiping every jar after use, sealing cereal boxes with clips, frequent washing up, putting packets of sugar and flour, even when unopened, into Tupperware boxes. Tupperware is back in fashion here – it’s fantastically ant proof.
The major has been calling my anti-ant tactics ‘extreme’ at best and at worse ‘paranoia’. Of course he is so wrong, if only he knew the awful consequences of an ant attack on our food cupboards. Ant-battle-weary as I am, I vividly remember the black butter I discovered after a night raid by ants in South Africa. But he was very upset that the runny honey, which is sealed inside a Tupperware for extra precaution – because I know they can smell it from across the road – had gone solid in the fridge and was no longer pouring onto yoghurt and muesli. “Well, spread it instead”, I suggested. Luckily we found a solution and now the honey and various other ‘ant vulnerable’ products are safely sealed in the microwave.
The ants are definitely on the move though. I’ve spotted several very large scouts at various points around the terrace/garden. We can’t really call it a garden as there’s no grass. I’ve also seen a whole train of them streaming back and forwards over the white painted wall into the garden next door – obviously marshalling troops for an imminent attack. But I’ll be ready for them. Have bought 2 cans of Raid spray… and there is a zero tolerance policy on any ant appearing in my kitchen. So ants beware.

So handy I did a lot of tree climbing when I was younger trying to keep up with two elder brothers. It turns out it’s a necessary skill for living in Cyprus.

Sitting on a plane 48 hours ago I was thinking most of the hassles were over. Having negotiated the main obstacles like cleaning, handing over keys, leaving ‘do’ with cake and mini speech. Then that boozy leaving lunch, when all of us became embarrassingly honest about…well that would be for another time! I thought I was tired then, but throw in squeezing our kit into too many bags and cases, more goodbyes and the flying visit to the bank to change our address. There seemed to be no end to what needed doing before we left the UK. Oh no, the phone needs unlocking – more phone calls! Anyway, once we were on the motorway, surely we were nearly there. Apparently not, arriving at the Oxfordshire RAF base, we discovered ‘check-in’ was the night before now and I found myself scrummaging on the floor in the lobby of the accommodation block looking for sharp objects amongst make-up bags in hand luggage. Why were my hands now sticky and purple? Smells like….nail varnish…yes, leaking bottle in here somewhere. Glancing over my shoulder the gaggle of female soldiers with massive camouflage Burgens, who were also trying to sort out weight problems (for their baggage I mean), would they be discarding nail varnish remover? Maybe not.

In fact the rest of the journey and even the arrival at our new house late on Saturday night was fairly pain free. We were beginning to settle into a new mediterranean-style laid back life, which for us involved chicken salad, a little shifting furniture around, some gentle unpacking and then a swim to cool down. At breakfast we’d enjoyed a fresh grapefruit, which we’d found on the terrace outside. It was slightly bruised in one place and we wondered how it had got there – perhaps someone had dropped it by mistake or it had been thrown over the fence…we ate it anyway. Later that afternoon I happened to look up into a small bush in the middle of the terrace and saw something large and yellow, on closer examination there were a lot of large yellow balls – grapefruits! We have a grapefruit tree in our garden and today I enjoyed a freshly picked juice-filled grapefruit for breakfast. Delicious.

But last night grapefruits were the last thing on my mind. I had sauntered outside for a few minutes to look at the night sky and enjoy the novelty of being outside without layers. Earlier I’d locked up careful as we popped out for a drink in the village. The Major followed shutting the front door behind him with the keys on the table inside. Oops, or words to that effect. Surely we’d left a window open somewhere or even one of the several other doors? No, I was far too efficient in security measures…slight panic that we had no phones – also locked inside the house – and one of us wasn’t wearing shoes. It was a fair walk to anyone who might help and it was also after 11pm. Would we have to sleep on the sun loungers all night and face the Mosquitos? Another slightly more desperate search revealed a tiny toilet window could be opened. There was hope again. But the 6ft 7inch Major’s shoulder’s wouldn’t fit through the gap – so it was down to me to climb on a slightly dodgy object at shoulder height and slide through the half of the window we could open, but backwards and on my stomach. Time to take off the new dress and thank goodness underwear was matching for a change. I’m not sure what any neighbours looking out at the view would think as I ran round the house in my bra and knickers with mission accomplished to retrieve my dress draped elegantly on the washing line. So scraped elbows and knees – but the tree climbing experience had proved useful.

I’ve been in therapy for the past 48 hours. It’s not what you’d normally think of as therapy, but it works just the same. Cleaning – the new self-help detox therapy, a total de-stresser, healthy and very cheap. So why has nobody realised this?  Time to corner a gap in the market perhaps.

You might be wondering how cleaning is therapy…it goes like this.

Think of a stressful situation like moving house, moving countries, leaving a job, abandoning children (Ok adults actually, but still our children!) and all that goes with it. How do you manage the stress? Try hoovering for an hour it really sucks up your worries. Then there’s sweeping – clearing away the dust and debris into little piles – while you mentally brush up your ‘to do’ list and drop it in the nearest black sack. Then there’s dusting and polishing away those anxious thoughts and this can be anything and anywhere from clearing the handfuls of dust underneath the radiator to making the bath taps or the tops of the cooker shine. The great thing is you make progress and you can see the results of your work, at least for a moment before someone walks in out of the rain and right across that newly mopped floor.

This has been my focus for the past couple of days and it’s felt good to leave the house sparkling – well not quite – but definitely clean and much cleaner than it’s been while we’ve been living there, all these years.

I’ve got a friend who insists on cleaning her house from top to bottom before leaving for a holiday – it’s an absolute ritual for her, but she is an army wife. I liked the idea, but preferred the option of having someone else come in and clean WHILE we were on holiday and when we walked in, we’d all think what a lovely clean house we live in…rather than what a mess! Cleaning is very much a lifestyle choice, for some they can’t even relax until the washing up is done, while others can just chill while chaos reigns all around them. When I used to work from home, dirty washing and unpacking were welcome distractions from getting on with the business of writing a report, editing an article, or whatever it was I was supposed to be up to for paid employment.

So what will I find myself cleaning next week and where will the sweeping and brushing take me?

As we carried out the last mop and bucket and closed the door behind us, had we cleaned this lovely house and home out of our hearts and minds? Not quite, but I felt a little more ready to leave and walk away up the drive…

A pile of socks has been travelling around our house for the past few years. It’s an evolving pile, which grows and decreases depending on the house occupants. Socks with a matching pair move in and out of the pile, but some socks have been there for years….waiting for a partner to emerge from the washing. It must be exciting for them when they’re joined by newcomers – the occasional Christmas stocking fillers. Although their normal resting place is the spare room bed they have been known to move into bags in the airing cupboard or into wardrobes, even under beds, when the house is full of visitors.

The call used to go out on a Saturday afternoon…
“Mum, where are you?”
“I’m in the spare room.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m having a sock party….do you want to come?”

‘Sock parties’ usually happened on the spare room bed and involved the ‘sock game’ which is finding pairs until the pile is reduced to the same old lonely favourites. The thick grey one, the day of the week socks with a flash of green or orange, the indistinguishable black ones which required close examination to see if any of them actually matched up, the various white or nearly white trainer socks and the odd ski sock – too good to throw away in case the other half turned up. Sadly time is running out for these odd socks… next week they will be consigned to the recycling bin. It’s definitely the end of an era!

I shouldn’t be sorry about dumping the pile of odd socks, but when I realised I’d be throwing them out I felt a bit sad…not about the socks (that would be silly!), but sad about leaving all those years of memories of the things we’ve done in the house – including ‘sock parties’, which usually involved some good chats one to one with whoever joined me in the quiet of the spare room. It seems it’s the little things like a basketball net rescued from the tip, the painted plate of a teddy in a wood of lumpy trees and then of course, the bundle of socks that triggers a little pang of sadness, in between the final packing and cleaning.

One thing is for certain, socks won’t be in big demand in Cyprus, whether they’re odd or in pairs. My flip flops will be my new best friends.

Is it wrong to pray for computers, or wi fi routers? If God can heal people I’m sure he could fix the lack of internet connection in our house tonight. Still, something doesn’t feel right about that kind of prayer….so I’ve bottled out and spent the last three hours trying to plug and re-plug wires, type in numbers on the lap top, poke a biro into the back of the router re-set hole and if all else fails shake the box a bit, hold it up above my head and tilt it slightly. Nothing.  I am now an IT expert. But still no internet.  Perhaps praying about it would have been a better idea.

This week has been dominated by IT issues. At work the word ‘website’ has been used a lot, along with a few more colourful words, as we attempt to get our new-look site ready for general use by Friday. It will be a delight to log in to, eventually…but I suspect I will be long gone by then. The lack of internet here at home is something I may need to get used to abroad, especially at first while we wait to get connected. It seems amazing to think that dial-up internet was completely the norm about 15 years ago, now we all hop from wi fi zone to zone, even walking through a town, I find myself checking for the nearest  signal, desperate to keep myself connected. Although I’m not sure exactly who we’re all connecting with.

My real connections are the people I see and meet up with face to face and then chatting on facebook , twitter or email with them is just another dimension. But it can’t replace the enjoyment of being with people, sharing their company face to face, hearing the chink of glasses and seeing the twinkle in the eyes as jokes are exchanged. The internet isn’t doing any of that for me. That’s what was good about today, lunch with friends – well colleagues who’ve become friends.

I’m not sure quite how many leaving lunches is too many? Two feels fairly decadent, but three may be positively greedy…and then that’s not counting the suppers out, afternoon teas, and the odd drink to say farewell. This leaving lark feels quite a drawn out process – just put me on the plane with a box of tissues now please!

Like the 53 bus in London, you wait 15 years for some really good news on the Church of England in Notts and then two bits come along at once, just when I’m leaving! This week the national attendance statistics for churchgoing came out and Notts was top (to everyone’s surprise)…I was running, yes running (or maybe it was skipping) without shoes on, down the corridor to tell my boss and make sure I wasn’t misinterpreting the figures. Seems they were as right as they are ever going to be, so we were top on growing numbers. However, because it’s the C of E and we’re not too bothered about bums on pews, we’re not making a huge deal of it…just a press release, some radio interviews and a mention on TV. The second bit of good news was that Christmas attendance is up aswell, by quite a lot and that’s everywhere pretty much. This is especially good news for Churchads.net and the ‘Christmas Starts With Christ’ campaign we’ve been working on for the last 4 years. Could it finally be paying off? Or are people just getting into Christingles and choirs singing carols because of nostalgia and Gareth Malone? More discussion on this on the Radio 4 Sunday programme I suspect.

So, someone told me it was good to be leaving on a high, in the light of this news of church growth. I wasn’t so sure, because if it continues to go well, I’d sort of like to be around and part of it. Looking on the bright side, it’s Ascension Day tomorrow and 16 boys (and a photographer) will be climbing the tower of our Cathedral – Southwell Minster, at the unearthly hour of 7.30am to sing in celebration of the special day. Jesus’ ascension into heaven was an entirely different kind of high, but was also linked to church growth. He had to go for something really good to happen…but I could be reading too much into that.

Working for the church does have its perks, because tomorrow, actually today now, the office is closed. I will be attending an alternative ‘worship centre’, in the guise of Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping centre. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Who invented green fruit pastels? And how many should there be in an average packet? For me there are never enough red and black pastels….who even likes green ones anyway? Rowntree (we know you’re really Nestle), please take them out, stop making them and replace them all with black and red pastels. It would just make the world a happier place.

This is the ‘stuff of life’ running through my mind half way up the M5 on a 250 mile journey back from Devon. I was on a delivery mission – handing over unwanted TV and surplus curtains to poor students receiving our moving cast-offs. Motorway junctions were marked in pastels consumed and Radio 1 and the chart countdown made an entertaining passenger.

Monotonous motorway driving is something I won’t miss when we leave this summer, especially the drivers who think they are in Italy and continually undertake on the left and weave in and out and across lanes irresponsibly. Plonkers! There is a motorway in Cyprus, where they drive on the ‘right’ side of the road – which is left of course – but it only goes from one end of the island to the other and I’m not planning to go on it a lot. I’ll be far too ‘busy & important’ with jobs like swimming pool cleaning and cycling to the market for food. Probably.

Walking to work I’ve been making different kinds of lists about leaving. They are, ‘what I’ll miss’ and ‘what I won’t miss’…here’s a few for starters, ‘cause it might get boring.
I’ll miss: the wood pigeons cooing when I wake up, morning dew on the lawn, the smell of freshly mown grass and the Sunday papers.
I won’t miss: traffic jams, damp grey days (or perhaps I will when it hits 45 degrees!) and fake tan.

I’m motorway-bound again this weekend, but northwards to Jordie-land for another drop-off of furniture, food and… flipping heck there must be another ‘f’ in there somewhere! That means more boxes will be disappearing from around the house, which seems to get more echoey by the day. And the more stuff that goes out of the house, the more need there is for cleaning…if you like cleaning that’s a positive, if not, it’s best to look busy and find an important blog to write, so you can put it off for another day.

mf (or more follows)

Yes, we’ve all heard it said, but I really am ‘on the train’. I’m London bound today with pilgrimage on my mind. This time last year I was setting out for a solo pilgrimage starting in Assisi and walking round Umbria in Italy. My husband was in Afghanistan for seven months and I decided to use his absence to set off on my own long walk partly inspired by watching a Martin Sheen film called The Way. One year on it feels like that walk was the start of significant changes, not least that I’m now leaving my job. My mission today is to prepare a talk for colleagues on that pilgrimage experience. I do have the bones of one I prepared earlier, in good Blue Peter style, but it’s probably a bit too ‘holy’ for the crew of communicators I’ll be with tomorrow. How to spice it up a little?…I’m thinking – mysterious encounter with stranger? Fictitious espionage element or invent a scandal – that’s one they will all be able to relate to.

What I need is tea. Tea trolley is rattling down the carriage reading my thoughts. I’m feeling shocked about tea today. Instead of preparing the talk earlier, I was reading an article on UK tea drinking stats and habits. Apparently, only 1 in 5 people use a tea pot now. Average consumption is 3.5 cups a day and people prefer strong over weak, according to The Times article, that makes a total of 166million cups of tea consumed a day in this country….seems Osborne has missed a trick not coming up with a tea tax. But that would cause even more of a revolt than the poll tax, especially in our family. I’m beginning to wonder now if tea is really a cold country drink and that I won’t want so much of it in a hot climate like Cyprus. Problem. I have packed 3 teapots and masses of tea, was that a bit excessive?

Back to pilgrimages. They seem to be increasingly popular and people are getting fascinated by the idea of them. Perhaps it’s the fact that modern life has become so fast tracked and work pretty relentless for many, that there’s no space and time to reflect or stop and enjoy the scenery. Even on the train the countryside flashes by and most of us are glued to screens or phones, keeping ourselves busy for the journey. But on pilgrimage the journey is the thing. It’s the whole experience of travelling and making a journey that can be enjoyed and it’s also the people you meet along the way. When the volcanic ash cloud stopped flights a while back, I read about people making very long journeys and having major adventures as they tried to get back home overland. For some it was just a pain for others they realised what richness they had missed out on always flying over places, it had made them miss out on all those countries and places they had never been through and people they encountered en route. One thing I did value about my small pilgrimage was space to think and be without deadlines and pressures and phone calls….although at first it was almost like withdrawal from a drug I hadn’t realised I was hooked on. Now back in the world of tweets, facebook, iPads and emails, I wonder if I’m still hooked on constant communication, even on the train.

Yesterday I squeezed the last woolly jumper into a ‘pack lll’ cardboard box to be shipped out to Cyprus. Yes, jumper! because it gets really cold in the winter apparently, there’s a hot water bottle in there somewhere too. Our bedroom was a cardboard city with stacks of boxes filling the room. It’s been so long since we moved house I’d forgotten boxes have names (l, ll, lll) according to size. The weird thing with packing boxes is that as soon as you have taped up the box you have just packed, your memory is instantly wiped of what was in it…however much you stare at it thinking, I just put my stuff in there, it’s impossible to remember whether they were shoes, scarves, knickers or whatever else was lying round in your drawers a minute earlier. So inevitably you must rip off the sellotape and look inside, just to be sure, before sealing it up again and reaching for the sharpie, that’s now sealed inside….

Packing up what I’ll need for two years has been a stressful experience – in the early hours of the morning I’ve found myself composing ‘to do’ lists – not unusual perhaps – but in columns? One for home, one for work, one for potential work, one for ‘remind the children’. After 15 years in this house where our children climbed trees, hosted sleepovers, celebrated birthdays and eventually clattered in at 3am to make tea & toast, there’s a poignant finality about moving on. But it’s definitely happening and since the removal van drove off, all my shoes are on their way to Cyprus, and where they go I must follow!

Today was the start of many farewells, as I attended another work meeting for the last time. Tweeting comments from the debates and discussions, felt a little bit lighter, even if it was Saturday. I couldn’t help smiling as I packed down the ‘most complicated and hard to erect’ pull-up banners – a newly purchased legacy for my colleagues to remember me by. Like Mary Poppins, I may be ‘practically perfect in every way’ – but the new banners say otherwise. Although I’m thinking…this may just make it easier for whoever follows on. “Of course, she was a disaster when it came to pull-up banners, you know.”

I’ve decided to record this new chapter of my life in a blog. Why? Because life’s about sharing the journey….so here goes.

mf