(Almost) Half Time Analysis

So we raised a glass of red wine to her maj over dinner this evening and we got around to discussing Darren's job situation, which is a bit up in the air for various complicated reasons.

His current employer has changed some of the terms and conditions of his contract and this has serious potential financial implications for us. The problem is, potential is all the problems are at the moment. The changes were supposed to have happened at the end of May and they didn't. They might happen later in the year and they might not. Nobody really knows, except Darren's boss, who's in Europe on holiday.

Faced with this uncertainty, he looked around for another job, which is how the outback rescue post came up. He's passed their medical and fitness test (this in itself is a miracle. Turning up to a fitness test with your wife's "Fitness First" gym bag shouldn't count) and they want to know when he can start. It sounds done and dusted, but if he leaves his current post, the boss will be pissed off. The boss has fingers in many pies. He could make it very difficult for him to find work in Sydney in the future. We don't want to burn our bridges if we want to come back.

And that's the crunch. Do we want to come back? Are we bothered about pissing off the boss? Do we risk it or do we risk staying in the current job and the money falling off? Will we regret having done that if we decide not to return? The half-time analysis is fast approaching.

I've talked to lots of Poms since we arrived, and we talked to Jo and Gordon before they left. They did the year we're doing. They described their emotions as following a "J" curve - loved it at first, then they hit a low point after a few months - the bottom of the J shape. Then after that, they bounced back. By the end of the year, they were making plans to emigrate in 2008. Their parents are coming too, though they'll have to wait two years if they need Jo and Gordon to sponsor them.

The thing I notice about the British people I speak to is that they all feel they had more to gain than they had to leave behind. They were pulled by the weather and the optimism, the life for the kids, the size of the houses. It's not that they hate Britain, and yes, they miss their families, and sure, it's hard at Christmas, but they didn't have good enough friendships to keep them in the UK. They didn't mind starting over again because they didn't have much they felt they needed to replace.

We discussed it over dinner. I had a few thoughts.

"I love Sydney, but it will always be here. You can come to Australia on holiday any time you like, if you can stomach the flight. You could retire here if you could support yourself. But if you leave your history, you eventually wipe it out, you can't have it back"

"What do you mean?"

"Well it's not just your history, it's your identity" I continued. "I mean, I think about our friends back home. We have a whole group we went to school with. I always think about the photo I took on new years eve 1999, the big group of us wearing daft party hats; there were a couple of kids in the photo but if you took the same photo now, there would be more children. And two of the people in the photo are divorced now. We've lived our lives together, been through everything together"

"And they're the people you'll grow old with"

"Exactly. And your identity is all caught up in it. In that group, I'm like the sarky one, the one who'll say something a bit barbed and the others will laugh. Then Claire and Wayne will say something hilarious, the whole group will be in stitches, crying laughing. And Sarah will have that extra drink and she'll come and sit on your knee and she'll be falling about laughing and so on, and so on. And then you have the friends you meet at university. Tim and Caroline - they're like family to us - loads of shared history; the time we were in America with them and it started thundering and I was terrified. That's almost ten years ago now. And my friends I met at work - I have another identity there - they call me Boss, I do the organising and the planning and they let me get away with it - we're a close-knit group of girls".

"I see what you mean"

"Being in Sydney for a year is like a game. It's not real life. We can be anyone we like but nobody knows us in any depth. I mean, I like that in some ways. Nobody has any preconceptions about me, but on the otherhand, nobody knows my real identity either, and without that, I'm not sure where my identity has gone. I can't be bossy or sarky or barbed. I can't make people laugh because they don't really understand my humour. It would take twenty years to develop the same networks of friends and I'm not sure you'd achieve it anyway because all the people you'd meet now are of a certain age and they have busy lives and young kids. And the ones who are younger have different priorities. They don't understand you've can't just drop everything anymore. There's no time to hang out together to develop a history. There's no playing records in each others' bedrooms or walking home from school or having sleepovers. There's no pissed-up nights on the town, no holidays in tents in France. Just barbeques with the kids.

I'm not sure I can wipe it all out. Not even for Sydney, not even for all of this, for a lifestyle and an enormous income and a pool. Not even for the cockatoos or the blue sky. I'm not sure it's enough"