Distractions

So the saga of Jackie's wedding continues; her future mother-in-law becoming progressively more over-bearing with every week that passes, all of which provides an entertaining distraction from doing any actual work on Mondays and Tuesdays. At the weekend she telephoned Jackie's mother to say "it's as much our big day as yours - they're both our precious babies". Apparently she refers to Dixon as "my prince". I deliberately haven't passed judgement because what I really want to say is that she's a typical Sydneysider and that's probably not what Jackie wants to hear.

"I want to slap her" she said, hunched over her soup at lunchtime. "And then I want to scream "he's not even yours, not even your offspring. You couldn't even have children, your body couldn't even have them, so he's not technically yours anyway".

Jackie makes me wince when she talks, not just because of the direct way she says things but because her opinions are so totally at odds with my own. Like the time she described her past job working with kids who have special needs and how she hated it and wanted to tell the parents "your child is a blob. There's nothing I can do with a blob". And still she talks about coming to work in Britain next March and now she's even talking about buying a house while she's there, you know, just for something to do.

"We'll come for nine months or so and buy a house or something. I don't like to talk about our property portfolio, it makes me uncomfortable. People will think I'm bragging; talking about money makes me itch"

"Where will you buy a house?" I asked her today

"I have no idea, somewhere we can go for holidays"

"I'm not sure you'll be able to, not if you're there short-term. You might have to be a resident"

"Really? But you British are always buying property in France and Spain and Greece and you're not resident there"

"No, but we're Europeans. We all have European passports and you don't. That might be the problem"

And suddenly I felt defensive on Europe's behalf, defensive against outsiders thinking they can rock up and buy property when so many of our own people struggle to get a foot on the property ladder. I hope there's a rule about it but I'm not sure.

"We're still looking for something on the north shore" she told me later. "We can spend about 1.17 mill". Funnily enough, it's not the first time she's told me this, though oddly, I've never seen even the slightest hint of an itch. I think she might be bragging.