Playdate

Today we had a playdate with Jan and Saul over at their flat near the university. We also had a playdate with Niamh Dawson but I knew the minute we made the arrangement that her mum would let me down at the last minute so I double booked her with Jan and Saul and thought nothing more of it. I've spoken with lots of British mums keen to make friends with the aussies but they've found a common problem in getting them to stick to arrangements and often find themeselves left high and dry at the last minute, which is why they end up hanging out with other Poms despite their best intentions to mix in. And then they end up living in little expat enclaves like the northern beaches because they want to be with their own people, their own culture. I never imagined the two cultures could be so different but they are.

Anyway, after six months down under I'm now familiar with the etiquette of playdates, which revolve almost entirely around the tradition of morning tea, which as you might remember, was a minefield of faux pas before I worked out the rules.

So rule number one, you turn up with morning tea and possibly an activity or a toy, especially if it's raining like today (yeah I know - actual rain again. Yesterday I was asleep on the beach in 23 degree sunshine, today it looks like Wigan). And when it comes to morning tea in nice middle-class circles, you bring an assortment of fruit and breads (raisin or banana) and possibly sultanas but definitely not peanuts as every middle class child might possibly be allergic to them (you know, until they've been to see an allergist). Funny how many Topics and Marathons we all munched through in the seventies without even a sniff of anaphylaxis but there you go.

And you most definitely don't turn up with dolly mixtures or Ribena or heaven forbid, fairy bread, not that I'd advocate any such frivolity myself (she says, wiping the dairy milk from around the edges of her mouth).

So today it was a tupperware box full of grapes and orange segments and a number of arty crafty activities like finger paints and paint rollers and lots more paint (see top picture for illustration of the play date bag before we left). Ella and Saul had twenty minutes of fun, leaving forty minutes of mess (most of it on their faces, Ella opting for a Ricky Tomlinson beard) but it was a nice idea in principle.

Jan received a call from the authorities while I was there. She's sitting her citizenship test to become a proper Australian and they've worked out a date for her interview. Saul was wearing a tee-shirt saying "My Dad says I can do anything I like except play for Australia"; a joke of course, but as holders of British passports I wonder where they really feel at home. Another common theme with long-term expats is that they return home for holidays but don't feel they fit in any more. And they never really feel part of their adopted country either so they live in no-mans land watching their kids grow up on foreign soil, knowing they've made a better life for the kids but suffering this kind of statelessness as a result.

"In the past you had to give up your British passport" said Jan. "You couldn't have dual citizenship"

"So would you have done that? Would you have given it up?"

"Not a chance. The reason I'm doing it now is that I'm tired of waiting in long queues at immigration when I fly into Sydney. That and the fact my parents want to retire here, so us being citizens will make it easier to get them in"

"So what do you have to do to get citizenship?"

"Well you sit a test about Australia then you have this ceremony where you pledge allegiance to the country and confirm you know your duties, you know, like how it's compulsory to vote in an election. Then they give you a seedling from a native plant and you have the welcome address and that's it; nice photo, nice certificate for the wall. Then you're Australian"

"Must be very emotional" I said. "I can't listen to the Australian national anthem without crying, it makes me think about all these brave people who've pioneered this land and everything they left behind. Though it's not as bad as watching GMTV on Christmas day when all the British expats are standing on the beach waving at their families back home and saying "hello Mum, this is your grandson" - that just kills me every time, I can't watch it"

"Then you won't be emigrating?"

"I don't think so. I'm not brave enough. I could do it for five years if I knew I was going home but five years is just long enough to screw up your kids and have them believe this life is theirs for keeps. Then you'd fly them home and they wouldn't know what had hit them when they saw the weather and wanted to know where the nearest beach was. I love Australia, I really, really love it, but it's not my home and it's not fair to mess Ella about. If we didn't have Ella, we'd be here like a shot"

"I can't believe you're going back, I wish you weren't. I feel like we'd have been good friends you and me, you know, if we'd known each other in another life"

I feel incredibly sad about Jan and Saul. We've become good frineds, but already the friendship feels like a dead man walking. We'll be home in January and we might never see either of them again.