It’s 2 am in the morning, I’m wide awake in my bed in the shared house I returned to after almost a year teaching English in Madrid. I’d spent almost a year working and travelling in Spain while waiting to take up a place in into a graduate nursing program at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow. Before I left for Spain I had been so energised about my new nursing career, about training in Scotland, the home of my paternal forebears, but now here I was, on returning from Spain/back in England, unable to sleep as I tortured myself wondering whether I was doing the right thing going ahead.
I’d come back to looking forward to spending a few months in the house in Westover Road, Clapham, which I’d had such fun sharing with a group of young Cambridge Law graduates before going to Spain. I was shocked to find the household breaking up. People were moving on; there seemed to be a change in the power dynamics in the house; Nick, was more openly using drugs. I’d had to cope when another housemate, normally so reserved, came in to my bedroom one night when he’d been drinking too much; and pressure to enter a relationship with Bruce, a happy and friendly New Zealander, at a time when I was grieving the breaking up of a relationship in Spain. Westover Road, my only base in London now that many of my expat friends had returned to Australia, was fraught with problems. I began to long for my friends in Australia.
I found the London I’d loved so crowded, so very crowded! Walking the streets, relatively empty when left in late September the previous year, wasn’t relaxing. The perpetual queueing during August, the busiest month in London’s tourism year, frustrated me immensely. I began to long for the less crowded streets of Melbourne. I increasingly felt that these weren’t ‘my streets’, the people weren’t ‘my people’.
I longed to see my mother and mourned for my beloved grandmother who had died while I was overseas. Both my sister and brother had remarried while I was away, their lives moving on, with blended families keeping them so busy. My only connections to Australia were my new brother-in law John’s parents in Manchester. I had visited them in their ‘2 up 2 down’ in Manchester a number of times before going to Spain and was quick to visit them again on my return to England. They played me a tape of my sister’s children, who were just 6 to 8 at the time. I felt that I was ‘missing out’.
Throughout this time I was investigating fob watches and nursing shoes, and searching out a car to take me to Scotland and use for the next two years. I found myself delaying these purchases, putting them off. (I'd also been advised to practise injecting oranges using a syringe... however I was finding this made me rather squeamish...)
One evening, Phil, a shared house friend I had travelled to France with, sat down with me at the kitchen table at Westover Rd over a cup of tea. Suspecting I was depressed, he listened to me, then said, “Bev, I suspect you are incredibly homesick and might need to go home”… I hadn’t identified it so clearly. Phil’s diagnosis was ‘spot on’. Feelings of home sickness had increasingly to begun sweep over me, sometimes in gentle, slow running waves, at others in huge, overwhelming, dumping breakers.
I had to make a decision about what to do. Reflecting over the next few days, I began to see that I would be unlikely to last the distance in Scotland, feeling as I did, that it would be selfish to take up a place in a course I may well decide to leave. It was all just too hard. I decided to withdraw, return to Australia and return to teaching.
So, I changed my mind, and returned to teaching in Victorian High Schools for another 12 years.
In 1991 I changed my mind again, leaving teaching to pursue social work. This was a big decision, as it meant losing my income continuity for superannuation, my seniority with the Education Department, but I wanted to pursue something different and had been drawn to social work for some time. With a degree in Social Work from Melbourne University came the opportunity to work in the Health system, not as a nurse, but as a social worker. I learnt so much from extended social work placements in the mental health and community health sectors, and then when working in community health and in the alcohol and other drug field which had a very strong interface with the health sector. (An added advantage - I didn't have to give needles!)
Then, in 2000/2001, I changed my mind again. I decided to return to education, this time at GOTAFE, where I had the opportunity for another 12 years to blending my education and social work qualifications and experience to teach in the Community Services area....
Interestingly, I didn't change my mind about . 'Retirement'.... but that's another story
Bev Lee
July 2023
*This is an reworked version of a story written in 2020 under the topic 'Too Hard Basket'.
I’d come back to looking forward to spending a few months in the house in Westover Road, Clapham, which I’d had such fun sharing with a group of young Cambridge Law graduates before going to Spain. I was shocked to find the household breaking up. People were moving on; there seemed to be a change in the power dynamics in the house; Nick, was more openly using drugs. I’d had to cope when another housemate, normally so reserved, came in to my bedroom one night when he’d been drinking too much; and pressure to enter a relationship with Bruce, a happy and friendly New Zealander, at a time when I was grieving the breaking up of a relationship in Spain. Westover Road, my only base in London now that many of my expat friends had returned to Australia, was fraught with problems. I began to long for my friends in Australia.
I found the London I’d loved so crowded, so very crowded! Walking the streets, relatively empty when left in late September the previous year, wasn’t relaxing. The perpetual queueing during August, the busiest month in London’s tourism year, frustrated me immensely. I began to long for the less crowded streets of Melbourne. I increasingly felt that these weren’t ‘my streets’, the people weren’t ‘my people’.
I longed to see my mother and mourned for my beloved grandmother who had died while I was overseas. Both my sister and brother had remarried while I was away, their lives moving on, with blended families keeping them so busy. My only connections to Australia were my new brother-in law John’s parents in Manchester. I had visited them in their ‘2 up 2 down’ in Manchester a number of times before going to Spain and was quick to visit them again on my return to England. They played me a tape of my sister’s children, who were just 6 to 8 at the time. I felt that I was ‘missing out’.
Throughout this time I was investigating fob watches and nursing shoes, and searching out a car to take me to Scotland and use for the next two years. I found myself delaying these purchases, putting them off. (I'd also been advised to practise injecting oranges using a syringe... however I was finding this made me rather squeamish...)
One evening, Phil, a shared house friend I had travelled to France with, sat down with me at the kitchen table at Westover Rd over a cup of tea. Suspecting I was depressed, he listened to me, then said, “Bev, I suspect you are incredibly homesick and might need to go home”… I hadn’t identified it so clearly. Phil’s diagnosis was ‘spot on’. Feelings of home sickness had increasingly to begun sweep over me, sometimes in gentle, slow running waves, at others in huge, overwhelming, dumping breakers.
I had to make a decision about what to do. Reflecting over the next few days, I began to see that I would be unlikely to last the distance in Scotland, feeling as I did, that it would be selfish to take up a place in a course I may well decide to leave. It was all just too hard. I decided to withdraw, return to Australia and return to teaching.
So, I changed my mind, and returned to teaching in Victorian High Schools for another 12 years.
In 1991 I changed my mind again, leaving teaching to pursue social work. This was a big decision, as it meant losing my income continuity for superannuation, my seniority with the Education Department, but I wanted to pursue something different and had been drawn to social work for some time. With a degree in Social Work from Melbourne University came the opportunity to work in the Health system, not as a nurse, but as a social worker. I learnt so much from extended social work placements in the mental health and community health sectors, and then when working in community health and in the alcohol and other drug field which had a very strong interface with the health sector. (An added advantage - I didn't have to give needles!)
Then, in 2000/2001, I changed my mind again. I decided to return to education, this time at GOTAFE, where I had the opportunity for another 12 years to blending my education and social work qualifications and experience to teach in the Community Services area....
Interestingly, I didn't change my mind about . 'Retirement'.... but that's another story
Bev Lee
July 2023
*This is an reworked version of a story written in 2020 under the topic 'Too Hard Basket'.