18.

It was the only time my dad ever stepped into a dispute not on the same side as my mum.

Dad; ‘If she’s big enough to fly to London on her own, then she’s big enough to pack her own suitcase, just leave her to it!’ 

This was the only outward sign I saw that mum was actually upset I was leaving home and true to form for our family, our emotions were expressed via anger, in this instance she was angry at me for packing my suitcase in a way she would have preferred I didn’t.

She knew I wasn’t coming back and so did I.

At 16, I tried to leave home the first time to do an ‘exchange’ year in Canada but despite best efforts, it didn’t come together. Though my parents were supportive, they ultimately couldn’t afford it. I would have lived with a family and attended a Christian school that was by definition of values the same as my own but just being in a country on the other side of the world where no one knew me was like a dream.

I was upset when it all fell through and instead spent my savings on a church ‘mission trip’ to the Solomon Islands. A thorough waste of money. It turned out those Solomon Islanders were going to church every day already and what they needed were doctors, not Christian do-gooder’s performing puppet shows.

It had only been two months since I had finished school and I was thrilled to finally be done. I had secured a nanny job (naturally), booked a ticket and bought a coat and a suitcase. I had worked and saved and mum and dad had agreed to pay for my ticket. They paid for my ticket because they bought my older sister a car and because I didn’t get a car, I could have a ticket of the equivalent value; everything was fair in our family down to the last cent.

Getting to this point in my life felt like such a long, arduous journey, my childhood and adolescence stretching out seemingly forever; an endless series of frustrations and a longing for adulthood, to be free and independent and to start my own life. I was counting down the years until I finished school from about year two.

A month before my flight to freedom, I thought my escape plan had turned to shit. I walked into our house and written on the family whiteboard, a well-placed noticeboard that helped us avoid verbal communication with each other, was ‘Erin to pay for own trip to London.’ A neat and to the point note in blue marker, dad’s handwriting, all caps. I had been spotted smoking and this was clearly an appropriate punishment.

Thankfully, upon further parental consideration, taking less into account my inconsolable grief and more their wondering if actually they were just punishing themselves by not getting me out the house and on the other side of the world as quickly as possible, the note was erased and the trip was back on.

I heard later some of the other mothers had expressed their concerns about my age and moving to an unknown country where we didn’t know a soul, saying to my mum, ‘Why can’t she just move to Sydney?’ My mum tells me she responded with; ‘Sydney isn’t nearly far enough away for Erin!’.

I cried when I got on the plane but not for long, I was too excited, I was finally out.

Two lasting memories of the flight; on one leg I had three seats all together and stretched out and slept. Those were the good old days when we happily cranked out those carbon emission without a care in the world flying half empty planes across the globe just to keep the schedules on track. And second, I remember seeing a good-looking woman in corporate attire and the male flight attendant was flirting with her. I thought, one day I’m going to be sophisticated and beautiful with an important job where I travel for work wearing wear lady suits and the male flight attendants will flirt with me. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I remember touching up my makeup in the toilets at Singapore airport, I had no comprehension that with 13 hours still to go before I had to look put together, whether you’re in business or economy, make up slides at twice the pace on a plane.

I was meeting a boy on the other side. Well, a man actually. I was flying to the other side of the world to be collected from the airport by a man I met on the internet.

I shit you not.

I had met him in a Yahoo chat room and his handle was jimmer_dude. Oh my goodness, just thinking about it now, what the hell were we all thinking. This was 1999 and the internet was new, there’s my first excuse. My second is that his mother was a vicar and my mother had spoken to her on the phone before I flew out to give it the old seal of approval. The woman could have been a madam and I could have been about to join her international prostitution ring but that conversation, and her being a woman of the cloth (though of course we disapproved of women vicars in own church) was enough to allay any possible concerns my mother had and Jimmer_dude was free to collect me from Heathrow.

I don’t recall having any qualms about this; at no point did it cross my mind that I might be flying 24hours to stay at the home of a murderer to meet my untimely death, jet lagged on the other side of the world. Given I didn’t feel any concern I don’t think my parents did either. Certainly, no seeds of caution were planted, no back-up plan or exit strategy was devised and I don’t recall any conversation about my personal safety. I was a sitting duck.

I disembarked and went through the usual Visa rigmarole and I walk out of the Arrival Gate and I see him. I think we have a technical name for this now, where someone sends photos that are taken in the best light possible and at just the right angle and are really not indicative of reality. My heart sank, he was a geek, shorter than me and not of significant build.

He was very excited to see me and had gone to some lengths to come get me. Being too embarrassed with his own car he had gone to the Peugeot garage and taken a new car for a test drive. A TEST DRIVE from Leicester to London. That is a 120 mile journey each way, 2 hours driving time per leg. I was embarrassed he’d gone to the effort.

Before the ick set in re the photographic false advertising and the car test drive, I clearly remember, having arrived in the early afternoon, stepping outside the airport on UK soil for the first time and it was cold and the sun was watery and it smelt like airplane fuel and I had a moment, I felt like I was where I was meant to be, I felt like I had arrived home to start my life.

Eventually arriving in Leicester, it transpires that he lives in a share house with three other potential rapists, I mean men. Whilst I had been told I would be sleeping on the sofa; on arrival it was made clear that it would be a whole lot easier if I just shared his bed. And being homeless in a foreign country, I did. Thankfully it turned out he was a decent human and a gentleman and his mother was a vicar after all.

Jimmer_dude very kindly took me out for dinner that first night and it was then that I realised I had missed a very important part of training to be an adult; restaurant ordering. I had no idea what I was doing. I was at an Ask, which I would now refer to as an ‘Italian restaurant’ in the same way I would refer to KFC as a ‘chicken restaurant’ but the menu was slightly fancier in that there were Italian words and outside of Carbonara and Bolognese I was completely at a loss as to what the other menu items were, how many dishes I was supposed to order from each section and when. I surveyed the A3 menu and felt embarrassed at my lack of sophistication and said ‘I’ll have the same as him – thank you’.

We rarely ate out as a family and when we did, we were told exactly what we were eating; Flake and chips or a Fisherman’s Basket. I was 18 and I had never been to an Italian restaurant.

I had a great time in Leicester, I was there for a fortnight or so before I started my new job in Wokingham. I spent money in shops I’d never seen before, all the variety and this new looking cash was like toy money, it didn’t count. I recall walking along a canal, the type with shopping trolleys and rubbish bobbing about, and a man came towards me on a bicycle and I smiled at him. The poor man was so surprised that he nearly went over into the canal. Turns out women don’t smile at strange men by canals in Leicester. I now know I should have shouted ‘fuck off!’ to make the man feel less threatened.

Poor jimmer_dude, I think he thought he was in love with me. He had sent me a mix tape before I left for the UK, I still have it. On one side of the cassette tape he had written on the little white strip ‘Saturday Night’ and on the other side ‘Sunday Morning’. It was a great mix tape. But he was not for me and I had to delicately extract myself from his life without appearing ungrateful; I mean he had test driven a new Peugeot to London for me.

A few weeks later I was a live-in nanny in Wokingham. The kids were sweet enough but the mother was a nut job with ideas above her station and they were clearly living way beyond their means.  The youngest of the 3 children was at nursery and whilst loitering about the school gates for pick-ups, some of the other nanny’s introduced themselves to me. Tish was nanny to triplets and my little girl was their friend.

At one play date early on, Tish said “We’re going with a group of friends to Centre Parcs, wanna come?” As I didn’t have any friends, like quite the eager beaver, I immediately agreed despite not knowing what or where Centre Parcs was.

For the uninitiated, Centre Parcs is a holiday park comprised of a load of bungalows ‘hidden’ down in some manufactured woods where you can achieve a feeling of isolation and at one with nature because you can’t use your car around the park. But when you’re tired of isolation you can walk to the games hall and drink pints and go on the water slide and eat shitty food with all the other people seeking peace and tranquillity. Serenity.

We had an ice-breaker get together pre-Centre Parcs and I was befriended into Tish’s circle, they had all been friends since high school.

As a freshie, straight off the boat, the boys kept singing a radio jingle at me after discovering I was from Hobart, Tasmania. Apparently, Chris Tarrant, a well-known UK radio presenter, and latterly host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, had stolen a jingle from Hobart’s 7HO radio station and had prolifically played it on Capital FM. I repeatedly had all the lyrics, which ended with a “Hooobaaaart Taasmainaaaa” sang at me. I’d never heard it before.

It was about as funny as when they took me to a Walkabout pub thinking I’d feel at home there drinking a Fosters whilst they asked me to ‘throw another shrimp on the barbie’ in dreadful faux-Australian accents all night. A real rib-tickler. 

Having quickly gathered what Brit’s thought of Australians, I was keen to distance myself as far as possible from the culturally bereft, Fosters drinking, shrimp eating, weather complaining, 2-year Working Holiday Visa holder Australian caricature.

I threw myself into UK Gen X culture and within months, I was laughing along to jokes that 12 months prior would have made no sense to me at all. I learned music, football, TV and pop culture, politics and geography and regional accents and I absolutely loved it.

 It was the antidote to 18 prior years of cultural starvation.

 And that’s how I met my first husband; thank you Tish and thank you Centre Parcs.