Feeling happy

I have been feeling unaccountably happy in recent days. The children and I are flying to the UK on Wednesday but whether it is a one-way ticket or a return is still unknown.

(Please note anyone from Husband’s employers who might be reading this: bear in mind that my feeling relatively relaxed DOES NOT mean you should take another three weeks to sort out what we’re doing. I am getting fed up.)

Anyway. Daughter is bringing a friend to the UK; Son is doing work experience and I have a weekend planned with writing friends, some lunches and two courses booked. The first is a Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook course called The Insider Guide to Submitting Your Manuscript and the second is an Arvon course, Writing Mainstream.

These plans are all badly placed in the calendar so that I won’t be able to rush around the country seeing everyone because of a need to stay south east for these various commitments. But I am going to be available to meet in London and I really hope people will be happy to come to us.

Today I am trying to write my covering letter to submit for comment to the W&A Yearbook course (as above.) Bear in mind I haven’t finished the novel yet… but the pitch letter, should I desire personal feedback (Hell, yeah) is due tomorrow. So far I have taken four hours on the first 70 words. 

Quite an optimistic post, honest.

And today my equilibrium has returned. I feel serene about what will be…

Yesterday Husband and I went to school to see Daughter in Macbeth. Son, who is full of cold didn’t come. (I always feel a cold, in such hideously hot weather, is so wrong.) His not coming meant that Husband and I could talk and it was the Beattie-style Worst Case Scenario planning that has brought me some peace.

The ideal situation is that we stay in Bangkok. I want to stay here but more than my selfishness, Son should finish school here because that would suit him and his personality best. I’ve been online to look at schools in the UK and funnily – or probably not – the school we chose with him at 11 is still the school that looks the best fit now. But we talked about what we could do if that school doesn’t have places. We have a plan… should we need it.

Bangkok is my home. It’s not where I’m from but it is where we’ve made our home for the last five years. Whatever people think about our lives here – that it’s a cushy number or that we’re spoiled – there are tough things about this life; we make sacrifices and face different problems (as well as some of the same) that you do in your home countries. I suspect that you have noticed some of our stresses in recent weeks! My immediate family are here and my books are here; it’s home.

But I am lucky because I have friends in both places; indeed, I have friends all over the world.

If I am made to come home (for that is the lack of control for us) then I will be closer to my elderly parents, I will be able to join friends at book launches, for weekends of laughing and eating. I won’t always have to miss the important occasions in the lives of my friends, my chosen family and both our extended families. I can think about what work I want to do and I can consider doing an MA. (Then I will have the three degrees I’ve longed for and will, forever more, be able to wear glitzy dresses and burst into song: ‘When Will I See You Again?’)

So (some of) the plan is that I shall be home to the UK, as planned, in July. I may be looking for schools; I may not. Then I may come back to Bangkok or I may not but I feel happier about all of this.

Gratuitous picture of beautiful, visual production of Macbeth.