England is playng the US in football tonight and it seems the whole of central London has gone quiet. Clearly everyone is watching the game – good on them – I too have felt the collective pull of sport-watching, but only for netball. Football leaves me cold and bored and fidgety. All well, then – so I have been on the NZ Herald site, having a look at what the news are in Old New Zealand Town. Unfortunately, it seems the teachers are having sex with pupils and watching porn while the 5 year olds draw very odd looking things and lisp to each other. At least the headlines are not screaming about horrific child abuse, although there is a fair bit to be found about 12 year old prostitutes. Sigh. Then, further scrolling down the headline news into the Lifestyle section leads you to articles nicked from The Independent, quoting Aldo Zilli give his take on dining with children in the UK. And it makes me feel a bit sad because it can feel as though I live in the centre of the world here, in W2, with Annie Lennox frequenting Tom’s Diner and the V & A a walk through the park and the Selfridges sale a 10 minute bus ride on the 92. One day we will go back home…and will I keep looking outward, back to London? Longing for London? I would like to think that life in New Zealand will be enough, but I am suspicious that it won’t be.

Anyway, these are the things I miss:

1. My parents. They are funny and brave and clever and when I think of them, I think of Scrabble and silverbeet from the garden.

2. Amber and Glenn. They are having a baby and I would like to be there to BOSS THEM AROUND.

3. The beaches and the camping and the warmth and the singing cicadas and the green, green Waitakeres.

Things I don’t:

1. Being a bit poor

2. Longing to travel. Feeling like the rest of the world is moving along on a stylish, fast-moving train and you have been left at the station, looking a bit dorky and sad with wildly inappropriate luggage.

3. The mosquitos.

4. The driving everywhere.

I am often wondering what we should do with ourselves. We have been here a little too long – I have been a grown-up here, we have had all our children here, I have had a few fun jobs and really gotten to know cocktails and tasting menus and seen proper theatre and been in the Brick Lane Festival crowd and felt deliciously swallowed up and always felt so anonymous. When we first arrived with backpacks and no where to stay and £1500 in our bank accounts with no jobs, it felt as though London was a tightly-closed, secret, unwelcoming scary place that would not let us in. I know now that it is a place that is forgiving, and complex, challenging, and beautiful. If we actually had tickets booked to go home, I think I would feel very scared. Palpitations scared. So we are a bit stuck. In the best kind of way. Kind of.

Enough of that. Here is my new teapot:

That *was* my new butter dish, except one of those pesky kids broke it. They are ugly ceramics with people in leotards doing jazzercise printed on them. Excellent. The DVD player is also broken, because Noah put a pen inside it. And I am waiting for my Alexa strap to be ruined, because Barnaby is obsessed with wearing it as a belt. He loops it to his trousers, then uses the hook to attach himself to trees/bunks/car doors, etc. Why do I let him, I hear you exclaim in a worried, perplexed tone (especially those who googled what the bag actually cost). Frankly, sometimes you take the path of least resistance. That is the only answer I have got.

And on that note, my last, here is a picture of what *was* my feathered headband, al la Lohan:

The feathers were pulled off, one by one.