Wagga Wagga to Worcestershire & back again
When I moved to England I quickly learnt that single use plastic bags were well on the way out. All big retailers in the U.K. are required by law to charge for that type of plastic bag. Although it was never a big fee, it became something I was mindful of and I quickly purchased reusable carrier bags, one of which I ended up using on almost a daily basis. I became so attached to that one bag, it made its way back to Australia with me…
When Adam and I moved back into our Australian home I decided I wanted to replace our old bookshelf (a flatpack I’d bought and put together in my 20s, which had sustained a number of house moves and was starting to look a little sad) with something that better reflected our style as a couple and fitted into the space we had.
I’d been eyeing off pretty stylised floating shelf set-ups on my Pinterest and Instagram pages for months and decided I’d found the solution.
Thankfully Adam was keen too, so last weekend out came the drill and up went the shelves…
In that hazy period between Christmas and New Year, while Adam and I were madly trying to get our home sorted, one of his Australian relatives thrust a bundle of home decorating/gardening/interior design magazines into my arms….
It’s hard to believe that this time last year I was only starting to find my feet in England. I finally knew my way around our town in Worcestershire, was starting to develop an appreciation for ales and could slip in the odd ‘British-ism’ into everyday conversation.
Last week I touched on a few aspects of Australian life that I’m thoroughly enjoying now Adam and I are back Down Under. Today, it’s all about England and what I’m missing about life on the other side of the world…
As a kid growing up in regional Queensland in the 90s and early noughties, the cardinal fashion sin among my group of friends was ‘joggers and jeans’. It was what dads wore at weekend barbecues and certainly had no place in the life of 13 year old school girls who were trying to plan their weekend outfits for group outings.
Over the last few years though, sneakers and specifically sparkling white ones, have become a mainstay. I’m a sucker for classic, basic clothing pieces – good jeans, white shirts and always a few Breton stripe tops- so I generally avoid trends and stick to what I know I like. I kept seeing pictures though of classic, basic white sneakers paired with my classic, basic wardrobe staples, and the more I looked the more I liked…
The other day while flipping through my diary to write myself a reminder I realised that Adam and I have been back in Australia for just over two months. I was flabbergasted. It feels like so much longer than that, probably because we’ve been slowly but surely doing jobs around the house and in the garden to transform both spaces into ‘our home’.
It also made me think about what I’m enjoying about my return to Australia…
Sometimes you just have ‘one of those weeks’. For me, nothing bad has really happened, it’s just been a long week (literally – I’m on my seventh working day straight!) and I’ve had a challenging story taking up much of my time at work.
It’s left me feeling a little weighed down, but instead of getting angry or upset I’m trying to switch off outside of work hours to find the joy in everyday moments…
When Adam and I lived in England, we made a real concerted effort to get out and explore the local area as often as we could. When we moved back to Australia we decided it was something we wanted to keep up. So, the other day we jumped in the car and headed south…
Wedding planning started in earnest after Adam and I got engaged last year on account of some of the legalities involved in organising a ceremony in the U.K.
Within a few months we’d locked in a date, venue, spoken to a nearby flower farm about blooms for our day and I’d also secured the services of a local hairdresser and make-up artist. (You can read more about my first few tentative steps into wedding planning here)
What I hadn’t managed to do was try to narrow down the type of wedding dress I wanted…
Last November Adam and I spent a few days sorting through all of English belongings, trying to work out what we wanted to bring back to Australia with us. Although I hadn’t really acquired all that much, Adam still had a lot of household things that he’d left in Worcestershire, which we inherited back when we moved to England in 2016.
In the end we whittled it down to four big boxes and a suitcase. Our English life packed up neatly. We farewelled our things and, at the time, found it hard to believe that when we’d be reunited with our stuff again, we’d back in Australia…
Wattle and Ash 