I’ve been a bad blogger. I haven’t posted for three months, which in the world of blog is a real no-no. On any list of top tips for bloggers, writing posts is pretty much number one. Mind you, on checking my site stats, I’d actually had a couple of days during my hiatus when I got my highest ever number of views. It appears that the way for me to be a successful blogger is not to post at all. Result.
So how have I been filling my time if I haven’t been blogging? Well, mainly by stressing, which takes a lot of hard work and commitment to really do it properly. We’re due to return back to the UK next summer and, at the moment, I don’t know the answers to the following questions:
Where will we live/work/kids go to school/buy cheap prosecco?
Will I have lost two stone by then? [Ed: I think we all know the answer to that one…]
And not knowing any of that is making me just a tad anxious. Until HWW (as the stereotypical main bread/prosecco winner in the family) confirms where he’ll be working, it’s a bit hard to plan the rest.
I could probably relax into it and just go with the flow if it wasn’t for the fact that my youngest is due to start secondary school next September, along with every other 11 year old in the UK, and applications had to be in last week. My stress levels were amplified greatly by being told something different depending on whom I spoke to at the county council: You can’t apply from abroad…You can apply but it won’t be processed until you return to the UK…We won’t accept your application …We will but you’ll be at the back of the queue…Have you considered home-schooling?
And so on and so forth until I finally found a muppet customer service advisor who seemed to know what they were talking about and directed me to the relevant section on their website which proved I did have to put in an application. However, another problem is that some of the catchment areas for schools in the UK are tiny; you’ve no chance of getting in if you live more than a mile away. Our application had to be based on our Rome address, which is approximately 1,200 miles away from our chosen schools. Fortunately, I haven’t actually got the energy left to fret about that so will just bury my head in the sand instead.
Anyway, after finally getting the application in, I thought I’d relax with a cappuccino and a read of the English news. Only to discover that my tax return was due in that day. And I hadn’t even taken it out of its envelope since receiving it in April. At that point, I had a panic attack and passed out for the rest of the day which at least gave me a nice break from worrying…
BARBED WORDS 