Hi! I’m Cathy. Nice to meet you. I’m quite cautious about throwing too many details around on the internet – I like to think I’m living on the careful side of paranoid, rather than on the paranoid side of normal – so we’ll just have to remain on a first-name basis. At least now you know how to spell it properly. See? It’s not with a ‘K’. One other tidbit: the title of this blog is a play on my surname. There. That’s your lot.
I used to live in London. I spent the last 7 years alternating between love and antipathy towards that city, and I still haven’t really made up my mind. A year ago, I decided to turn my world upside down. Literally. Almost literally. I think literally. I left London (on the top of the planet), and made my way down to Australia (on the bottom). Is that literally turning your world upside down? Because, if you think about it, I spent a considerable portion of time with my head pointing down. From the English perspective. Obviously.
In the spirit of a one-year, round-the-world-ticket-adventure, my boyfriend and I opted to not return to English soil straight away. I’ve done that flight before. It sucks. I can’t tell you how badly it sucks. So instead, we decided to take a 4 month break from real life and all that it entails – work, stability, income, nice shoes - shipped back to England two suitcases full of anything that we had any sort of material attachment to, and stripped down to bare essentials. Before you get too excited, I would like to point out that we are NOT naturists, what I’m talking about here is backpacking; no seriously, go and check through my Flickr photos, not a smidgen of naughty flesh in sight.
For those long-short 4 months (that passed slowly to be savoured while simultaneously rushing away in a blur), alongside the culture shock, adventures, brain-melting heat and steady stream of great new people passing through my life, I attempted to fulfil a promise to myself to record as much of the experience as possible through writing and photographs. And so this blog has a nice 4 month slot in which posts involve more than me whingeing about how tired I am. OK, there’s quite a lot of moaning about how hot I was, but at least the setting is exotic.
Now, it’s back to normal. I need to find work. I need to find somewhere to live. Never mind, real life is often lots of fun, and on the plus side, I can drink lots of red wine again. This trip has given me more than memories and fabulous experiences. It’s rekindled my (always bubbling) wanderlust. I’m making no promises to London that I’ll be sticking around for another 7 years.
