The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (17 page)

Today we each purchased a mobile phone in readiness for our job and shelter search. I added Rhiannon’s number to my phone book. She added mine to hers. And that was it.

I felt slightly nauseous. Will we ever have other numbers in our phones? What if we don’t make friends? What if it’s just the two of us for the next two years? What if we can’t find a job? What if we can’t find somewhere to live? What if I have to slink back to Oz and live with the Mothership? Why did we come here?

But my fears were temporarily soothed by the sight of a dozen kilted men walking down Princes Street. I thought this was standard procedure but it turned out they were rugby supporters on their way to a match. Still, all those pale hairy legs felt like a welcome mat.

I’ve become even more besotted with this country. In between job interviews, Rhiannon and I did three different bus tours this week. The tour guides point out the sights in a monotone, struggling to disguise their boredom, but I’m too enthralled to care. We’ve seen castles and mountains and Highland cows with hair more violently ginger than mine. We’ve seen Glencoe and the Wallace Monument and the bonny banks of Loch Lomond. We did not see a monster in Loch Ness. There’s something so wild and raw about the landscape I could just hump the heather-clad hills in ecstasy. And I can’t believe how much of Scotland you can see in a day! In Australia you can drive for a week without seeing a change of scenery.

Every tour ends with the bus pootling back over the Firth of Forth, and by the third tour Rhiannon and I would chant in unison with the guide, “On your left is the Forth Rail Bridge, which was the greatest feat of Victorian engineering.”

It’s so bloody great to be here.

The romantic part of me thought living in a shared house in the UK would be a bit like an episode of
This Life
. I would do a lot of shagging, drink lots of wine, and perhaps snort some illicit substances. Or at the very least I’d scamper around in my sexy bathrobe and scoff cake at midnight by the light of the refrigerator, Nigella Lawson style.

But it isn’t quite turning out that way. For a start my bathrobe is pink and hideously fluffy. It was a size 22 but it was on sale. I look ridiculous in it, especially when it’s combined with my purple slippers with the sequined love hearts, also on sale. We are on a tight budget now, so I am a vision of frumpiness. I look like the lost Jedi Knight, Porky-Wan Bath-robi.

There are seven women living in our house. Luckily there are two bathrooms, but there is just the one tiny fridge. My flatmates seem to live on tinned soup, diet yogurt, and ready-to-eat lasagna from Sainsbury’s, with barely a vegetable in sight. Instead the fridge is crammed with condiments. I’ve never seen such an impressive assembly of relishes and mayonnaise. Then there’s the Jams Throughout the Ages, topped with bursts of mold. We managed to carve out a third of a shelf for our own food, but I think the Glaswegian Chick’s radioactive cheddar has plans to invade.

Amazingly, we found a place to live on our second day in Edinburgh. We saw an advert in the
Evening News
and the cheery landlord invited us around immediately. It’s a lovely Victorian flat in Bruntsfield, close to the center of town. There’s a constant pungent stench of yeast in the air, thanks to the nearby Fountain Brewery. It makes me think of Vegemite and home.

The landlord leased us each a room right on the spot, no reference checks required! We moved in on Wednesday. My room looks rather sad, just a bed and a suitcase and a mobile phone, but it’s my own wee space here in Scotland.

Already we’re trying to establish new customs. Rhiannon and I are like small children or dogs: we’re best behaved when we have a routine. We made a weekly meal list just like we’d do in Australia and headed off to Tesco.

The plan was abandoned as soon as we hit the aisles. The supermarket proved more thrilling than all those castles put together! We spent two hours cooing over the foreign brands and products and packaging and sights and smells. And all the funny names! Courgettes instead of zucchinis; peppers instead of capsicum.

The fruit and veggies are a bit odd. Many of them are wrapped in plastic and come from faraway countries. Peruvian kiwi fruit, Italian tomatoes, South African butternut pumpkin! (Or butternut squash, to use the local lingo.) It makes everything seem exotic, if environmentally troublesome.

Our next mission was to find a gym. There’s a huge one ten minutes’ walk from our house; I’ll call it Fancy Gym. The saleswoman gave us the grand tour, and we were dazzled by the vast bank of cardio machines, the sauna, the pool, the bar, the plush leather chairs, the ambient lighting, and the spectacular class timetable. But then she revealed the monthly fee—£55! That’s like 130 Australian dollars. It’s more than double what we paid back there. She said she’d waive the joining fee, but we still can’t afford it. Especially since we don’t have jobs yet.

It was so depressing that we stopped for British Mars Bars on the way home. They seem to taste different from the Aussie ones. How will I survive without a gym? I feel my fat coming back already.

Rhiannon and I are working as administrators for a company we’ve code-named Geriatric Rescue. They install alarms in the homes of elderly people and give them a pendant to wear, so if they have a fall or need help, they press a button on their pendant and it sends a call to Rescue Headquarters. What a great idea. They’ve just taken on about ten thousand new clients, so we have the thrilling task of adding them all to the database.

I can’t believe I’m Secretary Girl again. If I’d known, I’d have packed my staple remover. But I’m not complaining; I’m just relieved to have a job after four weeks of fruitless searching. I’d naively hoped I’d waltz into a marketing-Internet-writer-geek job like I had in Australia, but I hadn’t done my research. Edinburgh is a financial town, so that’s where the jobs are. It makes me wish I’d got a proper career like teaching, nursing, or accountancy. They’re always in demand, unlike arts degree layabouts.

So we’re stuck with temporary work. We dumbed down our résumés and signed up with half a dozen recruitment agencies. I felt the cobwebs settle over my qualifications as each agent asked, “Can you do Word and Excel?” After taking what seemed like a dozen different typing tests, they informed us the minimum hourly rate was £5.50. We’ll be earning far less than we did in Australia, in a country that is twice as expensive. Well, they did say travel was character-building.

At least Rhi is working with me. We’re going batty together. We spend our days in a tiny attic office, typing in medical details. It gets rather depressing, seeing all this information about people in their twilight years. Some of them are really in a bad way. I wonder if they’re happy, if they’re alone in their house watching
Emmerdale
, or if they’ve got enough legs to pop out to the bingo. I type in their contact details and wonder who’ll be my contacts when I’m old and gray. I must start sucking up to people in advance.

It scares me, all these things that can go wrong with your mind and body. We’ve seen stomach ulcers and paralysis and hernias and cancers and dementia. It makes me want to run away from the office and climb some hills, write a book or shag some kilted men while I’m still relatively sprightly.

All musing aside, the urge to be unprofessional quite often prevails. It is dull, repetitive work, so we amuse ourselves by setting challenges to find the oldest client (101), the most common names (Mary and Alex), and the one with the weirdest ailments.

“Right,” I said today. “The first one to find a goiter wins a fiver.”

I’ve made contact! I’ve found a friend. Two, actually!

Tonight I met up with Rory in a cozy pub on the Royal Mile. Rory is a fellow Australian whom I’ve “known” online for many years. Since we have the dubious honor of both being Canberran expats in Edinburgh, we had to meet up.

His wife Jane came along too and they were both friendly and hilarious. It was heartening to meet people who’ve successfully existed in Scotland for nearly two years. We bitched about the weather and the food and reminisced about things we missed from Australia. Best of all they told me all about their European travels, which had me squirming in my seat with excitement and remembering why we literally turned our lives upside down.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d done two very un-Shauna things tonight. Firstly, I went to a pub and not once did I fret about breaking chairs or knocking over drinks with my enormous hips. Secondly, I talked to strangers! Sure, I’d known Rory from the Internet, but he could have been a serial killer or stamp collector, so it was somewhat bold of me. I’d say the evening was a dazzling step forward for this reformed hermit. And now I’ve got two new numbers in my mobile phone.

I’ve discovered that the bacon over here tastes amazing. I don’t know what the Scottish pigs are rolling in but they’re doing a great job. I keep telling myself that eating bacon sandwiches for breakfast is helping me become immersed in local culture, but the tightening of my pants—sorry, trousers, as they say here—indicates that it’s time to crack on with the lard busting.

Cabin fever set in last week. Well, attic fever, to be more precise. Chronic boredom has pushed us to the brink of madness. Every time the secretary leaves the room, we degenerate into behavior not seen since kindergarten. There’s hair pulling, tickling, stomping on toes, Chinese burns, and nasty insults. And the graffiti-ing of limbs with highlighter pens. As soon as we hear the secretary on the stair, we drop our weapons and nonchalantly resume our typing.

We’re just plain sick of the sight of each other. We trudge home from work together and someone will say over dinner, “How was your day?”

“Oh, I did some typing and some filing.”

“I know. I was there!”

Moving overseas is nothing like I expected. It’s such a well-worn path, Aussies doing their two-year stint in Britain; so I thought I’d slip into my new life as easily as a Scottish pizza slips into a deep fryer. Instead I’m feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed. Rhiannon and I enjoyed such a comfy, middle-class lifestyle in Canberra, and now we’re struggling to get by each week, let alone save money for traveling, which is our whole bloody raison d’être.

I’m glad Rhiannon’s here, but I miss my other friends. I miss the Mothership and affordable mangoes and avocados. I miss our old routine, I miss my former salary. I miss not living in a house full of strangers.

Britain would be a great place for a spot of depression. You could really work up a good gloom here, with all the gray skies, gray buildings, and grumpy gray faces on Eastenders. Depression never seemed quite appropriate in the midst of glaring sunshine and drought, but over here it’s more atmospheric.

But I’m not going to let that happen again. For the third consecutive week I spent Saturday night holed up in my room watching the National Lottery draw and plowing through a large bar of Dairy Milk. It was only when I reached for another square and found nothing but an empty packet that I realized where I was heading.

What’s going on here? I huffed. You’re a disgrace. Are you planning to spend the next two years like this? Being a miserable bastard and gaining all your weight back?

And what about the last two years, and all that effort I put into losing it? I couldn’t let that go down the gurgler. Did I really want to fall in a heap at the first sign of hardship? Especially when it’s voluntary hardship! I chose to move to Scotland, to challenge myself and do things I’d never done before. That was hardly going to happen while sitting on my bed.

My recent behavior and emotions were all too familiar—the gnawing dread, the fatigue, the crushing self-doubt, the anxious binges. I’ve been circling the drain, in danger of being sucked back down at any moment.

But this time I’ve recognized the signs before it’s gone too far. That’s one of the advantages of keeping such an angst-ridden diary—you can poke through the archives and see patterns of behavior.

So we can see, Doctor, that the patient has a strong tendency to hide from the world when things get scary. And to shovel food down her gob in an attempt to numb her angst.

Diagnosis: Freak-Out!

Moving to the other side of the world is a daunting thing, and I think I’ve simply been overwhelmed. So instead of waiting for it to get worse I sprang into action. I went upstairs to Rhiannon’s room and declared dramatically, “I’m not happy!”

Where would I be without my sister? This move has been equally crazy for her yet she still puts up with my whining.

We made an executive decision to join the gym. Sure it’s expensive, but I’ve been spending the equivalent on junk food anyway. I know I could exercise for free by walking the hilly streets of Edinburgh, but I’ve missed having a gym; Rhiannon has too. I miss classes and shouty instructors. I miss having somewhere to go that isn’t work or my bedroom. I miss having an oasis of sweat where I can escape from the world. Most of all I’ve missed the sanity and smug satisfaction I get from a good workout!

I went to my gym induction tonight and discovered I’m back up to 231 pounds—a nine-pound gain since February. Damn those bacon sarnies! But I’m ready to resume the battle and get those endorphins buzzing again.

How the hell do people lose weight in Britain? It seems easier and cheaper to eat badly. The supermarkets are chock full of ready meals, fresh or frozen. And if the microwave is too much effort, you can always walk up to one of many chip shops for some lard-covered delicacies.

Fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, are rather pricey. Back in Australia it was cheaper to buy raw ingredients than a packaged meal. I know I must stop converting prices back to Australian dollars, but fresh produce seems so expensive. And I still feel guilty for eating all those imported veggies, wondering how much air was polluted and how many workers were exploited for those baby corncobs.