What happened in America...

I am currently sitting on bed in a Premier Inn, my hair is wet and my boyfriend Osh is asleep next to me. I am safe. I am not happy but I am safe. I appreciate it so much, considering what has happened the last 24 hours.

When I posted about how excited I was for this Alaska trip on Facebook using Trusted Housesitters, Bondi was in the back of my mind. I can't fathom how much hatred is in this world and I hide from it generally. So when I posted I was excited, I felt a bit guilty, but I do know that my friends and family were excited for me and would want me to share.

I posted that we were off to Alaska, then when we reach Reykjavik I posted where we were, then 8 hours after that I posted I am in USA!!! 

When we go into Seattle airport, I was so happy because I cheesily and openly love "Sleepless in Seattle", coincidentally a film Rob Reiner appeared in, another grotesque and senseless thing which has happened in the last few days. That overshadowed it but I love that film, I love rain, and I love water, so Seattle is extremely appealing to me.

We approached customs, we got through the queue quickly which was great as we had only about 30 minutes to get our connecting flight to Fairbanks, Alaska, 

The customs officer asked us what were were doing and we said holidays, and that I was going to pet sit (unpaid). He then asked us how long we were staying etc. and we went through all the usual security questions, with maybe a bit more detail than I am used to.

He picked up a plastic bag and placed our mobile phones and our passports into it, sealed it, and called a colleague over to escort us through the gate. I naively thought she was taking us to meet our connection as we had very little time, at this point having still a great deal of belief in the humanity of people.

6.33pm SEA : We were walked through into a secure waiting room, our luggage was left outside. The room was long with a large looming desk at the near end, higher up than you could stand with glass barriers between us and the four US customs police officers sitting behind it. We were told to sit down.

I was still extremely giddy and happy, this hadn't phased me, but Osh was already on the alert. I was called up to the high desk and I looked up at a middle aged female police officer who asked me to show her on my phone what App I used to secure my house sitting gig. She had latex gloves on as she pulled my phone out of the bag (still I wasn't feeling worried). I brought the app up and she had a scan through it. She then asked me who my contact was in the USA. I told her a lady called Tammy who lives in North Pole, Alaska and she is going on holiday to visit her family in Hawaii whilst we stay at her house with her dogs and her chickens. I then showed her my WhatsApp history with Tammy, a sequence of ever increasing excited messages back and forth about my big adventure.

I was told to sit back down.

At 6.35pm I went up and asked about our connecting flight "don't worry about your flight, ma'am".

6.50pm came and went and we'd missed our connection, still no information forthcoming, just the tip tap of their keyboards, and the occasional conversation with a passenger as mystified as I was. These conversations were , in my opinion, abrupt, bordering on nasty and extremely accusatory, as if anyone who came to this room was in the wrong or extremely stupid and deserved punishment. I felt for anyone who approached the desk, including myself and Osh. The answers to our questions were minimal and final. I started to get uncomfortable.

8.30pm (2 hours in) The female police officer asked me to follow her. Osh got up "no just her, you sit down" was the answer. She took me to an interrogation room and told me I was under oath and then asked me my full name, my nationality, my father and mother's full names, dates of birth and nationalities, why was I in Seattle, why was I going to Alaska, was I being paid, did I know that tammy had a business there, was it a farm, was I going to work on the farm. No, I am just going to house sit and look after her dogs and chickens, that is all. I have and will not be being paid. This went on for about 25 minutes, I have the full manuscript, they gave it to me. Every single word I said and she said, typed up. She told me her supervisor would decide my fate. It was a grey area for her and they believed my having use of Tammy's house was a transaction indicating working in the USA illegally.

Silently I followed her back the way we'd come. As we went through he corridor of rooms, doors slamming forebodingly and loudly every few seconds, I noted a small cell with three army hammock beds, a simple blanket and hospital type pillow, on each one. I continued into the waiting room and she told me to sit down. Took her place again at her towering desk where I could only see the top of her head and hear her tip tapping (about me), maybe , who knows).

Osh was pulled up periodically and asked questions as he used to be a US citizen and they didn't seem to like that he decided to go back and live in the UK. He was taken and grilled as I was a few minutes later. He was gone for about 40 minutes. Grilled about the same things, but a sticking point was that he and his dad had lived in the US. They were trying to find a problem. That and the hilarity which my dog and cat sitting and chicken sitting had obviously created for this toxic group of people made me feel like a trapped animal and they didn't hide the mocking while I was crying into Osh's neck opposite the desk. He later told me he was glaring at them. We had no rights so anything he did to defend me would have made things worse.

I was called up to do three sets of fingerprints, two head shots and cheek swabs for my DNA.

I was finally called up and told that I was inadmissible to the United States of America and that I would be deported back to my original country on the first available flight the next day. All of this woman's sentences were punctuated by the sentence "do you understand?" to which , like a Stepford wife I'd dutifully say "yep".

9.30pm (3 hours in): a new police officer came in, another female. I was told to follow the two females and I was "tapped down" and felt up a little as obviously I could have secreted something about my person both inside and out, I couldn't stop crying during this bit as she asked me to spread my hands up on the wall and part my legs. They told me to breathe. They made me take off all my jewelry and they placed it in a latex glove in my luggage. I came back into the waiting room and buried myself in Osh's shoulder. I felt de-humanised. 

Another 15 minutes passed. My head was pounding and I wasn't permitted to have the nurofen in my bag because it wasn't prescriptive.

It started to dawn on me that there were two other women in the waiting room, who had been here since we came in. The three army camp beds started to make sense. I started to inwardly panic that me and Osh would be separated, no rights in this country, in trouble, illegal aliens in what is currently one of the most unfriendly countries in the world, politically.  We had hushed conversations, Osh telling me i was strong and everything would be ok. He's genuinely my hero.

10.04pm: Bed time. I was crying so hard, I hugged Osh and said goodbye? Goodnight? It was still undecided as to whether his immigration status was becoming a problem for them so I didn't really know if I'd see him in the morning or if he would be in a cell, or already deported without me? I was so scared.

Me and the two other women were led to the cell, which I now saw had a toilet and sink in it along with the three hammock beds. We were told to take off our shoes and leave them outside. The light in this room was so bright. Three luminescent strips of piercing light that hurt my already aching head. I wasn't ok, I was panicking and crying so hard. We were told there was an emergency button and that we would be brought back out at 8am the next day. 10 hours in this room.

They closed and bolted the door.

I sat on the edge of a metal bench bolted to the wall behind the camp beds, and sobbed. The other two girls said nothing to me, covered themselves with the blankets to hide from the light and they went to sleep. I went and pressed the emergency button twice to ask if I could be in the same cell as Osh but no one came. I imagine at around 11pm I crashed from so much crying, giving in to lying on the hammock. For some reason, in my mind, this wasn't real if I didn't lie on it. They'd come and get me, reunite me with Osh and tell me it was all a huge mistake.

They kept those lights on all night. We had no phones and no clock so we had no idea what time it was. I woke up and used the communal un-private toilet and washed my face and my fringe with the soap by the aluminium sink. I tried the button again as I needed my anti-anxiety meds they had taken from me earlier. My head was starting to spin as I need one every day. One of the other girls got their attention, I actually missed how. But they did come and I went to my bags to get my meds, gratefully noticing Osh's backpack had been added to my bags (he was still here). I took my pill. This black female police officer seemed to have the compassion lacking in the others we had come across and I liked her. She told me it was 4.25am. We still had 3 and a half hours in that light box. She locked us back in.

I chatted to the lady who was also up. Her name was ironically "America" and she was Venezuelan. She had also been accused of coming to the USA to work illegally. I have no idea if she was honest, I was just glad she was friendly. We both realised "Anna" the girl in the middle bed, was quite unwell and very cold so I gave up my blanket for her at that point. She had a terrible cough.

I found the next three hours quite excruciating. I wanted to know where Osh was, I was listening to every door slam, every voice and waiting for them to open the door so I knew he was safe and be with him again and most of all be out of the cell. I covered my eyes with my thin cardigan but it didn't block the light so i tried to makeshift something out of tissue paper to put over my eyes. I gave up and just sat up staring at the floor in the end. I realised they would walk past our room every 15 minutes and look in the small window at us. I waved at one point...

My head was pounding for most of the night. Jet lag and well, this situation...

7.35am: they opened the door slightly early. I was so relieved. My brain had started wondering if I would ever be let out. We filed out back into the waiting room.

7.45am Osh was let out and came to sit next to me, a face of thunder. His cell had been like a sauna and he had a pounding headache and a sore throat. He told me he wasn't taken to his cell until midnight as they kept on grilling him about him and his dad. Seemingly trying to find anything they could pin on him. He heard me come out of my cell and was relieved. He said no one checked on him the whole night.

There was a particularly condescending, seemingly more senior narcissistic officer who had been there the previous day. He showed up for his shift at 8 and he asked his colleagues why we were let out, exclaiming it would have been much easier for him if they just kept us locked up. I picture them trying to get me back into that cell now. I wouldn't have gone willingly. They didn't.

We were informed by the officers on the new shift that our flight was at 2.30pm so we had 6 and a half hours of watching muted American television which appeared quite dystopian to be honest. I couldn't wait to go home. The television watching was occasionally interrupted by conversations between the officers. The narcissist decided to have a conversation loudly with his colleague about how beautiful where me and Osh were planning to go actually is, and how it's serene and quiet and you can see the Northern Lights. I mean, what a dick!. I despised him even more after that.

Sadly, when it did come time for us to be marched and I quote "at a pace, so keep up" to our gate, it was the narcissist who took us there. He tried friendly conversation but I had sealed my voice off. I didn't trust myself. Osh, however, played the role, ensuring nothing stopped us from getting safely back onto the plane. Back to being people who count again. 

We didn't receive our phones and passports back until the plane had taken off and the seat belt light had been turned off.  Tammy had come to pick me up at the airport the night before in Fairbanks, hadn't heard a thing from me for a full day following and I now managed to text her what had happened. 

I cried my heart out as we flew back over Seattle.

That is the end of this story. To quote the lady who felt me up "Land of the free! Not today!!. I kid you not, she actually said it.

Holey tights and Doc Martens

It's 1995 and I can hear my heartbeat in my head (and maybe a little Blur sideline), sprinting down the pathway along the side of Ruthin Castle, fuzzy eyed and fresh faced. Strawberried up on alcosyrup, my mate Ems bumping into sandstone walls behind me. Drunken ghosts nonchalantly ambling out of the old arches. Nonchalant ghosts. Two lil Welsh teens dipped in punch, unnecessarily screaming for their extremely safe lives. So weaves the magic that is being 15 years old, female and tanked.
I'm not actually Welsh, I "grew up" there. Yeah I didn't, I kinda "grew sideways" confused and emotionally erratic. I can wryly smile now thinking about it but at the time it was SO serious. Holed up in my room in Pwllglas (there's no phonetic spelling that will help you pronounce it), sitting half on my windowsill, legs dangling out on the roof so I could see the sky and if I looked down my green holey tights and doc martens, feeling mildly trapped. Album of choice "Jagged little pill", in agony over my poor teenage enraptured heart. Smoking liquorice flavoured roll ups from the baccy shop in town. No dad I'm not smoking and yes it's incense made to smell like cigarettes because they make that now...

Um No dad I wasn't smoking and yes they still make cigarette "flavoured" incense...

Ems and me very tame during the day, visiting "Boots" the chemist, buying Farleys rusks and chocolate milk and sitting on the bench waiting for something amazing to happen. Come on boys on uninsured motorbikes! Take us away to the soundtrack of "St Elmo's Fire" and show us the world beyond the bypass! Please behave gentlemanly and sweep me off my little imitation Welsh girl's footsies :)) Boy on motorbike 1: "awww aint she just the sweetest...", Boy on motorbike 2 "Yeah I'd shag 'er"......ah the Welsh dream!

I know what I miss about Wales. Apart from Ems (she's simply beautiful and we still talk). I miss my national dish being a toasted cheese sandwich and having a dragon around each corner, being able to pronounce words which everyone else could too and drinking lager and lime. I miss the "old skool" Welsh men in the pubs drinking dark warm ale and a guy called Yori who used to walk down the road visiting every pub every day waving his cane in the air rounding his fictitious sheep up, poor guy.

I miss the snow.

I remember walking to school inside strong gusty snow blizzards, totally "walking against the wind" thinking at any moment a house and a cow would spin past me and I'd end up with amethyst slippers on (well I had to be different) clicking my heels three times because, altogether now "There's no place like home", it's true, there is no place like North Wales, for me it's a place full of faeries, purple heather hiding lil white sheep, wishing wells that actually work and lots and lots of rain :) It's where my dreams began...

So guys, having said that Wales is magical and spell-binding, full of heart, ale, cheese toasties and warm cheer.

LOVEbird xxx

Lip warmer

An hour and a bit ago I had an obscenely large piece of black forest cherry chocolate cake, I couldn't eat more than half then but as I move inconspicuously away from the couple next to me kissing openly on the street (obscene for me to stand where I was, I may aswell jump, launch myself and straddle them both) I am thinking about the other half....plus "the other half".

I miss being kissed in the street until I'm dizzy in my head. You can see your breath intermingle in Winter and every sound made is clear and listened to. If a pin were to drop...I mean to say, you'd hear it, everything is noted, senses heightened and heart beating audibly in the outdoors nightness.

I briefly noted the hands around her face and the sweetness of his gaze down at this little lady before I moved my body out of the magic not mine . Then as I ambled I realized it might not be the magical fairytale-land I presume in my gorgeous romantic heartmind.

It has been my second hand experience over the past few years that some individuals I have jostled past in my life have been settling for something below their level of integrity. I am blessed to know a number of people who have very high levels of moral behaviour and regard for their fellow heartbeaters, even more blessed to count them inside my small circle of friends. These are mostly environmentalists, animal welfare workers, and conservation advocates simply because those are the work circles I have moved in. Their regard for life is beautiful. However, a conundrum keeps popping out of the blue skies. Why then do they not treat their own hearts and souls with the same amount of respect as they do the Spotted-tailed quoll (go look it up, absolutely stunning) or the deterioration of the rainforest? It's baffling to me.

...and frustrating. I live in a treehouse alone with three small creatures and a large abundance of crazy aussie animals roaming around. I have done the whole "settling" thing. The I can't stand someone not wrapping their arms around me and the I want to make soup with you whilst listening to Gotye's first album and drinking red wine. Please do come and cuddle me at the stove, it makes me slowly warm from the toes to my lips, please don't ever leave me or I don't know what I'd do. However, unless that lip warmer is the one person in the world who you absolutely trust with all of you, your best friend and equal (the one who  it really is, in my humble opinion, to be alone).

My three Muppets

The little alien that lives with me and periodically chats nonsensically about his life using the great art of Siamese Wailing gets hurt...a lot...all the time. To the point where I no longer add the sum of vet bills because I'd start drinking gin at 6am instead of going jogging. Hang on, gin's expensive and jogging is free,,,

The million $ dog is sitting at my feet, she's got gold teeth and a diamond on a chain round her neck, it glistens as I narrow my eyes, sqinting jewels into existence. She's doing her bit for our family, turning tricks at the end of our long driveway in the trees. No she isn't is she...she's a dog...

I oftentimes have been heard to say that my life is an epic comedy. Most of which in the past has been of my own creation but as I sit here just before I head off to work again, having eaten the rationed cereal, thinking about homemade soup again for dinner (HUGE batch in the fridge) and holding my failed attempt at pet insurance in my hand, I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed...

My three creatures are without a doubt the biggest asset I have emotionally and the biggest liability financially. For those of us who "made some bad decisions" in our 20's (I stand by them all :))) and ended up alone with responsibilities beyond our financial capacity it is an unfolding tale of crazy. The solution of "giving them away" would be tantamount to severing my own arms, such is the large and magical role they play in my life. Plus, having been involved in animal welfare for just over 12 years, my phrasing is thus "see them through to the last and love them with every fibre". You see where I come unstuck ( and the "U" on the keyboard is sticky too but I'll suck that uuuuup)

We have had broken limbs, tick paralysis, twisted stomachs and hip replacements and now we're onto kidney failure and bad liver function....my teeth hurt a bit but we all need dentals so hey may have to "suck that up" too...literally. I'll be the youngest toothless woman...maybe that would be lucrative...

....but Phoebe tick paralysis kidney liver failure dog greets me when I get home like I've been away an eternity and kicks people in the leg when they irritate me, Zundy "fishy breath, I need a dental mum" collie dog sits at the end of the kitchen waiting for me in a perfect sit and then melodically howls and chants at me gleefully every single day and Vinny "alien cat" (who will be taking over the world and does have a spaceship) is receptive to my conversations with him, going back and forth telling me about adventures where he is possibly mortally wounded daily by lace monitors or barbed wire and attacks my legs with precision if he feels hungry. This cat taps me gently in the face with no claws at 5.30am every day...failing that he has a seasoned wake up strategy..."I'll just jump on this, you know the thing you don't want me to jump on..." I love them wholeheartedly and they me.

I Know my animal welfare comrades of old will get all this.

I love you in 1997

He didn't miss a beat, foot by foot covering ground closer to me. Man he wasn't slowing down hey, great moonboot leaps and suddenly I was collected into a bearhug on his way travelling through like I was meant to be with him anyway. Spinning and spinning again like a waltzer or a teacup and he was cuddling me up in this "I missed you muchly but you're so very back now" type way. Warmed me to my soles which were quite rightly dangling in the air, no hurry of replanting.

I turned 18 winded, injured and covered in mud, midnight rambling past peddlers of wondrous eats, in the rain in doc martens, with a tent. Music music everywhere...festivities and frivolity. I wish I remembered more about Glastonbury but it's all a Blur (who weren't there unfortunately). I remember only muddiness like suction pads, welly being stuck in until sock was all alone, briefly standing on a hillside with my back to'Sting' in a dream-like state thinking "that voice sounds familiar"...

and I remember 'Kula Shaker', a trippy Hare Krishna rock band (oh Crispian Mills please whisk me backstage and hold me tight til I can't breathe). The Mills boy is not only spindly-like and windswept and interesting with flicky floppy hair but he is also Hayley Mills child and thus John Mills grandchild which gives him a borrowed historical quality beyond his years....and I heart him with all my love...in 1997...

Bollards of NYON

Bollards are tricksy things. When I say "bollards" over here Aussies haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about. They think I'm being crude, I probably am. Description is un-movable solid, often cylindrical concrete blocks, concreted once more into more concrete. Function to prevent vehicles access....not bicycles tho, 

I'm back there with possibly one of the most "speshial" ladies I've been in the life of. I was able to be inside a short gorgeous time where we were in each other's pockets sitting in silence eating egg sandwiches on white bread with ketchup and drinking from her bottomless teapot while I stared, made 2 rollups at a time and sat beside her and let her read her paper in peace.

Charity shop runs are not without their magic, 'specially, "speshially"?? when you find a bargain which makes yer thighs look smaller and yer boobs look bigger and there's a caf' on the way which do a bloody good vege breckie with hash browns n mushys, real butter,the whole shebang and a blooming good mug o' teaaaaaaa :). Whole Saturdays with chuckling conversations over steaming mugs and cigarettes in her lil "outhouse" overlooking her flowergarden with cushions and a cat. Makes me want to think myself back to the safe-ness that is Tini's cottage in Cambs...

Homemade sloe-berry gin I had thimble-fulls of as she guarded me from the potency of the brew. We practised drinking red wine over and over, perfecting it until we reached our goal of one and a half bottles each one funny moon-filled (never un-noticed) night-time and then I cycled home...

No fear, none....home to my big red door across the street from "The Flying Pig" and I was riding very very well, steering through pretty lil deserted laneways of Cambs in the starlight times, looking at all the cute cottages keeping secrets in their coloured walls. I rode past warm and rosey cheeked and still giggly from my friendship......BOLLARD. 

I found a theatrical limp and used it to hobble to the red door, smiling and wheeling my buddy along beside myself. It didn't hurt untiil the next morning and I have a story I have told for NYON 15 years (now look-see, I wanted to use "nigh-on", "nyeon", "nie on"  with the air of a man in a rocking chair on a porch chewing tobacco because I know it exists but when I "bing" it, it gives me the local time in Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland, I'm using it).

Tini and I have much in common, not least our sense of the ridiculous and a firm grasp of the soil under our feet and I do know she was once pinned by her bicycle on Mill Road with her head on the white lines stopping traffic. Wheel under gutter and passersby scolding her for being drunk. Now it's fair and all well and good if you are actually "tippled" but she was embarrassingly sober and very aware with her skirt over her face and our shared enterprise in "big knickers" on display. At least she couldn't see the ridicule, just feel it. Even as I write this I'm giggling, she told it so much better than I. If I could bottle her I'd find an apothecary bottle, a cork and a red ribbon and I'd set up a "popup stall". I'd make a mint.

Love you Mart xxx

See, he's her lobster - OCD blog

We've got a feline drill in my flat now...the lil alien keeps coming home with new injuries and making me pay more money to the cat fixers. He makes it almost impossible to buy gin for the children...

This sort of day...the one where it starts off with your coffee and your cereal and you are at your desk at work and suddenly you feel very very ill...this sort of day sucks...and I tweeted it like a hand out in the dark...and I got a reply from a photoblogger with a beautiful heart....
Before I put my hand out I had an Angel in my office. I had rising panic in my chest threatening to bubble over until I'd jump into not there. She caught me by my fingers and placed me back in safe just by saying a few words. Its like spun silver or a moonrise, breaaaaaaaaaaaathe now, breathe out and back in again...there now you're YOU and that's alright. You can be. BE...

and I stayed there all day and did things I was meant to, and well even. Then I did cry for just a few seconds but only because I could and that was ok too and then I was being me again and it was really really ok.

I found myself home again battling with the urge to buy ice cream because the anxiety attacks were so extreme I'm sugarless. Wandering off into the night and the trees in search of a treat: sweet bananas or cola bottles, lickable wallpaper or maybe even just a chocolate cigarette, pink slippersocks over jeans and my chocolate jacket that goes way past my knees over a pinkish top...coinciding pinkness...I look like candy wrapped in chocolate. Singing "I don't want to wait" by Paula Cole croakily along to my car radio.

In my looking for a something I wasn't sure of I found:
-Quince paste and bitter almond ice cream,
-"Rhum" liquer chocolate and
-a plastic tub of pitted dates.
The combination of which has made me feel remarkably more nauseous than my usual Lindt experience...murphy's law, sod's law, the law under which thou shalt not buy weird sweets from strange shops whilst under the influence of OCD. Or is that strange sweets from weird shops?  Smile, it's vaguely funny now xo It has passed it's worst...I no longer wish to have my fingers jammed in a car door just to distract me from my brain... smile again, I can crack jokes because it's not grasping me by the throat, right now.

It started by feeling alone and then wondering if I deserved to be because I'm me and that doesn't quite cut it. It began this time because I had a lapse which isn't so frequent, the lapse of self where you're not sure if you can trust you to be nice and kind and a voice keeps saying you "might not" be who you think you actually are, you "may" be the person you really don't ever ever want to be, the inversed reflection of all you believe to be strong and true...balderdash really but who can tell the addled and very tired eyes that they are done weeping.

When I cry about this there is no end as there is no solution to the irrational. It keeps looping around and hurting me again until I lie exhausted in a chair with my dogs and expensive alien glued to my sides. The kind of tears that can be ever so laughably triggered by Rachel watching a prom video and ambling to Ross so sweetly and kissing him like sugar and their "Friends" grin. Ashamedly and quite hilariously I also find it brought on by Phoebe stating "see, he's her lobster" and there ends the seriousness that is my fucked up ailment in my silly head...

Incidentally, Quince paste and bitter almond ice cream is "lush", a word I hold up there with "Chillax" and the words "fully sick"...

Oh and despite today I'll get up again tomorrow and everything will be ok :)

IF YOU HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER , DEPRESSION OR JUST CRY SOMETIMES FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME ANY TIME, I'LL ALWAYS REPLY AND I MIGHT BE ABLE TO RECOMMEND SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE OR JUST BE ME AND THAT MIGHT EVEN HELP  XO  HUGE LOVEbird xxx