I’m back on the perpetual blog after a long pause. I’ve merged my poetry blog with this one, simply because the theme I wanted was no longer available and a stripped back and simple, slower-paced life online as much as off it is what I need.

I’m on a “mostly-break” from social media, mostly because I manage social accounts for other companies, and that sort of thing is not what I wish to continue when I’ve finished my bread and butter day’s work. In part it’s because the online world is ever more a cessy reflection of the world going to hell in a handbasket (Gaza, Ukraine, EU, UK, US politics, etc, etc), and AI, (the graphics make me queasy, AI hands look like raw sausages at a primary school fundraiser bbq, and the AI voiceovers make me feel at once as though I’m at an Amway convention and hearing Hawkings use a vocoder). Everywhere I click is all a bit disorientating at the moment. Meh…real life can sometimes be that way, too.

In any case I’ll be back here on the perpetual blog, at least till things get busy again. My last non-poetry post was in September 2022, just after my combined exhibition with Luca Serafini (you can catch up on that here).
Soon after that, it was high time to come home. I left Monte Amiata in October 2023, after having stayed several years too long there. I was going to leave in 2019, and instead the universe sent me a narcissistic Kurdish nightmare, which, while I escaped him as soon as possible, still took over 2 years to make that oxygen thief go away.

In the mix came the pandemic, a couple of short-lived dating glitches, new friends, old friends reunited, some stayed, others just simply went away, and others still I razed and salted the earth in their wake.

In April 2023, the urge to “come home” was greater than ever. Initially I thought I’d live and work 6 months in Italy and the other 6 in Australia – be a swallow and chase the sun. In May of that year my Australian-born friend, Sandy, met me in Firenze in May 2023, and the Aussie Printmaking Sisters were also staying in the gold and silver city. The niggle in the belly became an undeniable burn to be home in the Antipodes, and by mid June I’d made my decision, bought the ticket and organised a shipping company. For the first time in about a year I felt the genuine excitement of anticipatory forward-movement. I knew I’d have reverse culture shock to contend with, together with moving in with my parents, and into a slower-paced life in a quiet Victorian town.

I understood I would be leaving behind good, solid friends in the Northern Hemisphere, and dealing in different time zones would mean a difficulty in connection at times. I hadn’t banked on reconnecting online with a friend I’d met 17 years earlier, who had been widowed in 2022. In August 2023, while visiting my sister and friends in the UK, my phone pinged with a reply to my mother and my condolence message from 10 months earlier. That connection continued to develop and we haven’t been apart for more than a week since my return, and we are now engaged to be married. When that will be? Anyone’s guess, as this year has filled up the dance card! In the 8 months since November our feet haven’t really touched the ground. Aside from the international move, and a move interstate, I’ve found work, set myself up (mostly, and with a lot of help to navigate) with the new merged government and services system here, received the gift of a car (heaven, heaven, heaven after a decade of not driving, and relying on lifts and iffy Italian public transport). I’ve travelled to New Zealand twice, and Singapore (both firsts), and I’ve reconnected with family and friends.

What I’m looking forward to in the coming months are the simple, slow, gentle delights of spending time with my parents, travelling with my man and our forging a new life together, and the return of my life creative, now that I am home.