It's My Non-Surprise Party And I'll Cry If I Want To (Or Even If I Don't Want To)

There's an awful lot to do when you're emigrating, I've discovered. For weeks I've been fending it off. I'd managed to convince myself that I was doing more than enough by killing off the house plants, not putting anything in my diary post-April (not that I can ever find my diary) and using up the jam and all that body cream stuff that people give you for Christmas that otherwise sits in the bathroom cabinet for decades (sorry to all those people who have given me body cream in the years when I was not emigrating, but I can never be arsed).

Behind the scenes, however, my mum and some of my close friends have been plotting . . . not, I discovered to my dismay, plotting to keep me here, but arranging a surprise leaving party for us. However, it got much too complicated to surprise The Australian and I, mainly because all our trusted babysitters would naturally be at the party, and apparently people actually wanted to speak to us instead of politely observe us singing How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? to The Boy - he can do the woofs in all the right places, why wouldn't anyone want to watch that over and over? And then something about me being house-proud and yet arbitrarily a total slob, which made them feel uncomfortable about having it here without my prior knowledge. So all was revealed over the phone a couple of nights ago. 

While my friend was spilling the beans, I felt tingly and warm at the thought of the secret plotting and wanted to ask her to carry on talking for hours all about me and how much they'd miss me and the lovely surprise party . . . but I thought she might worry I was using her for phone sex. And then I felt a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes: we are really going. I know, I know, it's obvious we're going - we have tickets, the packing boxes have arrived, blah blah blah. But the fact is that if my mum is actually planning parties, that means she's accepted it. She is the last person to do that. Correction: she is the penultimate person to do that.

However, I am working on it. Yesterday, for example, I switched on Home and Away and snuggled up with The Girl, promising beautiful shots of the beach, happy-smiling-beautiful people and a jolly knees-up at The Diner. Seconds later we witnessed a dog run over by a car. "Oh look!" I said, hurriedly thinking of a cover-up. "The doggy is hiding under the wheels of the Ute." "The what?" she said. And then we got talking about Utes and that seemed to distract her from the yelping, bleeding pup. It was a close shave. We were almost not going to be able to go at all, what with her being so traumatised . . . hmm, it's on every day, isn't it? Maybe there'll be a helicopter crash tomorrow, or a mad gunman will open fire at the caravan park . . .