Elsewhere

People keep asking me: "Have you settled in yet?"

I'm getting it three or four times a day. By email, by phone, face-to-face - it has become a pre-requisite to any conversation. They mean well, I know. But it feels like nagging, the way all well-meaning questions do when you know that the answer you're going to give will slightly disappoint (you as well as them). It's a bit like "Is the baby sleeping through yet?" (And no, he's not.)

Sometimes I answer "No" straight away, and probably more aggressively than I intended, so then I try to make light of it and gesticulate wildly at the empty bookshelves - the big glaring sign that I cannot possibly feel settled in when my book collection is bobbing up and down on some ocean. Other times I pretend that I'm really thinking about the question: "Am I settled in? Hmm, am I? That's a new one. Let's think..." 

Maybe I'm in denial about feeling settled. Maybe I see it as some huge betrayal of my family and friends and all that is British. And how do you know anyway? Is it like how you know when you're in love? You just do? Is it like the way you have to guess if a shook-up can of fizzy drink is ready to be opened?

Let's look at the signs that this Pom has not quite acclimatised:

1. I still haven't cancelled my British mobile phone account. (Yes, that means I'm still paying the monthly amount.) The phone is somewhere in this cavernous house, dead. There is an Australian sim card in another part of the cavernous house but they are too shy to meet. They are not sure they'll get on.

2. I cannot buy anything without working out what it would be in pounds. As I'm not very bright, this mean that shopping takes an age. I handle Aussie money like a person with very poor eyesight and annoy everyone in the queue.

3. Speaking of shopping, I have not opened an Australian bank account either. But I am still carrying round my British Library card (now expired) and my Body Shop card (never used, and expired) and my Oyster card. 

4. For the first time in my life I am making loose leaf tea in a pot. How terribly English.

5. I keep the keys to my parents' communal gardens in my bag. The Australian keeps taking them out and jingling them at me: "What have you got these for?" 

There are a worrying amount of administrative clues that show I've not settled but thinking about them is giving me a headache. 

My feeling is that it will never happen. I know, I know - "Give it time." Even so, I think I have a strong internal resistance that no amount of lemon trees in the garden / beautiful "winter" weather / lorikeets instead of pigeons / consistently amazing coffee / good cheap eat-outs / stunning scenery / street-party-type address / muffin-bringing-neighbours  etc etc, is going to change. 

But just in case it happens to me and I don't realise, let me know.