Imagine living 2023 in a day. The adventures and challenges. The dreams, expectations, and realisations.
How would it look?
Our 2023, if we’d lived it in a day, would have looked like this: rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we awoke from our Taiwan dreams to find ourselves in Ireland. Before long, we were somehow breakfasting in Austria. A snatched lunch in Germany was followed by the afternoon and evening on a roller-coaster in Scotland.
What was it all about?
Ireland was like nowhere we’d ever experienced. We’re ashamed to admit how little we knew about this remarkable nation’s deep and impressive history before we arrived, but were delighted to soak up the culture, stories, and landscapes of this land hidden in plain sight on Europe’s westernmost edge. We learned of famines and fairies, Gaelic and gold, guns and greed, optimism and occupation. We were thankful for this rare chance to dip a toe into this wondrous country.
Yet we stumbled.
The winter cold and damp gradually made us both ill, while the nation’s traumatic past sank strangely deep within us. Then, at our lowest point, like knights in shining Gor-Tex to protect them against the rain, our good friends Fran and Dave flew to the rescue. That was just before New Year.
Days of bird watching, star gazing, and time around the dining table lifted our damaged spirits. Around the same time, Graeme was offered the chance to study in Munich.
We turned our heads, packed our bags and staggered towards central Europe.
Happily, we found a new home near Salzburg, with fabulous views of the Austrian alps, as once again Maria and her family offered us a safe haven. Long walks in the snow, warm fires, and thick woollen socks did their work, and we began to recover.
We were deeply moved by the welcome we received, and cheered by the chance to spend time with so many good friends after so long away. Marina and Clemens were always there for us, online, on the phone, and in person offering practical and moral support.
Taiwan friends (and hugely talented artists) Evelyn and Stephen came to visit too, having dashed to Salzburg from Innsbruck where they had tested the city’s A&E department following a climbing-wall accident. We had many moments to treasure seeing other friends too, and toughened ourselves up with fruitless trips to Munich for a visa which would give us the right to stay longer.
During these early months of the year, we were blessed twice by visits from Mike and Joyce as they made a long-awaited journey around Europe. Nina and Ed revived a treasured tradition of lending us a home from home in Vienna, where once again we felt welcomed back to a safe nest like Nina’s wild, migratory birds.
Though we’d hoped for stability in Austria and Germany after the turbulence and quicksands of Ireland, we were to be disappointed.
Bernice’s birthday in April by lake Chiemsee was spent in a flurry of confusion. The clock was ticking and our nerves were fraying, because post-Brexit, we could only spend 90 days in Europe without a long-term visa. Despite so many years of living of Europe, we bashed up against the limit.
As the deadline loomed and our stress levels peaked, as our hopes crumbled, a new development suddenly flipped all our plans.
Bernice was offered a job at the University of Edinburgh, teaching sustainability. While she was excited about the chance to live in the UK for the first time as an adult, and especially because it was to be in the land of kilts and haggis, Graeme was less sure. Though he’d been brought up there, he’d spent more than 20 years away. But we chose to ride the wave, and found a lovely flat in the same street he’d lived before.
We moved in while a TV period drama was being filmed outside. It seemed a good reflection of our own little drama, with its twisting, unexpected cliffhangers.
While Bernice now walked to work, Graeme’s plans to study in Germany slowly melted. Fatefully, and unexpectedly, we were suddenly without an address where we could register in Germany and our centre of gravity shifted Scotia-wise.
The summer brought the chance of a short holiday on the west coast. When it rained it was glorious sitting by the fire. When it was sunny, it was glorious too, in a different way. We were excited to discover a little patch of Celtic rainforest just above the Crinan Canal, complete with tiny little bronze-coloured tree frogs, the size of our thumb nails. There were several trips to Yorkshire too, to see Bernice’s lovely step-mother, Fran.
And all the time we reflected and searched, inwards and outwards.
With the sun at its highest and as swallows swooped, we finally found a house that would be a little more permanent, a place to call home for longer.
It’s in a wonderful village in the country, about 25 miles (40km) from Edinburgh, quite near the sea, with a lovely garden. We now spend our free days walking along the stunning East Lothian coast as well as being waiters to a demanding clientele of garden birds. Who knew small birds could eat so much?!
We spent our wedding anniversary on the last day of the year on the beach at Tyninghame with fish and chips (see below).
Now, at the end of a long year, we have the chance to look back and reflect. We moved house five times in 15 months, changed countries four times, and both changed our career direction more than once. We changed climates and languages, and rented more cars than we can remember.
What is home, we ask?
This year it has been hard to tell sometimes.
For years we’ve known that it’s different things at different times, to different people. Nothing is solid – everything shifts, slowly or quickly. For us, it can best be described as a feeling of tranquillity, security, and being together. A home can also be seen as the embodiment of all these things in a person, or people. It comes from adventures and experience, in those ideas and memories we carry with us, which we live in and through.
When it’s a place, it’s generally (but not always) a place that accepts you, where the fibres relax enough to make space for you, while still keeping their structure. It’s a sort of wriggling and settling feeling, like a bird into a nest, or a cat getting comfortable on a bed. Scotland, and the village we’ve moved to, seem to offer this, at least so far, with the people welcoming and warm. Christmas dinner in the village hall came shortly after we moved in, with starlit carols around the village Christmas tree a few days after. Then a knock on the door and invitation to tea and freshly baked scones. The pub landlord already greets us by name and gives us a warm smile.
We’re endlessly grateful for having been blessed with so many friends, and thank you all for your support over the last year. We fervently hope to see our Taiwan friends again soon. You are always in our hearts.
At the dawn of 2024 we’ve woken a little unexpectedly in Scotland. It’s not quite as we planned a year ago, but we are immensely grateful to be here. While the tiredness we felt before remains in our muscles and our memory, we now feel a different, deep, healthy tiredness: the kind you get after hiking up a mountain. The kind that says ‘I’ve climbed that hill and it was invigorating. Don’t those beaches over there look inviting for tomorrow….’
We wish you all a very good 2024.
