Saturday 7th March 2009

The day of my 36th birthday, and what a day it has been, but more about that later. For now I want to write about the time leading up to my birthday and get down for the record some of the feelings and emotions that have been running through my life and colouring my days for last week.

It has been a week of more stones then diamonds for me and I have found myself feeling flat and frustrated, snapping at the children and muttering under my breath at Simon's actions. Realising that this behaviour and indeed the emotions that accompanied it were new and not necessarily something that I wanted to continue, I tried some of Bee's soul searching and that together with looooooong telephone conversations to Linnie finally brought me to the conclusion that it was the eminent arrival of my birthday that had me is such a bad state.

It is funny how I expected the destabilising effect of a big event like Christmas and as it was something that the whole family was going through together I felt I needed to be "strong" in order to help them through it. I was therefore totally unprepared for the effect my birthday would have, and in fact for the most part I didn't even realise it was having an effect, I just knew I felt horrid. I guess the break from routine and the customary dinner with my parents, the roast with bacon cabbage and Afrikaans beans and some delish pud to follow had me reeling, and it was only after I recognised this fact and made the conscious decision to pull myself together did my week start to improve.

Times like this just reemphasise for me the impact immigration truly has on ones life and you can be happy for months and months and months on end when suddenly something takes the wind from your sails and leaves you feeling totally deflated........I do believe however that each and every one of us has it within to stop, take a breath and move forward and that successful immigration is a decision, it is not something that just happens.

I have also learned a tremendous amount about myself through this process and have grown to like and respect the woman that I am. This comment is in no way meant to sound conceited, but this peace with myself has been a hard won prize and I thank God every single day of my life that we started on this journey for no matter where it ends, here or back in South Africa, we have all learned so much about ourselves and that is why I believe our immigration has been a success....it is because we have grown as people and has nothing to do with the amount of time that we have been away from home.

So it was with a happy and replenished heart that I awoke this morning to the sounds of my children and dh singing happy birthday and the smell of freshly cooked bacon and brewing coffee.....breakfast in bed was the order of the morning and then after a call from my parents we were off to Thorpe Park to recapture my youth and find the inner child again.

Or so I thought..........God and Aunty Madge (aka the bus) clearly had different ideas and about 10 minutes from our destination (75kms from home) Aunty Madge started to splutter and we only just managed to steer her off the M25 before she stalled completely which is never a good sign, but particularly in a fully automatic car.

As luck would have it I had received so many text messages from friends for my birthday that my mobile phone battery had gone flat and the dead screen meant we had absolutely no access to the contact details of the people who would be most likely to help......the Viljoens!

However, God was on our side and for some bazaar reason my Megan had included my friend Catherine's phone number in her mobile and it was with great relief that I reached Catherine and started the ball rolling as far as getting Kerry and Rob's number was concerned. I have to also put in at this stage that Catherine is fast becoming one of my friends I call in a crisis and I count myself very lucky the day she stopped me to tell me my brake lights weren't working.

It goes without saying that before long Rob was on his way to rescue us (again), but he was a full 90mins away so my little family set up camp on the side of the road (you aren't allowed to stay in your stationary car on the motorways here) and prepared to sit it out. The wind was blowing quite heavily and it was cold (fortunately I had taken advice from Lin ages ago to always keep two blanket in our car in the winter so at least we had those), but apart from that discomfort I must say we felt very safe and it didn't cross our minds for even a minute that we were in any kind of danger.

Before long we received a call from the Road Agency responsible for that section of road to find out where exactly we were and to our surprise they turned up not long after to check that we had a safe position to wait and gave us a space blanket to keep the children warm and offered to return with food and water for the children in two hours if Rob hadn't arrived. To say we were totally amazed is an understatement....def a first world experience.

Finally Rob arrived and we hooked the cars together to begin the long tow home, unfortunately about 15 mins in the weight ratio between the cars proved too much and the tow ring pulled out of the back of Rob's car leaving my dh without breaks on a hill....fortunately he didn't panic and just used the handbrake, but it gave me such a fright I think I turned 86 in that instant.

To cut a very very long, sad and exhausting story short we finally made it home and organised a tow company to fetch the car, when Si returned to meet them the police were there with a fine as our MOT had expired, unbeknown to us and without MOT the towers won't tow so as I type my poor husband is on the side of the road waiting for a flat bed to come and fetch the car and God alone knows what that is going to cost......so all in all my birthday has been shocking and I will gladly close my eyes on it tonight - maybe there was a reason I had such a bad feeling about it all week.