Canyon Swing

Before we moved to New Zealand, we had a couple of months touring the country in a camper van. My favourite memory of that whole tour was the Canyon Swing in Queenstown.

The Canyon Swing was essentially a bungee jump, but you wore a harness at your waist rather than at your feet. Its the highest cliff jump in the world, falling 109m, looking down at a river and rocks. It was so weird because I thought I would be the type of person to not be scared of something like that, but as I stood at the top begging the two guys controlling it to check the ropes so I didn't fall to my death, I was absolutely terrified. The first jump was simply me running off the cliff. But that was nothing compared to the second.

I was hung upside down over the cliff, my head pointing at the ground, and they said to put my arm up when I was ready for them to drop me. I can't remember whether I did or not, even at the time I wasn't positive, but I'm pretty sure they just dropped me anyway. I didn't breathe for so long in that jump. Even thinking about it now makes my stomach go mental. But it was totally one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Stephen Hawkings II

Last summer, we went to the waterfalls somewhere up North where we lived (think it was High Force maybe? Irrelevant anyway). Just as we had started walking towards it I saw a little rabbit lying on the ground in the middle of a big grassy patch. I think its legs were broken or something cause it could only move in a circle and I was pretty sure I had to be a hero and take it home with us or it would be eaten by something.

We'd only just set off though, so for the rest of the walk I wrapped it in my jacket and carried it with me. And FULL ON bonded with it, it was my favourite pet ever (minus ugly Maisie and hottie Connie). Like no kidding, I was talking to it and telling it I would get it to a vets and everything would be fine.

Except it wasn't. Because we sat down to have lunch at the top of the waterfall and everyone was getting grossed out having a crippled rabbit (aptly named Stephen Hawkings The Second by my brother) staring at them eating. So I laid it down behind us on a rock to eat my sandwich.

When I turned around little Stevie Hawks had disappeared. I was getting really happy there had been a miracle and he had been cured and bounded off into the distance...when I saw a hole in the ground.

My rabbit had rolled down the hole. I tried to reach him and save him AND I COULD FEEL HIM but couldn't grab him. In the end he rolled down further into the hole.

Worst day of my life. I actually cried.

Mt Troodos

I can't remember how old I was, or where we were living at the time when we went to Cyprus. In fact theres not much I really do remember about that holiday other than my mum getting electrocuted whilst making the fridge work, spending quite a few nights in the Red Rum (I think was its name..?) Restaurant (where they thought cheese pizza meant literally cheese on a pizza base, no tomato puree or anything - clearly the worst moment of my life, or why on earth else would I remember that) and Mt Troodos.

We drove up pretty much to the top of this mountain, and had a wander and a snowball fight because there was just snow everywhere up there. I must have been relatively young, because I know my little brother John made me cry by throwing a snowball in my face and while I writhed around on the floor, continued to so for quite a while. But its chilled, cause after that his hands and feet turned all blue because he had some kind of circulation problem or something at the time. So ha!

On the way down, as luck would have it, the sky started going mental and a storm was going full blow. I remember seeing the lightening going right close to our car, and my mum was panicking as my dad was trying to dodge the ice that was all down the road. It was dark by this time too, which only added to the lovely journey down. We could see car sliding out of control down the ice next to us.

When we eventually got to the bottom, pretty relieved, we went to the Red Rum Restaurant where they actually got my cheese pizza right. By that time, with the best thing of my life in front of me waiting to be demolished,  I'd forgotten all about skidding down the mountain dodging lightening.

Wasps

My Nan and Grandad's house was the coolest place to go, it was pretty old and all the rooms were massive with all old fashioned bedrooms and furniture. I think I genuinely used to think there were ghosts there because my Grandad used to terrify us at night into believing there was a little ghost girl in the top of the cupboard.

The best thing about his house was the enormous garden. It was absolutely huge with little fountains and archways and massive trees. In the garden in the summer I used to go out and save all the wasps that flew into the massive pots of water and fountains using a piece of string. I thought I was some kind of wasp hero, and used to get all emotionally attached to each one and name them.

I think partly I did it because ironically I was terrified of being stung by a wasp and it was like if I saved them they'd all be nice enough not to sting me in the future.

It didn't really work out cause a few years later in Christchurch I got stung between my fingers and the little bugger blatantly refused to get off me. So whatever, haven't saved any since.

My Harry Potter World

Last time we went to Florida they had done up Universal Studios (or Adventure Island.. one or the other)  to look exactly like Harry Potter world. I love Harry Potter, I wish I was at Hogwarts and I know without a doubt that I would have been in Gryffindor. And married to Ron Weasley, or either of the twins. Anyway, this place was my favourite place EVER and it was totally amazing. We went so many times...

Anyway, the ride was the best part of all of it. Obviously, I can't say what its about, because anyone that goes in the future would kill me. I went with no idea what the ride was going to be like and that probably helped as to why it was so so so good.

So I was looking at the photo on my wall, and it made me laugh, like every time I look at it. Not only because my parents legs are ridiculously small, but also because I can swear down that my expression is absolutely genuine. I nearly died on the spot.

Army men and Pornography

·       Being the children of servicemen and women meant me and my three brothers travelled to strange places like the Falkland Islands.It was amazing for wildlife, we would walk amongst thousands of penguins and nearly have a heart attack over enormous elephant seals in the absolutely freezing conditions. We went there a few times when I was younger, but there is one little episode that I seem to remember better than all of that. 

    When I was about seven, my little brother was four and my older brothers were eight and nine, we stayed with a few army guys on a heli replen - a little island in the Falklands  with refuelling pads for the helicopters. I remember us kids chilling in the lounge whilst my parents were having a drink with the army men in the kitchen.

    We found a load of magazines under the coffee table and started having a read and a look at the pictures.. but these weren't exactly the type of pictures we'd seen in our books and my Puppies and Kittens magazines. I think we realised by my dad nearly dying laughing, and my mum having a panic attack rushing around picking them all up that we clearly weren't meant to be looking at them.

   The army guys just thought it was hilarious, and slightly awkward, that us children had unknowingly spread their considerably large porn stash all over the lounge floor.

Manhunt

When we lived in Riyadh in Saudi we used to play Manhunt around the compound. It was pretty simple rules, you obviously couldn't leave the compound, there were two teams, one team hid the other team had to get you. It sounds pretty unexciting, but at night, on the sand, around the pools and the tennis courts, in the backs of people gardens and down streets it was pretty scary to be honest..

Saudi was already a pretty creepy place to be at night, especially when the Saudi prayers Salah was being sung/shouted out of speakers all around the country. And we took this game pretty seriously. There would have been at least ten of us on each team, and we used to scare ourselves to death playing it, crouching behind walls and under rocks watching the other teams run past.

I remember this truck which used to pile out thick which went all around the compound, I don't even know why it used to go round, but it did every morning and late every night. One time when I was walking down one of the empty back roads, thinking of somewhere decent to run to, I saw black silhouettes coming out of the smoke, three guys, one with a gun. Now, admittedly us kids didn't fully understand the risks of being on a British compound, but we knew what terrorists were. I don't know what made me more terrified to be honest though, the fact that three strangers were going through the smoke with a gun, or the realisation that it was some of the other team, one with a BB gun, and I had no where to run.

That's how I have scar on my left leg just above my knee, from climbing over a wall with wire on top into one of the empty houses' back garden. It was pretty intense for a dramatized version of Hide and Seek.

Friday night rollerskating

When we lived in Gloucester, we would go rollerskating every Friday night in some big hall to music and disco lights. That was where I learned to spin a semicircle "The Golden Eagle". It seemed so, so cool then. The youngest people there would have been my age (which was about eleven) the oldest were about sixteen, but it was a bit embarassing if you were that old..

I remember one boy who was fifteen asked me to be his girlfriend, and I was all excited. I think his name was Rob. Well, he never said it was, but he had a load of dark hair and dark eyes and wore a skateboarding tshirt. So if it wasn't his name then it should have been. We had never spoken before he asked me that. He then asked how old I was, and so I said "Guess.." (see I knew how to be all mysterious even at that age) and he reckoned fourteen and I was pretty chuffed looking three years older than I was so I said he was right.

However, I couldn't be his Juliet because I was already with that little Jack guy (the one who I married) and so had to gently let him down. But it was cool, cause I had rejected him so he still thought I was all cool and old and a mystery woman.

Then my oldest brother came along and told him to clear off cause I was only ten (I was eleven :| ) and the boy called me a liar and laughed in my face.

I don't know why I remember that. Guess it was pretty difficult times for me.

Chilling with the jellyfish

A few years ago we were in Port Douglas in Australia and the time of the year meant people were meant to be extra careful swimming in the sea, only swimming in the parts which were netted off. This was because of these jellyfish which were smaller than the size of the nail on your little finger.

The signs around the place said not to even dip your feet in the sea because they could kill or seriously injure you, but considering they were so ridiculously small and I thought it was so unlikely that I would get stung,  and figured I was pretty safe. Besides, the signs about alligators freaked me out way more. And to be honest, I have a feeling I'm pretty lucky in general when it comes to dangerous things happening...

So me and mum (wild cards us...) needed cooling off as it was so boiling and so went into the water. My dad and the boys were freaking out shouting at us to get out and we just laughed at them.

Later that day as we were walking back up to the beach, there was everyone crowding around some woman on the floor, and some guy in a full body suit was carrying around a jar of water. The woman had to get taken to A&E and stayed in hospital for days as she had got stung when she was inside the netting.

I'd love to say I was wrong to go in, but really its just maintained the fact that I'm lucky.

Connie and Maisie.

I've got two collies called Connie and Maisie. They're totally gorgeous. Well Connie is, Maisie's pretty ugly to be honest. But she's cute and tries to talk like a human, so I love her.

When Connie was a puppy she was a right little bugger, once when everyone was out she managed to open the kitchen door and the lounge door and chew up a book and try to eat one of my mum's Lilli Put Lane houses. We had to put locks on the all the kitchen doors after that.

Maisie brought the whole bad dog thing to a new level. We got her when Connie was 18 months and she's a right little ledge! But one morning when me and my mum came downstairs we nearly had a heart attack. She'd somehow worked out how to open the top drawers in the kitchen and had eaten everything in it. She'd always eaten weird things. Especially spiders. And rocks. But this time she'd taken the plastic wrapper off an ink cartridge, and actually ate all of the ink. And an entire packet of blue tac, eaten some shoe cleaner and spread the rest of it over the floor, batteries, three packets of tissues and several pairs of sunglasses.

And she seemed to have enjoyed it.

New York Naughties.

Me and my family went to New York in the summer of 2010, and it ended up a being quite a cringefest. But a funny cringefest.

In Times Square we noticed a naked man with a guitar and a cowboy hat wondering around taking pictures with people, called the Naked Cowboy. Richard, my environmentalist, hippy, rather camp homosexualist brother, got  all excited straight away, but it was my mum who suddenly turned into a flirtatious teenager. Me and her grabbed him for a photo (he was proper sweaty) and my mum was giggling away, he was loving it.

Madame Tussauds in New York is amazing, but if anyones ever met any members of my family, they'll know we were hardly going to go in there and just have nice smiley pictures. We have some pretty awkward photos of John feeling up Marilyn Monroe, trying to escape the Pope from touching him up, looking up various waxworks skirts and licking Barack Obama. My mum has a photo slapping Bill Clinton who has his hand positioned on her boobs, Richard spent quite a while camping it up with Elton John, and then almost pushing Angelina Jolie out of the way to get to Brad Pitt. Mike went for a more sick route by staring at an underage Miley Cyrus like a perv, and the rest are apparently too inappropriate to write down.

On the way back, New Yorkers aren't mad for being so nice as they are when you first get there. They've got your money, and now they want you out... one of the guards working there was being a right dick, shouting at everyone and trying to make us queue up millimeters away from each other so my mum said a few choice words to him, and he said "Raaaiight maam, will you come this way with me?" Everyone was looking now, so my mum laughed proper loud in his face and said "What are you gonna do - arrest me?" He didn't enjoy that all, but the rest of the British tourists did, who gave her a clap for making him look a knob. I was actually concerned they were going to arrest her, but in the end we just got to go through quicker than everyone else for making a scene.

Welcome to Wood Green

In October 2010 I moved to London, into Wood Green Halls of Residence. I was a bit of an emotional wreck the whole day. We drove six hours from home, me, mum and dad to unpack when I got there, and the car was jam packed, my guitar was swinging into my head every thirty seconds. When we actually got there I had to pretend it looked better than I thought it would, as my mum was on the verge of a breakdown looking at where I was going to live for the next year. The black bricks on the top look like it had little bit of a burning-down sesh, and the area wasn’t exactly woody or greeny. When we got inside the security guard (Gamu) gave me a million keys and said my room number. I especially liked the prison-style hallways. 

My room made me die a little bit inside, although the yellow non-plastered brick walls were nice and clashy with the bright green door. Which had a hole in it. And the the curtains (oh the curtains) had a nice red-yellow-green pattern. I checked out the bathroom which was great, we had two virtually see-through showers and one toilet. Between twelve of us. The kitchen was pretty special too, although not big enough for a table, hence the last few months eating on the floor in the hallway. As we were hauling up all my things, I met Kim who lives opposite and from that day onwards have enjoyed seeing that gorgeously massive amount of hair every morning when I open my door. 

We went to see my brother when we were unpacked and had dinner at his flat, and then my parents dropped me off at the tube station in Harrow and me and my mum had a movie type of goodbye. I went to Ben’s from there, so I wouldn’t feel all depressed and went back to halls in the morning.

So that was my first day in Wood Green. It’s really not that bad anymore, now that I’m used to it. In fact, I quite like the fact that I’m living a proper student lifestyle in crappy halls rather than practically living in a hotel (like my brother Richard’s halls). 

And we’re pretty proud of being described as the “Worst corridor EVER”, due to paint, talcum powder and fake blood exploding over the bathroom every once in a while.

The skiing days

Back in New Zealand when it was winter we used to go skiing up Mount Hutt. We'd leave by six and wouldn't be back til late; they were the best days out. The weather up there would be crazy. One time we went, in the morning it was so hot we were in the snow wearing tshirts. In the afternoon, we were going up the chairlift and couldn't even see our hand when it was in front of us.. that was the best and scariest time I ever had skiing.

I remember the first time I ever went, I'd never done it before, but figured I would be totally amazing at it (I always think I'm going to be amazing at new things... I don't know why, I guess I reckon somehow if I say it enough it will happen).

 

So after about two times wobbling down the little practice slope, desperately wanting to trip up the shitty little kids who were about two foot and were doing flips, I thought I was a pro, and skipped the next two slopes, getting off at the top instead of quarter or halfway up the mountain. For some reason, I was totally fearless. 

It took a long time to get down the mountain, even if you'd skiid for years. Yet I managed to get down faster than anyone.. I hadn't learnt how to slow down, or turn, or stop, right up until the bottom where I realised I had to either learn to stop rapidly, or fly into a massive crowd of people. 

And, hey, thats how I learnt to ski.

Saving the turtles

When we were younger we used to go Ascension Island on holiday all the time. I can’t even remember how many times we went, but it was a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever get to go again, which is so depressing, it was my favourite place in the world, but you can only really go there if you had a family member (like my dad) in the RAF, and even then it’s pretty tricky. Nowadays, if it’s even possible to just go on holiday as civilians, it would cost ridiculous amounts. 

But it was a tiny little island in the middle of the Pacific somewhere in the middle of England and the Falkland Islands (going there is a whole new story...). Hardly anyone lived there. My favourite memory of Ascension Island has to be the Green turtles. They were absolutely enormous – I’d never seen anything like them, and came there to lay their eggs and then go swim away again. In the early hours of the morning, at the right time of the year, we would sit on the beach with only the moon to help us see, and watch them come from the shore right onto the beach and dig a hole in the sand to lay their eggs. It was amazing to watch. 

One day when we were on the same beach where we’d watched the turtles before, my little brother shouted us over and caught in some fishing cage under the sand were tiny little turtles, smaller than your hand, which had just hatched. Somehow they knew they were meant to be heading for the sea, but even if they got themselves out of the cage they would have no chance. There were hundreds of sea birds flying around waiting for newly hatched turtles. So (right heroes we are) we got them out and put them in buckets – there were enough to fill at least three – and put them in the car to go to a beach where they’d have more of a chance; Comfortless Cove. We put them on the sand, and watched them get to the water (they floated when they swam, it was freaky looking) and swam out with them as far as we could go, trying to scare away the trigger fish who were as bitchy as the birds. One of my older brothers saved them from a shoal of trigger fish when a tissue in his pocket fell out in the water and distracted the fish that split it into pieces whilst our little turtles made an escape. 

I somehow doubt many of them survived, but definitely more than they would have on that other beach. So we felt pretty awesome. 

Bad tsunami times.

In 2004 me and my family were on holiday in Sri Lanka. It wasn't the greatest start to a holiday in the first place, our car journey to the hotel turned out to be one of the most terrifying trips of my life, with the absolutely enormous spider that lived above my head for the entire journey being a minor side note compared to the mental driver who figured it would be a great idea to fall asleep at the wheel and overtake on blind corners. But eventually we managed to arrive at the hotel alive and things were looking much better.

Christmas day was lovely; just chilling on the beach and in the pool. Boxing day, we woke up at about ten, it was the first morning the whole time we'd been there that we didn't go down for the breakfast buffet. A few minutes later we heard screaming and banging outside, and I opened the room door to see the hotel staff running around banging on peoples doors shouting to go to the top floor. It was absolute chaos. My dad pulled back the curtains, and there was water spilling over our second floor balcony. It didn't look real, the sea had risen so you could only see the tops of the trees. We ran to the top floor and people were screaming that we should spread out, or the pillars the building was being held up by were going to collapse.

We stayed on that floor for over 20 hours, everyone was panicking that there would be another wave, but the water was slowly going down.

In the early hours of the next morning we literally had to push and fight to get on the coach to Colombo which after a ridiculously long wait and journey took us to a massive golf resort where we had a buffet that had been prepared for the president of Sri Lanka (who had to deal with bigger things like the tsunami that had just wrecked his country), so the tsunami wasn't all doom and gloom, we got a presidential buffet out of it. The people from our hotel all slept in one enormous room on the floor with blankets and duvets waiting for a flight home.

230,000 people died, so my experience was hardly one to have a moan about, but its still a pretty major memory... and a pretty crap end to the holiday.

Butterfly and Lizard

 About two years ago I got my first tattoo, a butterfly full of little pictures. It didn't hurt anywhere near as much as everyone said it would, but thats probably because it was on my hip. It took forever to design and I love it to bits. My second one was a lizard, and my boyfriend designed most of it. And its probably got a lot more meaning in it than the first, and it hurt a bloody sight more being on my spine. I've just finished the first designs of the next one I'm going to get when I go back home for reading week. It's the same style, five or six doves around the top of my leg, with the same colours and style of pictures inside. I cannot WAIT.

My best friend was a fairy

I was living in Yeovil at the time I think, and had a best friend called Melissa. She was proper bitchy and bossy and absolutely loved herself, but I was pretty young and it didn't really matter what your best friend was like as long as you did everything together. So when one day she announced she was the fairy queen, I wasn't too sure how to react. In the past she'd told me that she wrote the song 'Doe, a deer' so I couldn't exactly believe everything she ever said.

But she really did go all out to convince me that she genuinely was a fairy. She wrote tiny little fairy notes, which you could barely read because the writing was so small, put barbies around her room with wings and claimed that I couldn't see them move because I was only a mere human so only she could, and literally hung out of her window calling to her fairy clan. So even though I figured it was all a bit unlikely, something in me really hoped that because she had been trying so desperately hard to convince me, maybe it was real.

So even though I fully went along with her fairy story, when I told her that I had in fact been a vampire the whole time, she forced me to bite her arm to prove that I was lying. Strange girl, I dread to think what she's like now.

Manatees in Crystal River

My family have a pretty mental obsession with going to Florida, I think we've been six or seven times now, and every time it's like we've never left. So a couple of years ago we had a change of scenery from the classic theme parks and went out to Crystal River to go snorkelling with manatees (which if anyone ever met my dog Ellie, manatees are like the sea version of her) and scuba diving down a cave underwater. So the idea of it was obviously amazing, slightly terrifying, I'd never swam with manatees and I'd never done a cave dive. But at seven in the morning, there was heavy frost, and outside it was absolutely freezing. Can't say I wanted to get out of the car let alone jump into a freezing river with some pretty massive creatures. But obviously with my dad having experienced diving in much worse conditions he was totally up for it, and me being the other man of our family we were first to jump out, practically sprint to the changing rooms and whip on a wetsuit.

The water was warmer than outside and manatees were pretty brilliant. I freaked out quite a lot (I get scared just swimming with big fish...) but they were cute. Something I doubt I'll ever get the chance do to again, so I was pretty chuffed with the whole experience.

I learnt to dive when I was about 11 or 12 in the Maldives, and before that had gone with my dad using the extra octopus, so I was pretty confident with shore dives, reef dives and all that. But the idea of going into a cave was totally new to me. And when I first heard about I figured we would literally be diving round a big open cave. I soon realised (once I was going downwards) this kind of cave was pitch black, we were going down in a really thin space between the rock walls, and then into tiny little 'rooms' inside. I couldn't see a thing, I just followed the flashing of someones torch who was somewhere in front of me and feeling the floor and the roof and the walls next to me. It was definately one of the scariest things I ever did, I remember hardly breathing at all the whole time, because the bubbles in front of my mask were distracting and stopping me seeing the flashing light.

When we finally came up to the surface I was proper proud! Although the journey back on the boat wasn't exactly relaxing afterwards, it was the coldest I've been in my life. (Colder than coming back from that halloween party, covered in foam wearing practically nothing in London in the middle of winter. And thats saying something..) We had noodle soup on there, and all of our hands were shaking so much it was flying around everywhere.

But good times!

The day I became a Christian

Anyone who lives or lived in New Zealand who was between about 14 and 20 knew about Easter Camp. It was like England's Leeds Festival. Except everyone who went had to be part of a Christian youth group kind of thing. It was a pretty awesome few days. I joined my friend Emma's youth group so I could go, and although I've never really got the whole idea of Christianity (slavery good, gays bad, snakes talk....?) I was open to seeing what it was all about. So by the end of the camp I was mad for the Christian bands and singing along to it all, and going to all the speeches, but can't say I was even near to converting. In fact, if anything I thought they went a bit heavy on and I couldn't have wanted to be more atheist.

On the last night we were in the massive tent where loads of the speechers were, and it was filled with every person who went. So around two to three thousand people. This last speech was the biggie; it was seeing if Easter Camp had converted anyone who wasn't a Christian before they came, to becoming one. It was quite a long speech, and my attention span is pretty bad at the best of times, so I zoned out for a while. The guy next to me nudged my arm and ask if I wanted to stand up when the room had gone silent, and I gathered we were leaving, so I stood up with him. I think this is probably the exact point when I became a Christian.

Bit of an error of judgment being one of about six people out of three thousand standing up after accidentally silently proclaiming myself a Christian. Everyone else said that they felt an outside force (don't know if they meant God or like the wind or something) making them stand up. I really didn't know what to say when I was asked why I became a Christian and how did I feel after this new stage of my life. It was a bit late to say that I hadn't been listening and stood up cause I thought everyone else was. It was definately up there with the most embarassing moments of my life, and to make things even worse, I had to go along with it for the rest of the night and then hope people would stop mentioning it a few weeks later. People were crying, and I was given at least two bibles, I had to pray in front of everyone and pretend to be all emotional. Felt a bit of a twat really.

My (second) marriage

My first marriage was in the playground to a little ginger boy called George. He used to chase my brother around the playground, but it was all good, we were pretty on-off anyway. I don't think we even had a wedding to be honest, I think it was just a mutual agreement. So yeah, thats why i'm writing about the second marriage, about four years or so later, when I was in year 5, to Jack who was about half my height. And no shit, the entire school watched our wedding. It was quite an event.... We actually had bridesmaids and a priest (well, some boy in my class) and rings. Made of tinfoil and highlighters. The crowd of school kids made a little aisle and everything, I felt pretty cool. It was in the playground again, but this time was totally more serious than the fling marriage with George. Our marriage lasted at least half a school year, until I moved away and Jack forgot all about me and went out with one of my friends (what a slut). But whatever, I always fancied the boy in the year above anyway who played guitar and used to tease me on the swingy ropes.

Anyway, heres to hoping my boyfriend Ben's planning a wedding that will top off the last one.. it will definitely be a challenge.

First days on Al Nakheel

Well for a start this was a place unlike anything I could remember. I was about ten, and couldn't really remember the last time I lived in Saudi Arabia, so I guess it seemed more like a holiday. It was night, so I didn't take any notice of the guards, tanks and the big concrete walls with barbed wire. I was just loving the fact that it was really hot, that you could stand on the roof of our new house and that we were going to the pool at night, and would be going every day for the next eighteen months. We went over and met someone my dad knew, and he had a daughter my age, so I was chuffed. She turned out to be a total psycho bitch, but obviously I didn't know that then, so it was chilled. She was moving away soon anyway, but we still went out and bought matching dresses in the enormous mall, Kingdom Tower, for our welcoming barbeque. Living on the compound was a total novelty back then. In fact, it was a novelty the whole time. I was too young to want to go out any further, so living somewhere which literally had houses, a little grocery shop, a clubhouse with squash courts and a restaurant bar, too many pools to count, a skate park and a library was pretty much all I wanted or needed. Which was pretty handy, cause the only other places we could really go was school, our friend's compounds, Kingdom Tower to shop and then far away to Dahran beach. Once we drove ten hours to where we used to live, Khamis Mushayt, but that was about all. Saudi Arabia isn't really the place you wander round the streets if you're a family of RAF or BAE working for the Saudi's nowadays, and it certainly wasn't then. At the start though, I didn't go to school cause we were too late to start the school term (or something like that) so mum homeschooled me and my brothers for a while, then we'd spend the rest of the day chilling. It was the most relaxed lifestyle ever. And I loved it. As a kid, I had absolutely nothing to worry about, all the children as far as I know were relatively oblivious to what happened outside the walls, and we never saw any of the alert letters that were posted through the door. I would love to go back to Al Nakheel now, just see everyone again and take ten minutes to walk around the entire place. But hardly anyone in the RAF stays anywhere for more than a couple of years, so hardly anyone I used to know still lives in Riyadh. And any of them that do don't live on Al Nakheel anymore, cause it got demolished and every compound moved to one huge compound further into the desert. So I guess this post isn't even something I can go back and remind myself about. Theres practically no photos, so just contacts and memories.