Eight weeks ago, I moved from Perth, Western Australia to Mount Gambier, South Australia, a distance of over fifteen hundred miles. I think that's about 2,500km if your mind works that way. Mine doesn't. I mislike these metres, litres and kilograms, forsooth.

Anyhow, here I am in the space between the worlds, so to speak, or at least, between lifestyles. The last quarter of the year isn't a good time to move; certainly not if you're an inveterate joiner, like me. I miss the groups I belonged to in Perth: the WA Shakespeare Club; the Society of Editors (WA); the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre, especially the Spec-Fic group and the cousin-twice-removed face-to-face critiquing group that I value so highly; the WA Society of Genealogists (specifically the Western Suburbs House Group) and the WA School of Yoga, to say nothing of the many individuals I met in other contexts such as Buddhism, Meditation and Astrology which I've moved away from to some degree in recent years. Those groups and the people in them cannot be replaced. Of course, I'll meet new friends and join other groups over here, but therein lies the rub - everything is winding down for the summer break, and just as things start to wind up again I'll be on my way to England. So, in fact, I won't be joining any groups here until the middle of next year. Nor can I look for part-time work, which I really need to supplement the pension. (It's funny how everything else is going up, but not the pension - it gets harder and harder, month by month, to feed and clothe oneself, to say nothing of luxuries like health insurance and internet access.)

So how, you might ask, am I managing to travel to England? It's courtesy of my sister Clare, who lives there and always has, having elected to remain when the rest of the family emigrated in the fifties. It will be wonderful to see her and other rellies, and also the many e-cousins I've met through my family history research. My last chance to see the old country - now, that's exciting! It's something I'm really looking forward to, although I won't let myself get too excited this early or I'll be like a kid in the weeks before a birthday: only sixty more sleeps; forty-nine; twenty-four... No, I'll be patient and try to live day by day until St Valentine comes and carries me back to Perth, whence I fly out to Dubai and then Heathrow - whoopee!

Meantime, I'm in limbo. Not only am I failing to settle in properly here in Mount Gambier, but my life seems to be on hold. I've done precious little writing these last few months. It hardly seems worth doing much to my new flat - after all, anything could happen before next June and I could well have to move again by then. Yet one can waste a lifetime through inaction - I'll just wait until after Christmas, until I get a job, until the plot of the novel clarifies, until, until, until.

My Buddhist training is niggling me about being present in this very moment and not allowing myself to be ruled by attachment to past or future. Every week in limbo is a week wasted, but any other action--or non-action--seems too hard. But is Too Hard a good reason for dawdling in limbo? I'll think about it and let you know:-)