Little Things I Missed

Being brought up in by a civil servant is tough. I mean it really gets you down sometimes. Not that the parenting is the problem...it's mainly the travelling. Don't get me wrong, I love travelling. You know, visiting all these cool places and meeting really wicked people. But the problem I keep having is, well I can't stand staying in a country for 4 years and moving on after. You really miss loads of things. You know, friends and teachers and people and stuff.

The first time my family was posted overseas was in...1993 or 1994ish(?), I really can't remember. We were posted to New Zealand, the land down under the land down under...you dig? Anyways, from the pictures I saw, I seemed to have a great time over there. At least I think I did. Well nothing can be said about the time I had there, I was only 3 years old. I couldn't have remembered loads of stuff. But the one I miss dearly, was my stay in London.

It was my family's second posting, my dad's third...we were supposed to be posted to Washington directly after New Zealand, but, unfortunately, my mum decided that my brothers and I had to stay in Singapore to concerntrate on school...bummer. Anyway, London was an interesting place. Very cosmopolitan, very cool (literally aswell, the weather was unpredictable) and everything was under the white man, but let's not go there.

I went to study in a private school. It was so private no one knew about it...ok that was lame. So, I met my classmates on the first day, and we seemed to get along right away. Football was in everybody's mind, even the girls, it was a co-ed school. Footie this and footie that. Really a great place to talk about footie. The bus drivers even had strong opinions about opposing teams and they were strong in the words they used. We had drivers and teachers who came from Newcastle, Yorkshire and other parts of England. One of the bus drivers was the President of the Tattoo society somewhere. Anyway, football really is the universal language. Arabs, Americans, French...all played football during park breaks and the PE lessons were all...you guessed it: Footie! and cricket, in the summer.

I remember during the World Cup Qualifiers for Japan and Korea, Beckham scored the last gasp free-kick sending England to the world cup. The next day, everyone spoke about it. And they even showed matches of the World Cup during school time. I don't remember doing well in my studies that year, but it was for a good cause.

Little things I missed were crisps. In Singapore, it's called chips. Over there chips are fries...but let's not go into details. In London, you could find every single flavoured crisps and in every shape and form. Even chocolates and biscuits were fantastic. Over there, you had cheese-strings, its cheese in the form of a cylinder and you peel it off like a banana and eat the peels. There were dips...kinda like packet biscuits and you dip them in some flavoured cream. It really is a junk food wonderland. I'd even visited the Cadbury factory twice...it was fantastic. At each part of the factory, they gave free chocolates. The funny thing was, I belong to a family of five and the distributors of the chocolates gave more to younger kids. My brothers and I were really young, so by the end of the factory trip we had bags full of chocolates. I believe the dentist had a field day aswell the following week.

Parks were a plenty in London. I lived opposite Kensingon Gardens. And Kensington Gardens was just next to Hyde Park. The two parks combined were massive! My friends and I played football there almost everyday. We played directly after school around 4 and ended around 6 plus. It was there I learnt a few tricks...not that I'm any good by the way. There were as many squirrels as there were ice-cream men. You could cycle around the park, visit the monuments, fly kites and the girls were not bad looking aswell. There was also Richmond Park. That park had dears grazing around and you could even get close to them. There were park rangers to ensure the safety of both the dears and yourself, but the dears were really something at first. That was until they got hungry and smelt the crisps in your hands. Swans and ducks were also common. Loads of old people fed them bread and loads of them ended up running away from all the swans and ducks chasing them.

You know, all these little stuff you take for granted. I know it sounds very cliched but really...you don't realise what you've had til its taken away from you. Sigh.