She’s (He’s) Leaving Home. Bye-bye

She’s (He’s) Leaving Home – Bye-Bye

As my mother watched the bus pull out of Buchanan Street bus station in Glasgow, she worried that the people I was going to work for in Paris would steal my passport and she’d never see me again. I had turned 18 a couple of weeks prior to my departure and had to navigate my way across London to the correct train station  where I would travel to Dover, and after the ferry to Calais would take another train to the centre of Paris.  As it turned out, those people – although not nice to work for - were the least of her worries.

 I was very excited to be going to live in Paris for 3 months and imagined myself to be attending champagne parties and hanging out with Prince Andrew.  I KNOW!  I’ve never said that out loud before, never mind written it down.  And me a Republican!  But these were confusing times.  As a much younger child I’d loved Gary Glitter, and I longed to be on Jim’ll Fix it.

 To put the year into a historical perspective the week before I left, I was travelling home on the Helensburgh train line having been at a Barbara Dickson concert in Glasgow.  The carriage was full of the sounds of Don’t Cry for me Argentina as a group of soldiers, full of bravado, made their way to Faslane to pick up a boat to The Falklands.  They were also leaving home.  The next morning I met one of them in Helensburgh and he recognised me.  They’d missed their boat and he wanted to come home with me to eat pancakes with my Mum. 

The job I started in didn’t work out but I still yearned for a bit of adventure so went to the centre of Paris to look for another job. I found a new post immediately and booked into a hotel for a couple of days until it started, then went to buy a postage stamp so that I could write home about my amazing life.  A pleasant little man found me looking a bit lost and offered to take me to the nearest Bureau de Poste.  It turned out to be an attic room full of fur coats and he wasn’t as pleasant as he’d at first seemed.  The only wise thing I’d said when he asked me if I was alone was that I was meeting friends for dinner that night. In reality, Simone, the old lady who lived in the apartment above the hotel had only said she would “see me later”.  She’d been part of the French Resistance in WW11 and kept a caring eye out for the prostitutes who worked her street to make sure they returned safely each day. It was only when I watched the film Taken years later that I realised what had almost happened to me.  The only realistic thing about that film was that he got his daughter back, so unless your dad’s Liam Neeson, don’t follow pleasant little men up to attic rooms in Paris.  Perhaps Simone may have been my Neeson.

When Meg left home she did so by stealth so that I didn’t really notice.  She came home from University regularly and when she graduated, went to Australia and New Zealand for a 6 week holiday which she exchanged for a 2 year visa whilst there, taking me along on the stressful process of securing that visa en route.  She’s always been good at sharing her highs and lows and I’ve never needed to seek information on how she is.  She appeared on my screen one night looking particularly disgruntled and held up her ankle so that I could see the bruising.  She hadn’t made her work that day due to the injury and her boss had been very unsympathetic.  It was this attitude that she was phoning to complain about.  On a night out with her old Kiwi school pals she had demonstrated a Highland Fling and landed very badly.  This was not her fault she said, as accidents happen.  I didn’t point out that as far as I knew, she had no experience of dancing a Highland Fling and just because she was Scottish did not really give her a licence to demonstrate it to unsuspecting Kiwi’s.

When it came time for Finn to leave home for a 2 year trip to Canada I found it harder, having had him living upstairs for 25 years.  Who would help the Old Folks with their technical issues?  Meg had complained recently that both her Dad and I had pocket called her on the same day.  Finn explained that you clicked the off button on the side of your phone straight after messaging someone. I realised this was akin to the old fashioned act of putting the receiver carefully on the cradle.  There were many times when the person you called didn’t do that properly (probably my Mum and Dad) and you couldn’t make a phone call to anyone else as every time you picked up the phone to dial you could hear them chatting away beside the phone.  You could yell down all you liked to no avail until eventually you had to call The Operator and ask them to send a piercing noise down the line which usually did the trick.

 I exclaimed that I had never thought of clicking the button to turn off the screen! So simple.

 He said, - with some impatience

“It’s iphone 101 Mum!!”

“Well no wonder I didn’t know THAT – I have iphone 11!” I held my hands out in explanation.

My concern with Finn was that he might not remember to communicate at all, or only send basic information which would never be enough for anxious and curious parents back home. 

“I’ll want to know lots of details” I said, “like how you are feeling.”

“Cold?” he said

Family selfie before he left us.

The promised communication of how he’s feeling.