Scoundrels

One of my favourite things about living in London is the live music scene. There are bands and musicians playing every week, from the totally unknown to the internationally renowned. Being a huge music fan I've taken advantage of this as much as possible (though not as many times as I would like - an issue I intend on rectifying fully over the coming months, especially now that I live so close to one of London's most preeminent musical suburbs), but I've not really talked about it here because I figured hearing me gush about how great any gig was would be considerably less exciting than actually being there.

That said, I also love it when people put me onto amazing new music. So, in the name of musical education, I wanted to tell you about the brilliant band I saw on Saturday night.

I have to admit, my track record for getting places on time has been shocking this year. I tend to think London is much smaller than it actually is (Australian spacial arrogance), and so allow myself rather less time than I really need. But I went to see the Kooks with a friend of mine who is incredibly punctual, so I made it to the venue in time to see not one but both of the supporting acts. Which, in hindsight, was a very happy coincidence because the first support act was Scoundrels, a four piece indie/blues outfit who turned out to play the best live show I've seen all year.

We were so impressed by their performance at the Kooks that my friend and I went home and immediately bought tickets to their next London show. But come Saturday I was beginning to regret the decision. Having worked seven days a week for the past fortnight I got to the club wrecked, starving, and starting to worry the band weren't going to be as good as I seemed to remember. I could not have been more wrong; they were so much better than I'd thought. They play this fun, exciting blend of Brit-pop and southern zydeco that in words sounds ridiculous but in reality sounds phenomenal. Hearing a bunch of English boys playing the kind of deep south blues usually associated with older black men with harmonicas is something of an unexpected surprise, but by no means an unwelcome one.
Admittedly I was brought up on a steady diet of zydeco care of my mother (who once even took me to a blues fest to see her favourite zydeco band. I was the 12-year-old who danced like a crazy person in front of the stage and got to chat with the lead singer. I'm beginning to think my mum brought me up to be either really cool or a groupie), so I'm possibly predisposed to love this kind of music. After all it does remind me of my heady glory days, before I became an awkward teenager who bopped carefully at the back in a way painstakingly calculated to keep me out of the spotlight.

But putting to one side for a moment my own weakness for the siren call of the blues, this band are still mind blowing. They play with enjoyment and talent that conjured images of jamming for hours in garages soundproofed with egg cartons on lazy, rainy English afternoons. And they were charismatic. I swear, show me some guy with a guitar and I'll show you my "whatever, my brother's in a band" face; show me some guy with a guitar and charisma and I'm done for. The music is energetic and cheeky, the lyrics occasionally wistful but mostly tongue-in-cheek. There are honestly no words to describe how much I enjoyed this band. Which is why I usually don't try. I just end up sounding like an over-excited fangirl. Or my 12-year-old self.

Moving out

The past few weeks I've been in such a state. I finish my Au Pair job on the 17th of December, and with it goes not only my primary source of income, but also my home. And with the local and global economy rushing headlong into chaos, the job market isn't exactly thriving. So up until a few days ago my prospects were looking fairly dire.

Naturally I managed to get a job without too much hassle (it was always going to be one or the other). The company that hired me provides staffing for high profile, high end events. It's not exactly guaranteed full-time work - in fact they're advising already that January is a lean month - but it's a job nonetheless.

But if the job market is tough then the housing market is out and out war.

I must have looked at a dozen houses in the last fortnight. Of those, two were nice, and the rest had me genuinely worried that I might be sold into the white slave trade. I had always thought that shows like East Enders and The Bill portrayed only the scummiest aspects of London life. As it turns out, it doesn't matter how nice the surrounding areas are; if you live on an estate in London, the chances of you getting stabbed over £20 rise exponentially. I saw flats with no living area; a room with three doors and a curtain; and in the worst case was offered a place in a one bedroom flat sharing with an overweight middle aged man with a ponytail. I don't mean to be judgemental, but there are some things you should be obliged to mention on a room advertisement. And the going rate for a room is £150 a week.

I was beginning to think my top two options were death by exposure or being shanked on an under lit stairwell when I went to look at a room in Highgate, and found myself in flat search utopia. The woman I spoke to (also named Shannon) lives there with her adult daughter and one other lodger, a Spanish girl who's moving back home after Christmas. I was determined not to lodge with a family, but she made it clear I would be treated as a flatmate. Honestly though, even if she hadn't I probably would have offered her my firstborn for the lease. The flat is beautiful. It's in North London, flanked on two sides by Camden and Hampstead Heath (famously the home of Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton amongst others). It has high ceilings and a private garden, and night buses to every corner of town. The next door neighbours are rich young bankers (single, too, according to my new landlord), and the area is practically overrun by people in the arts and media industries.

Afterwards I went home and decided that if I didn't get the lease on that flat I would give up and become a drifter, hitchhiking my way to the Med so I could sleep on the streets in relative winter warmth.

I picked up my set of keys today.

But wait, there's more. As if I needed any further incentive, I also found out the mother and daughter who own the flat are, from February next year, going to be spending much of there time in America. For weeks and months at a time they'll be gone, leaving me all on my own. Which means, to all intents and purposes, that for £400 a month (all inclusive) I just rented myself an entire house.

Endings

Autumn is a wonderful time to be melancholy. Not truly sad, per se. More...wistful. A languid, enjoyable heartache. The falling leaves; the crisp, grey skies; the definite chill that permeates the air - these things are all geared towards thoughts of endings. Autumn is the final, beautiful hurrah before the deadpan black-and-white colour palette of winter. So it seems only fitting that this should be the time of year when my own safe little London life should begin to fall apart too.

I have known from the moment I took this job that it would end mid-December. But in January, December was a year away. And in June, December was half a year away. And even in October it seemed like an age before things like Christmas and snow and unemployment would come about. And now I suddenly have one month  - 30 days and counting - before I have no job and no home. Oh. And a brother flying in for 2 weeks expecting at the very least a floor space to sleep on.

I've been fairly blase about my encroaching destitution. But my blithe "I'm not worried. Things always work out well for me" is beginning to sound mildly insincere, even to my own ears (and before you start thinking how irresponsible it is to just sit back and hope for the best, let me remind you - it HAS all worked out thus far, and with painfully little effort on my part. So my assurance up to this point hasn't been cavalier. It's been honest).

I went for my first room inspection tonight. I inspected the house, the housemates inspected me. It was, in a word, unnerving. The house was populated by antipodes, which I'm not sure about (why come to England to live with Aussies, after all). But mostly I was shocked out of my comfort zone by the fact that I'm quite likely to actually be offered a room reasonably soon. Which means several things - not least of which being that I really, really need a new job - including my leaving my host family. Leaving my kids. And they're not making it any easier.

I have been considering moving out of the West, and heading North or East, for a change of scene. But when I told my kids that I was going to look at a house in the next suburb over, they immediately celebrated how close I would still be. And when I came home after my interview my host dad asked me "When are you moving out?"
and when I answered "Well I suppose it depends when I get offered somewhere to live", he replied
"But...what about us?"
No, please. Break my heart a little more why don't you.
Still, it does feel good to know they still want me around after having me invade their home for a full year.

On the other hand, I love winter. Plus spring is always there, lurking just beyond the horizon. And it's time for a change. It has been wonderful, really and truly wonderful, spending a year here with my kids and their parents. But I'm ready for something new. A challenge, and adventure, anything. I'll still see them, if they need a babysitter or I need a sneaky feed because I spent all my money on things other than food. I'll have less room, I suppose. But I'll have more freedom.

What is past is prologue

I doubt anyone would argue the fact that Germany is a fascinating place. The backdrop for the most heinous crimes of the 20th century, Germany bears more guilt than any other Western country. And yet it is amongst the most powerful nations in Europe, and one of the most important financial players on the world stage. It is basically holding the EU together by sheer force of will, despite having a deeply divided history. So to say I was excited to get over there is at best a mild understatement.

A friend of mine from Australia, Joshua Harris (whom I fortuitously ran into in Dublin), is studying in a small town in mid-Germany for the year and generously offered me the use of his couch. So, unlike many tourists, my trip didn't start in any of the usual places. After a slightly disastrous journey over the channel (missing my connecting flight in Frankfurt = bad. Having my flights realigned by the most courteous and helpful airline ever = good. If you get the chance to fly with a German airline, take it. They were amazing. And they gave me free chocolate) I arrived not in a major port of call, but in a tiny university town called Göttingen. This worked to my advantage in several ways. For one thing it meant I was greeted in Germany with the sentence "so, are you ready for some schnitzel?", which was almost enough to make my whole trip all by itself. For another it meant I was able to revive my own uni experiences. I'm pretty sure I spent at least 2/3rds of my time there in a state of happy inebriation. But most of all it gave me the chance to see some of Germany that had literally never been touched by the war. Thanks to a slightly bizarre agreement the Brits made sure their bombs didn't fall on Göttingen, and in return the big two in England were similarly unmolested. So Göttingen is this stunning half-timbered fairytale town that encapsulates all that is great about German history. Which is important. Given that most people visit Germany to see places like Berlin, Dresden, and Munich it is easy to forget there is so much more to the country than the past 80 odd years. 

One of my favourite things about Göttingen was the story behind this statue. The  Gänseliesel (Goose Girl) stands in the old town square, and is possibly the most-kissed little girl in the whole of Germany. Whenever a university student is presented with their doctorate, it is traditional for them to present  Gänseliesel with a bouquet of flowers and give her a kiss. I found that story unaccountably sweet. For me it kind of summed up the kind of place Göttingen is.

After three nights with Josh I gathered up my bag and my hangover and made my way to Berlin. A word on foreign languages: no matter what you think you know, you really don't. I went to Germany confident that I couldn't speak the language (knowing that Auf Wiedersehen means the same as so long, farewell and goodbye is about as complex as my German gets) but even if I'd come fully equipped with a litany of helpful phrases I still would have been utterly perplexed. So fast! So accented! Happily everyone seemed to speak English, and all the Germans I came into contact with were super helpful.

By the time I arrived in Berlin I was starving and exhausted, so imagine my dismay when my hostel told me they'd overbooked my room. Things turned around pretty quicksmart though. They upgraded me to a private room (with en suit! luxury!) for free, and I found a lovely little Italian restaurant just around the corner. It was run by actual Italians (I know because they spoke more Italian than German) who were so pleased by my joy at discovering they did take away orders that they sat me down and fed me bread until my pasta was done. And while usually being alone in a hostel room would strike me as counter-productive, having the shower and light switch all to myself came pretty close to paradise at the time.

Berlin proved just as brilliant as I'd come to hope. Parts of it, admittedly, are blighted by the Nazi history. The courtyard where they burnt the books, for example, is surrounded by beautiful buildings that stand as testament to the city's previously liberal history - a church (designed by Frederick the great), a library, a university. The Brandenburg Gate is inextricably linked now with the image of Hitler walking into the city as the new Chancellor. And the Holocaust memorial is just beyond sad.

But Berlin is also really impressive. The Brandenburg isn't lessened as a piece of architecture because of one event. The museums are brilliant (I saw part of the wall of Babylon, for crying out loud). And it's also quite beautiful.

This building is a stunning church that looks about 500 years old. Actually it was only built about 160 years ago, when the then-king decided he needed older looking buildings to make the city more impressive. It's times like these I remember why I think the fall of the monarchy was probably for the best.

When I was in high school I took modern history. History was - is - one of my absolute favourite subjects. If you sat me down and offered me the choice between seven days in the tropics or seven days with an in-depth analysis of the past 300-odd years I'd take the plane ticket for the sole purpose of using it as a bookmark. If you make even a passing comment on the politics of the cold war in casual conversation you can wave goodbye to any chance you had of getting a word in edgewise for at least the next hour. In short, I'm a little bit of a history nerd. So when I was asked by a couple of my academic kindred spirits' one lesson what moment in history I would attend if given the chance it might have seemed like an impossible choice. It wasn't. If I could have been at any moment in history, I would have been at the fall of the Berlin Wall.

To say the Berlin Wall captivates me doesn't even come close to explaining how I feel. I had expected the wall to be more...well, frightening really. It was the cause of so much suffering. But in the end it was just a wall, which is why it fell. On the 9th of November 1989 a bumbling press secretary precipitated the greatest event in decades by uttering words to the effect of "I believe...immediately" on live international television and radio. Hundreds of East Berliners, people who had been taken without warning from normality and thrown into a state of constant terror, who hadn't seen friends and loved ones for almost 30 years swarmed out of their houses and peacefully ensured the destruction of one of the most oppressive regimes of the century. And when they made it over to the other side they were greeted by West Berliners handing out beer. 

You say you want a revolution?

Last night I was watching Mary Poppins with my kids when it occurred to me that I had never actually been to St Paul's Cathedral. Seen it, yes, but only ever from a distance. In fact, I mused, that whole "old London" area - St Paul's, Cheapside, the Square Mile - remained as much of a mystery to me as it had been when I lived half way across the world. So I resolved then and there to set out the next day to go and see it, wondering vaguely if there might still be a homeless lady peddling her wares on the steps of the great cathedral. 

What I found wasn't feed the birds, exactly. But it wasn't far off.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has gained a lot of attention over the past few weeks. Much has been made of the grass roots protest in the media - some for, some scathingly against. But more importantly the message of the Occupiers - basically that corporate greed has gone too far - has reached others who, no matter their race, religion or creed, have embraced the ideals behind the movement and joined in solidarity to the cause, both across America and the world. Including, for the last two days, London.

I had been dimly aware that Londoners were forming their own Occupying force, but I'd not paid enough attention to realise they were congregating around St Paul's. So when I arrived earlier today I was caught unawares. Although upon reflection, St Paul's - an indisputable beacon on wealth and power - seems a good a place as any to "stand in solidarity with the global oppressed and...
call for an end to the actions of our government and others in causing this oppression" (source: http://occupylondon.org.uk/).

I must admit, the reason I'd not paid too much attention to Occupy London is that I found the message of the movement a little trite coming from the (free NHS, readily available public housing, generally quite decent social security) mouths of the Brits. Because even though many of the social welfare schemes in Britain have been basically decimated by the governmental cut backs, compared with the situation in the US, the UK is living on easy street. Don't get me wrong: I am absolutely 100% for the Occupy Wall Street movement. What kind of bleeding heart lefty would I be if I didn't think all grass roots movements were utterly brilliant? And what kind of journalist would I be if I didn't get all hot and bothered by such an important socio-political event? I mean, thousands of hardworking, educated people putting aside all their differences to unite for a pertinent cause that effects all of them in ways simultaneously totally different and yet exactly the same? It's actually the stuff my wildest dreams are made of. But London just didn't seem like the kind of place such an event could happen with any kind of genuine clout.

I was wrong, though. Aside from the blatant agenda pushing (oh hi there, Marxist flyers from the communist- and socialist-party pushers), most of the people outside the cathedral seemed to believe they could honestly make their opinions, and the opinions of others like them, not only heard but matter on a global scale. And...I love that. It's real change, without spin or hidden malice. It's democracy. Even the clergymen who work at the cathedral were said to have supported the peaceful protest, personally asking police not to move anyone on. It was a Bob Dylan song in motion, complete with acoustic guitar and harmonica. It was a phenomenal feeling to be there, talking to people and not only allowing but willing them to challenge my preconceptions, even if only for a few hours. And really, what does it matter of the message in the UK is slightly different to the message in the US? What's important is that there is a message at all.



Early September and the kids start school

Today my boss was talking to a customer about how underwhelming this summer has been when she said
"You know it's probably not true, but I always remember when we were kids the summer being really warm and sunny all the time." For the past few months my host parents have been periodically apologising to me for the poor weather of the last few months. There was a moment last weekend when people started using the phrase Indian Summer (over-optimistically, it turns out), but for the most part this summer has been fairly cool and grey. And I haven't minded one bit. Until now. When my boss said that I realised Australians are incredibly lucky. Because what for many people is only an idealised fragment of memory is an annual reality for us. My summers have all been hot and sunny; they've been spent lazing on the beach and wearing slightly stiff, salt-encrusted clothes; I've fought valiantly but ultimately vainly against sunburn for 20 years, and never fully recognised that this kind of summer is the stuff of daydreams for millions.

The thing is, I don't even like Australian summers. In fact, I spend most of my time sweaty and red, refusing to go into direct sunlight between the hours of 10am and 4pm and wishing desperately for winter. And I honestly believe when England does manage to turn on the sun that summer here is infinitely more enjoyable than the antipodean version. London summer means 26 degree heat, picnics and Pimms.

So why this rush of false nostalgia for a season I moved 12,000 miles away to escape? Well, for one thing I accidentally started listening to this song again, an event that coincided directly with the beginning of warmer weather back in Aus. I got the chance to wear shorts and a tee-shirt about once, and sundresses sans-stockings maybe three times in the past three months. So the influx of facebook statuses celebrating the changing weather has made me - loathe though I am to admit it - a little jealous. Plus the kids have gone back to school, and routine has returned, lending my life a degree of normality I haven't experienced in several weeks. And so until leaves start falling and bonfires start blazing, my day-to-day is in the doldrums, giving me plenty of time to think about what I'll be missing as I skip out on the Australian summer.

1) Bare legs. Complain though I might about the need to shave on a bi-daily basis, it is really nice to walk around with nothing on below the mid-thigh region. I swear, I didn't think it was possible for my skin to become paler, but after 9 months of almost constant coverage my legs are practically transparent.

2) Beer. I don't understand. The British are a technologically advanced, reasonably civilised society (if you ignore Essex). So why, Why, WHY haven't they mastered beverage refrigeration? Pints might trump schooners and the Brits might do pubs better than any other country in the world, but drinking lukewarm beer can't hold a candle to a cold one fresh from an esky after a long hot summer's day.

3) The beach. This isn't restricted to summer, because I love the beach all the time. But I will miss jumping out of bed, racing to the sea and swimming for a blissful half hour before the beach becomes overrun by tourists and UV rays. Not to mention the brilliance that comes of combining the beach with the aforementioned chilled long-neck.

4) The sun. London might not be far north enough to experience 24 hours darkness, but it's close enough. The sun rises late, sets by 4pm, and spends most of the intervening hours cowering behind heavy cloud cover. It's enough to give a person SAD. And I don't even like the sun.

5) Storms. Summer storms are brilliant. So wild, so refreshing, so satisfyingly brief and brutal. The weather here is so weak-willed in comparison.

6) Fresh fruit. Oooooooh god mangoes. What I wouldn't give.

In reality I doubt I'll miss much of anything in two months, when everyone in the southern hemisphere is complaining of 40 degree heat and I'm warm and cosy up here in the north, with my big winter jacket and underfloor heating to keep out the chill of the English winter. But if anyone wants to send me a copy of the latest Hottest 100 in January to remind me what I'm missing out on, then I wont mind enduring a little jealousy. But only a little.

Ou est la Eiffel Tower?

I almost never made it to Paris.

Tired and not a little hungover I committed the cardinal sin of travellers: I left home without my passport. Honestly, how can you leave for a foreign country and forget the one thing that guarantees you'll make it across the border? It boggles the mind. So, after rushing home to collect it and being driven "Notting Hill" style back to the coach station by my host mum and kids I had managed to miss my bus, and was staring straight down the line of a completely disastrous weekend. However my host mum convinced me that throwing money at the problem until I got what I wanted was the way to go, so I paid £179 for a train to Paris.

Admittedly £179 is a huge amount but, as Sian told me, if I didn't pay the money then in five years' time I sure wouldn't be £179 better off, and all I'd have would be the memories from the weekend I either went or almost went to Paris. And it was the best decision I could possibly have made. Oh Lord, how can I even begin to put into words how much I loved Paris?

I arrived on Friday night and, after having to call on my host family to save me for the second time that day by providing directions to my elusive hostel, I went for a stroll through Montmartre in search of a beer and some late-night Parisian watching. As I wandered I found myself surrounded by an ever-increasing number of sex shops, and just as I began to consider whether it was particularly safe for me to be walking in the red-light district alone at night I caught a glimpse of what looked like the arm of a windmill. Sure that there couldn't be more than one fluro windmill in Paris I quickened my step and found myself stumbling upon the Moulin Rouge. If nothing else had happened that whole weekend I think that moment alone would have warranted my train ticket. It was such a surreal moment - I could hardly believe this was actually my life. It was awesome.

The next day I jumped on a train and went out to Versailles. As it turns out, being young and living in the European Union has some perks, because instead of having to pay €27 to visit the Palace I only had to pay €8, which (irrationally) made me feel better about paying extra for the train.

Versailles is even more breathtaking in reality than in the photos I'd seen. There is really no way for the scope and beauty of the Palace to be conveyed in celluloid. It is phenomenal. The gardens are immaculate, replete with dozens of fountains and statues hidden within a giant hedge maze before morphing into literally miles of well-kept parkland, all of which leads you to both the Grand and Petit Trianon. Of all the places within Versailles, the Petite Trianon is most irrevocably linked to Marie-Antoinette. The area was gifted to her by Louis XVI, and it is the only part of Versailles ever to be seriously marked by the personal tastes of a single Queen.

The inside of the Palace is somehow even more amazing than the outside.

 But despite - or more likely because of - all the beauty Versailles made me feel slightly sickened. The place is enormous. The ceilings are so tall, and covered in massive murals. Every room is papered, carpeted and decorated to the nines. The furniture is priceless. And everything - EVERYTHING - is gilded. There is so much gold in that place that I don't even know what. The French revolution was admittedly a bloodbath, and a mostly ineffectual bloodbath at that. But if I had been a starving Frenchman in the 18th century and I'd seen Versailles I would have kicked off too. The ruling class just had too much. And although Versailles is so close to the centre of Paris, it is so easy to forget there's anything at all outside those big gold gates. It's like a world of it's own, where it probably seemed ok to spend all your money on clothes and food and parties, and where "let them eat cake" would have been a perfectly reasonable answer (whether or not she actually said that). But seeing Versailles I completely understood why the masses were baying for blood.

That evening I went back to my hostel and met Angele, a French-Canadian girl who was staying in the same room as me for the weekend. She asked if I'd like to come with her on a pub crawl and naturally I said yes. At the Metro station we met up with three other people from the hostel who were heading to the same place, so we all made our way into the city centre together. When we arrived at the supposed first pub there was no sign of the group we were looking for, so Angele used her super handy French skills to ask at the bar. As it turned out the pub crawl was totally bogus. But, not to waste an evening, we all went to the supermarket and bought bread, cheese and wine, and headed for the Eiffel Tower. While searching for a corkscrew we made friends with two Texan girls, and the seven of us sat under the Tower and had a quintessential French wine picnic, before heading back to Montmartre.

The hostel I was staying at had a 2am curfew, which was really unfortunate because by 3am the group had become fragmented, and I found myself cold and exhausted wandering around the streets of Paris alone when some guy came up and started talking to me in French. I managed to conjure up enough high school French to say "Je ne parle pas Fracais", at which point he switched to English before kissing me. I wasn't sure if I was totally ok with this turn of events, but I was too tired to fight it, so I just went with the flow until he asked if I wanted to come home with him. To the 14th arrondissement. Montmartre is in the 18th arrondissement, and there was no way I was going all the way to the 14th, so I turned him down. He seemed unfazed by my refusal and just led me into a side street instead, where he started taking off his clothes and trying to convince me to have sex with him there. Which I didn't. Even in Europe I feel there should be some lines I don't blithely wander across, and having sex with a stranger in a Parisian alley seemed like a pretty good place to stop.

Eventually I made it back to the hostel, and after about 4 hours sleep I went out into the city again. I don't think I could have had a more touristy day if I'd tried. And believe me, I did try. First up I climbed the Eiffel Tower. And I mean climbed. There was no way I was taking the damn lift.

Then I walked across the Seine to the Arc de Triomphe, which I also climbed.

And then I took a walk down a busy street, and realised I was hungry. Since I was on such a well-known French street I decided to have the most well-known French dish I could find. For the record: escargot are DELICIOUS! Ooooh I loved them.

Finally I went to the Louvre. I had hoped to visit Notre Dame afterwards, but I'd underestimated how much time I would spend at the Louvre. I wandered through the whole museum, saving it's most famous room for last. When I did finally make it to the Mona Lisa I was... well. I had heard people complain that she was too small, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a normal, portrait sized painting in front of me. But while I understand the need to protect such an important artwork, I feel like the Mona Lisa is protected to the point of detriment. It's hard to really see the painting from a foot away and through such a thick pane of glass. Still, I can now say I've seen what is possibly the most famous portrait in the world, so that's something.

On Monday I woke up early and walked around the corner to the Sacre Coeur before checking out of my hostel. Then I bought some more bread and cheese and had a picnic by Montmartre cemetery. Which might seem like a morbid place to eat my final meal in France, but it's actually a really beautiful place. And it's where a bunch of famous French people are buried, soI was in good company.

I was really very sad to leave Paris. It's easily one of my favourite cities, and I didn't even come close to doing everything I wanted to. I can't wait to go back.