Selfie at the Fossil Dunes, Abu Dhabi

I was reading an article last week and I came to the sudden realisation that I've been living temporarily, or as they say, living with one foot out the door. That is to say, although we've been living in Abu Dhabi for a year so far, I haven't really admitted or committed to it emotionally or geographically. I still tell people I'm "abroad," and I'm still working UK hours. I do everything in terms of what's going on "back home". I have one foot firmly planted in the whirling sands of the desert, enjoying the spectacular sights and new experiences that you get here, but equally, my other foot is already out the door and on its way back to England.

I haven't updated my blog at all with what's happening here because I've been so worried about being judged for being away while still running my business back home - nevermind that I'm still working especially hard, while my very capable mother-in-law keeps things going on-site. Whatever will people think? What will people say when they think I'm off swanning overseas in perceived luxury (I know that's what I thought of before visiting here), when the idea of here is so very different. I'd also been worried about why it was worrying me - just for good measure, I suppose. Where's home? Where's here?

So in all of this quiet worrying, we've still been living life. I've been quietly enjoying things like visiting the Fossil Dunes (that's the picture, above) just outside of Abu Dhabi. We got a bit lost on the way there, and ended up driving around the camel racing track which is smack-bang in the middle of some dunes and is barely contained. We waved to the riders and admired the long eyelashes on the happy camels. We finally ignored the SatNav and just drove straight over the dunes to arrive at our destination. Oh, how things are different.

The other thing that really struck me, while being here, is that people often ask - so where are you from? It's the first thing a taxi driver will ask you, and we get a lot of taxis as they're often a quicker and cheaper form of transport than anything else. It's also one of the first questions that they ask you at school, while the parents natter over the watercooler while waiting for the children to finish school. So where are you from? Often, people try to guess based on your accent. No, I'm not Australian. No, I'm not Syrian.

It's a loaded question. I'm from South Africa. I was born there, I grew up there. My family is there. But home seems to be England, where I've spent the last ten years. Ten! I don't know how that happened so quickly. That's where my two children were born. Where I met my WI family. Where we bought a house. I've felt conflicted when answering that question, as if saying that I'm from England is somehow betraying my family in South Africa. But practically, it's just giving someone a frame of reference for the following conversation. I suppose I've just really not set aside the time to process and understand what this means to me, or to consider why it's having such a profound impact on my sense of self.

And really, it hadn't occurred to me before this that living this way - struggling with this dual-heritage but now displaced diasporic lifestyle in a temporary setting - has the potential to be really unhealthy. I hadn't quite realised the extent of the impact it was having on me personally, and also on my family. It's a silly thing, surely? Everyone here is from somewhere. Everyone here has a home that's elsewhere. Yet for some reason, it's quite a big thing to me.

The one thing that is really quite marvellous about living as an expat in the desert is that there are shops, restaurants and social activities to represent just about every nation. We were so excited to see that there is a Waitrose here where we'd be able to get our favourite British foods and ingredients. We were doubly excited to see that it also stocks a number of our favourite South African goodies that we haven't had in years. There - in Waitrose - the three nations coexist so happily. Yes, you can buy Ouma's rusks and Mrs Ball's chutney in the British supermarket in the middle of the desert. It's a wondrous thing.

And so - I suppose, I want to share these things with you. I want to tell you about the spice markets, and about the old fishing dhows that meander down the waterways. I want to tell you about sandstorms, and navigating yarn shops where the owners only speak Arabic so you have to use hand signals. I want to tell you about how delicious moutabbal is, how we're using up buckets of sumac and that time when I accidentally bought laban instead of a bottle of milk because they looked the same and there wasn't any English on the signage.

So, I hope that I'm back. I hope that you'll join me for the short time that we're here before we embark on our next adventure - although, we're not sure where or when that will be. I left a part of my heart back in our home in England, and quite a large part of it in the tiny but beautiful shop we run in Westcliff-on-Sea. There's another big part back in Cape Town with my family. Even so - there's still a bigger part right here with me in the Arabian desert. I don't know if those holes ever fill up, but I think that embracing what we're doing right now goes a long way to healing the hurts and making way for new adventures.

Our beach, mangrove forest, city skyline.

Happy New Year to you and yours! What an interesting year 2018 was. Full of opportunities, learning and changes. I keep thinking about a post that I must write, a moment that I must share, but I haven't stopped in the last six months. Not even for a minute. Not even to jot down notes or stitch a tiny bit of that embroidery or even have a play with paints. All I've done is work. It's been the most bizzare time of change, upheaval, acceptance and opportunity, and I find myself back here as a way to share our journey with you all, my friends and family who seem further now than once before. Shall I tell you what's been happening? You might need a cuppa for this.

I'd been working a lot of long hours, seven days a week - making soap, wrapping orders, attending markets and events, stocking shops - and was burning out fast. I couldn't sleep, I was constantly ill, and I was struggling with a thyroid problem that the doctors just couldn't crack. And then in the blink of an eye, Isla turned four. We had a unicorn party (with a pinata of course). We started a new school year. We moved into our soap workshop, and I started teaching classes more regularly. And then - Graeme was offered a job abroad, and accepted it. I was suddenly a single parent with two children and a more-than-full-time job. I burnt out.

We'd agreed that the best decision (for now, for health and happiness) was to follow Graeme a few months later, packing up our most treasured belongings to pursue an opportunity in the UAE. My heart was broken, my soap business - a true labour of love and commitment - would need someone to nurture and grow it. And I'd always seen that as my job. In a marvellous meeting of opportunities, this coincided with exactly the moment that my mother-in-law decided to emigrate and return home to her native United Kingdom.

More and more people are switching to bar soap which is a brilliant thing for the planet, and for everyone's skin which has collectively long suffered from exposure to the harmful chemicals included in liquid soaps and handwashes (included for their ability to dilute and stretch the product, and to prolong the shelf life of liquid soaps or body washes, producing a commercially viable product). Every month we meet new people who have suffered with eczema, who get rashes from body wash, or who are newly enlightened to the benefits of using natural soap. They tell us their stories, share their journeys with us, join our family. It's an incredible place to be - humbling, honoured. We've expanded, and now have two people who help out and Audrey (my amazing mother-in-law) has jumped in to help too, making soap and wrapping orders. She's become the gardener who looks after the seeds I've planted. Once again, I've been so humbled and honoured to have family like this, it takes a lot of patience to share an inherited dream and to work across continents to make something that is so filled with love.

We recently did a few markets together and so many other traders were appalled and completely taken aback that I was working with my mother-in-law. Yes, we do get along. No, she's not wicked. We are actually rather good friends!

And what of moving? Well, we did it. We've been here in Abu Dhabi for a little over a week. It isn't permanent by any stretch of the imagination but it is home for now, a base for traveling and for our comings and goings across the world as we go between home in South Africa to visit family, and home in England to work and to teach soapmaking. It feels a bit like a no-man's land to me right now, but I'm sure in time it will evolve. I can't spend crazy hours in our workshop making soap any more, I can't work late nights wrapping soap, and I can't attend market after market after market while I'm here. So that means I can do all the things that I've not had a chance to: a new brochure, an updated website, better social media posts, blogging. Most of all, experimental soapmaking. The spices and teas here are extraordinary, my mind has been reeling with ideas and new combinations that would be the perfect addition to a luxury bath time collection.

And of course, all the things that I've been wanting to do for me. Watercolours. Project Life books. Studying. Are you on instagram? I'm sharing my progress there. I'll be back here more, too, with big group updates so you can all see at once. Skype and Whatsapp calls are blocked here, so we've had to come up with new creative ways to communicate with relatives abroad. I'm going to try post a little more regularly with the things we're discovering as we travel, and the things I'm making too as we go along. I've enrolled to the Herbal Academy's introductory herbal foundation course which I'm thoroughly enjoying and so excited about. I've unpacked my paintbrushes and notebooks. It's time, I think, to get creative.

It's been an incredibly busy time here. My soap business has grown wings and taken flight off into the sky, and I'm flapping about underneath trying to keep up with it - measuring, making, cutting, wrapping. It used be something I did in the evenings after the children went to bed, now it's a full time job. It's an honour and a privilege to be making soap for families all over the world, and I've learnt a great deal about soapmaking and all of the amazing ingredients that I use every day. But still. Sometimes, we need to go slow.

My family have been to visit me this past week and it was magic. We had so many ups, so many happy moments, so many shared laughs and hugs. I feel so responsible for causing the distance by moving away to pursue other opportunities, but it makes the time we have together full of love. Parting is such deep sorrow though, and I think that's when the distance feels impossible.

And so - I've slowed right down. This week I'll be finishing off all of my outstanding projects and deadlines at work, and then I'll be taking stock and considering what needs to happen and how. I'm two modules away from completing my diploma in reflexology which has been a much-needed escape, and then my aromatherapy diploma starts not long after that. I've been reading everything I can find on folklore and herbalism, circling back to my degrees in fairy tales and the role of the women in communities. It's so funny to come back after ten years of living outside of books. It was inevitable, I think, that I would find solace and self-time in the pages of second hand journals discovered in charity shops and elsewhere.

Next week, I'll start my embroidery tutorials leading the some 20,000 downloads of my "life is beautiful" embroidery sampler through the different stitches and colours that I used to create this little sampler. I think that some scheduled down time, working with my hands away from soap, may be just what's needed.

May is very nearly gone, and that's happened really suddenly! This big boy turned two a few days ago which I can hardly believe. Happy birthday Finnlay, you are magnificent!

He has grown into a brilliant child full of ideas, boisterous enthusiasm and helpfulness that is well-balanced by an ethereal sensitivity. It's magic to watch him grow. We step through the days with vigour at the moment, tiptoeing between cars strewn around the house and picking up bumbling toddlers who throw themselves into everything. Sometimes the days feel unreasonably long, and I look forward to bath time so I can focus on work and get things ticked off the list. Other days disappear far too quickly, and I long for weekends where I don't have to work (rarely) and for time not occupied by looming deadlines. It's a tough balancing act between being a working mama and a guilty-feeling parent.

In my infrequent "me time" after the children are in bed, I've been crocheting. It is slow going. It's a focus thing, I think, as a way to keep mindful about the day while winding up my to-do lists in my head. I've made some socks which has been quite a brilliant learning activity, and I've already got some new yarn to try out a variation which is rather exciting. I used to think of knitting and crochet as my winter sports but spring is here and I've got no intention of packing the hooks away any time soon.

And, I haven't forgotten my promise to do a step-by-step embroidery tutorial with photographs, that's happening soon. Things are going to get really busy and super crafty around here very soon, so watch this space.

The busy season for markets, festivals and events in July, and I shall start finding more time (I keep promising myself) to do the things that I've wanted to do for forever. Before then, though, I've got a workshop to decorate from the ground up (not the nice kind of decorating either - the painting, flooring and roofing type! - more on that in another post), some big decisions to make and lots and lots of soapmaking and teaching! It feels a bit impossible to fit personal time and making in amongst all of these things, but the slow moments of making and mindfulness are the ones that centre us the most. There's something so internal and therapeutic about making something useful and beautiful. I know that "therapy" is an awfully dirty word in most circles, but it does seem most apt at the moment when we need more love and less stress!

The garden is looking magnificent as the weather improves - the strawberries are nearly here, the tomatoes have grown into towering green monsters and the beans are working their way up and over the beanpoles. There are peppers on their way, a pumpkin, chillies and raspberries. The apples and pears are starting to look more fruit-shaped than flowers which is exciting (and good for the soul). I expect a healthy and happy glut from the garden this year, and I look forward to experimenting with a thousand different ways to cook with the enormous yield of tomatoes we're expecting. I'll have to get out there and get some photos to share with you all. Do you use instagram? You can find me here on my personal account and here for work. I'm going to make a big effort to post on my personal account more regularly and I work my way through testing shots for embroidery and other bits. Come and say hello!