Moving On Up

Four years ago, a simple text message received from my husband proved to be one that changed not only my life but that of my family. The two words read simply: “Got Cyprus”. This brevity of term was the culmination of an ongoing saga of previous months of decisions, application form filling, frantic car and train journeys to interviews and endless telephone and email watching. The arrival of this news heralded the end of the stress and hassle and the beginning of an extended holiday on the Island of Aphrodite.Or so I thought.....
Isn’t naivety a wonderful refuge? Little did I know, as I accessed the inbox on my mobile phone that I was, in fact, opening a massive Pandora’s Box of bureaucracy, frustration, negotiation and an enormous culture shock that was the transition from Civilian Life to working with the military overseas.
Now, please don’t get me wrong, nearly four years on and we’re still rubbing shoulders with a bunch of hard-working, dedicated souls who have earned our ultimate respect, and, frankly, even had I been warned exactly what I could expect, I still would have no regrets. But, one has to admit, it really has caused me to look back and realise that life as a military wife is no walk in the park, even when the setting is a Mediterranean paradise such as Cyprus.
Having spent nearly 20 years as a civil servant, I truly believed that I was “au-fait” with the subtleties and apparently meaningless methods that the government applies daily to confound, confuse and mesmerise us into submission, They call it ‘paperwork’, a modern form of witchcraft which has the ability to transform a simple, achievable task into a labyrinth of u-turns, dead-ends and spaghetti junctions. This was our first challenge- to negotiate the mountainous pile of referenced, cross-referenced and indexed forms that came our way, in order for us to justify our existence as creatures in a system that appears unable to permit breaking wind without a rubber-stamped approval. We foolishly took for granted the assumption that two government departments held the wherewithal to communicate effectively between one another and soon learnt that no degree of security clearance with any other authority held any sway whatsoever with the painfully drawn-out system of vetting we had to withstand before we were to set foot on Cypriot soil. We soon learnt that any date of arrival quoted to us was actually gleaned from an entirely different and unique calendar used solely by the Ministry of Defence. Thus, our estimated moving day slowly transformed from October, through to Christmas, eventually settling to January.
When the confirmed moving day was set in stone, we faced our next challenge – preparing to move all our worldly goods some 2000 miles to a remote island. Here is where I offer my utmost respect to those individuals and families who find themselves having to face this mind-blowing task every few years. The job basically involves taking all the furniture, ornaments, bric-a-brac and beloved possessions contained within a typical home, and attempting to shoe-horn them into a large metal box, not much larger than your average car-port. It is a surprisingly emotional task as the first step inevitably is the paring-down of items into essential and non-essential and it is this point that you develop a heart-rendingly sentimental attachment to the teapot that Auntie Matilda gave you as a wedding present, and that has resided in the cupboard under the sink for the past decade. If you have children, this issue is compounded further as they have an uncanny ability to foster a sudden and unprecedented need for any toy which they have unfortunately just witnessed being deposited a nearby bin-bag. On the other hand, you also discover friends you never knew you had when word gets out that you have box-loads of items to give away for free, and you find yourself on first-name terms with the ladies of the local charity shops.
When you have consigned all your possessions to a mini-Stonehenge of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and brown packing paper (having checked for the umpteenth time that the family cat has not made a cosy home amongst your spare duvet covers), it is time to sit and wait for the Big Red Van to spirit your hard-attained goods across the sea, where hopefully, you will be reunited some six weeks later.
At this stage, if you do not have the untamed hell of the march-out clean, may I recommend you hold your leaving party in the empty shell of your house before it is re-decorated for future residents. Forget the ‘bring-a-bottle’ etiquette, by the end of the night, you’ll be foisting all your left-over booze and dodgy liqueurs to anyone who’ll take it.
And so….the fateful day of our New Lives finally arrived one drizzly day in January. Having said all our emotional farewells and handed the key of our house to the Letting Agents we packed ourselves and our multiple suitcases into our hire car and headed up to RAF Brize Norton. The terminal itself, although small was a refreshing change from the cold, faceless world of commercial airports, the staff were understanding, warm and helpful and did not bat an eye at the frankly ridiculous excess of baggage we shamefully produced.
The flight itself, although a little noisier than your average Easy-Jet plane trip was also surprisingly comfortable and stress-free, even with two children under 6 who attempted every trick in the book to try the patience of their parents, the cabin crew and all their fellow passengers.
Touching down at RAF Akrotiri, it still hadn’t dawned upon us that we would now be calling this place home. The warmth of the Cypriot climate, the smell of the Mediterranean, the buzz of the drowsy mosquitoes all alluded to holidays we had taken in the past and it wasn’t until we arrived at our new home that the truth began to seep through.
I was very fortunate in that my first-impressions of our allocated quarters were positive. I’ve since heard many, many horror stories of people who have arrived at homes that have seen better days and, despite the sterling efforts of the local Housing Office, sadly betray the woeful inadequacies of the MOD budgets. My heart goes out to these people, who, many, miles away from home, in a strange country find themselves having to make a family home with very limited resources. It is fully to their credit that not only do the majority achieve this, but they also do it with a positive spirit and cheerful disposition.
Our worst challenge was negotiating the baffling contents of the “get you in pack”, enduring the tortuous discomfort of Military-issue furniture and learning to live without a microwave for the first six weeks of or new life. Needless to say, the day the Big Red Van arrived with our worldy goods was an occasion for great jubilation, heralded by a celebratory microwave dinner and a glass of wine in non-plastic cups.
I am pleased to report that settling in to military life at Akrotiri was a painless and surprisingly easy affair. People here were extremely welcoming and had a great degree of empathy for the newcomer, understanding better than others the impact detachment from family, friends and all things familiar.
Once I had reconciled my original resistance of being a “Wife Of” (in my opinion an archaic and insulting concept which my career-minded, post-suffragette sensitivities railed against heartily), I was able to relax into the Akrotiri way of life.
Most profoundly, as a civilian moving into a military environment, I found my respect for its’ personnel increase exponentially. From my ‘other life’ in my comfortable, suburban existence, it was easy to subscribe to the common belief that soldiers, airmen and sailors families made their lifestyle choices and therefore should expect to suffer the demands and consequences of their jobs uncomplainingly. I also am ashamed to admit that I had jumped upon the bandwagon of having very little concern or sympathy for those involved in the troubles in Afghanistan. Meeting the families involved with these brave individuals put paid to that flawed and frankly bigoted opinion. Witnessing first-hand the strength of character and courage exhibited by every member of these families, be they the servicemen and women or the field or the partners who have to maintain a secure and happy home-life whilst living in fear of the knock-on-the-door, has humbled me incredibly. I now feel a great privilege to walk amongst these extraordinary people.And, of course, doing it on a sun-soaked, beautiful holiday island is a bit of a bonus.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about learning to live amongst “the natives”, the lovely, curious, baffling yet warm Cypriots.