A Life in a Day of the Rockers

He says...

Good heavens it seems like forever since I've hit the “PUBLISH POST” button. Christmas, a fantastic beach holiday, the indescribable trauma of sending our children away to boarding school, adjusting to an empty nest, a wildly different work routine, some hectic travel have all gotten in the way of Mr Rocker speaking his mind. But today I find myself on a plane again next to a smelly passenger so what to do? Write a post.

I wonder if we'll ever have a normal life, or even if we want one. The day dawned normal enough. An alarm clock, an annoying hungry cat, wake the children, a family breakfast around the table with some scrambled egg on toast, orange juice, superb coffee made from freshly ground Arabica espresso beans (just like life is too short to read a crappy book or have crappy sex, bad coffee is also a Schedule 1 offence), a cursory glance at SkyNews to catch up on world affairs and time for the Rockers to Rock and Roll. Mrs Rocker kisses me and the kids in their school uniforms goodbye and heads off to work. But that's probably where all semblance of normality ceases since today was the first morning after half-term break. Mr Rocker and Rocker Kids bundle into the Audi and head off to the border, clear the border into South Africa, drive to Johannesburg International Airport. I check the kids onto one flight, myself onto another, leave them at a Sushi Bar for lunch (sigh, I wish they just ate burgers like other kids) and head across to the other side the city to drop Mrs Rocker's car off for some um... repairs, catch a taxi back to the airport, meet up with the Rocker Kids again at their boarding gate, spend another 30min with them before hugs and “goodbye see you in 3 weeks" and then I head off to my own boarding gate leaving them at theirs. By the time the night is through, I will have flown 2 hours in one direction, the Rocker kids (all 13years and 10 years old of them) 2 hours in another direction before boarding a bus for the final 1.5hour trip to their schools. Tonight the Rockers will sleep scattered all over the subcontinent, in a roughly equilateral triangle but with each side of the triangle roughly a 1000miles in length.

And this is the year that the Rockers are planning to lead a more normal life! So far so good though, After 157 flights last year, this is only now my 14^th flight of this year with not too many additional flights planned for the foreseeable future. I've spent more time at home in the last month and a half than I have the last 2 years put together. I feel almost normal! And tonight when I Skype home it will be normal conversation not like last year's antipodean conversations that went along the lines of the following...

Mrs Rocker: “Hi, honey how was your day?”

Mr Rocker: “Honey, I'm in New Zealand, I just woke up silly”

Mrs Rocker: “Oh right, forgot about that, so how did you sleep?”

Mr Rocker: “Yeah great thanks, how did you sleep?”

Mrs Rocker: “Honey, I've just got back from work silly”

...and so on.

Yes, there's a lot to be said for living in more or less the same time zone!