1 LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES Ih ave always liked plane travel at night. It’s as if I am in a dark, peaceful bubble being soothed by the gentle throb of the engine and the repetitive hum of the air conditioning. No one can bother me. Except for tonight. Tonight I had the seat from hell. I was on the aisle in the centre row of four. A small noisy girl was next to me, then her mother, then a smaller louder boy. The children were bouncing on the chairs and over the harried woman, fl icking lights on and off , wailing, and slapping over juice cups as though they were bowling pins. The mother had clearly lost control. Every now and then the little girl froze and gave me a demonic stare. I burrowed deeper into my blanket hoping to be too inanimate to be of interest. Closing my eyes I wished myself back to my high-fl ying corporate days when I sometimes fl ew business class. Flat beds; fi ne wines; no plastic forks; movies of choice. And best of all . . . no kids! As though telepathic, an air hostess soon glided down the aisle, winked conspiratorially and off ered me a row of three empty seats away from the adjoining circus. I hesitated for an appropriate 1 ON THE ROAD . . . WITH KIDS second, then launched across the aisle as though shot from an ejector seat. When my wife, Mandy, distracted by another of our kids’ drink spills, fi nally noticed my absence, she looked at me as though I had just taken the last chopper out of a hot zone. Mandy and I took turns in the three-seat row during the fl ight, allowing me space to think about what lay ahead. There were a lot of unknowns to consider. I may have been strapped in by the seatbelts but couldn’t restrain my thoughts from running off in anticipation. They all focused on the seven-berth motor home waiting for us in the Netherlands. Months earlier, we’d zapped off 14,000 euros to buy it over the internet. I was slightly concerned we had been sucked into an internet scam, but the image of this wonderful craft had been seared into my mind for months, even dreamt about for years, and had recently transformed into a magical star ship that promised to provide our travelling family with nirvana for the next year. Consequently, two days later, on a grey Tuesday morning in August, on the way to view this new motor home, I was so excited I was quivering more than a wet puppy in a cold wind. The dream was about to come true. (cid:2) Donna, an eccentric Dutch American who bought and sold used motor homes for a living, chatted away about her cats while weaving her little red Fiat from lane to lane down the motorway out of Utrecht. As her car could only carry one passenger, Mandy and the kids had remained back at the hotel, mainly because I had begged and pleaded with Mandy to be the fi rst to drive the machine. Donna soon pulled off the highway and the car bounced down a narrow dirt path, stopping behind a dilapidated old farmhouse and windmill. 2 LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES ‘It’s in here, John.’ She pointed to the windmill. It seemed a very strange place for a professional operation to store motor homes. Donna jumped out of her car and wrenched back the windmill’s big timber doors in a surprising show of strength. ‘Look. Look at it!’ she cried. I peered beyond the doors and felt an instant gush of relief. Inside the shed were rows of renovated gleaming antique cars. Donna obviously had a passion for autos and was just the right person, I thought, to have cared for our new home during the past few months since we’d bought it. I squinted further into the dark recesses of the shed, eager for the fi rst view of the motor home, as though on a blind date. Donna fl icked a switch, the lights blinked and a dark shape slowly came into focus. I gaped in silence, frozen to the ground. This fi rst sight of our motor home was supposed to be a moment of exultation, of trumpets blaring ‘Hallelujah’, declaring a life-reclaiming event was about to begin. Instead I stared in complete and utter devastation. In the rear corner of the shed sat a big white box with faded red racing stripes down the side. The engine hood was open, with cables attached to various parts as though it were on life support. The ‘thing’ was covered in a thick fi lm of dust. It sat there discarded, disowned and decrepit, in teasing contrast to the sparkling antiques surrounding it. ‘We’ve had some problems getting it started,’ Donna said. ‘Uh huh,’ was my reply. Mandy and I had gambled everything for this shit heap. We had no jobs, no income and had just torn a hole in our savings. Our car was sold, the house rented, probably to the Manson family. All our beloved possessions were in a storage shed gathering cobwebs. We were about to launch into a world without TV, internet, telephones, friends, family, toys or schooling for the kids. We had an old laptop with some children’s DVDs, one small backpack of clothes each and 3 ON THE ROAD . . . WITH KIDS no idea where we were going or for how long. And I was about to sleep, eat, pee and shower together with my wife and our two kids for a year in this rolling box smaller than our bedroom. I stared long and hard at the motor home, wondering again how I had got here. (cid:2) It all began on Christmas Day the year before. My brother-in-law Terry and I had been playing a swashbuckling game of table tennis, progres- sively hitting the balls harder as we smashed our way around; two male egos in our own gladiatorial ping-pong arena. With two points to win, I launched across the table wildly. Swinging the bat in a long arc, pain ripped into my back as though a sniper had shot me with a hot bullet. In noiseless slow motion I landed on the ground. For long seconds I lay there staring at the sky, waiting, blinking. ‘Get up, ya wimp!’ came the call from across the net. I moved and cried out in pain. I immediately thought I had burst a disc, but I was wrong. I had burst two discs, the lower two. This was the fi rst in a series of shock strikes that would create the revolutionary period I would later refer to as when my back went ‘snap’ and my career went ‘poof’. I was mostly bedridden for the next two weeks, sucking on valium pills like they were sugar-coated lollies. The drugs worked on my back but could not dull my whirring brain. I insisted on working, literally fl at out, making calls to the offi ce from my bed and whacking away on the laptop day and night. I was on the executive team for a global public listed company, and had been negotiating to buy another company in India for the past year. It had become my own personal mission that I lived and breathed. Unfortunately my kids didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. They kept surging into my bedroom, curious and 4 LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES entertained by the sight of their dad, horizontal and at home during the day. My four-year-old daughter Jaimie, as usual, led the charge one sunny morning, her blonde hair falling down over her blue eyes and freckles. She stood, smiling in her giraff e pyjamas with a hopeful glint in her eye, the spokesperson for every plot she and her two-year-old brother Callum hatched. He was smaller, with his grandmother’s olive skin and a mop of brown hair, and stood loyally next to her in red Spiderman pyjamas waiting for my attention. They reminded me of C3PO and R2D2, the taller, chattier one always blaming the littler one who couldn’t speak properly for anything that went wrong. ‘Do you want to play dolly with us . . . pleeease?’ Jaimie pleaded, handing me her unattractive doll. I held ‘Scary Dolly’, as she was aff ectionately known, up in front of my laptop. ‘Oh, I can’t, kiddies. I have to work.’ Scary Dolly and her two pyjama-clad sidekicks would have to wait. ‘Aw! Can you sing “Barbie Girl” with us?’ That was one of my specialties. ‘Nup. Sorry. Later.’ Their faces dropped and they soon scurried off , but my eyes followed them, a little thought drifting like a ghost behind them. I started replaying the past few days and nights. I’d watched Mandy pick the kids up and put them to bed while I stood by like a broken appendage. When would I be able to hold them? And how could I keep a job if I couldn’t sit upright? My work? Shit, my work! What was I doing? I had no time for these distractions. I turned back to my computer, but soon fl oated further off into weird thought-bubbles of acute clarity, losing hours staring at the ceiling, thinking. Pop! My work sucked. Well, more so the people, not the actual work. I had buried this knowledge for some time, but the unusual cocktail of excessive spare time, a comfy big bed and valium pills had 5 ON THE ROAD . . . WITH KIDS burst the thought wide open. An infl ux of new people had created a pervading ‘me’ culture at work. Trust and loyalty were eroding. Redun- dancies were happening for the fi rst time. I had revelled in the company for over a decade and I wasn’t averse to change but not like this. Weeks later I popped painkillers to attend an important board meeting to summarise the Indian deal. After so much isolated time in bed, my brain was whirring with confl icting thoughts and I entered the boardroom in a rather skittish frame of mind. The chairman was a legend of the corporate scene who delivered questions rapid fi re and expected precise answers. I was soon given the fl oor but was immediately cut off by one of my team members who took over the presentation. I was gobsmacked, but decided a confrontation in front of the board would not be good. Instead I eased back into my chair and tried to look unfl ustered. The presentation started with ‘As John was not available . . .’ confi rming the ‘me’ games I had avoided so well were now upon me. I don’t know if it was the valium or my sudden wish to be transported from the situation, but my mind drifted off to memories of a fellow I’d contracted to paint my house years earlier. I remembered he was always up on the roof, which was odd given I wasn’t getting the roof painted. ‘Hey Johnno!’ he screamed one afternoon. ‘Can’t you see it, man?’ ‘See what?’ I jumped, looking around for a snake. ‘The lines!’ the mad painter yelled. ‘You’re living between the lines, man!’ Standing in my shiny polyester grey suit, the 25-year-old me yelled upwards, ‘What are you talking about, man?’ This was back when it was cool to call everyone ‘man’. ‘The fucking lines, man! They’re trying to box us in! Everywhere you go, there are lines. This block of land,’ he waved his paintbrush. 6 LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES ‘Fences! Driving down the road . . . fucking lanes. Queuing at the bank! Swim between the fl ags. They’re trying to cage us in, man!’ I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, man. It won’t happen to me.’ ‘Ha! You’re already trapped, you poor bastard!’ he screeched. ‘You know it! Hopping to the beat. Playing the games. Get out. Escape . . . while you can!’ Was that even possible? It occurred to me that this boardroom world had played a large part in snuffi ng out the adventure in my existence. Riding on the rooftops of buses in Africa, or stowing away on a Colombian cargo plane over the Amazon, felt like dreams rather than memories. I heard my name and snapped back to attention, then realised it was only being used in the context of me not being available the last few weeks. I chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy chuckle. What folly, I thought. Here I was, barely able to sit up, and playing around me was a game of ego. My biggest worry over the past month had not been that I couldn’t carry my kids to bed but rather that some business in India might not get purchased. There was something awfully wrong with my priorities and, right then, the stranger I had become fi nally struck me. I was dragging myself to meetings at the expense of my health and ignoring my family at the same time. My career had become my defi ning priority. My social life was my work life. Adventure was a bygone concept. The mad painter was right. I had to escape. ‘Anything else to add, John . . . from your perspective?’ The pointed question jolted me out of my delirious state. All the important faces wheeled around at me like gun turrets. I stared back down their barrels taking in each one of them. I saw mentors, good guys and sociopaths. The seconds ticked away as they waited for my reply. My statement needed to be witty, detailed, professional and balanced. I had to brilliantly retake control. 7 ON THE ROAD . . . WITH KIDS But I no longer wanted to play. It suddenly all seemed so silly. My leg was jiggling under the table. It was a moment of discovery that I will never forget. It was the moment, for my working world, that I no longer gave a fuck. I didn’t even get up. I just took a deep breath, hoisted the white fl ag and said, ‘Nope.’ (cid:2) In the taxi home I became marginally psychotic, slapping myself on the forehead for my stupidity. Then I laughed, crazy like a demon. Then reality knocked again. I may have wanted to stick my middle fi nger in the air towards the working world, but I didn’t have that luxury. I was a husband and a father of two. I was the current breadwinner. We had a mortgage and responsibilities. My ‘nope’ was a blip. It had to be. With the acceptance that career and parenthood had captured my life, I trudged back into the house and slumped down on the couch feeling like I may as well have sawn off my own testes and hung them in the company trophy cabinet. The house was in darkness, the kids were in bed. It was a familiar scene: me arriving home late, a meal sitting on the kitchen bench with plastic covering it, waiting to be reheated. Mandy bounced down the stairs, keen to talk to someone over the age of four. I fi lled her in on my mad moment of surrender and started discussing my unavoidable fi ght-back before being interrupted by the kids’ yells about a spider in their room. Mandy went to investigate, leaving me on the couch thinking. It was becoming a dangerous pastime, this thinking. I knew that something had broken in me that day. And I knew I should be the one smashing that huntsman; spider killing was one of my key roles in the family. And yet my back meant I couldn’t even do that. What was left? 8 LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES Mandy returned to fi nd me staring at her. ‘What’s life really about?’ I punched my hands together. ‘Living it!’ I shouted before she could reply. ‘This back thing. It’s a wake-up call! Life can be snatched away in a nano-second! Why does it have to take a massive tragedy in people’s lives before they stop and think, shit, am I really enjoying this?’ I paused to collect my thoughts. ‘What if I died tomorrow? Was hit by a bus? What if I was diagnosed with cancer and given a few months to live?’ She raised her eyebrows waiting for the answer. I asked her to think of a fantasy, a dream, maybe a great purpose . . . and then imagine actually doing it. Tapping into something that makes you so excited your heart pumps and you gasp for breath. ‘That’s what life is about!’ She was as confused by this dramatic enthusiasm as she had been with my previous despairing self. ‘Go on,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘I’m listening.’ ‘Well we haven’t done anything outrageous in ages,’ I continued. ‘We can’t just meander along collecting more TVs and end up at the pearly gates with a bunch of assets, “if onlys” and “what ifs”! So let’s do it!’ ‘Do what?’ Now all my dangerous thinking converged on one point. ‘Well . . . you know I’ve always said that one of my dreams was to hoot around Europe in an old orange VW camper.’ ‘Bit late,’ she laughed, holding up a dirty nappy as though it were a visual aid. ‘That was when you were twenty-two.’ I chose to ignore this ageist remark. ‘But it doesn’t have to be too late. They’re talking about redundancies at work. If it happened to me, we could just take the payout and go!’ ‘Oh rubbish! They won’t sack you. And anyway, if they did, we’d need that money to survive on.’ 9 ON THE ROAD . . . WITH KIDS ‘Yes, and that would be the responsible thing to do. But . . . and this is just a thought,’ I paused for eff ect. ‘What about if we just say fuck it and go?’ Mandy was a traveller from way back. While being only fi ve foot two with a bob of brown hair, she had been a formidable tour guide across Russia and Egypt, herding tourists around like stray cats and dealing with everything from her driver’s rampart sexual exploits among the punters, to talking down suicide attempts. It was her sharp wit and acute, searching intelligence that had always both attracted and challenged me. Not to mention her blonde surfi e look when we fi rst got together. We had once regularly sipped wine and babbled away into the wee hours about wandering the world, but these dreams had been sealed into a locked closet since we became parents. Mandy had turned away from her corporate career some years earlier to chase her passion for writing. It was a joint decision but the advent of kids and Mandy’s desire to be at home with them while juggling her writing had slowly eroded our egalitarianism. To say we had drifted apart was a stretch, but we both knew we could enter that slippery road at any time. ‘OK. I like those four words. Fuck it and go. So how?’ I calculated how much the redundancy payment would be. ‘Let’s buy a camper and do it. What’s the point in waiting till we’re retired to live our dreams? We may not be around or physically able to then anyway.’ ‘And what about the kids?’ ‘Come on. You’re thinking between the lines, man. We get like a Winnebagoey thingy, a big one. Six berth. Kitchen on board. Toilet, shower, TV, bikes strapped on the back. The works!’ I could hear her mind ticking. She’d spent the past two months nursing me, driving me everywhere, and dealing with my frustrations and moods. This was not a sane suggestion. She got up and walked 10