A year ago today, Rhiannon and I were sitting in the McDonalds on St Andrews Square. Backpacks at our feet, we shuffled our fries around on the tray and tried to pretend we weren't terrified.

"The Big Mac is much smaller in the UK."

"I guess everyone will be less fat than back home."

"Indeedy."

The next day we each purchased a mobile phone. I added Rhi's number to the Phone Book. She added mine to hers. And that was it. My gut rumbled with panic. Would I ever know anyone in this country and get their numbers in my phone? What if it's just us two for the next two years? What if we don't find a job? What if we can't find somewhere to live? What if I have to slink back to Oz and live with The Mothership?

These days my phone has a modest collection of numbers. I found a home, and not one but two jobs. Now I am cosy in Edinburgh and don't need McDonalds for a dose of (albeit evil) familiarity. We're doing alright. Bazillions of Antipodeans head to the UK every year, so it's not like we're doing anything new -- but I still can't believe we that we actually did it.

I used to be so scared of things. There's so much I didn't do, opportunities I ignored, out of fear of looking stupid or being uncomfortable. I'd spend my day in a panic, nauseous at having to phone a client at work, or to walk into a shop and tell them my shoes were broken.

If you've spent any length of time being afraid or depressed or maybe even just plain blah, plonking your arse on the other side of the planet is a rockin thing to do. There's no bigger rush than doing something you never thought you were capable of doing. The more you push yourself the more you want to squeeze every drop out of your day. The people you wind up meeting, the wacky things you get to do -- it's all so bloody addictive and makes you want to hump the planet in ecstasy for being such a fun and scary place to be.

I hate to be such a navel-gazing wanker, but after a year away I wanted to say something. If you're embarassed for me, here's some dodgy photos of our adventures thus far, including the Highlands, the Fringe Festival, Frankfurt, Reykjavik, Paris and... North Berwick.

"Have you ever had sex while you were stoned?"

"No... what's it like?"

"It's amazing. It makes everything so much more intense and wild!"

"Wow. So when you'd do that?"

"Oh... I haven't. But I had a wank once!"

Today on What's New Pussycat, your intrepid correspondent speaks with Miss R., a young lady struggling to come to terms with her childhood baggage.

You can trace a lot of my issues back to a brown plastic suitcase. The Mothership forced me to lug it to school for four years. While my friends had Barbie backpacks, I had this shitty boarding school relic. This was a bag you'd take when setting off for London on a steamship circa 1955. Old people used to call it a "Globite" or a "port" and fondly remark what a sturdy, sensible bag it was.

I used to ask why couldn't I just have a normal schoolbag? "Because!" snapped The Mothership. "The Port is strong, The Port is practical. Bananas will not get squashed inside it. You can lay your homework out nice and flat. You can drop it from a great height and your sandwiches will survive." Never mind that it made me look like a miniature door-to-door salesman.

How did the Brown Port come into your possession?

The Brown Port was the replacement for the Little Green Port (LGP). I got the LGP when I was in kindergarten. It was kinda cute to be 5 years old and trotting off to school with a tiny suitcase, but after a couple of years I realised its embarrassing-ness and I longed to be rid of it.

Can you tell us about its unfortunate demise?

It happened one summer morning as we were rushing off to school. I think it was a case of Mum thinking that I had put it in the boot of the car, and me thinking Mum had put it in the boot of the car. But let's not point fingers here. The outcome was, Mum reversed the car out of the garage and mowed right over the top of it.

So it was an accident?

Oh yes. But I didn't shed any tears over its mangled green corpse.

I thought I was finally in for a decent bag, but Mum immediately launched the search for a Replacement Port. The hunt was exhaustive, spanning three towns. "I can't believe how hard it is to find a decent port these days," she moaned. Finally we ended up in Canowindra, the tiny town in which she grew up. We were in a dry cleaners' and the withered shopkeeper produced The Brown Port from a dusty shelf.

"We don't get much demand for these anymore," he said, "But it's a good case, built to last a lifetime."

"Oh, she only has another ten years of school left," the Mothership smiled.

"That IS a lifetime, Mother!"

But she was basking in her triumph. Not only had she succeeded in finding me a sensible port, she had got it for a bargain price, in her home town, and in the presence of our grandmother, The Queen of Shoppers.

"Yes, yes, that is indeed a good buy," said The Grandmothership in begrudging tones.

So I spent the next few years trudging up the school path every morning, head down, avoiding the mocking stares, hoping the Port was somewhat camouflaged by the bottlebrush trees.

I have to say I think my Port was even more crap. It was blue cardboard and at least a metre wide, I'm sure it's what Raymond Burr used to smuggle out his chopped-up wife in Rear Window.

Mine was worse. It was plastic. Brown plastic! It looked like a hitman's toolkit.

Ah yes. Readers should remember that this was the late 80s, in which Everyone Else had a canvas backpack, on which they could scrawl their name across the flap in black marker, then add poorly-rendered metal band logos and/or the name of their beloved (4 EVA) . But, our mother argued, if Everyone Else jumped of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, would we do it too? She also believed these newfangled backpacks were a chiropractic hazard, as the trend was to carry them on one shoulder only.

Yes, it was far more sensible to have a small child carry a large heavy suitcase and slowly disengage the arm from its socket over the course of the school term.

Do you also remember the trauma we faced every second Friday? Every second Friday our Dad would pick us up from school so we could stay at his place for the weekend. This meant we had to take The Red Suitcase. It was twice the size of the blue port, made of vinyl. Mum would carefully pack my shorts and t-shirt and tootbrush and PJs on the left side, yours on the right. Then she'd drop us off at the school gate, and we'd have to lug that monster up the path between us, in addition to our regular baggage.

Pure evil.

Then it would sit there all fucking day in the weather shed, wedged between the blue port and the brown, with all the other kids' backpacks hanging from the coathooks and laughing it up.

It just never made sense to me, why she was so insistent on traumatising us. It wasn't like we were poor and couldn't afford modern luggage. I can understand her desire to make her children individuals and not follow the crowd, but there are some occasions where a degree of conformity is necessary for survival.

It seems The Mothership's parenting motto was simply, "You gotta be cruel to be... cruel".

Indeed. At the end of Year 4, I changed schools, going from the dinky 30-child school to the Big School in town. There was no way I was taking The Port into town. And that was your first year of high school, you came very close to taking Big Blue with you.

Yes, it would have been large enough to fit my bloodied corpse after some Year 10 kid kicked the crap out me.

The only way I got rid of The Port was to publicly shame The Mothership in front of her friends. I outlined the trauma that The Port had caused over the years, and argued that it would make me a social outcast at my new school. I would have no friends, be forced to drop out in Year 9 and get knocked up by some pimply git in the back of a Holden Gemini. Her friends were astounded that Mum had forced me to have such a rubbish bag for all those years. The ambush worked - she finally agreed it was time for a new one.

So what did you get next?

A shitty polyester sports bag that she'd won in a competition at Woolworths.

There's been some rainy mornings, where dog turds dissolve on the footpath and the traffic lights cast red green puddles on the street. All the mums and dads put plastic covers over the prams, so their babies look like those cellophane-wrapped baskets you win in raffles. Perhaps some day you'll stop outside a supermarket and buy a ticket from a blue-haired lady, "So what's the prize?". First prize Avon hamper, second prize meat tray, third prize six-month old Baby Chloe.

I finally scanned my photos from last year's T in the Park and can't stop gawking at the abundance of blue sky. Go forth and behold the wonder of drunken frisky Scots, Flaming Lips and the vague grainy likeness of Michael Stipe!

Edinburgh is sometimes known as The Windy City, this website told me so. I also discovered this while ploughing my way to work today. It wasn't a day to be wearing a kilt. Not that I was wearing a kilt, but I was thinking, if only some hunky Scotsman happened along just now, wearing a kilt.

This wind was more powerful than velcro. It rrrrrripped open the velcro flap on my bag and threatened to steal my lunch. I always thought velcro was an all-powerful substance. I remember in the 80s when all the kids in my class had velcro sneakers. Thick, sticky fingers wrapped around their foot like a claw -- it seemed to me the greatest innovation since the Old El Paso Taco Kit. And truth be told, I'd always struggled with shoelace-tying. I begged The Mothership for velcro shoes, but she deemed them "sheer bloody laziness".

Tonight the breeze propelled us into Tesco, up and down the aisles, and all the way to the dimwit at the checkout. No matter how carefully Rhi and I choose our Checkout Dudes, we always wind up with the most stoned kid in the shop. We had never witnessed such excruciatingly slow scanning of groceries. He stared up at the ceiling and groped absently at the conveyor belt. It look five minutes to scan five little yogurt pots. He lifted a lettuce, peered at it for a long moment, then let it drift across the scanner. His mind was in the clouds but the body thought it was still in the thick of the gale.

I was filled with an irrational rage. After polite coughing and foot-tapping proved fruitless, I resorted to snatching each item from his hand mid-air and stuff it into the shopping bag.

SHAUNA: Take it up a gear, buddy!

CHECKOUT DUDE: You got a Tesco Club Card?

S: I got a bus to catch.

CD: Mmm.

RHI: They let them sit down, that's where they go wrong. There's no chairs for checkout kids where I come from. I'm going to round up every space cadet Tesco employee in Britain and take them to WOOLWORTHS BOOT CAMP back in Australia and show them how it's done! Speed! Precision! Chop chop!

CHECKOUT DUDE: Are you collecting coupons for the school kids?

S: I don't give a shit about the school kids!

We almost missed the bus, but luckily the breeze was at our backs.

Please refresh and tolerate boring black until I get around to jazzing things up. That orange cat had been there for 18 months and I was going to kick it in the arse if I had to look at its stupid grin for one more day.

There was a crowd gathered around the old lady. She was face-down on the pavement outside a little pub, a policeman crouched beside her. Her hair was bright white against the grimy concrete and grey afternoon.

I spend my weekends calling ambulances for people who've fallen over, so I absently assumed that someone was on their way to help her up. She'd have a cup of tea and that would be that. Just like it was at work. Hang up, next call, next old person.

We huddled close as we waited for the Glasgow bus. The ambulance arrived, there was no siren. I thought about my weekend job and how easy it was to detach, to forget you were dealing with real lives. Sometimes I would swing in my chair between calls, grumbling about my lack of weekend and trying to think of the money. A lovely old man fell over last week, he was unhurt but it would take half an hour for his son to arrive and help him up. I can wait hen, nae bother, came his watery voice from the living room floor.

As I hung up he'd started to whistle, that wobbly tuneless whistle that's unmistakeably elderly. I pictured him laying there patiently, carpet brushing his nose. I tried to comprehend being at a point in life when you had no choice but to wait. But then the next call came through and I moved on -- smoke detector, 95-year-old lady, I'm just baking a potato, dear.

It was sobering now to watch things happening for real. My heart sank as we realised the ambulance guys weren't in a hurry. The crowd trickled away and they moved her tiny form onto the stretcher. When they finally got back into the vehicle, they didn't turn the lights on.

As we got on our bus, it has hard to shake the image of her on the ground, the peak hour pedestrians swirling above her. She'd looked like your regular wee lady heading down to the shops, and now she was gone.

It kind of set the mood for the evening. We were in Glasgow to see Stereolab, their second gig since Mary Hansen's death. How strange it must have felt for them. The French chick was now placed centre stage and seemed tentative and distant. The gig was fantastic, but even a Stereolab ignoramus like me could tell the energy was different. Bright breezy songs were now tinged with heaviness. No amount of drunk singing Glaswegians can quite fill the space of a person.

When we got back to Edinburgh, our breath shot out ahead of us in the icy air. The odd person wandered past the little pub, hands stuffed deep in pockets or devouring greasy chips. There was still a puddle of blood on the ground, glistening under the streetlight. And it stayed there another two days, until the Thursday rain washed it away.

That last bag o' shite entry was only meant to be there for two days until I finished the next one, but then I got too busy unloading vast quantities of snot and phlegm into cheap, rough tissues and lazing around in bed. In the meantime, have a gander at this wee interview thingie from a recent issue of Web User magazine, in which WNP was Blog of the Fortnight. Woohoo!

I could almost hear The Mothership's disapproving tones as I crammed the open packet of spaghetti into the little cupboard above the kettle, instead of putting it in a Proper Container and walking the five metres to the pantry where it really belonged. That's just sheer bloody laziness, young lady!

I believe in her ability to Teach Me A Lesson even from the opposite end of the globe. Ten minutes later, while attempting to spread peanut butter on crispbread, the packet leaped off the shelf and a thousand wholemeal arrows hailed down on me. What didn't pierce my eyeballs ended up in the peanut butter jar.