Cross-posted to Lost In Transit.

If you want to know how it feels to be Lost In Transit, may I recommend a Working Holiday visa. Over 40,000 people come wandering over from the colonies each year, all leaving behind friends and jobs and families to spend two years in the UK.

The honeymoon period is delicious. Everything you see and do is new and exciting, sometimes scary. Every day is stuffed with opportunity and adventure. With no real committments, responsiblities or money, life is pared down to the essentials - work, drink, shag, travel.

Next comes an equally satisfying period where you feel less of a stranger in your surroundings. You now have friends and work, favourite pubs and restaurants. You have routines and rituals. You know which supermarkets sell Vegemite and which don't. Best of all, you know where the buses go. The city map was once a blur of strange names, but now when you see a Number 9 or 33 or 5678 coming along the road, there's a certain cosy pleasure from knowing that you know whether it will get you home or leave you stranded on a dodgy industrial estate halfway to England.

But after awhile this feeling becomes tinged with unease as you remember your time is limited. I was on a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow recently, off to see Aussie band Powderfinger in concert. There were plenty of my countrymen in our carriage and I couldn't help tuning in to their conversations.

I just don't know what to do. My time is running out. I wonder if they'll sponsor me. How hard is to to get a work permit? I'm not ready to go home. Me either. My visa runs out in June. How much does it cost to send things home? What are you going to do when you get back? Fucked if I know.

If you're not ready to go home, the idea of going back seems devastating. Home is where everything is predictable, where Europe isn't two hours and £20 away, where no one will comment on your accent, where you have to think further into the future than your next meal. It's an unreasonable line of thinking - life doesn't have to be dull just because you're going home. But I always recall my friends who've returned from Working Holidays and spent months or years feeling lost and unsettled.

The gig venue was chockers full of Aussies, all seemingly determined to assert their Aussiness. Accents were louder and broader. Many people wore green and gold football or cricket jerseys. One twat wore an akubra. People were texting friends back home, Gday mate guess wot powderfinger right here in glasgow, scotland, uk, can u believe !?! Even the band went ocker as the crowd screamed for more, the singer drawling, Jeez youse are loud, crikey! Everyone pounded the floor and sang Waltzing Matilda until they came back for an encore. If they pulled that stunt back in Australia they'd be decked, but here in Scotland it seemed okay to be cringily Oz. I guess it's that whole expat spirit - you don't always want to live in your native land but you want the world to know where you come from.

I often think the Working Holiday is nothing but a temporary suspension of reality. Unlike "proper" expats, we're only here for a limited time. You're voluntarily abandoning what in my case was a very secure career and lifestyle, just so you can run amok for two years. So much can happen in that time - you have all sorts of fun and meet all sorts of people and grow very attached to your new life. But the only way to make it your reality would involve a lot scheming and/or paperwork. If only I'd had the foresight (or brains) to be an accountant or a teacher so I could get a work permit! And why wasn't my grandfather English so I'd qualify for an ancestry visa? How bloody unthoughtful of him!

It's an awkward feeling, straddling two continents, not feeling quite at home in either space. Sometimes I want 12-month subscriptions to magazines. I want a fancy winter coat and a permanent job. I want to grow basil in a window box. But you cannae do that, hen! Not when you're getting deported in ten months, just like your bread-stealing arrow-suited ancestors.