About

Figs Ahoy is a blog started in April 2011. To quote my first post: “My name’s Jill and I’m a 27 year old woman living in Perth, Western Australia. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m leaving in 6 weeks to go and live in Edinburgh for a few months after backpacking around New Zealand and fooling around in New York for a couple of weeks. In total I’ll be away for around 9 months and hopefully when I come home for Christmas and my friend’s NYE wedding it will only be for a few weeks because I’ll have found somewhere else I can call home. Anyway, I guess overall this is a time of transition and the intention of this blog is for me to ruminate on changes, share interesting or funny stories, and generally document my time over the next year or so. I am also single for the first time in 5 or so years, so I’m looking forward to a lot of cheesy self-discovery.”

I am now 33 years old and I am back in Perth after living in London and being in a relationship for 5 years. I am leaving Perth in 6 weeks and I don’t know whether to stay in London, move back to Perth, or explore Asia or regional Australia. There is a lot of cheesy self-discovery going on.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Will I end up with some of the figs, all the figs, or none at all?

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest,and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
– Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)