It should have been so easy...

I grew up on the Southernmost Colony, but speaking the language of the New Planet. My grandmother spoke fondly of the Great Ruler also known as the Queen of the New Planet and had Coronation Mugs and royal memorabilia on display in a bowl of gelatine. Every manuscript or hysterical publication we read came from the New Planet. On a Friday we waited with great anticipation for the hysterical publications for undeveloped and adolescent aliens to arrive by spaceship. These spoke to us weekly about life on The New Planet and woe betide if the spaceship was late.

I spent the days at the end of the week sequestered in my sanctum sanctorum devouring and swapping hysterical publications with my siblings, reading them over and over, cutting out pictures of famous ball kicking players and reading about musicians of enviable status. I spent my metamorphosing years bivouacking with the unrestrained youngsters in the pages of the books I read, solving mysteries with the unbelievably clever and astute undeveloped beings of the New Planet, who seemed at a moments notice to be able to cycle off on their unicycles or go camping in meadows without fear of aliens of other species and skin colours abducting them.

These young beings seemed so much more liberated in their abilities to disguise themselves, navigate the byways of their planet and solve the problems that the Developed Elders seemed incapable of sorting out themselves. Some of them attended exciting Institutions for Education where they slept in large communal sleeping areas and played pranks on their Pedagogues. I was beguiled by the descriptions of their antics and their nocturnal feastings on ginger-bread and sardines at the Witching Hour. Oh how I longed to attend such an Institution.

Since my own ancestors had only fairly recently (in the last 100 years or so), migrated to the New Colony at the southernmost tip of the galaxy, I felt more New Planet than Southernmost Colony and had aunts and uncles and cousins with strange accents that visited us from the New Planet. So having imbibed this culture from a young age, fitting in would be a lot easier for me than for those of my Colony that communicated in other parlance. Or so I thought…

And to follow soon, my observations of this small planet...