Archive for November, 2011
In case you hadn’t noticed, Christmas is coming…
So, a couple of weeks back, the following email landed in my In box:
Unfortunately, due to the very bad turn out at the recent PTA meeting, we are looking at stopping all PTA activities. Last year we did not have a chair of PTA and, therefore, we did not hold any fundraising activities or any large events due to the lack of support and help. This year, with less than three PTA members attending meetings on a regular basis, we can not even keep up with the basics. Because of this, the following activities will not be going ahead this year:
Christmas crackers at the dinner tables
Christmas disco
Christmas fair
You are all evil, terrible, horrible parents whose children will grow up to be thieves and vagabonds.
We are going to try, for one last time, to bring the PTA together. The meeting will be held this Wednesday at 6pm.
Okay, so maybe I made up the evil, terrible, horrible parents bit. Still, it did rather sum up the gist of the email.
On that fateful Wednesday night, like a lot of other parents with an overactive guilt gland, I headed to the PTA meeting at the school. The meeting began on time and then, for 45 minutes, we brainstormed fantastic ideas for all the wonderful things the PTA could do during the coming year. Then, at the end of the 45 minute session, the headmistress asked for volunteers to get these fantastic ideas rolling for the Christmas season.
Deathly silence.
A very, very long deathly silence. The kind where her eyes scanned the room looking for the weak and unwary.
Which would be me, obviously, because, like a fool, I stuck up my hand. ‘Um, I can help out,’ I said, knowing all the while this meant I would now surely carry the burden of the whole bloody thing alone. To be honest, though, I knew something like this was going to happen from the start. The guilt had hit hard on reading the headmistress’s initial email. Christmas! The kids! And we were only here for a year, we couldn’t take, take, take. We really needed to make an effort to give back as well. And what better time to do this than Christmas?
Sucker.
I was always going to put that hand up, damnit. Despite the fact that I’d just signed up to write a 100,000 word teen book, along with writing the travel memoir. Not to mention the five relatives we would have descending upon us come 17 December.
Thankfully, the woman sitting next to me took pity on me (either that, or my suckeritis was catching) and said she could help out as well. Another mum said she could do a Victoria sponge if we decided to run a cake stall (I had to hold myself back from congratulating her on putting herself right out there). As everyone else trudged out, the headmistress approached me and started talking about tombolas, Father Christmas grottos and various other things I had never heard of before in my entire life. There was also a long list of a, b and c’s mum who could help with x, y and z. Naturally, I knew none of these children, or their mothers.
I immediately went home, began a list of what I needed to do and sent an email around asking for the name of a GP who would prescribe valium, no questions asked (I figured if Santa had his little helpers, it was only fair I had some too).
The Christmas Fair is next week (it hurts just typing that). I have found one major benefit in all the planning that’s gone into the day, however — it’s made me start thinking about Christmas early this year. It might only be the last day of November, but with my parents, brother, aunt and uncle arriving soon, I needed that extra time to book some Christmas cheer before we miss out. Even the local pub has had its ‘book now for Christmas or miss out!’ sign up for the last month or so.
In between fielding emails about the Christmas Fair, I found myself starting to book events and jot down notes in the calendar – ideas of things we could do. Hopefully not in a, ‘Right! It’s 2pm, time to roast chestnuts, drink mulled wine and be merry. Stop being merry! It’s 3.45pm and time for our winter wonderland walk. Hup, two, three, four, keep it up, two three four! No drunken lagging behind now!’
I booked a pantomime (Cinderella), a play (Hansel and Gretel), a Victorian Christmas weekend at a nearby stately home, added in a 30 decorated Christmas trees event in a neighbouring village and noted when the Christmas lights were being turned on in Cambridge. I bought tickets for an outdoor ice-skating session in London and we’re going to see the huge tree in Trafalgar Square, a gift each year from the city of Oslo. I may be Christmassed out already and it’s not even December yet.
Don’t think I’m going completely Christmas crazy, though. There’s still time for rest and relaxation. Between the roast chestnuts and mulled wine and the winter wonderland walk, I’ve scheduled in a three minute break for everyone to do a wee.
The Kindle game
I have this new game I like to play and it’s so much fun, I just have to share it with you. It goes something like this:
1. Find a stately home. Any stately home. One like this will do…
any stately home
2. Locate the library
3. Linger until at least three visitors over the age of 75 are staring in awe at the books and quizzing the (also over the age of 75) volunteer
4. In a Very Loud Voice, mention how all the books in the library could fit onto your Kindle
5. Stand back and watch the elderly have at it
Trust me, if you come back in an hour’s time, they’ll still be going on about the evils of the Kindle.
I take one (a whole packet, actually) for the team…
I feel quite sick. This is probably because I just ate a whole packet of Revels. For research purposes, don’t you know. Yes, really! It was tough, but someone has to do this stuff.
Not knowing what Revels were, but hearing a lot of Revels mentions all over the place (TV, school playground, park etc.), I finally decided it was time to really put myself out there and eat some chocolate. Most people recommended Revels for their fun factor — apparently you’re never quite sure what you’re getting when you reach in the packet. It might be toffee! Or a raisin! Maybe even plain chocolate!
Sheer chocolate craziness, Revels.
Being the huge blogger that I am (sometimes I remember to post more than once a week!), I was quite surprised when I put the Revels feelers out and no gigantic truck turned up with 500 packets on board. So, I sourced my own truck — I added a packet to my online grocery shop and when the truck turned up, there my little Revels were, waiting for me.
Well, hello Revels
Before I tucked in, I Wiki’d. You can’t say I’m not thorough when it comes to chocolate. It seems Revels have undergone a few changes over the years. Originally, the variety included Maltesers, along with peanut, orange creme, chocolate buttons (called Galaxy counters, apparently) and coconut flavours. Later, the peanuts were replaced with raisins and the coconut flavour was replaced with coffee creme. Here’s what they look like…
The chocolate hides all
After a good inspection, I sat down and did what I had to do. I needed to make absolutely sure what I thought about Revels, so I ate the entire packet.
Groan.
Thoughts? Well, I’m afraid Revels aren’t for me. The problem was this:
The problem
The chocolate buttons are easy to find, as is the toffee flavour and the raisins. But the Maltesers and the coffee and orange cremes all look exactly the same (that’s a Malteser on the left and then orange and coffee cremes on the right). I hate orange creme. Yes, hate is a strong word when it comes to chocolate, but it’s true. However, I love Maltesers. Slight issue here. I spent a lot of time tearing through that bag trying to guess the Maltesers and being very, very, wrong in an orange-flavoured kind of way.
Needless to say, it’s over between Revels and me. Over.
The one where I go for a driving lesson
So, after one particularly hairy roundabout incident a fortnight ago, I booked in for a refresher driving lesson (this may, or may not, have had something to do with me failing two online q&a driving tests, which were completely unfair because each test quizzed me on non-relevant topics — I have no interest in towing a caravan or a trailer, EVER. Just sayin’…).
My lesson was with a guy named Tom. In the photos on his web-site he seemed fairly laid back, leaning against his car and posing in the driver’s seat. And when I talked to him on the phone he had a laugh at our differences in pronunciation when I had to spell my address twice. Our apartment number is sixteen. Which I like to pronounce with a ‘t’ in it (oddly enough). It took a bit of explaining to get to the point where he understood that by ‘sixteen’ I actually meant ‘sixdeen’, but we got there with good humour, which is the main thing. He asked me how close our place was to the stone bridge and I asked him if he meant the really skinny one that needs a simple, inexpensive set of timed lights on either end of it to be safe and he said, ‘Yes, that one’.
Poor Tom. You couldn’t say he hadn’t had fair warning.
By the time he was due to pull up downstairs, I had a whole lot of questions for him, mostly concerning roundabouts (the recent hairy incident involved travelling three times around a roundabout searching for the correct lane that would give me the exit I wanted).
‘Here,’ I showed him my licence as soon as I got into his car, even though he hadn’t asked to see it. ‘They swapped it straight over for my Australian one. Which I’ve held forever. With no points deducted. Ever,’ I said only slightly defensively.
‘Great! Let’s get going then,’ he answered. ‘You said there were specific places you wanted to go?’
Oh, yes, Tom. Yes, there were specific places. I brought out my comprehensive list. To his credit, he only looked slightly taken aback. ‘Into the village first,’ I told him, driving off. When we got in there, I was delighted to see several instances of Really Bad Parking. ‘So, is it okay to park like that?’ I pointed one of the cars out, parked half on and half off the footpath.
‘Well, no,’ Tom said. ‘Not really. But in a small village like this, it’s better than blocking the flow of traffic.’
‘But it’s not legal?’
‘No.’
‘And that one?’ I pointed out another car, parked facing in the opposite direction to the traffic.
‘No, that’s not exactly legal either.’
‘Oh,’ I said, as innocently as possible. ‘Because people do that here all the time.’
Next stop was the village roundabout. ‘So it’s okay to drive straight over the top of it?’ I said, driving straight over the top of it with glee. I may have even sped up slightly.
‘Well, no. It’s a roundabout. You’re supposed to go around it.’
‘Oh! But I’ve never seen anyone go around it. I thought because it was all worn out it was out of use or something.’
Yes, basically, I acted like a Total Shit for the entire lesson.
Tom, however, had the time of his life. When I pulled back up at the old mill and turned the car off, he told me it was the best time he’d ever had in a lesson and that I was ‘so funny’. I would have been flattered, except I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was trying to be a Total Shit. ‘Any last questions?’ he finished off by asking me.
As a matter of fact, I did have one last question. I rummaged in my bag until I found the piece of paper I’d printed out – a black and white photo of the Magic Roundabout at Swindon. I handed it to him and asked my one word question.
‘Why?’
Tell it again, Mummy…
I’ve been such a good little writer the past few weeks, diligently adding to my travel memoir manuscript to the point where I’m now over halfway through the first draft. I’ve actually had to slow down a little because I’ve run out of material. I need to go out and live a bit so I have something to write about in the second half of the manuscript.
It’s been odd jumping around a bit where time’s concerned. The problem with memoir is that you can easily fall into a ‘this happened, then this happened, then this happened’ pattern. Which is not good. In fact, it can be quite boring for the reader. I’ve had to be mindful of mixing things up a bit.
I’m currently planning a little trip to London for two nights (alone! Whee!). And writing about this saw me mixing things up a bit bit in my manuscript this week. I found myself writing about the family trip we took to London in the summer holidays and I dug out the notes I’d taken during that trip (crucial!) and ended up writing about something I’d almost forgotten about. So, here’s a little excerpt for you:
When we got to our apartment in Kensington on the first Saturday of our stay, we dumped our bags and set off. As my husband tends to do in every city we visit, first on our ‘to do’ list was what the children have now coined the ‘daddy death march’. Our destination was the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Park, which we could easily see was going to be our kids’ over and over and over and over again playground of choice. To be fair, the pictures we’d seen of it looked amazing – there was a huge wooden sailing ship, paddling pools, teepees and all kinds of swings and climbing frames.
In true ‘daddy death march’ style, daddy somehow managed to turn the five-minute walk to the playground into an hour and a half extravaganza, via Notting Hill and the Portobello Rd markets. As we walked, Mr5 proceeded to dish out what will surely go down as the most amazing whinge of his life. His feet hurt, there was a rock in his shoe (No! A bee in his shoe!), a bird was ‘following’ him, there was a leaf in his eye… This was a truly amazing, Oscar-worthy whinge, especially considering he’d easily traversed twice this distance the weekend before at Legoland, for his birthday. Eventually he whinged so long and so hard and so industriously, we decided he needed to be rewarded for his efforts. Seeing some other children with ice-creams, we located the nearby shop and sat down to see if we could shut him up with sugar. And then, while he systematically dripped Belgian chocolate flavoured ice-cream all over his body, I told him a story to pass the time.
The story was about a boy called ‘Neodore’, sometimes called ‘Freddie’ (no great surprises, but Mr5′s name is Theodore and he’s sometimes called ‘Teddy’). He didn’t fancy this at all and told me so between licks, so we changed it to ‘Sam’.
One day, on holidays, Sam and his family were walking in the city. They were walking, walking, walking and Sam was whingeing, whingeing, whingeing.
His mum said, ‘What’s the matter, Sam?’
‘My feet hurt,’ Sam said.
His mum said, ‘You know what’s good for that, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘What?’
‘Ice-cream!’ his mum said.
So they got a chocolate ice-cream (Mr5 got to pick the flavour here) and Sam ate it and then they went walking again. They were walking, walking, walking and Sam was whingeing, whingeing, whingeing.
His mum said, ‘What’s the matter, Sam?’
‘My feet hurt,’ Sam said.
His mum said, ‘You know what’s good for that, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘What?’
‘Ice-cream!’ his mum said.
So they got a strawberry ice-cream (again, Mr5 picked the flavour) and Sam ate it and then they went walking again. They were walking, walking, walking and Sam was whingeing, whingeing, whingeing.
His mum said, ‘What’s the matter, Sam?’
‘My feet hurt,’ Sam said.
His mum said, ‘You know what’s good for that, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘What?’
‘Ice-cream!’ his mum said.
So they got a bubblegum ice-cream (again, he chose the flavour) and Sam ate it and then they went walking again. They were walking, walking, walking and Sam was whingeing, whingeing, whingeing.
His mum said, ‘What’s the matter, Sam?’
‘My feet hurt,’ Sam said.
His mum said, ‘You know what’s good for that, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘What?’
‘A spanked bottom!’ his mum said.
It was probably unwise to say the word ‘bottom’ just as he shoved the final bit of cone into his mouth, because he immediately began laughing like I’ve never seen him laugh before (he’s a serious little boy – 5 going on 93). Veins stuck out on his neck, he thumped the table, he rolled on the bench seat. And then he coughed, choked and started to make some very odd gasping noises indeed as he aspirated ice-cream cone. My husband being an anaesthetist, specialising in airways, you’d think he’d be helpful in times like this.
Oh, no. No, not at all.
You see, the thing about anaesthetists is that they know the best thing you can do for someone who’s choking is not set about whacking them on the back, or kindly breaking their ribs in the Heimlich manoeuvre, but wait until their body sorts the problem out itself, which it invariably does.
Most of the time.
(This has been a major source of embarrassment at children’s parties, when people watch him kick back with a beer while their kids turn blue in the face, rather like choking is a spectator sport). Still, maybe he’s right, because he hasn’t lost a kid yet.
So, for the next few minutes, we watched our second born turn blue. Until, just like that, he hacked up a bit of cone on the table, then picked it up and re-masticated it and got it down just fine the second time around. ‘That was a great story, mummy,’ he said, croakily. ‘Tell it again.’
Forks, Cambridgeshire
It’s like living in Forks here at the moment. The only upside I can see to this is that I’m not sparkling.
Autumnal Sunday
We had an Autumnal Sunday today. Took the kids to a bridlepath and let them loose on their bikes.
On the bridlepath
Found a barbecue on our travels that made us laugh…
Warning: park barbecues may not be to Australian standards...
Then home to roast some chestnuts.
Mmm... chestnuts (as it turns out, not terribly exciting).
Was all quite lovely, despite still being half-blind from Guy Fawkes bonfire debris falling in one of my eyes last night and Ms8 with no voice after screaming relentlessly at the ‘killer’ fireworks.
The things that elude…
So, we’ve been living in the UK for almost four months now. I thought that by now I’d have everything figured out. Yet there are several things that continue to elude. Small things. The kind of things that you notice again and again and then, the moment you have the time to look them up, or ask someone about them, they’ve already slipped your mind. Until the next time, of course. These things for me included:
1. Morrisons. I see a lot of Morrisons trucks. Their website would suggest they are a supermarket. Yet I have never actually seen one of their supermarkets. And the ad. on TV shows a small boy practically begging to go to Morrisons from the moment he wakes up. Mainly because of this, I am dubious that Morrisons is a supermarket. Or that it even exists.
2. The Luminus Group. Their minivans are everywhere around here. I have no idea what The Luminus Group is or does. Is it an electrical company? Lighting? Not being the owner of an inquiring mind when it comes to men in minivans, my brain can’t find the strength to look up their website and find out.
3. How central heating works. There is a pilot light thing in the cupboard. There are radiator things on the walls. When my body reaches something close to freezing point and I need to use warm water in order to prise my children off my legs, I will probably hit the neighbours up for tips on central heating.
4. Jedward. How Thing One and Thing Two became famous over here I have no idea.
5. How one channel can show only re-runs of Friends for many, many years.
6. What Revels are. I know they’re chocolate. People talk about them a lot. The guy on An Idiot Abroad seems to carry them on his person at all times. I always forget to buy them at the supermarket.
Now I’ve started, I could continue this list all day. Or I could go out and buy some Revels and knock one of these things off my list. That sounds like a good idea…
Would you like baked beans with that?
So, you’re at a five-year-old’s birthday party at one of those play centre type places. The kids get to choose a meal — chicken nuggets, fish fingers, or a burger. With chips, of course. As per usual, peas are included (which no child will touch) to negate all the fried stuff. The plates are served up, but you notice the kids aren’t tucking in. There’s an odd sense of them… waiting for something. And then you see what they’re waiting for. The girl who’d passed around their meals comes back. With a huge bowl and a ladle. And starts dishing out baked beans onto each plate.
If you’ve never seen this, I’m guessing you’re in Australia right now.
Aussie kids get brought up on Vegemite sandwiches, but over here it’s the humble baked bean. Around these parts, baked beans are offered to my kids with everything. Every kids’ meal comes complete with baked beans and when Ms7 ordered a cheese sandwich with olives (don’t ask) at a restaurant the other day, a little pot of baked beans was resting on the side of the plate. I’m slightly confused as to what age they stop serving baked beans with everything to you, because not once have I been offered a baked bean with any of my meals, especially my sandwiches. There must be a lot of confused adults out there, especially after so many years of school dinners (there are baked beans on the menu every single day at my kids’ school).
I’ve taken a quick tutorial, lest my kids start demanding this foodstuff at home. I’ve included it below. Be warned, however, it’s quite Mastercheffy and difficult. At least, I thought so…
