Awards

These awards are definitely reasons to be cheerful. Getting awards is marvellous for the morale, exciting for the ego, superlative for the self. The embarrassing thing is that some of them date back a little while, so I apologise for being slow in collecting them. It's partly because I keep writing blog posts which are on the long side already, and I haven't wanted to make them even longer by adding an award to the bottom. It's partly because anything which involves uploading images is inherently a bit scary - but as you will see, I've overcome the fear, and can now display brightly coloured little squares on my blog with the best of them.

A big thank you to all who have bestowed the awards on me. Please don't think that the delay in collecting them is an indication of ingratitude. I also have a nasty niggling feeling that I have missed somebody, and if that is the case, I apologise and hope you'll be lenient. Again, take it as a sign of incompetence, not ingratitude.

Shall I just shut up now and show you the awards?


This one from Rotten Correspondent







This one from Beta Mum and Mother at Large










This one from Mya and Kaycie












These two from Annie















This one from Laurie











Oo er Missus. Intellectually stimulating. Or was that intellectually simulating, perhaps?

Look at them, standing obediently in a tidy column. Lovely. Thank you all.

Reasons to be cheerful: Part II

Motts Pots
They don’t call them that, which is a shame. It would be such a good name for what is such a good idea. They are little tubs of apple sauce (stewed apple or apple puree if you'd rather), which are just excellent as an alternative to a yogurt or fromage frais. Handy at home, perfect for packed lunches, top picks for picnics. Of course this all depends on your kids being the kind who like apple sauce, but for those of you who have the other kind of kid, well, you can just eat a Motts Pot yourself from time to time. You don’t even have to keep them in the fridge. They do a few variations too: apple and strawberry, cinnamon apple… in fact, here’s the whole range.

Please, if you know someone connected to the company, would you pass on to them a couple of ideas. The first is the name. They’ve got as far as Motts for Tots (ie smaller tubs for toddlers), but no-one has made the really very obvious step to Motts Pots. This would, I’m sure, put them ahead of the competition (Kroger, a rhymingly challenged company). The other idea is that they should launch into the UK market. Apple puree, formerly available only for babies, now here for children and adults. One of your five daily portions in a convenient tub. It’s really delicious stuff. Motts Pots for Brits. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t succeed.

Garage openers
These are absolutely standard here, so you have to try not to look too wide-eyed and excited as you point and click from the comfort of your car seat. Makes you feel like a bit of a celeb though. I mean, fancy me having an automatic garage opener. It was some weeks before I could do the point and click without saying “open sesame” and laughing out loud – until I caught sight of my children’s faces in the mirror. I think they’d heard the joke once too often. Most people programme the clicker into some clever gadget or other just above the driving mirror, so they don’t even have to fumble around in a door pocket, but can just reach up in one elegant movement. When we were test-driving our car, this feature was pointed out to us. I asked “why are there three buttons?” The reply came “some people have three garages” (duh….). Almost all houses other than the very old ones (you know, those dating back to the 20s and 30s…) have integral garages, meaning you can walk straight from the garage into the house. So if you have a garage opener, you don’t have to worry about rain, cold, wind, sun – you can be straight out of your climate controlled house, into your climate controlled car. Your legs need hardly be activated at all.

Of course in Britain garage openers would be next to useless, as they are designed for people who put their car in their garage. It's a strange concept, but it seems to work once you've got the hang of it.

Long summers
I know I’ve complained about the heat here in high summer. I know. The nice other side of that coin, though, is that for much of the year (at least May to early October) it is warm enough to be in flip-flops, a t-shirt and capris (not shorts, please, at my age). I can hear the envious intakes of breath from here, as I tell you that it is only last week that I have had to think of taking a cardigan when I go out. That is nice. I have become very wedded to flip-flops (except in banks).

Goo Gone
I was intrigued to find out about Goo Gone, after one occasion when I heard American women in Scotland discussing how much they missed it. So when the official at Immigration stamped our passports and said “welcome to America. Do you have any questions?”, I replied without hesitating “Can you tell me where the nearest Goo Gone retailer is?” I do see exactly why you would miss this product so much. You know how often there is an irritating problem relating to a price tag on a birthday present, or the remains of a sticker on the furniture or the window? Well, Goo Gone is the thing. One little squirt and a quick wipe, and the unsightly mess is gone. On a bad day, I have been tempted to see if it worked on the kids themselves. It’s another product ripe for the UK import market. I’ve even thought of an advertising slogan: Blair gone? Goo Gone would have got rid of him quicker.

Kitchen roll in half size strips
You know how a piece of kitchen roll is often too big for the job? The Americans have got this sussed. Here, you can buy kitchen roll in half size strips. Nifty AND environmentally sensitive (although I expect that is just a lucky side effect). “But hang on a minute” I hear you say. “What about if the spillage is too big for a half size strip? What if I need that full size square? I’d end up having to have two different rolls on the kitchen counter, and that would take up precious space.” Well, here’s the clever clever thing. When you have a roll in half size strips, if you need a big old-fashioned square, you can miss out one line of perforations and just tear off two half size pieces together! It works just the same! Brilliant. They've thought of everything.

Reasons to be cheerful: Part I

Now, in the interests of redressing the balance following my miserable gloom of last week-end, I’m going to tell you about something that I really like about here. Thunderstorms. We’ve had a couple of humdingers this week. The good thing is, it won’t be long before the next one. Not that they’re really frequent, but frequent is a relative thing. Think about it if you’re reading this in Britain. When was the last time you had a good thunderstorm? And the time before that? See. Hardly ever. And how long did they last? A measly 20 minutes? Here they rumble around for hours.

Thunderstorms here are magnificent. The thunder rolls and booms and cracks. The lightning flashes just like in movies, or when children fiddle with the light switch. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark. We get that proper forked lightning too. Lots of it. Like the finger of a divine being: “You, yes, you, Iota Manhattan, this one is for YOU”. And zap! You can see it crackling its way down to the intended spot. Actually, I shouldn’t joke, as lightning strikes do account for deaths and injuries here, and it is treated with respect. I’m told you shouldn’t be on the phone or use the computer during a lightning storm, (although there are those of us who will risk personal safety for the sake of our blog readers). People feel uneasy about being outside. Outdoor pools are closed if there is a threat of lightning, and this morning’s preschool trip to the pumpkin patch was cancelled. The words ‘rain’ and ‘mud’ were mentioned, but lightning was given as the reason.

Thunderstorms can hog the stage and perform on their own, without it raining, which I find very exciting. Of course they do bring rain too. Proper rain. Torrents of the stuff, lasting for ages. You get veritable rivers running down the sides of the roads, and the drainpipes flow like taps. Proper rain. Not that drizzle that passes for precipitation in the UK. Over there on the eastern side of the Atlantic, you’re really quite pansy-ass when it comes to a good storm. Bigger and wetter, that’s the style here. Something else I like about rain here is that it doesn’t have to be cold. We’re not talking tropical conditions like the monsoons or anything, but certainly, you can have a warm day that doesn’t turn cold just because the rain has come. I like that. Why should rain always equal cold? Huh? Here, you can be out in the rain in your flip-flops (remember this detail, it becomes significant later on).

So thunderstorms are good. And today it turned out that lollies in banks are good too. Lollies in banks. Usually I hate lollies in banks. Does my child really need a sugar fix just because I’ve paid in a cheque? “Don’t waste your money” I always want to say. “Lollies are not necessary. What else are you frittering away my cash on? Stop the lollies and lower your overdraft charges.” But today, nothing to do with the very satisfying thunderstorm, at least I don’t think so, although you never know how these things tie up in some cosmic realm, I even found a purpose for lollies in banks.

I was going to the bank after school pick-up (why?), so I had three children with me. One, the smallest, was running about in a wild fashion that in Britain would have made me feel rather self-conscious, but here, doesn’t make me feel quite so bad, as they seem a bit more relaxed about noisy children (oh look, did you spot that? Another nice thing about America has sneaked in. I could run a Spot the Nice American Thing competition at this rate. By the way, did you notice the word ‘pansy-ass’ a few paragraphs ago. That’s another. I didn’t know that word a year ago.) Anyway, she was running up and down, with the Burt’s Bees lip salve (oh, there’s another one) she’d stolen out of my handbag, saying “guess where I’ve put lipstick, I’ve put it all over everywhere” and giggling hysterically. This might have embarrassed me, but I knew that (a) she was talking about her own body, as evidenced by the hoiking up of her t-shirt to display her belly button which I could imagine is a pretty tempting target for a lip salve when you are 3 years old, (b) she was laughing so raucously that I knew no-one else would be able to understand a word she was saying and (c) lip salve is clear so that if there had been some collateral damage on the furniture and fittings that I hadn’t witnessed, we’d be long gone by the time it was discovered.

It happened. She tripped over her flip-flops (hah! remember?), her pink bejeweled flip-flops, measured her length and landed on her front, the fall accompanied by a dull 'bop' sound as her little forehead hit the bank floor, since her hands were too busy clutching the lip salve and its lid to be any use in saving her. There was much yelling and sobbing, which continued for a while. Then a while longer. Then, after a pause which only the most heartless of mothers would interpret as resulting from a quick assessment of the size and interest-level of the audience (both satisfactory), a while longer. At this point, the helpful bank lady started talking about ice packs and cold water (more yelling, louder yelling), and I could feel the situation was getting out of hand. So I put aside my pride, and there on my knees in that Bank of America, I uttered some words which I never thought I would utter in a bank. I asked “Do you have any lollies here?”

I suppose I should be honest, and tell you that actually I was rather inarticulate at this point. Kneeling on the floor, arms round yelling child, hands fumbling with lip salve and lid, I was struggling for the right word. I was hesitating to say “Do you have any suckers here?” which is what kids call lollies. It didn’t seem a very appropriate turn of phrase for use in a high street bank. So I started with ‘popsicles’, which I knew was wrong as soon as I’d said it (they’re the frozen ones), and quickly diverted to ‘lollies’ (not right either), which I tried to segue into ‘lollipops’, but I fear I produced some burbling sound somewhere between the three attempts. The nice bank lady understood me though, and of course the end of the story is that they did indeed have lollies there. They had a particularly nice pink and purple stripy one (you see why I wonder about cosmic realms), and all was well. The boys managed to sneak one each too.

Thunderstorms. Lollies in banks. Reasons to be cheerful: Part I.

What they don't tell you about moving abroad II

Well, Bloggy Friends, you always come up trumps. You are all totally spot on, of course, and if I wasn’t so darn trapped in the physical world, I’d just curl up in a nice corner of the blogosphere, and you could all come and visit. We’d drink virtual wine that doesn’t give you a hangover or do your liver any damage, talk about virtual things and be virtually happy.

The mold in our basement would virtually go away; the people who sold us the house as having a dry basement would virtually agree to pay for the work we are needing to have done to make it so, without us having to go to virtual mediation; I would win the battle against clutter (that’s real, I’m afraid, there’s nothing virtual about clutter); I would have lots of virtual time to write and read blogs; going to the virtual gym or pool would be inherently interesting and fun rather than a necessary evil and would therefore happen, and there would be lots of virtual English countryside and sea.

Actually, I feel a bit of a fraud because in general I am feeling much happier here. The new school year has brought more opportunities to get involved in things, and to meet people. The boys have made new friends, and all seems to be going well for them. 3-yo is thriving at preschool. Life has a shape to it. A rather strange shape, with lumps and bumps where sleek lines should be, but a shape. A warty gourd rather than a smooth butternut squash, but that’s a shape. I do have time to myself (of sorts). There is still much chaos, but it is receding, and let’s face it, it never goes entirely. There are things I’m excited about: we are going to San Diego for a week in November, my mother and sister are coming for Christmas, on the strength of my blog someone has asked me to write an article for a magazine for people thinking of emigrating. There are people I like spending time with: I’m getting to know other moms at school and preschool, I’ve formed a book club with 3 other people and it’s great. So things are falling into place, and of course there’s always chocolate.

I think it is this: that moving away from home is some kind of bereavement. Everyone will tell you about the stages of grief, and how, just as life is coming together again and you seem to be making sense of it, suddenly you are plunged back into the depths. You might see why that happened - a familiar voice, a triggered memory, a smell in the air - but it might just come out of nowhere. And of course there is the delay factor. For the first while, making arrangements dominates, but then when you see that life functions, you surface and have a little more time to catch breath and reflect. Perhaps that’s where I am. Sniffing the air (but not inhaling too deeply because of the potential mold spores) and pausing for thought. Catching up with myself, and I tell you, I’ve been running so fast over the past 12 months that I’ve got to sprint fast to get me.

I never know whether blogging is really a good thing or not. It’s great to be part of a community of people who know how to hit the spot in a comment three sentences long, re-telling old truths, or giving a new insight. But I can’t help feeling it must be a bit dysfunctional. Is it stopping me making as much effort to get to know people here? You know, REAL people. Down the road people. Round the corner people. I would say not (I’ve thought about this carefully), because I think that local life happens slowly, in its own mellow time, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot you can do to hurry the process. Of course, it’s not mutually exclusive – you can inhabit real space and virtual space together.

I know myself well enough to know that if I didn’t blog, I wouldn’t have a tidier house, a cleaner house, a more focused life. I’d just let everyday tasks take longer. There'd be a bit more pottering about, maybe a bit more shopping, but not a whole lot more organising or domestics. I’m sure I’d find other ways of taking myself away from my own four walls, but I wouldn’t end up in such a wide variety of locations, with such a spread of thought-provoking and thoughtful people.

So, thank you all for your concern. Bloggy friends always come good (apart from Victoria Beckham's phone number, but please don't feel bad about that.) If I’d written a list of things I needed to hear after my last post, you’d have covered them all perfectly. Toshak!

What they don’t tell you about moving abroad

They don’t tell you that you will be tired for a year. That you will be tired every day all the time. That you’ll be tired in the evening when you go to bed, and you’ll see a tired face when you look in the mirror in the morning. That living outside your comfort zone is exhausting. That you will have no comfort zone for a long time, and that when it comes, it will be patchy, like pieces of a jigsaw coming together to make a tree here, a house there, a boat in the distance. You won’t be able to dwell in the patches. They won’t join up to make a whole picture. Not for a long time.

They don’t tell you that you will watch a year of films without seeing their endings. They don’t tell you that you will say to yourself “I can’t be pregnant” more often than is comfortable, thinking you recognize the first signs of that old brain-slowness and body-heaviness. They don’t tell you that you will discover you can fall asleep, sitting bolt upright on a hard wood floor, playing trains with a three year old. “Open lor eyes, Mummy, open lor eyes”, as the small sharp fingers jab at your face, making you flinch and turn away. They don’t tell you that health food shops sell a thousand different combinations of vitamins and minerals, and that your tablet of choice will be called 'Unbounded Energy'. They don’t tell you that the labels on the bottles make all kinds of claims for how their contents can help weariness of body, but none of them dares suggest they can help weariness of soul.

Weary. I like that word. I remember when my oldest started nursery, and I picked him up at the close of the afternoon session, his teacher told me “He was wearying towards the end, but he’s been fine”. To my English ears, newly arrived in Scotland, the word 'wearying' sounded like 'weeing' (a word always close to a mother's anxiety zone), and I thought what an extraordinary thing she had said. That was when I first started noticing the word 'weary'. I don’t think it was the right word for her to use. Three year olds don’t get weary. They get tired; they have low blood sugar; they get grumpy; they get tetchy. I don’t think they get weary. The old get weary. The sad, the ill, the bereaved get weary. The relocated get weary.

Grey is the colour of weary. Not early morning wispy mist horizon grey, or cold depths North Sea grey. Just dull nothing grey. Weary rhymes with dreary, with teary, and I think too it hints at fear-y. Worry is a bedfellow of weary. Weary is what you are when life is wearing. Life is wearing.

Weary makes me think of Lowry, and his grey, tired, bowed matchstick men and women. Oh dear. I’ve just looked at a few of his paintings (isn’t the internet a wonderful thing? all this at my fingertips), and I find that his people don’t look weary at all. They look rather purposeful, hurrying along with intent. They are in groups, or twos: the luxury of companionship. There’s a rather pert little dog. Oh my. I must have it bad, when Lowry looks cheerful. What next? I’d probably think Munch’s Scream was roaring with laughter. I'm not even going to look.

I can’t think of a way to end this post. I can’t think of an ingenious twist, a witty one-liner, or an appropriate reflection to wrap it cleverly up. That is rather apt, though, don’t you think? When you are weary, you can’t see an end to it at all.

Siblings and Soccer II

The conversation between my two children on the subject of soccer (see previous post) reminds me of the fine soccer education I received from my own big brother. He was watching England v Japan. I know this because when England scored, he punched his fists into the air and shouted “TOSHAK!”. I asked him what that meant and he replied “It’s Japanese for GOAL!”. And thus it was that I went through many years of childhood, and indeed adulthood, thinking that I knew three words of Japanese: mitsu bishi meaning three lozenges (look at the logo), and toshak meaning goal.

I now know that John Toshack is a Welsh football player (so actually it must have been Wales v Japan), whose career was at its peak in the 1970s. He was then manager of four Spanish teams, and (according to Wikipedia) amused Spanish audiences during press conferences with his use of English stock phrases translated literally into Spanish. "Hay más posibilidades de ver a un cerdo volando por encima del Bernabéu" (you're more likely to see a pig flying over the Bernabéu). "La liga es el pan y la mantequilla y la nata es la copa del rey" (the league is the bread and butter and the cup is the cream). John Toshack, I’m glad you have your linguistic struggles too. It’s a bond between us. And you do have a marvellously expressive surname. It ought to be a shout of triumph in some language or other, even if it isn’t. In another life, I’d be married to you, and be called Mrs Toshack. I think I’d persuade you to change our name by deed poll so that we spelt it Toshack! Mr and Mrs Toshack! I like that.

I’m a bit worried that mitsu bishi doesn’t mean three lozenges. It was my big brother’s best friend who told me that.

Siblings and soccer

If you have more than one child, occasionally you are privy to the conversations they have between themselves without your presence. Most of these you miss, of course, but occasionally you can eavesdrop. Eavesdropping is, as we all know, a bad thing, but maternal eavesdropping, as any mother will tell you, doesn’t count.

This particular conversation took place in the sitting room, which, conveniently, is within earshot of the desk where the computer is. I could therefore type the conversation as it happened, so I know I got it down verbatim. 10-yo was watching soccer on tv (hence the curtailed ability to utter a sentence longer than three words). The boy lives, breathes, thinks, eats soccer (just to set the scene for you). The conversation went like this:

3-yo: Why do soccer matches be silly? [blimey, 3-yo, talk about going for the jugular]

10-yo: They’re not silly.

3-yo: Why are they?

10-yo: They’re not.

3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Are they good or bad?

10-yo: They’re good.

3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Where did soccer matches came from?

10-yo: Different places.

3-yo: What do you do when you play a soccer match?

10-yo: You try to score a goal.

3-yo: Why do they have matching costumes all the same? [honing in now on the more important aspects of the sport]

10-yo: They have to.

I’m so glad that 3-yo has the opportunity for such a comprehensive education concerning the beautiful game. After all, there won’t be many boys in her life with whom she will be able to use the opening gambit “Why do soccer matches be silly?”. Not if she’s got any sense.

HobNobbing

Doo doo doo, da doo, da doo doo doo

Oh, hello. Sorry. Didn’t see you there. Where were we?

Ah yes. Words. Lovely words. Now, if you were living in the middle of the middle of a long way away from Britain, you would find the following three words very lovely: milk chocolate HobNobs. (By the way, I’ve checked, and it is indeed three words, not four. Don’t be fooled by that upper case N. Your child might be taught at school that you can only have a capital letter at the beginning of a word, but Mr McVitie knows better. He would be in a very strong position to argue the case, after all.)

Anyway, I had been told that my local Dillons (Waitrose equivalent, remember) has started stocking a few shelves of British goods. I have to say that I don’t terribly miss food items (except chipolatas and fish fingers, which must say something about my culinary habits). If necessary, I can always hustle over to World Market, an amazing emporium which sells everything from Lindt chocolate to Indonesian furniture, via Indian silk scarves and Danish Bodum kitchenware. It’s a huge store, recently opened, and I’m usually the only customer so I fear for its long-term future, but up till now, I have been happy that it has kept me in decaffeinated PG tips tea bags. Now, however, it seems I can get them from my local Dillons (so I fear even more for World Market).

If you cruise around the ex-pat corners of the blogosphere, you get a feel for the kind of edible items people miss from Blighty. Lots of people write about them. Lots of other people comment. We say bonding ex-pat things to each other like “Ah! Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut” or “Ooooh yes, MARMITE!!” To all of you out there, I dedicate my local Dillons. I’ve just been along to check out the rumoured British selection, and I have to tell you that they have got the range of products just exactly right. They have clearly done some impressive research. Either that, or the manager spends hours reading blogs when he is pretending to be analyzing the sales figures on his computer. There is Ribena, Robinson’s lemon and orange squash, Heinz beans, Heinz treacle pudding and spotted dick, various Cadbury’s products, HP sauce, Bird’s custard powder, piccalilli, Branston pickle, little pickled onions, both Colman’s mustard and Colman’s mustard powder (how’s that for attention to detail?), digestive biscuits, Abernethy biscuits, milk chocolate HobNobs. Stop right there. Milk chocolate HobNobs. If I was going to be very picky, I would say that plain HobNobs (no, not plain chocolate, just plain) would have been a nice option, but hey, that would be very small-minded of me. There is one mystery item, which is green tea. Americans think we Brits drink green tea as well as brown (which they call black). Do we? Is this something that we do, that has passed me by?

The British section is well nigh perfect. I’d be interested to get an expert national opinion on the neighbouring French, Italian and German ones (each sporting its own little flag). They seem to me to be a lot less imaginative. The Italian one is full of fancy dried pasta and accompanying sauces. The German one has pumpernickel and lots of jam. The French one has a whole shelf of jam, a whole shelf of olives, a whole shelf of olive oil and, intriguingly, glass jars labeled “Large French Prunes”. Oh, that tells a sad story, doesn’t it? Dillons staff must have reported a significant number of disconsolate French ex-pats asking “Do you sell ze prunes? I need ze prunes. French ones, zey are ze best. And large, please.”

I don’t know if Dillons are hoping to sell all these items to Americans. Maybe there is some cache in buying expensive European products (Heinz beans are nearly $3.79 a can – that’s 1.90 pounds sterling). Or perhaps there is a large hidden community of Europeans here, which makes it worth Dillons’ while. I haven’t spotted any, as I wander round the store, although of course I might not know just from looking. I’ll have to be more alert. Perhaps I should walk around with an open packet of milk chocolate HobNobs held aloft (one of those handy cardboard tubes with the blue plastic lid) and see if I attract anyone.

Hurrying along

Words. They’re lovely things aren’t they?

When I lived in England, I would hurry. Or hurry up. Then I moved to Scotland and found myself scooting. “I must scoot”, I would say. I would scoot to the Co-op, which Husband and I called the Coop (we’re so amusing). Scooting to the Coop had a very pleasing feel to it. Scooting to school felt good too. It was for occasions such as these that school English lessons taught me the word alliteration.

Now in America, I hustle. I like that word. Hustle, hustled, hustling, hustle. It even sounds like what it means (there’s a word for that too, but I’m not going to use it – one word about words is enough showing off).

You’ve no idea what hustling can do for morale. Watching my son play soccer, for example, I hear another mom shout “Come on boys, half-time’s over. Let’s hustle.” She sees seven small boys in orange shirts and black shorts, who need encouraging into a second half. I see these people. For a short moment, I am aware of these facts: although I drove to the soccer ground in a Honda minivan in which the cd selection was Children’s Ultimate Party Album, Barney's It’s a Great Day for Learning, and Amy Grant’s Home for Christmas, and although the differential between my waist and hips isn’t anywhere near as large as it used to be, and although the extent of my interaction with young men these days is to yell “good jahb, CJ” at the goalie, deep down, deep down, I am oozing such ice cold urban chic that it is amazing my extremities haven’t frozen off, even though it’s in the 80's this afternoon and there’s no shade at the soccer ground. In another life, (I’m accumulating a worryingly large collection of these) I know I could be shoulder to shoulder with Marc Warren and his gang. I could be in that immaculately tailored business suit, no yogurt on the lapel. I could eat in minimalist restaurants with views over the Thames, where they don’t have a kids' menu. With my sheer craftiness and brilliance, and a few calls on a mobile phone thinner than a credit card… no… wait… thinner than a business card, I could trick business men, art dealers, tycoons, the lot of them, out of their millions. I could walk out of a lift towards a camera in slow motion, arms swinging, hips swinging, as the opening credits rolled. I could take on Marc Warren in quick-fire repartee. And win. The lovely word hustle does this for me.

I’ve had a fine old time with hustling on Youtube (who invented that thing? - as if we didn’t have enough demands on our time already). First, I found this truly marvellous clip from Hustle series 3 (sorry, it won't let me embed it here). It features the very building I once worked in, but I never saw anything even half as exciting from my window.

Next, there’s plenty of this:



I only included that out of sheer devilment, because people get cross with me when I leave them with a tune on their brain for the rest of the day, and this one is guaranteed. Doo doo doo, da doo, da doo doo doo.

Uber-suave con artists, naked bottoms flustering the tourists in Trafalgar Square, and one of the catchiest tunes of all time. As I said, hustling can do a lot for the morale. I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back to mere hurrying, or scooting (not even alliterative scooting).

Verruca

One good turn deserves another. You, America, have introduced me to the word cosmetology. I am going to introduce you to the word verruca (pronounced v ' roo ka). I discovered yesterday that you don’t know this word. I’m not going to tell you what it means, because you can click over to Wikipedia or Google and find out for yourselves very easily, and I’d like to build up the suspense a little. Remember how your teacher used to tell you that if you looked up a word yourself, you’d remember its meaning better? I’d hate to tell you straight off what a verruca is, and not give you the best possible chance of retaining the knowledge. With the knowledge will come the realisation that you missed out on the humour of the name of the character Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (but you may feel that missing out on British humour is the best way of approaching it).

Meanwhile, we Brits can chat amongst ourselves, and say “how can they not have a word for a verruca?” You can also heave a sigh of relief on my behalf that I discovered this sorry lacuna in American English in the relatively unembarrassing context of a private conversation (although honestly, verrucae never make for a very pretty discussion). The alternative might have been in a crowded pharmacy:

“Have you got anything for a verruca? For a verruca. No, not a feraverruca. Just A VERRUCA. Yes, that’s right. A verruca. I don’t want them to stop my son swimming, you see. He's got several. In Britain, we use something called Bazooka to get rid of them. You don’t have that here? Do you have anything similar? No, I’m not trying to be funny. No, not offensive either. Um, well, [sensing it’s time to go] most people say that if you leave them alone, in time they will go away on their own, so we’ll just try that.”

Everyday communication can be such a minefield here.

Cosmetology for verruca. It seems a fair swap.