Life isn't fair

There’s a fabulous moment in the medieval Blackadder series (which unfortunately I can’t find on youtube), when Baldrick complains to his master “But that’s not fair”. Blackadder replies “Life isn’t fair, Baldrick. Otherwise things like this wouldn’t happen”, and clips him round the ear.

I’m guessing that a lot of you might think “Iota’s probably got something to say about this subject. She’s had cancer…” But you’ll be disappointed. You see, last summer I never really had those moments that you’re meant to have, during life crises, when you rail against the universe, or God, or whatever you need to rail against, and say “Why me? Why is this happening to me? Life isn’t fair?” For sure, I had moments when I railed “Life is sometimes rubbish. Cancer is the pits. I hate having cancer. I would not wish this on anyone. This is horrid, and I can't do anything about it.” But the “not fair” thing? No. I didn’t do that.

I think I was a Stoic in a former life. I was probably so Stoic that I felt the need to fall on my sword one day, because I’d forgotten to put my dirty toga in the laundry basket before setting out for a busy day at the forum. Then I woke up as a baby in the 20th century, and that must have been a big cultural shock. “I’m hungry, my nappy’s wet, this mattress isn’t comfy, I’m a third child in my sister’s pass-on baby clothes, I’m six weeks old and I have bronchitis… crying might just be appropriate here, but… no… I think it’s probably a little attention-seeking, I’ll just smile sweetly… That’s what babies are suppposed to do… Bit of gurgling, perhaps… Hang on... It’s not working… Where IS she?... Waaaaaaah…”

So yes, I’m Stoic, by nature and by up-bringing. But I’ve also noticed this. People never say “life isn’t fair” when nice things happen to them. You don’t hear “I’ve got healthy kids, I’ve just been promoted at work, I’ve unexpectedly inherited a holiday cottage in Cornwall, life is good to me. It just isn’t fair.” No. People say “life isn’t fair” when they mean “life isn’t all plain-sailing for ME”. But think about it this way. If you’re reading this, you have access to a computer. It’s a reasonable assumption that you have food to eat, shelter, education, medical care, and plenty more besides. There are huge numbers of people in the world, huge numbers, who do not have those things. How can any of us (and I include myself here) really say “life isn’t fair”? Let’s face it. If the world was fair, do you think your situation would get better, or worse? That's in general. How about the specifics? Would you be more or less likely to get cancer, if the world was fair?

And how did we all get to think that it would be “fair” (ie plain-sailing), in the first place? There is little evidence for that expectation. Just look at life. It’s ups and downs, isn’t it? Good patches, bad patches. We’re all going to die. We’re all getting older. We’re going to encounter disappointment, ill health, injustice, bereavement… With some good stuff too, of course. But my point is this: why do we expect it to be any different? Why does it feel “not fair” when these things happen?

I know what you’re thinking (those of you who haven’t given up reading in a state of total depression by now…) You’re thinking “that’s all very well, intellectually speaking, Iota, but it’s not how it FEELS, is it? When something bad happens, you do FEEL it isn’t fair, don’t you?” Well, of course you’re right. It does feel different when it happens to you. No-one ever thinks it will happen to them. That’s the weird thing. I didn’t think I’d get breast cancer. Not even when I knew that 1 in 9 women do at some point in their lives. But I can honestly say I didn’t deeply feel “it’s not fair” when I did. I don’t know why that was (apart from my inherent weirdness, of course). I suppose feelings are broadly shaped by belief systems, and to feel “it’s not fair”, you first have to believe that the bad things that happen in life aren’t fair, and for all the reasons I’ve just talked about, I didn’t believe that.

I think, honestly, I’m more afraid of the seeming randomness of life, than the unfairness of it. When I’ve worked out how to deal with that one, I’ll let you know.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that life IS fair. I admit there is great injustice and inequality in our experiences of life. I thought I’d list a few of them.

• France and Germany have the best national anthems.

• Before me and my contemporaries, whole generations of young people had to face their teenage years without ‘80s music to help them through. Imagine the suffering…

• Library fines. I mean, do they want us to encourage our children to read or not?

• When you leave a tissue in a jeans pocket before putting them in the washing machine, the whole load is covered with little white flecks, and it takes ages to pick them all off. That punishment is ridiculously disproportionate to the crime. I know you can put the load in the tumble drier, and it does it for you, but then there’s eco-guilt to contend with (and listen, I’m not blogging about laundry AGAIN, ok?)

• Things that taste nice are usually not good for you.

• Alcohol, which you can buy in the shops, gives you a hangover. Gas and air, which doesn’t, is only available during childbirth. (Why doesn’t anyone market that stuff?)

Do you have any “not fair” examples yourself?

I thought it was time for another competition, so the person who leaves the best example, gets to choose which blog post about life in mid-America I write next, out of the following: Guns, Religion, or The Garage Sale. Or how I screw up bring up my kids within my whole ‘life’s not fair doesn’t work as a slogan’ philosophy. I could get that random selector widget to pick the winner, which would be fair, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to choose the winner myself, not based on any objective measurable criteria, just on the whim of my own personal fancy, because life isn’t fair.
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Bloggers of yesteryear

I was e-chatting to a blogger the other day, as you do, and the subject of the North East of England came up. “Wife in the North country,” I said. “Wife in the North?” came the reply. “I don’t know that one. Have to look it up.”

I have known for a long time that I am an Old Blogger, but it was with that comment that I realized that a whole generation, maybe two or three, of bloggers have emerged since mine.

I started blogging in May 2007, and it was very different then. That was in the days before the explosion. There were no groups to join, and you found new blogs to read via the blogrolls of your favourite blogs, or by following up comments. So it was important to be on blogrolls, and to keep your own one up to date. You had to make your comments sympathetic, witty, insightful, perky, intriguing, inviting (no pressure, then) as they were your opening gambit in the conversation, and there really wasn’t any other route.

No-one in the UK was making any money from their mummy blog, and there was much more talk of blogging as a guilty pleasure. People would regularly say "I should be doing the ironing/playing with my children/walking the dog/working on my new world peace project, but here I am blogging again." It was a little like being in a club, and confessing to a naughty secret.

Twitter didn't exist (yes, really). You didn't know who your followers were, and feed-readers were for the advanced. Anyone who had a Sitemeter button on their blog was pretty sophisticated. Uploading a picture was a skill that new bloggers sought help for, and were congratulated on when they’d mastered it. If we’d known vlogging was only a couple of years away, we could have called putting a picture up, “plogging”.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being cliquey, or competitive, so I don’t want anyone to feel excluded here. But I got a little nostalgic, and I started thinking back to the old days. Any other Old Bloggers out there, I thought I'd invite you to accompany me down Blogging Memory Lane. (And I'm not really worried about being cliquey here, because I don't think most people would feel hard done by, for not being part of a group of shamelessly backward-looking old fogeys, in today's forward-looking, punchy, dynamic, multi-media blogging world.) Trouble is, as I wrote this, it stopped being a trip down Memory Lane, and became a visit to Bloggers' Graveyard. That's the thing with blogging. Most of us are doing it for a reason, and that often also means we are doing it for a season. A lot of people whom I was reading two years ago are no longer blogging. Some people announce they're leaving (and some then in fact come back), but most just post less and less frequently, until the last post is up there for months on end.

Wife in the North was, of course, the big name at that time, but do you also remember Strife in the North? That was a spoof blog written by Rilly Super. On occasion, Wife in the North would write a post, and within a day, Rilly Super would have written on the same subject. One or two people suspected Wifey of also being Rilly, but I didn't buy that theory. One blog is time-consuming enough...

There were other Northumbrian bloggers who I enjoyed: Mutterings and Meanderings, and then a couple who have disappeared completely from the blogosphere: Mutterings from the Mill, and Over 60 Now, whose blogs don't even turn up on google now.

Then there was Stay at Home Dad. In those days, a daddy blogger was a very rare creature, almost mythical in status, and because he wrote so movingly and sensitively about his daughter, lots of us had a virtual crush on him. Oh go on. Admit it.

I miss Rotten Correspondent, with her tales of life as a nurse in a busy ER. I was actually in her town a while back, and we could have met up, but I didn’t discover till after the event that that was where she lived. What a waste. And what about Blooming Marvelous? Remember her? It was through her blog that I learned that marvellous is spelt differently in American and British English. Who knew? I thought she’d disappeared for good, but she left a comment recently, so she must still be reading occasionally.

Ha, and what about Omega Mum? I used to laugh out loud at her descriptions of school assemblies. Never understood her blog title though: 3 kids no job, since she did have a job. Maybe the blog came first, and the job came later. Then there was Beta Mum, who went all off-shore on us and moved to Jersey.

It’s a pity I didn’t keep a copy of my blogrolls (is there some way of accessing old versions?) It would have been interesting, and I know I’ve missed a stack of excellent Old Bloggers. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip with me, though, and please feel free to add any other lost old favourites in the comments. There ought to be some way we could have a get together. Class of 2007. Perhaps there's a niche for a website here: Bloggers Reunited, which would put our anonymous virtual identities virtually back in touch with other anonymous virtual identities.

Names and numbers

5-yo told me the other day,

"Mom, there are two boys in my class with the same name. Carlos. One of them is new. So he has to have a number."

This seemed a little harsh. Surely the teacher didn't say "Sorry, there's already a Carlos in this class, so you'll just have to be called Number 27 instead"? So I asked 5-yo for a bit more detail.

"Well, it's not just a number. It's his name AND a number."

I wasn't sure this was much better. Did the teacher say "We'll call you Carlos 2, ok?" So I probed a bit more.

"He's One Carlos. We already had Carlos, and the new boy is One Carlos."

Aaaaaah. All is revealed.

"That's not One Carlos, Honey. That's Juan Carlos."

So confusing, being in Kindergarten.

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What's wrong with my help? Part ll

Everyone loves a heart-warming story on a Friday.

Remember how only a few days ago, I was feeling a bit unwanted and un-needed? In spite of all your comments, and Husband’s insistence that receiving help is easier than giving it, and we Help-Accepters make a valuable contribution to society? Well, it just so happened that I heard that a woman who was unbelievably kind to me last summer, was having a tough time. Her baby had pneumonia, and a partially-collapsed lung.

Let me give you a bit of background. This woman is a single mother, has three children aged 1, 2 and 8, with a demanding job. As if that wasn’t enough to fill her days, when she heard I was doing chemotherapy last summer, she emailed me to say “I know we don’t know each other very well, but if you felt comfortable with the idea, I’d love to take your children out for the day”. So she left her own two youngest with her nanny, and took her oldest and my three to the zoo for the day. They had a lovely time. She brought them home in the evening, with two chickens ready, in disposable baking tins, to go into the oven.

It’s not that I feel I owe her something, because I know she did it from the generosity of her heart, and not in hope of anything in return. But I did feel, when I heard her baby was ill, that I’d like to help. Didn’t know quite what to do, though. She always looks like she's walked out of a fine-dressing catalogue (even when going to the zoo... even when returning from the zoo, come to think of it, which is remarkable), and seems like one of life's copers.

It just so happened that I bumped into her at the school door. I said I was sorry to hear about the baby, and we chatted about that. Then, armed with the great wisdom and perception of 20 bloggers who commented on my previous post, I asked

“Could I bring you dinner tonight?”

And in the second in which I could see she was hesitating, I added

“It really wouldn’t be a big deal. Honestly. Let me just bring you dinner.”

At that, her shoulders sagged, and her face seemed to drop an inch or two.

“That would be lovely. I haven’t slept for days,” she replied.

It wasn’t lovely, actually. The dinner, I mean. It was very mediocre. Hm... Probably not even mediocre, because in my “wouldn’t be a big deal” moment, I hadn’t focused on the fact that between 3.30 and 5.00 (when she said they usually ate), I not only had to make the dinner, but also go and get 5-yo from school at 4.00 and drop 12-yo at a play rehearsal at 4.30, both of which would be 10-15-ish minute round trips, and probably go to Dillons too, then drive the 10 minutes to her house. You do the math. So it wasn’t a great culinary triumph, but this is what I think. When someone brings you dinner, it doesn’t really matter what they bring, so long as it is edible. It’s the fact that you didn’t have to think about it. You didn’t have to conjure up thoughts of food from the maternal brain-whirl that accompanies having an ill child. You didn’t have to do anything except put the dish in the oven, or open the packet. And - more importantly - someone cared. They cared enough to bring you soggy baked potatoes, tepid bacon, a packet of shredded cheese which you probably have in your own refrigerator anyway, some salad which you probably also have, ill-travelled broccoli, unimaginative yogurts, and a bar of Godiva chocolate (especially the chocolate).

That’s what I think, anyway.

And here’s something else I think. One of the things I love about blogging is the way little bits of empathy and smidgeroos of insight get passed around, and help us on our way. Writing that post on Monday, and hearing your thoughts, made me a little better at dealing with the situation when it arose again.

I knew you’d like my Friday story. Better go, because I’ve got things to do before picking up the kids from school – my own, and my friend’s 8 year old too. She’s coming for a playdate.

You CAN have your cake and eat it

I’m caught up in the midst of a little flurry of simultaneous blogging at the moment. First there was the one about the old primary school connection. And now, I am simultaneously posting with my old china Pig in the Kitchen.

Pig’s blog is so multi-faceted. No, no, no. Not multi-fauceted, like American bathrooms. Multi-faceted. She’s a mummy blogger, an expat blogger, AND a recipes-for-food-allergies blogger. I just can’t pigeon-hole her at all. One thing that really endears her to me is this. She once said she was giving up blogging, and then just couldn’t keep away, and came back. I did that too, a long time ago. It was nice to find a kindred feeble-willed blogging-addict. She also confessed to sharing my crush on Anthony Wiggle (but not in public; sorry, Pig, to out you on that one).

I use Pig as my personal cooking and baking advice guru. I once emailed her to say “why do my biscuits always burn on the bottom? If I take them out before they’re burnt, they’re not done. If I leave them till they’re done, then they burn. How do I find that nano-second in between underdone and burnt? Is it the baking trays? Should I bother to line them with baking parchment? Do I need to get the light inside my oven mended? How would I do that? Where would I buy a light bulb? Can I fit it myself? Could I then see the biscuits, or would I also have to clean the inside of the oven door? Do you know how much I hate cleaning the oven? What am I going to do with the rest of my life when my preschooler starts full-time school? Should we have invested our English money in an instant access account before we came here? Is there justice in this life?”

She emailed back “Do you put your biscuits on the bottom shelf? I always think the bottom shelf of the oven is a bad place to be if you’re a biscuit. Try the top shelf.”

Biscuits in this household, since that day, have her to thank for their pale undersides. She is a whizz at all things culinary.

After my cancer diagnosis and treatment, I have been trying to do as much with my diet as possible to prevent any stray cancer cells making a nest and settling down. There’s evidence that you can do a lot to help yourself, and of course this is good for morale if nothing else. Much better to feel you are doing something, than to feel you are sitting waiting for some cosmic dice to roll, and to find out which side of the statistics you fell on. What I’ve done is the subject of another blog post, but the bit where Pig comes in concerns sugar. As far as my research tells me (and when I say "my research", what I mean is the half dozen books that Husband has read on the subject, and distilled into nuggets of practical wisdom for me), cancer cells thrive on sugar. I hope I’m not wrong when I say that there is one scan that you can have to detect a tumour, which simply looks for areas of high sugar concentration in your body (please correct me, if you know about these things). We all know that the Western diet contains ridiculous amounts of sugar, and that the human body wasn’t designed for that, so one of my aims has been to cut out the stuff. And even if it’s a total red herring on the cancer front, we all know it makes sense for so many other reasons.

I’m pleased to say that after a few months of cutting down (not quite cutting out) sugar, I don’t really miss it much. I don’t lie awake at night yearning for doughnuts, or have to avoid the bakery aisle in Dillons. I get my fix when needed from a hugely increased consumption of dark chocolate, which has a bit of sugar in it, but also has anti-carcinogenic properties (and if it doesn’t, please don’t correct me). But just occasionally, I do think “hm, a great big, stodgy mouthful of something spongy and sweet would be very nice at this point”. Plus, my kids are still in the I-don’t-call-it-a-snack-unless-it’s-sweet mode of operation. So I asked Pig if she had any recipes for a low sugar, or even a no sugar, cake.

She said she didn’t have one to hand, but muttered something about "enjoying a challenge in the kitchen". And voila! Here is the result. I’ve tried it, and I love it. (Can’t quite say the same for the children – they can sniff out healthy food at 100 yards and take the necessary evasive action.) It’s fruity, sweet, delicious, and fills you up. It provides that "sink my teeth" moment. You should try it. And simultaneous blogging. Both are fun, and both are non-fattening.

Thank you, Pig. The recipe is fab (and I'm going to try your healthy Beetroot buns too). It’s lovely that you are concerned enough about me to spend time creating my very own recipe. I mean, how many people have a cake named after them? And please don’t try and leave blogging again, (not soon, anyway).

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What's wrong with my help?

Why is it that people never take me up on offers of help?

I have a friend who's had a baby recently, and promised that she'd let me help out with her usual school run, and/or having her older children to play. She hasn't. I have another friend who broke both legs. I offered to help out in any way I could (she has 5 children, so I thought might be in a position to use some assistance). She said thanks, but she was fine. Then there's my friend who's having minor surgery this week, and whose husband is taking time off to look after her and her two children. We were talking today about how he can't be with her at the hospital, and be at home with the kids at the same time. So I offered to go with her to the hospital, or to be a drop-off point for her two kids. She wouldn't agree to either.

These friends helped me out on several occasions last summer. What is wrong with me? Which of the following do you think applies?

(a) I'm the most dreadful free-loading scrounger, when it comes down to it.

(b) They think I've got some horrendous contagious disease that I'm not being honest about, and they don't want to expose their children to me except in short supervised bursts. I should try and get the subject out into the open, by one day blurting out "my face has always looked like this, you know".

(c) I find it easy to ask for help, and don't feel that by doing so, I am failing or not coping. I expect other people to feel the same, but they don't. A lot of people find it very difficult. They drop hints, but somehow when I pick up those hints, I say the wrong things, and either overstep the boundaries, or foul up in some other way that I don't understand.

(d) Linked to (c), this is one of those competitive things that I fail to spot. There's an unspoken challenge to see who needs the least help, and I just haven't realised I'm an entrant (and not a very good one). I thought this was life, but it seems it's a series of competitions that other people know the rules to and I don't. Blogging fits into this category as well, or so I'm told.

(e) Since having children, I've never lived near family, so I've often been more needy of help than people who have their mum or sister round the corner. This means that I love the idea of a supportive community of mums/dads helping each other out, like a 1950's movie, and am happy to do my bit to create one, but 21st century life isn't like that, and I'm really out of step. There are possibly people in this city who, right now, are saying to each other "someone should really tell Iota..." Until they do, though, I'm going to keep on trying to be helpful, and wearing my nice selection of headscarves and wing-shaped sunglasses.

(f) Everyone runs their lives much more competently than I do, and so they don't need help. Not even when they have babies and/or surgical procedures, or break limbs.

(g) People don't realise how it can be quite hurtful not to allow someone who has been incapacitated and reliant on others, to reciprocate when they are in a position to do so.

Does anyone else have this problem?

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More life stuff

I forgot to tell you the worst bit.

The day after the visit, back home, in the grim grey light of morning when it had become clear that the negotiating process was going to end badly but whilst we were still mired in it, my friend who had been looking after our hamster phoned to say he wasn't looking very well. Not very well at all.

He had been healthy at 4.00am that morning, when she had been unable to sleep and had gone into the kitchen and seen him running on his wheel. Literally on his wheel, ie on the top of it, which is something of a hamster first, according to the vet we later spoke to. But by 8.00am, something had happened, and he wasn't responding to stimuli. When I got there, he was looking dead, but a few twitches indicated life, so I lifted him out of his cage, and held him on my lap, thinking perhaps the warmth of my hands would revive him. For a few minutes, it seemed I was onto something, as his breathing became regular again, and his eyes opened. On the advice of the vet who my friend phoned, we dripped a sole drop of honey into his mouth, and kept him warm. For about half an hour, I willed life and health into him, but alas, the glimmer of hope was forlorn. Whatever was ailing him was too much for his little hamstery form, and he died in my hands.

At 5-yo's valentine party, I was admiring the art work on the classroom wall. The children had had their pictures taken with puckered up lips, and had coloured in their lips in red or pink. They had then written a sentence saying "My valentine kiss is for..." (which actually I didn't think was terribly appropriate, but that's another story). Most of them had written "Mom" or "Dad" or the name of one of their classmates. 5-yo had written "My valentine kiss is for mi ded hamster".

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Life stuff

Do you remember I told you about a job opportunity for Husband which was causing us to agonise a little? Great job, great career move, wrong side of the Atlantic, was the gist of it. The end of the story goes like this.

We went to check it out one long week-end in January. By that stage, we'd pretty much decided it was for us. Though not where we wanted to end up, it had great potential to be a good stepping stone, giving Husband the opportunity to do all the things he needs to do, to polish up a nice bright shiny cv for a future trans-Atlantic hop.

The week-end itself was pretty bad. Two flights in each direction, so that's already a pretty tiring day at the beginning and end. Rainy and grey, in a state known for its sunny weather. 9-yo got ill, and so I stayed with him in the hotel, while he threw up 15 times in the course of a morning (yes, I was counting). I knew it was bad, because normally when he is ill, he is a trooper. If I ask him how he is feeling, he manages a weak "fine", or "ok", but on this occasion, he called me over to the bedside a few times to tell me "I feel very terrible", unasked.

Husband got the same bug, but managed to soldier on through the arranged schedule, since he wasn't actually vomiting (sorry, too much information, I know). At one point, I left the two of them in a double bed, Husband fully clothed, clasping the duvet around him, and saying in a shivery voice how cold he was, while on the other side, 9-yo had flung off all covers, stripped off his pyjama top, and was red in the face and burning up. 12-yo was with our friends (as you can imagine, the whole thing had developed some logistical challenges by this stage), and I took 5-yo, who had been cooped up in the hotel room with me, her sick brother and Spongebob Squarepants all day, to the hotel pool for a swim. It was an outdoor pool, but it had stopped raining. Or so I thought. As soon as we'd got into the water, the rain started again. It was chilly, our towels were getting wet in the rain, it was grey and miserable, I still feel really self-conscious in a swimsuit, and 5-yo was playing a game that I didn't really understand, but it seemed to involve her bossing me about a lot. I think it would be fair to say it was a low point, but it's at moments like this that you have to love kids.

"Isn't this relaxing?" said 5-yo, sitting on the side of the pool, kicking her feet in the water, and surveying the scene in a somewhat regal manner.

"We're so lucky to have the pool to ourselves. I don't know why more people aren't here. It's just... so... relaxing."

So the week-end wasn't great, but we decided we wouldn't let that colour our thoughts about the job and the option of moving. However, a tactful reporting of events (you never know quite how anonymous your blog is...) would be that the content of the job, and the terms and conditions which accompanied it, had changed considerably between the time when it was first offered to Husband, and the time of our visit. Nothing had been in writing, but that wasn't really the issue. It's just too complicated for a blog post, as these things often are, but suffice to say it was all rather an exhausting, frustrating and demoralising experience. Yes, I think that sums it up (and if you want to read the rant between the lines, feel free to do so).

Here's the thing, though. When it all fell through, apart from the disillusionment and disappointment, we both felt a huge relief (especially me!) I really hadn't wanted to move within the US at all - not even to a state known for its lovely climate, not even to a place with good air links to the UK, not even to a lively growing city by the sea, not even for a great career opportunity for Husband. Because it was the only option on the table, and seemingly a very good job and a good package, with bells and whistles, it would have been hard to turn it down, but my heart was never in it. I already knew all that in advance though, so going through the tortuous process didn’t tell me anything new.

Life’s a bit like that sometimes, isn’t it?

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More about names

You have to be careful, talking about names. They're such personal things. So if I offend you, in this post, I'm sorry. This is all just my private opinion, and you should treat it as such. I'm sure many people think my choice of children's names is boring and traditional. As I say, it's all just personal choice.

The trend in children's names round here, in kids aged up to about 8, is to give them as a first name what has previously been a surname. (A couple of commenters on my last post have noticed the same thing.) Of course it's not a brand new phenomenon, but it seems very out of control at the moment.

I first noticed three years ago, when I was looking round a preschool for my daughter. It struck me as odd that some of the pegs had labels with the child's first name on them, and some with the child's surname. It seemed inconsistent. Duuuh... They were all first names.

Without even stopping to think, I can tell you I know an Emerson, Aniston, Saylor, Baylor, Taylor, Tyler, Kinsley, Peyton, Peighton, Hampton (known as Hamps), Mackenzie, Shakespeare. And that's just the girls. Among the boys, there is Garrett, Gannon, Cannon, Colton, Colson, Carson, Haydon, Braydon, Brandon, Brenden, Jackson, Archer, and I could go on. (I made Shakespeare up, by the way, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

I've been in situations where two children in the room share a name, one as a first name and one as a surname. In fact (and I'm not making this up, honestly), I once had a marvellous trio. There was Thomas Clark, Clark Taylor, and Taylor Bryant in a group. I was so desperate for a Bryant Thomas to come by, and make a perfect square, but it didn't happen.

My personal favourite, though, is a little girl called Brityn. I often help out with her Sunday School class, and I always love it if they do a craft activity. It gives me the opportunity to look at her piece of work and say enthusiastically "Wow, good job. That's so great, Brityn." But I say it inwardly without the comma. And an upper case G. I'm sorry. I can't help myself. I know it's naughty, but it doesn't do any harm. Allow me my little private expat joke.

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Names

While we're on the subject of accents, here's a thing. When you name your children, you don't usually stop to think what their names will sound like in the accent of another country (unless you're living there already, as Jenny Rudd's comment on my previous post shows). I did think about North/South pronunciation, since we have family in both, but it didn't occur to me to think about the American pronunciation.

Your darling Scott, or John, over here will become Scaahtt, or Jaahn. Any name you chose with a T in the middle of it, risks the fate of the word dentist. So Peter will be Peder, Katie will be Kadie. A name ending -er will suffer the fate of being sucked back into the mouth and chewed around with those extra -rrrs. Esther becomes Esthrrr, Alexander becomes Alexandrrr, and Peter becomes Pedrrr (boy, am I glad we didn't choose Peter as a name). You need to watch out for extra R sounds sneaking into names such as Mark, Clare, Eleanor, Gertie, Dirk, Percy (haven't come across any of those last three, as it happens...)

Then there's the unfortunate vowel sound in Anna, or Ann. She becomes Eena, or Een. Or on a bad day, Ee-un. The same problem with Jane, which sounds like Jean.

If you agonised between Laura and Lara for your baby girl, then you'll discover what a waste of time that was when you get here. They sound the same. Joseph is pronounced with a hard S sound, as in seaside, not as we say it in England, as if with a z. Paula sounds like parlour.

Then there's the whole boy's name girl's name conundrum. I've come across two male Gails. Jamie can be male or female, and is spelt as many different ways as you can think of. It still surprises me when I hear of a boy called Erin. It's Aaron, actually, but they pronounce it Erin round here. The boy's name Sean sounds like the girl's name Sian. A girl introduced to you as Don, is in fact Dawn.

It's probably just as well I didn't know we'd be living in America. It was hard enough choosing names for our babies as it was...

A dutiful post

There are some words that I’ve never quite got to grips with, in an American accent. 'Dennist' is one of them. I need to have my teeth looked after by a fully T-ed dentist. I can’t be doing with dennal issues. Dennist sounds far too much like Dennis the Menace. Then there’s the word 'and'. I’m sorry, but I just can’t love it when it’s pronounced 'ee-und'. Sorry. I’m not too good with words that end –er either. I like those words properly clipped. Eith-a, for example. It’s just not nice when the ending is swallowed back into the mouth and chewed around with an rrrr sound. I couldn’t help flinching a little when I was at 9-yo’s school Winter Show, and 200 children enthusiastically launched into the opening numb-a, singing “In Decembrrrr, We remembrrrr…”.

There is one word which I really can’t cope with at all. It’s the word ‘duty’. That word just begs to be pronounced dyootee, as in “England expects that every man will do his dyootee.” How inspiring would that have been for the navvies if Nelson had announced “England expects that every man will do his doodie”? See my point? Doodie sounds like what you put your dog out in the back yard to perform. It’s just too close for comfort to doo-doos. I feel the meaning of the word does honestly require a little more gravitas in its pronunciation.

I had a long exposure to doodie when 5-yo was keen on the Barbie movie The Princess and the Pauper (por-pah, or pah-prrr – we’ve been through this one, I’m not doing it again for you). Both the princess and the pauper are very enmeshed in thoughts of their responsibilities and doodies. Given the choice, I have to say that I’d go for being a princess, living a life of luxury and inheriting the kingdom, even if it does mean an arranged marriage to the hunky prince Dominic who rules the neighbouring realm - frankly, what’s to complain of there? The pauper’s alternative is living in a lonely hovel, and slaving away night and day for an abusive employer, in order to pay off her parents’ debts. Hm. Tough choice.

I digress. Both girls sing of their devotion to doodie, and it made me laugh each time 5-yo watched the dvd. “It’s my doodie!” beautiful blond Princess Anneliese would chirrup prettily.

Well, now the word has come home to roost. 12-yo is playing the part of Frederick in his school’s production of The Pirates of Penzance. It’s going to be hard for me to keep a straight face when the pirate chorus opens with:

“We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship’s a boodie,
We are sober men and true, and attentive to our doodie”.

Then 12-yo has the line:

“It was my duty under my indentures, [Back to dentistry again, Ed.] and I am the slave of duty”.

Of course the audience will already adore his English accent, and if he says “dyootee” in his opening lines, he will just steal the show.

I'm not even going to get started on the whole byootee/booty issue. Barbie princesses, for example, love to assert that their booty is on the inside, which is anatomically very curious.

Oh, it’s so complicated being English.

Post-script 1: Oops. Seems Nelson didn’t say that line anyway. He signaled it from his ship with flags. They’re so clever in the navy. Thought of ways to get the word out fast, even in those pre-Twitter days.

Post-script 2: Oops. Seems “We sail the ocean blue” is HMS Pinafore, not Pirates of Penzance. Listen. I’m a blogger, not a G&S expert, not a naval battle historian. A blogger. Right? Give me a break.

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Small world

The girl who I was at primary school with was… Brit Gal in the USA. I can’t remember quite how we discovered the connection – something to do with a website that I’d typed ‘Chesham’ into. As I mentioned, Brit Gal was a couple of years below me, and I can’t honestly say I remember her. There was also a girl with the same name as her in my year, who I do remember well. That made the process of uncovering Brit Gal’s identity a little complicated. According to Friends Reunited, that girl is living in the Chesham area, divorced, with five children, whereas Brit Gal in the USA claimed to be living in Oklahoma, married to a man known as the Hubster. For a while I was confused - but I worked it out in the end.

I enjoy Brit Gal’s blog, with its friendly and open style. She talks about things that, like for me, would have been completely alien to her a few years ago: tornado warnings, trucks, the front porch. These are now the stuff of her life, as they are of mine. I read her posts about these things and think “yes, it’s just like that”. We live a few hundred miles apart, but so much of what she writes is familiar. Except for the rattlesnakes, for which I am very grateful. We don’t have rattlesnakes round here. Who needs rattlesnakes?

Brit Gal and the Hubster have an intriguing hobby. They go geocaching. I’d never come across geocaching before reading Brit Gal’s blog. I think I’d enjoy geogaching. It sounds to me like treasure hunts for grown-ups. Treasure hunts were a part of my childhood, and I often do them for my kids too. I love watching as the excitement overtakes their critical faculties. The clue says “this is where you put your dirty laundry”, and with a shriek, 5-yo exclaims “I know, I know. It’s the television!” and sprints off in the direction of the sitting room. Geocaching is a little more sedate, but I imagine there’s still a child-like thrill in finding the box you’ve been hunting for.

One thing the Midwest does very well is the sky. Brit Gal posts a photograph of the sky on a Friday: ‘Skywatch Friday’. If I’m ever feeling low about living in this part of the world, it reminds me of one of the things I will truly miss when we leave. If you think you’ve seen a big sky, let me tell you this: if you’ve not been to the Midwest, then you haven’t.

The only bad thing about your blog, Brit Gal, is that it is one of two that makes my web browser crash (Not From Around Here – you have the dubious honour of being the other one). The only way round it seems to be to read the post in Bloglines, rather than opening it up. So if I don’t comment very often, that’s the reason why. Anyone have any ideas how I can get to the bottom of this problem? It's only started happening recently and it's only these two blogs. Just as well I'm not into conspiracy theories...

So here’s to you, Brit Gal. Funny to think of us in our blue stripey dresses, running around the playground playing tag, doing ‘Music and Movement’ in our pants and vests, working our way through our times tables with the scary Mrs Edwards, she with the bouffant bleached white hair. And yes, I share your memories of the chain-smoking Mrs Davis, and Mr Kitchenman. How could one forget a teacher with a name like that? And oh indeed, the egg and spoon race too - that annual highlight. I won it one year, which is the one and only sporting achievement of my life. But I also still remember the horrible humiliation of coming last in the bunny hop race. Ah, the highs and lows.

I wonder what our head teacher Mr Ford would make of us now. He taught my class to sing ‘All Through the Night’ in Welsh. That was pretty darn PC, before PC-ness was even invented. I wonder if you learned that too?