The Chicago Six

So there I am, sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Chicago, listening to another English woman tell a story which begins “so there I am…”, and I’m thinking “I love that – the way English people tell stories in the present tense. I miss that here.”.

Get me, though. Chicago. Chi-ca-go. I’m having this FABULOUS week-end. We’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re being driven around on our own personalized tour, we’re looking at pictures in the Art Institute, we’re strolling around Chicago in the late autumn sunshine… We’re having the best week-end, and all the time, we’re talking, talking, talking. I think I haven’t ever talked so much in a 2-day period in my entire life. We talk as if talking is going to be banned tomorrow. We talk as we eat, we talk as we walk, we talk as we sit in a taxi, we talk when we’re ready for bed and should be going to sleep. I don't mean 19 to the dozen; it’s more like 91 to the dozen. We use much-loved phrases, rarely heard in our American lives: we speak about a fortnight, faffing around, losing the plot, being all over the shop, going to the loo. It’s the conversational equivalent of comfort food. I feel enveloped in a warm blanket of spoken words.

The cast list. You want to know the cast list. There were the two Chicagoans who organized us and looked after us. Thanks, Expat Mum, for your knowledgeable guided tour, and Nicola, I’m in awe of anyone who can wear a white wool coat and keep it looking that good. There were the two Californians, who turned up in bikinis carrying surfboards. Hope you’ve warmed up, Calif Lorna and Geekymummy. The East Coast was represented by Nappy Valley Girl, with her tales about visiting New York's Museum of Modern Art, (though I suspect she’d just got lost in her own neighborhood and was looking at the Hallowe’en decorations, which, if her blog is anything to go by, are works of art of museum quality in their own right). And then me, feeling like I’m one of the hicks from the sticks, though I think I impressed them all with my tales of how we have electricity and hot running water in every house, and a Wal-mart on both sides of town.

I remember a period of time when bloggers in the UK started meeting together. In real life. In the flesh. Sometimes it was an ad hoc group, sometimes it was arranged by British Mummy Bloggers. There was a flurry of ‘meet-ups’. If I’m honest, I hated reading those reports. I felt I was missing out big time. I wanted to know what it felt like to clap eyes on a completely strange face, and yet know the person behind it so well. I wanted to join in all the posting and commenting: “you were JUST like I imagined you! Can’t wait to see you again!” Sometimes living abroad really sucks. Then last summer, I was thrilled at the thought of meeting people at Cyber Mummy 2010, but I was also a little irritated that the blogging wagon had rolled on without me. Everyone was over the novelty of the whole meet-up thing, and was moving on, before I had even had my first taste. People were going to Cyber Mummy because they wanted to attend the sessions and learn stuff, when all I wanted to do was sit at a succession of coffee cups and talk. Not even talk… Just chat… I’m even going to confess (sorry, Susanna, Jen, Sian) that in advance of the conference, I emailed a few bloggers who I really wanted to meet, and sought to lure them out of sessions, so that I could fill my day with my own personal serial meet-up. (It only partially worked.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say, in amongst all this wittering on, is that this week-end in Chicago was not only a fun-filled, chat-filled, friendship-filled two days which will live in my memory for years to come, but it also somehow made up for all those meet-ups in England which I missed. And in Chi-ca-go, for heaven’s sake. Yup. I think I’ve caught up now.

Thank you, fellow members of The Chicago Six. I wish I could put all those conversations we had over the week-end in bottles, and uncork them over the next few weeks. I'd love to re-run them and chew them over again and again. There was so much great content!


PS Since someone is bound to ask, I don’t know if I’m going to Cyber Mummy 2011. Don’t know if I’ll be in England at the time. But if I am, and you fancy a quick coffee and a chat behind the bike sheds when teacher isn’t looking, email me.