The Story at the Bus Stop

I was flicking through a notebook yesterday, and I came across notes I’d made over the summer, when we were in England. Notes for blog posts that never got written. On one page were the notes I made after an encounter with an elderly lady at a bus stop. She was waiting for a bus, I was enjoying a country walk. She stopped me, and started talking. She told me how the bus company has cut back their services, so she can’t go and visit her sister-in-law any more. She can’t get there and back in a day. Then she started telling me about her life, talking with great animation. I was hooked.

She was 15 when war was declared. She told her father “I hope it goes on long enough that I can join in”. He said “It probably will. They usually go on quite a long time once they get started”. She overheard her mum and dad discussing whether to let her join the WAAF. It was her dad who said to let her go: "we better had, seeing as she wants to so badly".

She met her husband when she was in the WAAF. His name was Johnny. They were on the wing of an aeroplane, in for repairs. She asked a mechanic on the ground to throw up a part she needed. He tossed it high in the air, she caught it in her upturned, cupped hand, and Johnny’s hand came down – slap - on top of it, on top of her hand. That was how they first got talking. Later on, he asked her what she was doing in the evening, and she agreed to meet him. When she turned up at the bar, there he was with another woman. “I didn’t think you’d show up”, he told her. So their first date didn’t exactly get off to a flying start, but things worked out, and they married.

They had one son, and no grandchildren. Their son was disabled (she used the word "handicapped") and died young, "but he was a super little boy, he really was”.

Johnny died in bed one night, with his arm round her. She phoned the police, and they came, and they got her to phone her friend Mabel. Mabel came and collected her, and took her to her house. She put her to bed in her son’s bedroom. Mabel’s son was keen on aeroplanes, and his room was full of airfix models. She lay there, her husband gone, surrounded by aeroplanes to look at. It seemed fitting.

As the woman talked, I could almost see the movie rolling. A young Kate Winslet would be good as the WAAF girl, I thought. Was it just because of the wartime theme that I could so easily imagine the woman’s life as a film? Was it the disabled son, who made her life a little different to that of most mothers? What was it? I think it was the details on which the stories hung. Yes. It was the details, intricate and intimate, that brought the scenes so vividly to life for me.

I wonder, do we all have lives that could be moments strung together on a cinema screen, if only we tell them in a spirited way, as if engaging a stranger at a village bus stop?

Christmas 2011, the Christmas of the Towels

Christmas Eve, and Mr Claus and I were in the basement wrapping the final presents, and watching old episodes of Men Behaving Badly (yay, Netflix). I asked Husband to pass me a box of tissue, from the other side of the room, and as he pottered over in his socked feet, he paused and asked "why is the carpet wet here?". Yay for the box of tissues, which led us to discover that we have a leak in something (since it hasn't rained for a few days), and that water has been seeping into a corner of the basement, for probably several days (or weeks - who knows). This accounts for the slightly odd smell, which Husband had mentioned the other day, and I'd ignored. Our basement often smells slightly odd. It's usually to do with the dirty socks strewn around.

So the carpet is peeled back, the underlay discarded, and a pretty semi-circle of towels is keeping the water at bay. Towels which every few hours need to be wrung out, bunged in the washing machine and then the dryer (yay, driers.)

We had a lovely Christmas Day. We really did. Then last night, three of the five of us (Husband, me, 7-yo) went down with a bug. Or got up with a bug, I should say. Was it the turkey? Anyway, in these situations, I become a bit obsessive about washing everything: bedding, towels, pyjamas. I also put down a lot of spare towels, a habit which dates back to the days when our children weren't old enough to make it to the bucket, or good enough at aiming even if the bucket was right next to the bed. Thus it was that Husband, seeing me with another load on my way to the washing machine (yay, washing machines) wryly observed "This has been the Christmas of the Towels".

Right. Off to check that our house insurance is up to date.

.

The Music of Christmas: Part ll

There's been a post doing the rounds where bloggers have been sharing their favourite Christmas songs. I've already mentioned a couple of mine, and told you how much I love and revel in Christmas music.

But even I have my least favourites. They are (in ascending order of awfulness):

1) Anything recorded sung by children. I don't mind hearing children sing. It's sweet. Lots of them have lovely voices. So why, when they make recordings of popular Christmas songs for the mass market, why on EARTH, do they recruit children who can't sing in tune? There is nothing cute about children singing flat. Or sharp. And putting a quasi-adorable picture on the front of the box, of several smiling children of different races is not going to persuade me otherwise.

2) The Little Drummer Boy carol. It's boring, tedious, gloomy, and factually ridiculous (little drummer boy goes to play drum for sleeping newborn baby - I hope Mary gave him what for). I grant an exemption from my loathing of this carol to David Bowie and Bing Crosby, who do a nice job of making it into a duet. It is the only exemption I will allow.

3) Frosty the Snowman. I don't know what it is about this song (I'm not going to elevate it to 'carol' status), but I really hate and detest it. I don't even know the lyrics. I looked them up for the purposes of this blog post, and frankly, I was happier when I didn't know them. Anyone else share my detestation?

If you don't share mine, what are your LEAST favourite Christmas songs?

.

The Music of Christmas: Part l

I love Christmas. I always have. I think I've mentioned that before (and since a quick check reveals that I've written 18 posts to date with the label Christmas, I expect I have mentioned it more than once). And one of the best things about Christmas is the music. I love Christmas music. I love it all.

I love the familiar favourites about Santa and snowmen and reindeer and children, rehashed in scores of ways, played over wobbly sound systems in shops, abused as the background music to adverts on tv, warbled by children in school concerts.

I love the jolly ancient songs about wassailing. They make me think of our medieval forbears cheering themselves in the dark, dank, muddy, winter days, with a wassail bowl and a hog roast and a roaring fire. (Oh, thank heavens for central heating, fast food and shopping malls.)

I love carols, careful carriers of theological truths down the ages before most people could read and write. I used to love my 12" black vinyl record of carols, with a picture of snow-laden Christmas trees on the front. (I wonder if I still have it somewhere?) I love all those David Willcocks arrangements from Carols for Choirs. What a genius that man was. My favourite Christmas hymn is Of the Father's Love Begotten, which we had at our wedding (in January, not quite Christmas, but still Epiphany and therefore seasonal). It's based on a hymn written in the 4th century. It's old.

I love the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve. I sat and listened to it with my grandmother in the last month of her life in 1983. I had just got a fancy radio/cassette player which I was rather pleased with - it had two built-in speakers, taking me to the lofty heights of stereo sophistication. She needed an oxygen mask on during parts of the service. It's one of my loveliest memories.

I love modern classics, All I want for Christmas is You, Santa Baby, Let it Snow, War is Over, Slade's So Here It Is - all of them. My favourite in this category is Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. There's something about that song that just gets me between the ribs.

I love mystic-sounding madrigals on CDs which have the word Celtic in the title, with pictures on the front of people in hooded garb, gazing mysteriously across misty landscapes. (Incidentally, don't you think the current iPod generation misses out, with downloadable music which has no need of album covers?)

I even love the offensively vacuous Kidz Compilationz CDs we have. I'm going to have to use the word 'festive' at this point. You know the kind. Lots of jingles and jangles and a good strong beat, where Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer morphs into Ding Dong Merrily on High which segues into We Wish You a Merry Christmas which blends into Away in a Manger which transmutes into Deck the Halls. We have one version in which they sing 'bows' of holly instead of 'boughs'. Falala-lala to that.

Ah yes. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the music. I love it all. Well... Almost all...



NB I've sent this post to Notes from Home for her Christmas Carnival. If you're writing about Christmas, why don't you join in too?

.

I fuond tihs fasctianing

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

I got as far as the word "wrod" before I realised anything was wrong. Which just proves the point. But then I'm a dreadful skim reader. One of my very bad habits.

I wonder if that's why middle children are so screwed up. The parents are just concentrating on the first and last ones. (Hey, I'm a 3rd child out of 4. I'm allowed to be rude about middle children.)

My favourite character

My favourite character in the Bible is Jonah. Not very seasonal. You thought I was going to say Mary or Joseph, or possibly a shepherd, didn't you? Well, ha ha. Wrong! My favourite character, by a long chalk, is Jonah.

Jonah is best remembered for that stint in the whale, but the rest of his story is the best bit. He gets to Ninevah, where God sent him in the first place, and he preaches to them, and they all go "Hey, yes, Jonah has a point". They repent, and live happily ever after, and Jonah says "See, God? I told you there was no point me coming here. You make me so angry. And now you're probably expecting me to be all glad and joyous that the Ninevites have repented, but I'm not. I'm angry and I'm grumpy. Aaaaargh, I'm so angry I can't even speak. I'm going to sit under this tree in the shade and be really really angry". And the story ends with God trying to get Jonah's attention, and Jonah sitting in a great big wallowing grump, probably the emotional equivalent of the belly of the whale, and not talking to him. It's marvellous.

When I get to Heaven, the first thing I'm going to do is find Jonah. I'm going to sit right down next to him, under that tree, and I'm going to join in his great big long eternal grump. And I'm going to enjoy every eternal minute of it. I think he and I will get on really well.

We'll start with schools. I don't know if he had much experience of schools, or even had children, but I expect he did. I mean, that whole whale episode was so designed to be a Favourite Kids' Bible Story down the ages, it smacks of someone who knows about children. So we'll get started on schools, and how teachers can ruin your week by expecting you to help your child produce a project, on a huge piece of poster board, about Christmas traditions in some selected nation of the world, by Friday. Don't they KNOW how much some children hate doing projects on poster boards? Don't they REALISE that Friday is very soon after Monday? (and ok, ok, I could have read the homework page on the website, or maybe my child could have communicated to me, but GET REAL, this is life). Does anyone CARE about Christmas traditions in France? I will ask Jonah if they had the tradition of teachers' seasonal gifts back in his time. You know the one. Where you feel obliged to contribute to a pot of money for someone who is doing their job, just like all the rest of us are doing our jobs. But most of us don't have jobs that involve innocent adults having to help with projects on poster board. Am I the only one who has noticed this?

You see, Heaven will be Heaven, because it will be full of people who have noticed the poster board thing. I am sure of it. I'm guessing quite a few thousand of them will have drifted towards Jonah and his tree, and it will be FABULOUS, because we can complain about poster board projects endlessly (literally endlessly). And if we get bored with that, we can move on to children and their incapacity not to strew chaos everywhere (Heaven is going to be self-tidying, did you know that?), the Post Office, churches and all their members, the media, adolescents who answer every question with "I dunno" but manage to leave out all the consonants so that it sounds like a nasalised "I uuuhhh", tax forms, sleepovers, McDonalds, customers who want to tell you about their trip to England which happened so long ago they can't remember the names of any of the places they went to, the quirks of Blogger, apostrophes in the wrong place's, library fines, and families who have the nerve to get together at Christmas - together, I tell you! - without those of their number who live on a different side of an ocean.

So Jonah, hang on in there, up there, or wherever the Nth dimension is. I am coming. I'm going to join your club. I bet it's the coolest one in town (does Heaven have towns?), with all the anarchists, the Occupy Cities people, the trailing spouses, the disgruntled mums, and all those people who just can't face the shiny smiley ones over the other side of the cloud. We will eat far too much chocolate and drink far too much wine, and be really really grumpy all the time, without it mattering one single jot. We will whitter and whinge to our hearts' content, and dance to the very loud music of rejuvenated punk rockers dressed in bin liners with safety pins through their noses and lips, who will be tediously smug about how they started the whole body-piercing craze.

And ha! I've just had a brilliant idea! We will do poster board projects... about teachers. We'll do them badly, without reading the instructions, and hand them in late (we'll need a philosopher or two to help us out with the concept of "late" in an eternal setting). Ooooh. I'm looking forward to it already.



Picture credit: phillipmartin.info

12 Days of Blogging

Everybody is at it. Hot Cross Mum, The Potty Diaries, Nappy Valley in New York and Expat Mum. They've all come up with versions of the 12 Days of Christmas. I wanted to join their club, so I've done one of my own, about blogging.

Incidentally I have, actually, already done a truncated version of the well-loved carol, counting down the body parts I've lost, but that was a long time ago: (all my hair, 4 wisdom teeth, 3 moles, 2 boobs, and a lymph node, I believe it went.)

Anyhoo, here is one about blogging. I'm going to cut to the chase, and start at the 12th day.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my bloggy friend sent to me:

12 Tumblrs Tumblring
11 DiggIts Digging
10 Blogger Updates
9 Wordpress Downloads
8 RSS feeds
7 Pics a-Flickr
6 Tweets re-tweeted
5 BritMums Live!
4 Angry Birds
3 Facebook Friends
2 Gurgle Loves
And a Rise in my Site Meteree!

.

I need your help on books

One of the great pleasures in having children is the way you get to revisit elements of your own childhood. This is nowhere more true than in reading. I have loved getting down from my mother's shelves the worn copies of books she read to me, to share with my own children.

When I started writing this post, there were three books that I loved reading as a child, whose titles and authors I can't remember. I thought you might be able to help, Bloggy Friends. A lot of you were avid childhood readers, I'm sure.

I say "when I started writing this post", because the three has been reduced to two. With the magic of blogging, as I was describing one of them, I remembered its identity. Ta-da! It's Thursday's Child, by Noel Streatfield. I have such strong memories of that one. I loved it. A girl runs away from an orphanage, and joins a family who lives and works on a canal barge. I remember how her job was to lead the horse along the towpath, how hard the work was, how affected by the weather, and I remember a scene which describes how she helped propel the barge through a tunnel, which had to be done by having two people lying on boards, one each side, and walking along the side walls, pushing the barge as they went. (Noel Streatfield describes that much better than I've done.) I remember that she is called Margaret Thursday because she was left at the orphanage on a Thursday, and how she fantasises that she is from a noble family, because she was left with finely embroidered linens.

So that was book number one. I highly recommend it for girls aged 8 to 12 (at a guess - it was a long time ago that I read it). Especially if you live near a canal, as I did.

Book number two is about a boy who befriends a dolphin calf called Wiki-wiki. I think it might be set in Hawai'i (do they have dolphins in Hawai'i?) One day there is what we would now call a tsunami, but in the book it's called a tidal wave, and Wiki-wiki is left stranded on the beach. The boy and his friends manage to rescue her. I loved that book. I read it several times. Can you help me track it down?

Book number three I remember very little of at all. It's about a girl who is something of a misfit, grumpy about life. She hears the most beautiful haunting music, played on a flute. The man playing the flute tells her it's by Debussy, and is called L'Apres-midi d'un Faune. The first time I heard that Debussy piece, in my early twenties, I suddenly recalled the book from my childhood, and thought "no wonder the girl was so captivated by this music - it's beautiful". I have never been able to hear that piece without thinking of the book. Do any of you know it? I would love to find it again. I haven't given you much to go on, but perhaps someone out there will recognise it.

While we're on the subject of books, I've just read one which I couldn't put down. It's called Cinderella Ate My Daughter (what a great title), by Peggy Orenstein. You should read it, whether you are in the business of bringing up daughters or sons, or just for interest. I can do no better (it's late, I'm tired) than quote from Amazon:

Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source — the source — of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.

But, realistically, how many times can you say no when your daughter begs for a pint-size wedding gown or the latest Hannah Montana CD? And how dangerous is pink and pretty anyway—especially given girls' successes in the classroom and on the playing field? Being a princess is just make-believe, after all; eventually they grow out of it. Or do they? Does playing Cinderella shield girls from early sexualization—or prime them for it? Could today's little princess become tomorrow's sexting teen? And what if she does? Would that make her in charge of her sexuality—or an unwitting captive to it?

It's really well written, witty and clever, and very easy to read. A little depressing in one way (who would choose today's highly sexualised culture as a context for raising their daughter?), but I liked the opportunity to think about the issues head-on. I highly recommend it, and I've enjoyed the author's webpage too.

Guess what I've just done?

Oh alright then. I'll tell you.

I've just booked my ticket for BritMums Live! Even though I don't like that exclamation mark. Couldn't it just be BritMums Live please? I had to put that "please" in, because otherwise it looked like I'd replaced the exclamation mark with a question mark, though come to think of it BritMums Live? has a certain pleasing ironic tone to it. Anyway... whatever... I've booked. (And I have to add that I prefer the title to CyberMummy.)

Do you know who is responsible? My big brother. Yes. Charlesinparis. When we were in Chicago a few weeks ago, and he was generally looking after me and being fabulous, we got talking about blogging. And he said

"What on earth was all that about?"

And I said

"What?"

And he said

"All that [putting on a little girlie voice at this point and waggling head] Oh, I don't know if I'm going to go to the conference or not. We all KNEW you were going to go. Of course you were going to go."

I started protesting, because honestly, last time round, (and the time before, come to think of it), I really didn't know whether I wanted to go, but the more I used the word "honestly", or the word "really", the more he waggled his head and shrugged his shoulders and went all older brother-ish on me.

Maybe he had a point. Anyway, the net result is that this time, I've signed up super-early. So early that it's frankly a bit silly. I mean, I don't even know if we'll be in England next June. And there's no returning the ticket back to BritMums Live! if I turn out not to be (in England, I mean, not Live!... I certainly hope to be Live!) However, I can sell it on to someone else, and I'm hoping there's enough Goodwill Live! in the blogosphere that I'll be helped out and I won't be saddled with a ticket to an event I can't get to. I'm hoping.

It was the yoga session, and the promise of cake and wine, that finally tipped the balance for me. Oooh. I've just thought of a much better name for the event. CakeMums WineLive! Doesn't that sound more appealing? Really. Have the organisers got no marketing expertise at all?

.

What I would love about my blog if I were you

A cheeky little title, I know.

This is what I would love about reading Iota's blog, if I were one of you. When I started blogging, it was because I was struggling to make sense of living in a new culture. I was beginning to make 'real life' friends, but that seems to take forever in a new place, and I was lonely. Blogging was an addiction, which in itself isn't bad (hey, who'd be reading this if blogging wasn't a little addictive now and again?), but at that time, I think the addiction spoke of isolation and unhappiness.

Then I had cancer. Remember that? I guess my blog was hard to read at that time. You must have been holding your breath, wondering what the next thing was going to be. Hoping I was going to be ok. Feeling the fear in my situation, even though I was so darn upbeat and jolly about it all, and trying not to let those fears of mine hook into your own buried ones.

The past couple of years have seen a rebuilding of life. But I'm not just back where I started. That was something I really resented about cancer. I was wailing internally "I just want my life back", while at the same time knowing that it was never going to be the same again. But ooh, get me (as they say... well... as I say anyway). I like my life a lot a lot a lot now. I've got a green card. I've got a job (I mistyped that as "I've got a nob", which made me laugh). I love my job. I'm doing a Masters degree. I love my Masters degree. I love how you always see it written with a capital M. Why is that, I wonder? I don't see why it deserves a capital. I actually love living in America (I hear the gasps of surprise followed by the cheering). I am happy. I am content.

You've probably spotted that I don't blog as much. You've guessed that I'm just too busy at the moment. The recycling of a couple of old posts was a bit of a giveaway. Yes, I'm busy, and my blog is getting a little neglected. But don't you even love that about it?

So that's what I would love about my blog if I were you. It's the story of a chunk of a life's journey that was a down and an up, a valley and a journey out of it. I would find that hopeful and heartening. It's more than that, though. It's the story within the story that I like. I feel a difference in myself. I've grown as a person so much over the past 4.5 years (yup, that's how long I've been blogging). I like myself more than I used to. I wonder if you can tell. I wonder if you sniff it out, in the gaps between the words on the screen, in the spaces between one post and the next.

And of course that's what I love about your blogs I've followed over the years. The tales of your lives: the narratives, but more so, the stories of who you are, who you were, and who you're becoming, which somehow, through the magic of writing, leak through the typewritten word.

Autumn: part ll

Look at this lovely carpet of leaves in my back yard. (It's worth clicking to enlarge).


You can almost hear them whispering “don’t sweep us up, don’t sweep us up” can’t you?

You will probably remember that what impresses me so much about the trees here is their ability to multi-colour (ooh, a new verb is born). Well, the leaves do it too.

These leaves have decided that those of them on one branch will be yellow, those on another will be green. How do they do that? A fine example of peaceful democracy.



Here, they’re all mixed up together.



I wonder if that creates more friction between them, or if they still happily co-exist, green and yellow, at such close quarters. Does the tree engineer the design and control when each leaf may change from green to yellow, or does each leaf have free will?

Look here, though, how within a single leaf, the multi-colour effect is achieved. These do that clever thing that the trees do, holding on to one colour in the middle while letting a new colour creep in at the edges.



This one is a work of art. Deep red veins traced against that subtle orange background, on an even deeper red stem. Perfect.



A couple of final glorious pictures, just because I can’t resist, and it’s going to be at least 10 months till autumn comes round again.






And don’t you just love this song? (a rather clunky version of it!)



To me, it captures the whole essence of the way our lives are marked by change. The seasons are a part of that. The music somehow manages to be both melancholy and cheery at the same time, which is masterly, for change is, surely, both our enemy and our friend, a stealer and a giver.

.

Autumn

I absolutely love autumn. And I absolutely love autumn here. The colours are amazing, and the days can still be warm. Even if the weather isn't warm, it's usually sunny and bright, and the light has a particular quality to it. I love it.

Three years ago, (that long?), I did a couple of blog posts about autumn, with pictures of trees and leaves, and I'm going to re-run them here. It's interesting to see how then I was busy comparing autumn here with autumn in the UK. It's a sign of how long I've lived here, that I no longer do that. I just enjoy autumn for what it is, and I enjoy the familiarity of it. I know what to expect.

Three years ago, I wrote this:

Trees in Britain have to get their shows done so quickly, and in the damp. A few days, and they need to get from green foliage to bare twigs. They manage a little colour, but have to speed on through to dead brown leaves pretty fast. The trees here have the luxury of week after week of slowly fading temperatures, and still have the energy to choreograph their colour changes with finesse. What impresses me most, is the way one tree can exhibit different colours at the same time. We had two trees in our garden that were, for days on end, red at the top, yellow in the middle, and still green at the bottom. Traffic lights. I couldn’t get far enough away from them to photograph them, more’s the pity, but here are some other examples I found.

Look how this tree shades itself from orange to green, left to right.



This one decided to do it from top to bottom.



These ones do it from the inside out. See how they’re red at the ends of their branches, but still green at the core, as if holding on to summer in their hearts while bravely waving their hands at the oncoming autumn.



Impressed? Just wait till you see this. Group choreography. These five babies have got together for a chorus line performance.



Great show, gals. (That isn't a floating roof, by the way. It's just that someone painted their store the exact same shade of blue as the autumn sky.)

Some trees are just too bursting with their own creativity to bother with that shading effect, and they mix up the colours in a great effusion. This one gives us a beautiful two-tone green and yellow.



I left in that stunning little red bush for you to see. What an effort it made – the least I could do was not to crop it out of the picture.

This one couldn’t wait to decide which colours to go for, so threw them all in together and mingled them up. The photo doesn’t do it justice. Click on it to enlarge it - go on, you know you want to.



To finish, here is a glorious display of autumnal splendour.



Look at the rich red, the startling yellow, the mellow ochre, the luscious green. Even that little shrub in the front is shimmering in maroon and silver.


Which one? Well, it's a bit small, I admit. You probably can't appreciate it properly.



I'll enlarge it for you - I'm sure it's well worth a closer look.




Those lovely autumn tones...




Hang on...









It’s a fire hydrant. I’m getting carried away here.

This post was trees. The next is going to be leaves.

.

Calling all Hawaiians, New Hampshirites and Vermonters

I have a list of the 50 US states. Whenever we see a car licence plate from another state, we cross that name off the list. (I know. Hours of fun for all the family.) After nearly five years, there are three remaining states: Hawaii, New Hampshire and Vermont. So if you're from New Hampshire or Vermont, and are planning an across-the-continent road trip (it could happen, you might be fed up with your autumn colours), please get in touch. I could design you a route that passes nearby me, and we could rendezvous. All I need is to see your licence plate.

As for Hawaii, well, you were always going to be a challenge.

.

Degrees

Not of the Higher Education variety. Though I must tell you about the MA I'm doing some time, because that would be a good post (stop yawning at the back there).

No... this post is about degrees Celcius and degrees Fahrenheit, prompted by a list of things that still surprise Not From Around Here, an American blogger who's lived in England for six years. Though, just to clarify, she's not surprised by the use of Celcius; she's surprised at her own lack of adjustment, and that she still has difficulty with it.

I'm going to let you all in to the inner workings of Iota's mind. I feel a bit embarrassed about this, but I know we're all friends here. Just try not to laugh too audibly at me in the comments. Here goes...

For all the years I lived in Britain, I never really coped with Celcius. So when I heard the weather forecast, I would mentally convert to Fahrenheit. To do this, you divide by 5, multiply by 9, and add 32. Yes. I really did do that every time I heard or watched the weather. Every time. It became a habit. I liked to think that I was exercising my brain in an Alzheimer's-protective sort of a way, but truth be told, it was just one of those little weirdy quirky kooky things that YOU LOVE SO MUCH ABOUT ME (stop laughing at the back there). I have to confess (and this is where the Alzheimer's-protection theory falls down), that I couldn't remember the result from one day to the next. So if Michael Fish said "it'll be the same tomorrow as it's been today", I couldn't short-cut the calculation. I'd do it all over again.

There are a couple of sneaky tips. It's worth knowing (if you're stuck in the same loop as I was) that 16C is 61F, and 28C is 82F. Ha! Genius. Except you do have to remember that it's 16-61 and 28-82, and not 15-51 or 17-71 or 18-81 or whatever, otherwise you'll be into that divide by 5, times 9, and add 32 manoeuvre all over again, just to check you've got it right. Which I did have to do. Frequently. It's a pity that the Great Fire of London happened in 1666, not 1661, because that would have been an easy way of remembering. Though then I wouldn't ever have remembered the date of the Great Fire of London, because it wouldn't have ended in 66 like 1066. Perhaps William the Conqueror could have made his move 5 years earlier, in 1061, and then everything would have lined up nicely.

Another easy-to-calculate temperature is -40 degrees, which is the same in C and F. Ta-da! Sadly, not very useful to know that one, when dealing with UK weather forecasts.

The other point I should confess to, is that it never made any difference anyway (stop that snickering, or join Husband, who always found this amusing). Having dutifully converted to Fahrenheit, I really didn't have much idea of how the figure correlated to the experience. I mean, I knew 32F is freezing, and that if it's in the 90s you're probably on holiday somewhere Mediterranean, but as for the gradation in between, well, I was always a bit in the dark (or out in the cold, if it was, and this being Britain, it often was). Husband gave me a rule of thumb (being a decent bloke), that if it's 60F you can just about get away with no jacket over a long-sleeved shirt. I know, I know. You have to remember, (a) he is a bloke, and (b) we were living in Fife among the hardy Scots. Over time, I've recalibrated that to 64/65.

Being in America has been a real education for me in what temperatures feel like. I now can read the weather forecast and know whether to wear jeans or shorts, whether to take a cardy or not, whether my feet will be cold in flip-flops. I tell you, it's a whole new thing. It's partly because the range is so huge, compared to the UK, that I've been more interested. It's partly because the forecasting is so good and reliable, that it's worth paying attention. It's partly because I see the temperature much more frequently than I used to - the dashboard of the car, the computer, winking digital signs outside shopping malls, churches, gas stations, restaurants, etc. I feel rather proud of myself. I've cracked this Fahrenheit thing. I'm hot stuff at Fahrenheit.

And I much prefer being 98.4 than 37 point whatever it is. Or 36. Can't remember. There's more room for manoeuvre. We all know that 100 means 'ooh, getting a bit high here'. Three digits is a helpful clue. Nice and easy. In Celcius, it's a matter of a decimal point or two between life and death. Much too scary. I need a bigger range of temperature when it comes to health. And yes, since you ask, I do have two thermometers. I don't trust either of them, actually. I do also have a conversion chart in the medicine cabinet, which I printed out before I'd got round to buying a Fahrenheit thermometer.

There you are. All you wanted to know, and more, about temperature conversion in daily expat life. Well, my daily life anyway. I'm guessing my approach might not be entirely typical. I'm going to stop now.

I want the perfect muffin, or nuffin

Why can't I bake muffins? I've tried several times. They don't turn out light and fluffy, and poking over the top of the muffin case. They turn out a bit hard and a bit dry, and barely reaching the top of the muffin case. I don't do any super-healthy wholemeal recipe. In fact I've probably tried several recipes over the past few years. I don't think I can be a proper American mom until I can bake muffins (and yes, I do already make a mean apple pie).

Let's have a poll. I'm relying on you, Bloggy Friends. Don't let me down. I can't accept I have no future in muffins. You can select as many answers as you like, and/or leave me a comment with further information.

Adding infancy to injury

It's bad enough trying to get to grips with school years being called "grades" and how the numbers equate, when you arrive in the US. Then there's the whole issue of college years. For a long while, that was just a mystery to me, until I took the bull by the horns, googled the answer, and then spent a few minutes chanting "freshman, sophomore, junior, senior" to myself, until it became ingrained in my mind. Not ingrained in the same way that it's ingrained if you've lived through it yourself and it becomes second nature, but ingrained enough for day-to-day purposes.

What I hadn't realised was the extent to which High School grades use this terminology too. So it's no good that I know that High School is grades 9 to 12. Nobody talks about 9th grade. I now have to shelve that knowledge, and start talking about 14-yo as a freshman. "He's in his freshman year at High School" I say.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "wow, those expat mums are so impressive... We really have no idea the burdens they carry... Someone, give them an award".

At least you'll be comforted to know that I'm not alone in my struggles. I have a helpmeet in the form of 7-yo. She has recently been reading Dick King-Smith's "Sophie" books. When Sophie starts school, there is talk of her brothers being in the juniors. This confused 7-yo, so I explained. It's nothing to do with being college juniors or high school juniors. In England, Kindergarten, first and second grades are called "Infants" and third, fourth and fifth grades are called "Juniors". So far, so straightforward. (I was a bit hazy on the exact demarcation, but given that these things vary from LEA to LEA, and given that I'm not sure that terminology is still used in any case, I didn't worry too much.)

A few minutes later, 7-yo came back with further questions about "Insults and Juniors".

.

More second grade homework

I wrote recently about 7-yo’s homework, and how I hate the way she is being taught ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ ways to interpret passages of English. It’s getting worse. Could you bear it if I whinged on about it again? Given that you, my readers, are among some of the finest writers I've ever come across (and I sincerely mean that), let's see how you'd fare in second grade English homework.

Sam swims quickly.
Sam swims well.

Question : What is the best way to combine these two sentences?
Answer (choice of 4):

1. Sam swims quickly and Sam swims well.
2. Sam swims quickly, well.
3. Sam swims quickly, well too.
4. Sam swims quickly and well.

The right answer is number 4. But 7-yo had chosen number 1. I have to say I agree with her. That sentence has a lovely rhythm. It’s almost like a nursery rhyme or chant. It echoes the movement of someone swimming front crawl. It has a symmetry. It swings along. I actually quite like numbers 2 and 3 as well.

Of course it depends on your definition of “what is the best way…”. I note that it doesn’t say “what is the correct way…” (thank goodness). I would prefer to see it rephrased “what do you think you’re meant to think is the best way…”. At least that would be good early training in exam technique.

I’m sure you’re going to say that it’s important for second graders to learn grammar, and that these are just grammar exercises, and won’t quash her literary creativity. And you’re probably right. But the words “dumbing down” spring inexorably to mind. (Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if the letters that have come home from the three primary schools my children have attended weren’t sprinkled with typos and grammatical mistakes.)

Then I stopped to think. Do I care so much about how her brain is being trained in maths? Or any other subject? Do I have a strong opinion on what she should or shouldn’t be doing in PE? Do I react so strongly, either positively or negatively, when she talks about what she’s done in Art or Music? The answer to all these is no, not really. Opinions here and there, varying from mild to strong, but nothing gets under my skin to the same degree as her English homework. This says more about me, than about the education system (though I think my opinions stand, none the less).

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about being a parent, it’s that you learn such a lot about yourself in the process. I knew all along that I love words, and that how we put them together is important to me. I didn’t need the reminder of 7-yo’s homework really. But it’s interesting to see what things push our own personal buttons.

What I wrote... What I wanted to write...

What I wrote

Dear Teacher of 7-yo

I wanted to write to tell you how sorry I am to hear you are leaving. I understand you have personal reasons for relocating with your family to another state. I do wish you well. 7-yo will miss you. She has made a really great start to Second Grade. Thank you so much for the way you have encouraged her. She is happy in the classroom and eager to learn. Thank you for that.

What I wanted to write

Dear Teacher of 7-yo

Nooooo.... You can't go. You can't. 7-yo loves you. She cried yesterday when you told the class you were going. You're a brilliant teacher. Softly-spoken, serene, fair, kind, an encourager, a piquer of children's curiosity. You teach them to love learning and have fun. Don't go... There should be a rule that says good Second Grade teachers can't leave mid-year. A law. I'm going to write to President Obama. Waaaah...

.

Hobbling, but happy

Hobbling, but happy. That’s me.

I’ve been in Chicago. My big brother (the legendary Charlesinparis) had a conference there, and said to me ‘If I come over a couple of days early, will you come up and hang out with me?” We stayed with Expat Mum, she who showed a group of English bloggers round so ably this time last year. She plied us with tea, wine, nuggets of information about living in Chicago. I met the Ball and Chain (I didn’t call him that). Thank you Expat Mum. You really looked after us well. Ah, Bloggy Friends, it was fabulous.

We went on a boat trip, we went to the Chicago History Museum, we shopped, we saw the Bean (I love the Bean), we ate, we drank, we talked, we went to the top of the John Hancock tower (second highest building in the US) and felt a bit wobbly looking at the view. Here's a picture of the Bean.


We walked miles. Miles and miles. Mies and mies (van der Rohe) - little Chicago joke there. I don’t walk all that much in my daily life (one of my beefs about living in my car-orientated city), and after the first day I was feeling the muscles in my feet and lower legs. I was wearing natty city shoes, not my usual flip flops (it’s still summer weather here), with a little more of a heel than I’m used to. But I wasn’t going to let aching limbs and extremities curtail my city experience. By the end of the second day, I had a blister on each foot. The one on my left foot was on the sole, right in the middle of the fleshy pad, and BIG. Don’t you love blogging? Where else could I share details of my pedicular woes and be sure of a sympathetic ear? I must have looked a sorry sight hobbling through airport security at O'Hare. I’ve spent the week-end walking on the sides of my feet, and wincing, but it was worth every single painful, incapacitating step.

There is a big city person inside of me. It’s quite a small corner of me these days, but it needs a fix every now and again. My big brother is a big city person. But even if he’d invited me to spend a couple of days in a cave in the middle of nowhere, I’d have gone (and I wouldn’t have got blisters). We couldn’t remember the last time we’d spent two days in each other’s company, one on one. If ever. It’s very different to spending time in a big family conglomeration, which is how it usually is. It was wonderful. Thank you, Charlesinparis.

Hobbling, but happy… that’s rather how I am in my life at the moment. Quick update. I did enroll to do an MA in Christian Ministry. I’ve rather taken myself by surprise. I love it. I really do. Every minute. And therein lies the rub (speaking of blisters). There aren’t enough minutes in the days any more. I’ve also upped my hours at the toy shop for reasons that have their own internal Iota-style logic, though an outsider might look at my life and think “Hm, interesting timing”. I do love being busy. I’ve had too many years waiting for green cards, recuperating from chemo, being the at home mum who I love being but who has ceased being as busy as she used to be now her children are getting bigger and going to school. So now I’m busy, but aaaargh, there aren’t enough minutes. Is this what they call juggling? Struggling and juggling, hobbling and bobbling, I call it. Hobbling, bobbling, jobbling and wobbling. I have so much in my mind that my brain has run out of compartments. The chicken casserole we’re having for dinner is all mixed up with Church History, 14-yo’s need for new soccer boots, Neil Armstrong (school project), and Savlon. All to the soundtrack of 10-yo's clarinet practice and the Disney Buddy Songs CD that 7-yo bought at a yard sale at the week-end chim chimma-nee chim chimma-nee chim chim cher-eeeee. It’s not pretty in there, I tell you.

Hobbling, but happy.


Photo credit: www.explorechicago.org

These are two of my favourite things

I was pondering what is my very favourite thing about living in America, and I think it is this. I love what has come to be known as the 'can do' attitude of Americans. But it's more subtle than that. The 'can do' attitude is often used as a blunt instrument, to beat us all into a 'try harder' mentality. I get irritated when I hear stories about the man who started selling running shoes out of the back of his truck, and ta-da, a few decades of hard work later, he's CEO of Nike! I hate those stories, and they do abound here. Abound, I tell you. What they fail to recognise is all the thousands of people who sold running shoes out of the backs of their trucks, and quack quack oops, a few decades of hard work later, they're still selling running shoes out of the backs of their trucks. Or they've found other ways of making small amounts of money and scraping a life together. And of course it begs the question, do we all want to be successful business achievers? Is that the highest aim?

So the 'can do' attitude has its rather thumping approach to life, but its finer side is worth a second look. I didn't know the word 'intentional' before I lived here. I like the word. It speaks of attempts to live life in meaningful ways. Who wants to look back on their allotted span and think "well, that was kind of fun"? Wouldn't we rather look back and see that we expended our energies seeking out what was important, what was meaningful, what was good, and pursuing those things? Intentionality in the small things of life can make a huge difference. Americans are much less shy than we are of living life in a way that says "this is what I'm about". You see it in the way they talk about family, friendship, bringing up children, hobbies. They don't just want to see what life brings. They want to find what they want in life. I love that. I used not to know the word 'intentional', and now I seek out opportunities to use it. (Geddit?)

Then I thought about what I miss most about life in Britain (as a generality, not the obvious issue of specific people, places or things). I decided it was the humour. That wry, dry, dark, self-deprecating, witty, hilarious, sarcastic, ironic, squirmy humour that is in my bones. It has to lie a little dormant here. It just does. It seeps about quietly in my marrow.

I'm guessing that if you haven't grown up with it, British humour can be negative, sarky, detached, and downright odd. Perhaps it reveals our stoicism. "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile" - that kind of attitude. "You have to laugh, or else you'd cry." So why do I love it; why do I miss it? I think it's because it speaks of the ability to hold lightly to life, to take ourselves with the lack of seriousness we deserve, to walk across the top of the difficult days instead of trudging through them, to deflect what life throws at us instead of catching it, to enjoy the loopiness of it all, quite literally to laugh things off.

I realise that what I like most about here, and what I miss most about there, are two sides of the same coin. I hadn't seen that when I started writing this blog post, but it's obvious now. I like taking life seriously, and I like taking it not too seriously. That's a bit weird of me isn't it?

Come on then. Fill up my comments box with the things you like or dislike about the place you live, and the nationality you are. (The first person to say "a nice cup of tea" wins a virtual prize.) Or do my generalities annoy you? Do they say more about me than about the two nations I dare to stereotype?

Things that aren't right with education

Oh, don't get me started. Truly. This is the stuff of many a conversation in our household. Kind of goes with the territory if you're married to a Philosophy Professor. I tell you, "evaluation" is a more-than-four-letter word in this house. (Come to think of it, it probably is in your house too.)

So I'm not going to get all ranty about the education system. The school year has been underway a couple of weeks here, so we are almost in full swing, ahead of you, my fellow compatriots-by-birth-not-current-location.

However, I do just want to share with you something that happened with 7-yo, which was one of those moments where she discovered that sometimes you do your best, and it's not right, or not good enough. I hate that. What mother doesn't hate that for her small child?

She was showing me a couple of passages that she'd had to read and answer questions on. I think we used to call them 'comprehension exercises' - I don't know if they still do. The first one was about a girl named Frida, going off to camp to learn to play tennis. On the bus, Frida looks for her best friend, named Gina (not Saturda or Sunda, which would have been more logical), who wasn't there. So she sat next to another girl, Elaine. When she got to camp, she found out that Gina wasn't coming as she was ill. "Frida was sad" the passage tells us. "She wanted to play tennis with Gina". But she played with Elaine instead. The passage goes on "The girls learned how to hit the ball." Oh yes. That would be useful for playing tennis. It concludes by saying that Frida missed Gina, but still enjoyed herself. The next day, she told Gina about camp and about Elaine, and couldn't wait to share her new friend with her best friend.

Most of the questions on the passage were multiple choice, but one of them asked

Why is Gina's illness important to the story? Include details from the story in your answer.

7-yo wrote:

Frida and Gina are Best friends. Frida missed Gina very much.

an answer which was deemed inadequate. Wah. Honestly, I think 7-yo had just missed the ending of the story, which was on the back of the page, and maybe there's a lesson there about remembering to turn the page over. But I also think that even if she'd read to the end, her answer stands. I'm guessing the correct answer would be something like "Because Gina was ill, Frida made a new friend, Elaine. Frida would not have played with Elaine if Gina had not been ill." But I like 7-yo's response. She's bringing of herself to the story. To her, the most important thing was that Frida missed Gina very much. (And, between you and me, I think she did well to skip that bit about introducing a new friend to a best friend, because we all know what a recipe for upset that can be.)

I comprehend that the exercise was all about comprehension of the passage, and not designed to encourage personal response to literature, but I think that's sad. The idea that there's a right and wrong answer when you're talking about plot and character seems very limiting. I know I'm over-thinking this, but you would too, if you'd seen 7-yo's big blue sad eyes, as she asked "why did I only get 11 out of 13?", and I had to tell her that she's not always going to get full marks for everything and that that's ok. And adding that sometimes the questions are a bit silly, or open to misinterpretation, and then you just have to know that it's the question that's wrong and not you. Was that the right answer? I don't know.

Then there was the second passage, all about Mr Garcia, who brought a guinea pig into his classroom, and how excited the children all were. One of the children, Paula, held the guinea pig, and whispered to it "Welcome to our class". Aw. Anyway, 7-yo had to say what "whisper" meant from the following four options: shout, soft voice, loud voice, friendly tone. She picked "friendly tone", which wasn't the correct answer. But she explained to me that in the story, Paula knew the guinea pig would be frightened by all the people, so she whispered to it because she wanted to help it not to be frightened, and so that was being friendly to it, wasn't it? So "whisper" DID mean "friendly tone" in this story, didn't it?

All this over-thinking. Can't imagine where she gets it from.

One more thing. Can schools puh-lease stop giving our children stories to read about cute dogs and sweet little guinea pigs? At least until after Christmas. If they insist on stories about dogs, the narrative should be full of details about vet bills, boarding kennel bills, unpleasant poop-scooping, and walking out in the wind and rain when you'd rather be inside watching television.

.

Things that just aren't right somehow

I was never a big fan of the slanket. In fact, I'd go further than that. I really hated the idea of the slanket. I hated it so much, that I'm not even going to find a picture to put here. You'll just have to google it yourselves.

Oh, go on then.


I just don't get it. Either you want a blanket to snuggle under on your sofa, in which case, get a blanket. Or you want something with sleeves, in which case, get a sweater (or jumper if you're English). Listen carefully: either... or... Shall I run that by you again? Either... or... Got that? Who on earth wants to wander round the house, looking like a Hallowe'en alien commander gone wrong, tripping over an oversized garment whose only redeeming feature is... hang on... hm... can't think of one. A slanket has no redeeming feature. Except that they're optional. You don't have to have one. And guess what? I don't. (I do have an alien commander Hallowe'en costume though. Well, my son does.)

I don't know which is worse, by the way. 'Slanket' or 'Snuggie', which was the name used to market these apologies for household items on this side of the Atlantic. The name 'slanket' sounds like the kind of false expletive you use when you're in the company of children. "Oh slanket!" you might say, as you pour Cheerios all over the floor because someone has ripped the bag open sideways, and half the contents has ended up loose in the box, but you hadn't noticed before you aimed for the cereal bowl with your usual morning abandon. But 'snuggie' is somehow worse. It's the thought of opening a present on Christmas morning in front of your relatives, and having to say "oh, a snuggie! Just what I was hoping for!" In that situation, you need a word that doesn't sound as embarrassing as you feel embarrassed. 'Snuggie' is the kind of word smurfs might use. In fact, I bet you can buy a blue 'Smurftastic Snuggie' on Amazon. I'm not going to look. It would be too depressing if I'm right.

Let's leave the slanket/snuggie to one side and move on to an article that yesterday made me shiver with horror as I spotted it in my local supermarket. Pajama jeans. And yes, peoples, we're talking pajama, not pyjama. But honestly? Really? Truly? Pajama jeans? Why? Just... why? Of all the sartorial innovations there could be in the world, why, why would someone invent pajama jeans?


Let's try that nifty "either... or..." tool that we learnt about during our analysis of the slanket. Here goes. Either pajamas... or jeans... Either pajamas... or jeans... See? It works here too. If you want to wear pajamas, wear pajamas. If you want to wear jeans, wear jeans. Are we getting the hang of this yet, peoples?

I can't imagine what pajama jeans are for. Are they nightwear or daywear? Or (*shudder*) are you meant to wear them in the day and simply not bother to change when it's bedtime? And then get up the next morning and not have to put clothes on? Are they for people who live life in the fast lane and have no time to get dressed and undressed? In which case, do you wear panties underneath them or not? I am not coping well with this concept.

Deep breath, Iota, deep breath. This is not armageddon. Just pajama jeans in your local supermarket.

I have one final reflection, Bloggy Peeps. Hybrids are cars, not clothing.

Sometimes it helps to be American

I'm so often told "I wish I had an accent like yours", but today, American people, I came across a situation where it would have been useful to have an accent like yours.



In a conversation with my mum, she referred to something that "wouldn't have mattered formally". But to clarify, I had to ask her "formally, or formerly?"



Now see, if we'd been American, we wouldn't have had that problem.



Similarly, I might have to seek clarification if she ever talks to me about cheetahs or cheaters, though I expect the context would give it away in that case.

Thoughts on our return to the US

Just to clear up a bit of confusion...



Yes, 14-yo's video does make it look as if we live somewhere beautiful. No, actually, we don't. Some of the pictures he used were taken on our holidays in Colorado and Arkansas. Just felt I had to put the record straight, as I have in the past whinged on about how there's no beautiful scenery near us. Thank you for all your comments, by the way. He loved them.



Anyway, here we are, back again, new school year beginning. Here are three lists. I used to be a civil servant, and I still find lists a good way of organising thoughts. Or of writing a blog post when you can't quite string it together in any other way.



1 Nice things about returning to America



a) People. Friends. A group of three families who organised a 'welcome back' barbecue for us, hiring the party room at the local pool, and whenever I said "what can I bring?" insisted "we've got it covered". Americans do hospitality and welcome in a fabulous way.



b) Each time we come back, it feels very different. Like a child starting a new school year isn't actually any taller than on the first day of term than they were on the last day of the holidays, but somehow they seem it. A step away and a step back brings a new perspective.



c) The weather seems sensitive to our arrival. For the second year running, a hot and humid spell has broken the day after we get back. It's very nice of the weather to be so accommodating. It must know I don't cope very well with the heat. This year, I am especially grateful, as it's been record-breakingly hot. It was over 100 degrees (38 celcius) for over 40 consecutive days, and one day it reached 113 (45). I have a little shared laugh with people here about how in England we all pluck our t-shirts away from our bodies and woggle them about, trying to create a tiny breeze, saying "wow it's hot today" when it gets to 80 degrees. Sorry, British people. I have a joke at your expense. (When I was an au pair in France, the little boy I looked after thought a t-shirt was called a p'tit shirt - isn't that sweet?)



2 Things that have changed in Britain



a) Oreos. I spotted some in a supermarket. That's a shame. They're not a patch on hobnobs, digestives, kitkats, or a million other nice British biscuits. And they leave a horrible black ring round your child's mouth. Don't buy oreos.



b) Jaffa cakes. Don't like them. Never have. Never will. (They haven't changed, so I don't know why they're on this list. Wrong list, Jaffa Cakes.)



c) Moving on to non-biscuit-related topics. Sharpies. Yay, wa-hoo wa-hey. Sharpies have arrived in Britain. I cannot imagine how we have lived without them in a satisfactory manner till now. Go out this minute and buy yourself a Sharpie. (Except you, Josephine, you've already got one.)



d) Speed cameras. They are everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Have they been breeding?



e) Top Gear presenters. They are everywhere. Not only is Top Gear on television whenever you turn it on, but they are presenting pretty much every other television programme there is as well. Including that rather addictive one that's made in Argentina because Health and Safety in Britain wouldn't allow it. What's it called...?



f) More Americanisms in British everyday speech. I don't feel very strongly about this. I think language evolves and grows, and you shouldn't try and put it in a cage and keep it. It needs to rove free, like the buffalo over the plains (though it didn't end terribly well for them in recent history). Rove... or should that be roam...? See, a case in point. We should all be free to grab whatever word we want, to suit the mood and the moment, and if that means that some become more popular and some die out (like the buffalo nearly have done), then so be it (though I do feel sad for the buffalo, so this is an imperfect simile). But I have noticed that there is an increasing number of words that have crossed the Atlantic. 'Mad' meaning 'angry'. 'Smart' meaning 'clever' (I blame smart phones, smart technology, etc for this one). 'Call' instead of 'ring' when talking about phoning someone.



3 Things that are still just too counter-cultural for me to love



a) Over-competitive sports for children. I've said it before, and I'll say it again (in fact I have a ranty blog post just waiting to spout out and rove all over my blog any day now on this very subject).



b) A phone message from a very chirpy student on our answerphone:



"Hi, Dr Husband, this is Francine from X University. I'm just calling on behalf of the university as the new academic year begins, to say how much we appreciate the faculty members. We just want you to know that the university values you so much, and we're so glad you're part of it."



Does this really work for most Professors? Really? Or do they, like Husband, stand glowering at the answerphone, making retorts about how a pay rise would do more to make him feel valued than employing a student on the minimum wage to go down the faculty phone list making vacuous calls.

My son's take on living in America

Gosh, that's a boring title. Sorry.



Anyway, 14-yo entered a competition for expat kids. The challenge was to make an audio-visual presentation about your life in a different culture. He wasn't short-listed as a finalist. If you want to see the entries that were, you can go to this facebook page, and vote for a winner in each of the two age categories.



I thought his was rather good, though, so I'm sharing it with you. The images are all from our own camera, and I think it really does give a little flavour of what our life is like here. (Apologies for the picture quality.)

What can really only be described as rambling

OK, so here I am on the other side. Of the Atlantic. This isn’t a mystic voice from beyond the grave or anything. But you probably knew that. Oooh, I was about to write “But you probably knew that already”, which just goes to show. Year by year, day by day, sentence by sentence, I am being tweaked and shaped, and I become less and less the two people I flit between, UK and US, and more and more the one hybrid lump of somewhat amorphous personhood that… oooh, “somewhat”. Did you spot that?



For thus it is. The longer we live here in the Midwest, the more I become me, in this life that is my life. I’m no longer constantly surprised that it is my life. I don’t spend so much mental energy on comparisons and analysis. I’ve got used to the loss of many of the things I’ve had to let go of (not all…), and I’ve got used to carrying round the new things I’ve acquired. It’s just me, here or there. I’m feeling what the French would call “dans ma peau”, meaning literally “in my skin”. Very good expression, don’t you think? It’s rather taken me by surprise, because these transitions from one location to the other, from one culture to the other, are usually rather difficult. I know, too, that homesickness is a spooky lurking beast, and can pop out unexpectedly when you round a corner, so don’t be surprised if my next post is all about how much I miss England and how miserable I am.



For the moment, however, and we all know that the moment is the best place to live, life is good and seems full of potential. Today the kids are all back at school. I am debating whether to go back to the toy shop, which is fun, but has - as I predicted - rather lost its novelty, and is appallingly badly paid. I am capable of so much more, and as Husband’s teaching schedule this year means that he would be free to do school pick-ups, I have the freedom to explore. So I am job-hunting. I applied for a job online, but logged out half way through the process. I hadn’t got round to logging back in and finishing the form, when, blow me down, quick as a wink, the next morning I woke to find they’d sent me an email saying thanks but no thanks. This serves to confirm my worst anxieties about Corporate America. Way too flash fast for plodding-along me. But I know you’re all going to tell me not to be discouraged, and yes, you’re right. I will persevere.



The other idea that’s bumbling around in my head is to do an MA. My thought process goes like this. I can do an MA for free at Husband’s university. Ooh, good deal. What do they offer that I could do and that would be interesting and useful? (You have to remember it’s a small private university with a very small graduate programme, so the answer is not going to take long.) An MBA? Well, that would certainly look good on my cv, but it looks like you can’t really do it unless you’re in a job that will let you do on-the-job projects and assessments. And an MBA? Me? Really? Moving on… Counselling and Family Therapy. No. Not for me. At least not from that side of the table. Christian Ministry? An MA in Christian Ministry? Hm… Well, I don’t want to be a Christian minister… But it does look interesting. Some of it, anyway. And what’s this bit here? “You don’t have to be preparing for ordination or Christian leadership to take this course. Many of our students sign up for their own personal development.” Ooh, sounds like me. I’ve already spoken to Husband’s colleague who runs the programme, and he said he’d be happy to have me. Wa-hey! The only snaffoo (just learnt that word, isn’t it great?) with the idea is that I have discovered that although it’s billed as a freebie for families of employees of the university, it’s a taxable benefit and therefore does have a financial implication. Given the huge fees that people pay for these kinds of courses, even just paying the tax on it is significant. Plus there's the ginormous loss of earnings that I could potentially enjoy in my new, reinvented, Iota as Corporate Princess, “who needs to fill out a whole application form, can’t you see how impressive I am from the first half?” self.

So… job or MA, job or MA, or shall I just go back to the toyshop and potter along? Options, options.



Meanwhile, back at the first day of school for my kids, I have to just tell you that I am super-impressive in the whole area of school supplies these days. Gone are the laborious hours wandering round Target, Wal-mart, Hobby Lobby, Office Max and wherever else the last person mentioned, lists clutched in sweaty hands, wondering why on earth it has to be a pink eraser, not an eraser of the colour of my choice. I am now Supplies Queen. I know that all erasers are pink (except those white polymer ones), so that pink erasers are easy to find! I know what a 1½” 3-ring binder with an accordion folder inside is. Yes, I do! I know what a folder with brads is. Ha! I know that… sshhhh… it doesn’t always matter if what you get isn’t exactly what is specified on the list. Is it really going to matter if your child has a 2” notecard ring instead of a 1” one? No! I am so obviously Supplies Queen that I’m surprised Target hasn’t made me a crown using their construction paper (one pkg, any colour), dry erase markers (pack of 4, thick, different colours), 3” x 5” plain white index cards, 7” pointed Fiskars scissors, and Elmers glue.



But pride comes before a fall, so I must temper my self-adulation, and tell you that having a child start High School puts you right back at the bottom of the pile. You know how it felt when your child started Kindergarten or Reception, and everyone else seemed to know what was going on except you? Well, High School brings that feeling back with what might be called a vengeance.



And now, since this is 1,000 words and already too long, I’m going.

Iota's mother's loft: final instalment

I couldn't call this post Iota's summer holiday top tips for entertaining children: Part IV for reasons which will become apparent.



This last item was in a box of my own stuff. It's a copy of The Sun newspaper, dated Saturday October 19th 1985 - a month or so before my 21st birthday. The headline that day was





BUDGIE COOKED ALIVE IN MICROWAVE



Lads giggled as the oven went 'ding'





(You see why I couldn't bill this post as summer entertainment for children.)



Attached to the paper is a note from my older brother which says "This must be the best headline ever. You should keep this paper. It might be worth something some day."



So now, nearly 26 years later, who will make me an offer for this historic newspaper?



The thing is, even if I don't make any money from this loft item, it did make me laugh, and reflect back on family life over decades, and be grateful, and who could put a cash price on that? (It went back into my box of stuff, in case you were wondering. I couldn't put it in the bin somehow.)

Iota's summer holiday top tips for entertaining children: Part lll

And now we come to my two favourites. Both of them have strong memories from my own childhood, and both of them - hurrah - occupied my three children for hours.

Here's a crane.


The main body of it stands at just over 2 feet high. It was made by a friend, and when his children had grown out of it, we inherited it. It's fully functional: the arm can be raised and lowered, and then the hook wound up and down.

I remember spending hours with my younger brother playing "cranes" (although there was only one, we always talked about playing "cranes" in the plural). One child is upstairs, and dangles the crane hook down through the banisters to the other child, in the hall below. There is seemingly no end to what you can do with a crane. You can put something on the hook, and tell your playmate to shut their eyes, wind the object up, and guess what it is by feel. You can choose an object, and race to see who can wind it up the quickest. You can put something really heavy on the hook, and then let go of the wheel, letting it spin and the string unreel at speed, till the object hits the floor with a thud. You can hang a doll or a teddy bear by the neck. Oh, the possibilities are endless.

This is the kind of toy that grown-ups like, because it looks so educational. We like to think our children are learning about pulleys, weights, relative forces, almost as if it was a practical hands-on physics lesson. Well, I never got anywhere with physics, but I did have a lot of fun with this crane. And so did my children.

And finally...

Corinthian!


It's a precursor of the pinball machine This one is 30 inches by 15, to give you an idea of scale. Many of you will look at this and respond "Ah, Bagatelle!" But this version is called Corinthian. Here's a close-up of the rather splendid label at the bottom, in which Walter Lindman (who he?) asserts his preference.

The bit of the label which the photo cuts off states "The recognised tournament board is Corinthian 21T". Dang it! Our board was only a 21S! Just as well we didn't know about tournaments. We would have bullied our parents endlessly to take us to one. We fancied ourselves as Corinthian players (though upping our game to a 21T might have been a shock). I can't think of a toy that gave us more hours of pleasure than this one. It was also an absolute favourite of visiting children. I remember friends loving to play. Maybe they only liked me for my Corinthian board.

The minute my children started playing this, the plink-plink-plonk noise of the steel balls bouncing off the pins was so familiar. This came from my mother's childhood, so it really has done sterling service. Alas, the drumstick used to push the ball up the runway has disappeared, but there are still 19 balls - the number there were when we played with it, or when my mother's family inherited it from some friends. That's quite impressive, not to have lost a ball in two generations. My kids used the handle of a wooden spoon as a pusher, and of course it worked fine (though I miss that drumstick...) Of course the more upmarket versions of Bagatelle have a puller on a spring, to fire the balls into action. I like to think the drumstick requires more skill and finesse. There used to be a list stuck on the back, of the names of those who'd scored 1,000 or more, but that has been lost. It was only a short list, as 1,000 is well nigh impossible. I don't remember anyone in my generation scoring 1,000.

It's another of those educational toys, isn't it? Think how good for your mental arithmetic, adding up your score at the end of each go. My kids shocked their grandmother by whipping out an ipod with a calculator on it. She made them put it away and add up in their heads or with paper and pencil. Good for her!

That almost ends this mini-series on my Mum's loft. There is just one more object of interest for tomorrow... Just one...

Iota's summer holiday top tips for entertaining children: Part ll

More items from my mother's loft. And by the way, what's the difference between a loft and an attic? Anyone know?

Look at these beautiful parasols. My mother doesn't know where they came from or who they belonged to.


They've evidently never been used; they're in beautiful condition. I'm guessing they were presents from someone's foreign trip. I don't know when they date from, but they belonged to my grandmother, and maybe someone before her. I remember enjoying them as a child. The pink one was my sister's, because she loved all things pink, and the blue one was mine, because I hated all things pink. I can't say that they kept 7-yo entertained for long, but she did prance around the garden with them a little. It's good to have the opportunity to teach children to look after things. In today's throw-away world, it's important for them to learn that things have value, by virtue of being old, or beautiful, or interesting. I taught 7-yo to open and close them carefully and gently, treating them with respect, as I was taught to do by my own mother.

The blue parasol lives in a parasol-shaped tin. The pink one lives in its original brown paper wrapping.


I love the curly writing, and the idea of the "modern shape" of sunshades. Lovely.

Here's another item that I remember from my childhood. It belonged to me.


It wasn't my everyday piggy bank. That was pink, with a removable stopper. The disadvantage with this pig is that it has no stopper. It's also very small - about 3 inches long, so it wouldn't hold much money. But it did have a few coins in it, and the children set about trying to get them out. They succeeded (that used up quite a bit of time), and were thrilled with the achievement of it. 10-yo presented the empty pig and the coins to me with pride: "We've got them out for you, after all these years!" What they don't know, is that I remember being perfectly able to get money out of that pig, sliding the coins out on a knife. I did it loads of times. I didn't tell them that, though. "Gosh, how clever!"

The coins were pre-decimal, so date from my early childhood (decimalisation was 1971, I've looked it up). There were a couple of sixpences - "these are what the tooth fairy used to bring" - and three threepenny bits.

10-yo is the magpie of my family. He loves collecting things, and is fast developing a taste for old items. Yesterday, he bought two farthings for 20p each in a local bric a brac shop, to add to the sixpences and threepenny bits. That's the beginning of an old coin collection (he already has a foreign coin collection). I'm not a collector or a hoarder by nature. I'm minimalist in what I keep. 10-yo is both a magpie and a hoarder. It's a dangerous combination, and it was quite an effort to ensure that a large proportion of the contents of the loft didn't simply end up in a big pile marked "keep for 10-yo". He's already made my mother promise to keep the typewriter.

Back to the pig. I remember being fond of this pig too, but look at it close up.


Don't you think that's a rather sinister grin? This loft clear-out could turn out to be the Return of the Evil Pig.

.

Iota's summer holiday top tips for entertaining children: Part l

Help your mum clean out her loft. Yes. Truly.

Mum's loft turned out to be quite organised on investigation, but there was still quite a lot of stuff up there. You know. Loft stuff. And the government want to contribute towards the cost of having it properly insulated, so down the stuff had to come. Husband did a valiant job, descending boxes, trunks, suitcases, parcels wrapped in plastic, from the hole in the ceiling, as the rest of us waited below, being showered with dust and dead insects.

The most unappetising item was an old badger pelt. It was given to my brother, when he was hitch-hiking round France about 30 years ago, by a taxidermist who stopped to give him a lift. And if that's not the making of a Roald Dahl story, then I don't know what is. It was falling apart and we didn't inspect it too carefully, preferring to jettison it out of the landing window for later retrieval, bagging and binning. Ooh, and once we'd got the taste of jettisoning things out of the window, there was no stopping us. The badger skin was joined by a mouse-nibbled leather pouf, flowery curtains, a heavy wad of black-out material, a bundle of orange carpet, a roll of kitchen lino, foam camping mats, lots of heavy duty plastic, black bags, bubble wrap, dusty cardboard boxes. Next time you're at a loose end, try a bit of jettisoning out of an upstairs window. Very therapeutic.

This process in itself provided entertainment for the kids. Holding the ladder steady - what a very long-lasting activity that can be. Brushing the dust and insect corpses and paper shreddings off the tops of boxes - another one. Marvelling at the tooth-power of mice (mice? well, we called them mice), who can nibble through paper, cardboard, plastic, A level notes. And then, of course, the anticipation and reward as each box or bag is opened. Lots of it deadly boring grown-up stuff, but from time to time your childish patience is rewarded by gems such as this.


10-yo and 7-yo spent a very happy couple of hours getting this to work. They succeeded. So long as your text doesn't need spaces (space bar still not working). And so long as you don't mind colouring in the ribbon with black felt tip marker every few letters. And so long as you don't mind dusting a layer of black dust off the table underneath where the typewriter was when you've finished. Ta da! Nearly a whole morning's activity with just one item. We reckon it's 1920's or 30's. What do you think?

Then there's always the fun of seeing what Mummy used to play with when she was a girl.


These are about 4 inches tall - just to give you an idea of scale. Small enough to be dwarfed by a Bionicle, should one chance by. I have a vague memory that they are in national costumes. That looks like a Chinese coolie hat second from the left, held on with a blue headscarf. (Is it un-pc to talk about coolie hats?) And if I saw women wearing the headgear on the right, I can't for the life of me think of what country I'd be in. Any ideas? Perhaps I'm wrong about the national costumes. I find it a bit sinister, the way their eyes are all looking off to stage right, but 7-yo has spent some very happy hours playing with them. I even sewed a press-stud back on one of their costumes. Talk about devotion to duty, especially since I can't even remember if they belonged to me or my sister.

You may have noticed that this post is titled "Part l". Yes... Meh... That's because, over the next couple of days, I'm going to show you several more items that came down from the loft, which have provided activity for the children.

Then I'm going back to America, where they have basements instead of lofts. Don't worry if you're in America, though. I'm sure my top tip would work in your mother's basement, just as well as in a loft (except for the jettisoning).