The last couple of weeks I've been playing in my head the Simon and Garfunkel song America as it sort of sums up how I feel about this trip to Chicago and the West Coast. It's going to be a bit of an adventure for my beloved, children 3 and 4 and me, of course, and as I can't take you along, I thought I'd blog my way round...
As I frequently point out to my children, travelling anywhere with their father is never dull. Already we have made the train at Knaresborough by the skin of our teeth and really only by virtue of the fact that our singing-dancing doctor drove us there. Then we managed to catch the wrong train from York to London - to clarify, the train was the earlier one but it arrived precisely at the time our slightly later train should have arrived had all trains not been temporarily derailed - time-wise rather than literally - by trespassers on the line at Durham.
We arrived at Kings Cross having been scattered through the carriage as our reservations were for the original train rather than the one we actually travelled on and - I can't believe I'm saying this - ate in the fabulous new concourse. Kings Cross station, so grim and grotty of old, sitting next to the very smart St Pancras, seems hardly to know itself and the new roof is really spectacular. I can't help thinking that there must be money to be made if they lined up the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 and 3/4 and ran a daily excursion into the countryside but then HP is dear to my heart so perhaps I am not entirely rational where the works of JKR are concerned.
Finally outward bound on our Virgin flight, disappointingly not skippered by our pilot pal who works for the airline and regularly flies this route but nevertheless in comfort having made the flight by the skin of our teeth - this appears to be a recurring theme already. First, number 4 child thought 'someone else' was bringing her luggage down from the hotel room - that would be the unspecified someone other than the three of us presumably, and so had to go back to collect it. Then it took forever to check in though we were entertained to see the imposing rear (and front) end of Serena Williams' mother also checking on to our Chicago-bound flight. I have seen her and I wouldn't mess with her! Finally, number 4 (yes, again) had to go and look for magazines and disappeared for so long that the trek to gate 20 had to be done at speed - not easy for me as my beloved (who may in future be known as the man who does not travel light) had had overweight hand luggage and consequently all his books were now in my hand luggage. Anyway, we're safely on board and 3 and 4 are happily glued to the screen in front of them - just like being at home then! - and my beloved (TMWDNTL) is on his fourth drink and deciding what treats lie in store later in the trip.
To be continued...
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Saturday, 23 June 2012
A Break in the Weather
Last night I slept in my winter jamas, not that you need to know that, but it is a sign that the weather has been utterly abysmal. Child number 3, post-GCSEs, has had five cricket matches and two tennis matches scheduled over a nine-day period and, day 8 as I write, has managed one tennis and one cricket though he tells me his team won both so I imagine things could be worse.
Last weekend, however, we (my beloved and I plus 24 other guests) skipped off to Rome for the weekend to celebrate a certain 40th birthday. It was blisteringly hot and, after the summer we have had so far, a real shock - in a good way - to the system. The birthday boy had smartly organised meals altogether in the evening and left the days to do as we pleased. An excellent choice because this left us with the opportunity to do some very selective sightseeing (because this is our third trip to Rome) and some very pleasant eating and drinking.
For me, the great thing about Rome is that you can do the Vatican/churches thing (not for me this time), the capital city buzz thing including restaurants, shops and bars (need I elaborate?) or the Roman history thing. Now the last is a big favourite and if I list the top historical sites so far visited in the world, the Colosseum is right up there. For the sake of completeness and in no particular order, the others are Hampton Court, Tower of London, the Temple at Karnak and Abu Simbel in Egypt.
The one place I really wanted to revisit in Rome was the Colosseum because it just blows me away every time. How they even built it, without cranes and proper scaffolding amazes me, but human life was cheap and dying on the job an occupational hazard, particularly for slaves. On this occasion, we went with a guide who was not worried about making his charges stand in the sun or, more kindly, sit in the shade whilst he made the place come alive for us. Once I get into the zone, the millions of other footfalls are stripped away and I imagine how it must have been when the Colosseum was the greatest spectacle in the greatest city in the world.
At the time when the Roman Empire was at its height, not only did the Romans control most of the known world, but 2% of the world's population lived in Rome - something unimaginable with today's huge population but it nevertheless made Rome THE PLACE. Whether you were rich and powerful in another corner of the Roman Empire, or poor and hoping to better your lot, Rome was a magnet the world over. And in Rome, the biggest attraction was the Colosseum.
But to be in the huge crowds that were drawn to the amazing spectacle, to be amongst those watching the animals fight, and then the gladiators - the rock stars of their day; to be, along with the Emperor, choosing life or death for the losers by the flick of a thumb - that surely must have been an experience beyond anything in our sophisticated world.
Last weekend, however, we (my beloved and I plus 24 other guests) skipped off to Rome for the weekend to celebrate a certain 40th birthday. It was blisteringly hot and, after the summer we have had so far, a real shock - in a good way - to the system. The birthday boy had smartly organised meals altogether in the evening and left the days to do as we pleased. An excellent choice because this left us with the opportunity to do some very selective sightseeing (because this is our third trip to Rome) and some very pleasant eating and drinking.
For me, the great thing about Rome is that you can do the Vatican/churches thing (not for me this time), the capital city buzz thing including restaurants, shops and bars (need I elaborate?) or the Roman history thing. Now the last is a big favourite and if I list the top historical sites so far visited in the world, the Colosseum is right up there. For the sake of completeness and in no particular order, the others are Hampton Court, Tower of London, the Temple at Karnak and Abu Simbel in Egypt.
The one place I really wanted to revisit in Rome was the Colosseum because it just blows me away every time. How they even built it, without cranes and proper scaffolding amazes me, but human life was cheap and dying on the job an occupational hazard, particularly for slaves. On this occasion, we went with a guide who was not worried about making his charges stand in the sun or, more kindly, sit in the shade whilst he made the place come alive for us. Once I get into the zone, the millions of other footfalls are stripped away and I imagine how it must have been when the Colosseum was the greatest spectacle in the greatest city in the world.
At the time when the Roman Empire was at its height, not only did the Romans control most of the known world, but 2% of the world's population lived in Rome - something unimaginable with today's huge population but it nevertheless made Rome THE PLACE. Whether you were rich and powerful in another corner of the Roman Empire, or poor and hoping to better your lot, Rome was a magnet the world over. And in Rome, the biggest attraction was the Colosseum.
Ancient Rome as it was then
It's hard to imagine a world without multi-media communication and having so much knowledge about places we have never been to, but try to think what it would be like to live in Britannia anytime between AD43 and AD410 and to arrive in Rome and see animals like lions and elephants - it would surely be like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They would literally have appeared to be creatures from another planet. Of course, if you arrived at the Colosseum and you were a slave, you would probably be in the dark labyrinth of corridors and cells under the arena and your visit might well be your first and your last.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
A Blast from the Past
My two favourite things from Harry Potter that I wish were real are Quidditch - well, obviously, who wouldn't want to fly around on broomsticks wielding rounders bats? - and Professor Dumbledore's Pensieve. In case you're not as Harry Potter-ed up as we are in this house, the Pensieve is the thing that looks like a font full of mercury and Professor D pulls memories out of his head with his wand (think spun sugar or candyfloss) and puts them in so he can return to each memory and relive it.
Now I realise that this would be a mixed blessing. Yes, you can relive the joyous moments again and again (but with repetition would they lose some of their gloss?) but I would certainly be tempted to go back to some of the less warm and wonderful and probably most embarrassing/humiliating bits too. And a goodly number of the latter happened in my mid-teens.
I moved to Yorkshire in my very early twenties and so have left the evidence - or rather, the witnesses - of the latter long behind me. But last night was almost like a Pensieve moment - a blast from the past - as they would say on Radio 1 in the nineteen seventies.
My beloved and I attended a significant birthday party of a friend from all those years ago when Coventry (yes, really!) was the most happening place in my universe. This friend also lives up here and our paths have crossed occasionally over the years so when he invited us to a party at which a goodly number of these friends from my misspent youth were likely to be heading north (and from various other directions) it had to be done.
Of course, with the invitation being months ahead of the party it didn't start to stare me in the face until the few days running up to it. And then, in the brief lulls between all the jubilee-ing going on in our lovely village over the weekend, I had contemplated some of the times when we had all last been together. Happy, sad, embarrassing and ungainly - definitely - but worth remembering. Friends, one in particular, no longer with us and other friends who have drifted away to be distant memories only.
Fast forward to getting ready and a proper wardrobe crisis almost on a par with those of thirty-something years ago. We had also been invited en famille to a party in the village last night so we arranged to start and finish there, leaving children 3 and 4 with their gang of friends whilst we headed to a pub the other side of Harrogate. On the way there in the car, I worried... would I recognise any of them? would they remember the embarrassing, awful moments that haunted my youth and remind me of them? would I be that ungainly, bashful girl, hoping to control my blushes and not say or do the wrong thing? My beloved, who was remarkably stoic about the whole thing with the likelihood of only knowing one other couple, assured me I would survive.
And as he had correctly predicted, as soon as we got inside the pub, there was a shout of 'Stiggins!' which was my nickname from all those years ago (my oldest friend, Alps, still calls me Stigs) and I was enveloped in hugs and memories and affection from all those years ago and, keeping my beloved in sight out of the corner of my eye, I chatted to some of the characters who joyfully populated my teens and remembered and relived some great moments. My beloved left me to it, uncharacteristically drinking water (whilst I most definitely didn't) and chatted with good friends who were clearly amused by my general jumping up and down, singing songs never made famous by a band once called Lavatory and subsequently - I suspect at the insistence of someone's parents - renamed Eric and remembered things that I haven't thought about in years. And gawky, unsure teenager I may have been in those days but we did have some good times.
So big thanks to Dave and Pam for inviting us, my beloved for being my wingman (in the manner of Top Gun) and to Chris Nought (because he has no middle name) Bailey, Patti, Mick (whose children will by now have congratulated him on refusing to go out with a woman who is definitely not the full shilling), Marcus (no, I can't remember you driving me home in 1972 and I am still wondering what happened...), Ali and lovely Bill Allen. Unforgettable...
Now I realise that this would be a mixed blessing. Yes, you can relive the joyous moments again and again (but with repetition would they lose some of their gloss?) but I would certainly be tempted to go back to some of the less warm and wonderful and probably most embarrassing/humiliating bits too. And a goodly number of the latter happened in my mid-teens.
I moved to Yorkshire in my very early twenties and so have left the evidence - or rather, the witnesses - of the latter long behind me. But last night was almost like a Pensieve moment - a blast from the past - as they would say on Radio 1 in the nineteen seventies.
My beloved and I attended a significant birthday party of a friend from all those years ago when Coventry (yes, really!) was the most happening place in my universe. This friend also lives up here and our paths have crossed occasionally over the years so when he invited us to a party at which a goodly number of these friends from my misspent youth were likely to be heading north (and from various other directions) it had to be done.
Of course, with the invitation being months ahead of the party it didn't start to stare me in the face until the few days running up to it. And then, in the brief lulls between all the jubilee-ing going on in our lovely village over the weekend, I had contemplated some of the times when we had all last been together. Happy, sad, embarrassing and ungainly - definitely - but worth remembering. Friends, one in particular, no longer with us and other friends who have drifted away to be distant memories only.
Fast forward to getting ready and a proper wardrobe crisis almost on a par with those of thirty-something years ago. We had also been invited en famille to a party in the village last night so we arranged to start and finish there, leaving children 3 and 4 with their gang of friends whilst we headed to a pub the other side of Harrogate. On the way there in the car, I worried... would I recognise any of them? would they remember the embarrassing, awful moments that haunted my youth and remind me of them? would I be that ungainly, bashful girl, hoping to control my blushes and not say or do the wrong thing? My beloved, who was remarkably stoic about the whole thing with the likelihood of only knowing one other couple, assured me I would survive.
And as he had correctly predicted, as soon as we got inside the pub, there was a shout of 'Stiggins!' which was my nickname from all those years ago (my oldest friend, Alps, still calls me Stigs) and I was enveloped in hugs and memories and affection from all those years ago and, keeping my beloved in sight out of the corner of my eye, I chatted to some of the characters who joyfully populated my teens and remembered and relived some great moments. My beloved left me to it, uncharacteristically drinking water (whilst I most definitely didn't) and chatted with good friends who were clearly amused by my general jumping up and down, singing songs never made famous by a band once called Lavatory and subsequently - I suspect at the insistence of someone's parents - renamed Eric and remembered things that I haven't thought about in years. And gawky, unsure teenager I may have been in those days but we did have some good times.
So big thanks to Dave and Pam for inviting us, my beloved for being my wingman (in the manner of Top Gun) and to Chris Nought (because he has no middle name) Bailey, Patti, Mick (whose children will by now have congratulated him on refusing to go out with a woman who is definitely not the full shilling), Marcus (no, I can't remember you driving me home in 1972 and I am still wondering what happened...), Ali and lovely Bill Allen. Unforgettable...
Monday, 21 May 2012
Out with the Old
We've been having a bit of a clear out at the little house on the prairie. This, let me tell you, was very long overdue. There is a saying, 'Nature abhors a vacuum' and we appeared to have lived by that adage for all our 28 year marriage. We have a number of outbuildings which are, effectively, stuffed with things that we can't quite bear to throw away but can't find a use for either. Add to this, the fact that my beloved's family (and a few friends and acquaintances along the way) also use our outbuildings for storage when they move. They say things like, "Just for a few weeks till we're sorted" and then leave their Christmas decorations, filing cabinets, African wooden heads and pots and pans with us for years.
When my beloved went on his annual trip to Las Vegas in January, this was a great opportunity for me to clean the kitchen cupboards out - yes, all of them, even the ones where you have to stand on a chair and you can still barely reach to the back. Because we both owned houses when we joined forces all those years ago, we had full sets of crockery, cutlery, pans etc, etc most of which we still own. So I piled it all up in my office whilst I decided on a plan of action.
Then granny decided that it was time I took ownership of various items from my teenage bedroom including some very nice china horses which I had saved up for as a child and some very much loved stuffed toys. All this I added to the pile in the office.
Then I started on the bedrooms of my own absent children, the ones who have flown the nest but left loads of stuff behind and seem equally reluctant to take it all with them (it would only be more stuff for my beloved to help them to move from time to time when they migrate from one flat to another). And, of course, the frightfully grown-up teenagers who have all sorts of things they have grown out of. Once I started looking at their favourite books (I can't get rid of Mog and Bunny because I read it so many times or The Queen's Knickers, come to that) it took me on so many sentimental journeys that progress ground almost completely to a halt. And the stuff under the stairs including several wetsuits, flippers, masks and snorkels. You can imagine it was by now a significant pile and that's not counting the books and clothes and CDs and vast amount of sporting equipment and, well, just stuff.
A couple of weeks ago, my beloved (very, very reluctantly) and I went to recce a car boot sale in a nearby town. After trundling round the stalls, my beloved pronounced: "Their tat is even worse than our tat!" so we decided to give it a go. Not the china horses which are selling quite nicely on Ebay at rather good prices, but pretty much all the rest. Joined by some like-minded friends who were, with us, raising money for a venture to Vietnam for some students from our school, we set off in a convoy on Sunday morning and lined up in a row in the appointed field.
Well, their tat might have been worse than our tat, but we probably had the wrong sort of tat for the most part. The eight-place setting china tea and dinner service (including vegetable dishes) from my beloved's first home generated no interest whatsoever. Likewise the very nice clothes from my various slender daughters (because slender was in short supply in the female form amongst the buyers). And no-one wanted the huge array of sports equipment we had amassed between us ("It's like Intersport!") covering football, cricket, swimming, hockey, tennis and a mile, end to end, of golf clubs. CDs, however, flew off the stall but clearly reading is not a popular pastime - I must have taken at least 100 books of which we sold about five. Shouting encouragingly, "Read a book! Expand your mind!" may not have helped, of course.
On a positive note, however, the African head has gone to a new home as has the old laundry basket, lots of electric cable and various knick-knacks and some dishes for snails (the sort you eat) which I successfully remarketed as egg dishes! And eventually, we packed up a ridiculous amount of stuff but not quite as much as we had started with and made our way home, in profit but not vastly and with a new perspective on selling. My beloved pointed out to me that I would have been fired on The Apprentice a few weeks ago when they did the 'selling tat' challenge. I am rubbish at it.
So this morning, remaining tat has been transferred out of the van and into the car and accepted gratefully by various charity shops apart from a few bits that we will sell online. And if you want to buy... old pans, golf clubs, wetsuits, complete eight-place setting dinner and tea service and the last remaining dishes for snails... er, eggs, I can tell you where I delivered them.
When my beloved went on his annual trip to Las Vegas in January, this was a great opportunity for me to clean the kitchen cupboards out - yes, all of them, even the ones where you have to stand on a chair and you can still barely reach to the back. Because we both owned houses when we joined forces all those years ago, we had full sets of crockery, cutlery, pans etc, etc most of which we still own. So I piled it all up in my office whilst I decided on a plan of action.
Then granny decided that it was time I took ownership of various items from my teenage bedroom including some very nice china horses which I had saved up for as a child and some very much loved stuffed toys. All this I added to the pile in the office.
Then I started on the bedrooms of my own absent children, the ones who have flown the nest but left loads of stuff behind and seem equally reluctant to take it all with them (it would only be more stuff for my beloved to help them to move from time to time when they migrate from one flat to another). And, of course, the frightfully grown-up teenagers who have all sorts of things they have grown out of. Once I started looking at their favourite books (I can't get rid of Mog and Bunny because I read it so many times or The Queen's Knickers, come to that) it took me on so many sentimental journeys that progress ground almost completely to a halt. And the stuff under the stairs including several wetsuits, flippers, masks and snorkels. You can imagine it was by now a significant pile and that's not counting the books and clothes and CDs and vast amount of sporting equipment and, well, just stuff.
A couple of weeks ago, my beloved (very, very reluctantly) and I went to recce a car boot sale in a nearby town. After trundling round the stalls, my beloved pronounced: "Their tat is even worse than our tat!" so we decided to give it a go. Not the china horses which are selling quite nicely on Ebay at rather good prices, but pretty much all the rest. Joined by some like-minded friends who were, with us, raising money for a venture to Vietnam for some students from our school, we set off in a convoy on Sunday morning and lined up in a row in the appointed field.
Well, their tat might have been worse than our tat, but we probably had the wrong sort of tat for the most part. The eight-place setting china tea and dinner service (including vegetable dishes) from my beloved's first home generated no interest whatsoever. Likewise the very nice clothes from my various slender daughters (because slender was in short supply in the female form amongst the buyers). And no-one wanted the huge array of sports equipment we had amassed between us ("It's like Intersport!") covering football, cricket, swimming, hockey, tennis and a mile, end to end, of golf clubs. CDs, however, flew off the stall but clearly reading is not a popular pastime - I must have taken at least 100 books of which we sold about five. Shouting encouragingly, "Read a book! Expand your mind!" may not have helped, of course.
On a positive note, however, the African head has gone to a new home as has the old laundry basket, lots of electric cable and various knick-knacks and some dishes for snails (the sort you eat) which I successfully remarketed as egg dishes! And eventually, we packed up a ridiculous amount of stuff but not quite as much as we had started with and made our way home, in profit but not vastly and with a new perspective on selling. My beloved pointed out to me that I would have been fired on The Apprentice a few weeks ago when they did the 'selling tat' challenge. I am rubbish at it.
So this morning, remaining tat has been transferred out of the van and into the car and accepted gratefully by various charity shops apart from a few bits that we will sell online. And if you want to buy... old pans, golf clubs, wetsuits, complete eight-place setting dinner and tea service and the last remaining dishes for snails... er, eggs, I can tell you where I delivered them.
Friday, 4 May 2012
One of these Nights - Sixteen Years Ago
Sixteen years ago this week, I was in the Special Care Baby Unit at Leeds General Infirmary. Two babies, colour-coded by their blankets, were in cots next to my bed. One, the blue one, was the biggest baby on the ward by some margin whilst his sister, wearing an enormous hat to stop heat escaping from her very tiny head and with a tube up her nose to feed her, weighed only just over half what her brother weighed - a couple of bags of sugar, no more. They were our miracles.
Scroll on a few days and we arrived back at the little house on the prairie which had, for their arrival, been turned upside down - literally. Their first nursery was the dining room (now our sitting room) as we had been advised that there would be significantly less running up and down stairs if their world was contained on the ground floor. Two of everything babywise takes up a lot of space!
We were joined for the first few weeks by a maternity nurse, Sister R, who had once been the supremo of Harrogate's only maternity hospital and where number 1 child and I had spent a few formative days - formative for her, reformative for me whilst I started to shrink back to the old me. Anyway Sister R had a lovely, old-fashioned approach to babies and routine and she quickly licked us into shape. She used to stay for three or four nights a week giving us desperate parents a few much-needed nights off to recover - and yes, I know we were very lucky to have her. Once in residence, she would spend the evening in front of the television with us with the remote control gripped vice-like in her hand, insisting (as if we had the energy to argue) that we watch medical programmes (yes, me the most squeamish person in the world and these were 'the bloodier - the better' variety), nature programmes (nature programmes with blood even better) and football - the only sport we never watch in this house. Anyway aside from the television, she got bottle production on a mass scale organised and dealt with 3 and 4 in the middle of the night whilst my beloved and I slept on.
When she left, we were ready for her to go and for us to face up to the task ahead. This involved my beloved staying up till late to do the last feed at any sort of sociable hour, then me getting up in the wee small hours to feed the one that woke up first, then waking up the second one (whether he or she wanted to be woken or not) for their feed. Sometimes, in tiredness and confusion, I wasn't sure whether I had fed one or both or perhaps three of them but we and they survived. I watched, in chunks in no particular order, The Commitments and, towards the end, the Olympics in Atlanta, which featured all those sports which only true aficionados, people who work night shifts (me) and insomniacs watch - women's weightlifting and synchronised swimming to name but two. Incidentally, anyone who thinks synchronised swimming and synchronised diving are in the same skill-category are way off beam. Synchronised diving is brilliant, brave and exciting and the stuff in the pool with the make-up and weird nose things is not, in my view, any more a sport than dominoes!
What was most wonderful was how the older two fell immediately in love with the twins. They helped brilliantly, changed nappies enthusiastically and were generally the proudest parents - apart from their own! And that relationship is still magic today and when they are all at home together - the messiest, loudest and happiest times happen. When war breaks out in this house, as it sometimes does, we need to remember how we are all lights in each other's lives.
When the twins were born in the early and very antisocial hours on May 3rd 1996, the song on the radio in the delivery suite was played by the Eagles. One of These Nights might have been appropriate and Take It Easy would have been nice and I can't, sixteen years on, remember what it was but this one is my favourite so here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaO-kgG7eCQ
Scroll on a few days and we arrived back at the little house on the prairie which had, for their arrival, been turned upside down - literally. Their first nursery was the dining room (now our sitting room) as we had been advised that there would be significantly less running up and down stairs if their world was contained on the ground floor. Two of everything babywise takes up a lot of space!
We were joined for the first few weeks by a maternity nurse, Sister R, who had once been the supremo of Harrogate's only maternity hospital and where number 1 child and I had spent a few formative days - formative for her, reformative for me whilst I started to shrink back to the old me. Anyway Sister R had a lovely, old-fashioned approach to babies and routine and she quickly licked us into shape. She used to stay for three or four nights a week giving us desperate parents a few much-needed nights off to recover - and yes, I know we were very lucky to have her. Once in residence, she would spend the evening in front of the television with us with the remote control gripped vice-like in her hand, insisting (as if we had the energy to argue) that we watch medical programmes (yes, me the most squeamish person in the world and these were 'the bloodier - the better' variety), nature programmes (nature programmes with blood even better) and football - the only sport we never watch in this house. Anyway aside from the television, she got bottle production on a mass scale organised and dealt with 3 and 4 in the middle of the night whilst my beloved and I slept on.
When she left, we were ready for her to go and for us to face up to the task ahead. This involved my beloved staying up till late to do the last feed at any sort of sociable hour, then me getting up in the wee small hours to feed the one that woke up first, then waking up the second one (whether he or she wanted to be woken or not) for their feed. Sometimes, in tiredness and confusion, I wasn't sure whether I had fed one or both or perhaps three of them but we and they survived. I watched, in chunks in no particular order, The Commitments and, towards the end, the Olympics in Atlanta, which featured all those sports which only true aficionados, people who work night shifts (me) and insomniacs watch - women's weightlifting and synchronised swimming to name but two. Incidentally, anyone who thinks synchronised swimming and synchronised diving are in the same skill-category are way off beam. Synchronised diving is brilliant, brave and exciting and the stuff in the pool with the make-up and weird nose things is not, in my view, any more a sport than dominoes!
What was most wonderful was how the older two fell immediately in love with the twins. They helped brilliantly, changed nappies enthusiastically and were generally the proudest parents - apart from their own! And that relationship is still magic today and when they are all at home together - the messiest, loudest and happiest times happen. When war breaks out in this house, as it sometimes does, we need to remember how we are all lights in each other's lives.
When the twins were born in the early and very antisocial hours on May 3rd 1996, the song on the radio in the delivery suite was played by the Eagles. One of These Nights might have been appropriate and Take It Easy would have been nice and I can't, sixteen years on, remember what it was but this one is my favourite so here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaO-kgG7eCQ
Friday, 27 April 2012
The Rain it Raineth Every Day
Morning all! I had to look up the quote in the title and, of course, was delighted to be reminded that it was from Feste, the fool in Twelfth Night which is appropriate since it was Shakespeare's birthday this week (on the same day at St George's Day) and I spent a lot of my teenage years in Stratford upon Avon, probably acting the fool myself. I'm not being picky about the 'upon Avon' bit but usually now when people mention Stratford, they are referring to the Olympics.
Anyway, back to the rain for which we must accept some responsibility in this house. You see, every time my beloved goes away for an appreciable length of time we get weather. Not the normal stuff we get which in Yorkshire is usually a selection of all four seasons in one day but proper, big stuff. When my beloved goes to Las Vegas in January, we generally have to dig ourselves out through the snow and now, on his first ever trip to Pittsburg, he has provided us with a month's rain in a week. In our house, where sport is very much a feature, especially at this time of year, we have been rained off cricket, golf, tennis and cycling and had it not been for pilates and indoor tennis there would have been climbing of the walls, by me anyway. We've also been carbooted off but that is, as they say, another story.
The other thing is that this is an old house and when it rains, it leaks. Earlier in the week, to cap a very tricky day - tricky because number 4 had to hand in her graphics coursework for her GCSE and the computer was not behaving in an appropriate manner - number 3 informed me that rainwater was running through the downlighter in the bathroom. Luckily it was running straight into the sink therefore negating the requirement for a bucket but with two leaks already in the conservatory and the boiler room leaking so much that large amounts of plastic are permanently placed over all the electricity controls for the central heating, this was not looking good. I half expected a selection of indigenous animals to be pairing up and lining up ready to join us for a cruise across the flooded plains of North Yorkshire.
Anyway, today my beloved returns and already the skies are lightening - although I believe the pitch is so waterlogged that there will still be no cricket again this weekend ... though there might be tennis - so clearly he is responsible. Incidentally, twenty eight years ago tomorrow it was a wonderful, hot, sunny day and we are about to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary. This will be followed next week by the twins' 16th birthdays - unbelievable, how did that happen? And then number 2 will have her birthday the following week, but she is feeling a bit sensitive about her age to which the only response is clearly: wait till you get to fifty something.
So off to walk the dogs now (who are fast developing webbed feet) and resisting the urge to wear any of the several wetsuits which are still on my office floor because we couldn't carboot them last week due to ... yes, the rain cancelling the carboot sale. Meanwhile I have been enjoying a spot of Fawlty Towers on Youtube, so here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcliR8kAbzc. Any similarities between members of the cast and our dear friends who run the best B&B in the Lake District are entirely ...um... deliberate!
Anyway, back to the rain for which we must accept some responsibility in this house. You see, every time my beloved goes away for an appreciable length of time we get weather. Not the normal stuff we get which in Yorkshire is usually a selection of all four seasons in one day but proper, big stuff. When my beloved goes to Las Vegas in January, we generally have to dig ourselves out through the snow and now, on his first ever trip to Pittsburg, he has provided us with a month's rain in a week. In our house, where sport is very much a feature, especially at this time of year, we have been rained off cricket, golf, tennis and cycling and had it not been for pilates and indoor tennis there would have been climbing of the walls, by me anyway. We've also been carbooted off but that is, as they say, another story.
The other thing is that this is an old house and when it rains, it leaks. Earlier in the week, to cap a very tricky day - tricky because number 4 had to hand in her graphics coursework for her GCSE and the computer was not behaving in an appropriate manner - number 3 informed me that rainwater was running through the downlighter in the bathroom. Luckily it was running straight into the sink therefore negating the requirement for a bucket but with two leaks already in the conservatory and the boiler room leaking so much that large amounts of plastic are permanently placed over all the electricity controls for the central heating, this was not looking good. I half expected a selection of indigenous animals to be pairing up and lining up ready to join us for a cruise across the flooded plains of North Yorkshire.
Anyway, today my beloved returns and already the skies are lightening - although I believe the pitch is so waterlogged that there will still be no cricket again this weekend ... though there might be tennis - so clearly he is responsible. Incidentally, twenty eight years ago tomorrow it was a wonderful, hot, sunny day and we are about to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary. This will be followed next week by the twins' 16th birthdays - unbelievable, how did that happen? And then number 2 will have her birthday the following week, but she is feeling a bit sensitive about her age to which the only response is clearly: wait till you get to fifty something.
So off to walk the dogs now (who are fast developing webbed feet) and resisting the urge to wear any of the several wetsuits which are still on my office floor because we couldn't carboot them last week due to ... yes, the rain cancelling the carboot sale. Meanwhile I have been enjoying a spot of Fawlty Towers on Youtube, so here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcliR8kAbzc. Any similarities between members of the cast and our dear friends who run the best B&B in the Lake District are entirely ...um... deliberate!
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
The peace that passes all understanding...
On Easter Monday evening, we (my beloved and I plus three of the four children and one granny) found ourselves at our local pub for an early supper. Our lovely friends from our village had decided to do likewise and were there with two of their three offspring plus a brace of grannies. They, like us, had realised that they really needed not to cook another meal. In fact, they had totalled up that they had served over 50 meals during the Easter break and we were probably not far behind. In fact, my beloved was quite happy to rustle up a curry on Monday night but I couldn't face the ensuing mess in the kitchen and so we ate out on the largesse of the resident granny.
We are usually packed to the gunnels at Easter and Christmas with all four children home plus a boyfriend and a granny. Luckily this time no-one brought their pets as well because that does precipitate a sense of humour failure on my part. Anyway we had also had a visit from the other granny and her husband so we had done the family thing big style.
Today I put the granny on the train back to the Midlands and I and my little house on the prairie heaved a sigh of relief that we are now back to normal population-wise - two parents, two teenagers, two dogs and yes, daughter number 2 who has come back home for a while. And although it is Easter and not Christmas it made me think about the innkeeper in the Nativity.
Imagine, if you will, you learn that thousands of people are about to turn up in your town and that you are the proud owner of Bethlehem's equivalent of the Hotel du Vin. Great, you think to yourself, we'll spruce up the rooms, maybe slap on a mud hut extension and then we'll pack them in for the great taxpaying weekend and make a pile. And then, of course, you hear that your mother-in-law will be coming and will need a room and that is quickly followed by all the members of your extended family who all have to be in Bethlehem for the taxation jamboree. Suddenly your great moneymaking enterprise in which you have already made a considerable investment in art deco light fittings and shower attachments is being overrun with relatives who expect to stay gratis. So when the very expectant lady in blue and her rather harassed husband turn up you wonder which of your relatives you can turn out of their luxury accommodation, only to realise that, actually, if anyone gets asked to move there will be the mother and father of all family rows. Personally I feel sorry for him. And if any more of Noah's relatives had turned up we probably wouldn't have zebras (actually if his sons had been single, we probably would still have unicorns).
So here we are, after another big family weekend which was great fun, relaxing back into what passes for normal in this house, and very nice it is too.
So a quick update (in case you missed it on facebook) of the annual Easter egg hunt: 96 eggs were hidden in the garden very early on Sunday morning, after the church service on the top green in the village at 6.15am and breakfast in the small hall. Child number 4 was the runaway winner with child 2 coming in second and complaining bitterly that her younger sibling had been aided by the official referee. The stewards' enquiry rejected that accusation and the result stands. Number 1's boyfriend came a very creditable third - but he is training for the London Marathon and so is fairly nifty on his pins - with number 1 returning in fourth place. Child 3, however, proved that last year's win was a complete fluke and failed to find his quota of eggs which means there are more for me to find when I'm gardening for the next few weeks.
We are now rushing headlong into the tennis, cricket and GCSE season and are hoping for success in all three - it may kill me!
We are usually packed to the gunnels at Easter and Christmas with all four children home plus a boyfriend and a granny. Luckily this time no-one brought their pets as well because that does precipitate a sense of humour failure on my part. Anyway we had also had a visit from the other granny and her husband so we had done the family thing big style.
Today I put the granny on the train back to the Midlands and I and my little house on the prairie heaved a sigh of relief that we are now back to normal population-wise - two parents, two teenagers, two dogs and yes, daughter number 2 who has come back home for a while. And although it is Easter and not Christmas it made me think about the innkeeper in the Nativity.
Imagine, if you will, you learn that thousands of people are about to turn up in your town and that you are the proud owner of Bethlehem's equivalent of the Hotel du Vin. Great, you think to yourself, we'll spruce up the rooms, maybe slap on a mud hut extension and then we'll pack them in for the great taxpaying weekend and make a pile. And then, of course, you hear that your mother-in-law will be coming and will need a room and that is quickly followed by all the members of your extended family who all have to be in Bethlehem for the taxation jamboree. Suddenly your great moneymaking enterprise in which you have already made a considerable investment in art deco light fittings and shower attachments is being overrun with relatives who expect to stay gratis. So when the very expectant lady in blue and her rather harassed husband turn up you wonder which of your relatives you can turn out of their luxury accommodation, only to realise that, actually, if anyone gets asked to move there will be the mother and father of all family rows. Personally I feel sorry for him. And if any more of Noah's relatives had turned up we probably wouldn't have zebras (actually if his sons had been single, we probably would still have unicorns).
So here we are, after another big family weekend which was great fun, relaxing back into what passes for normal in this house, and very nice it is too.
So a quick update (in case you missed it on facebook) of the annual Easter egg hunt: 96 eggs were hidden in the garden very early on Sunday morning, after the church service on the top green in the village at 6.15am and breakfast in the small hall. Child number 4 was the runaway winner with child 2 coming in second and complaining bitterly that her younger sibling had been aided by the official referee. The stewards' enquiry rejected that accusation and the result stands. Number 1's boyfriend came a very creditable third - but he is training for the London Marathon and so is fairly nifty on his pins - with number 1 returning in fourth place. Child 3, however, proved that last year's win was a complete fluke and failed to find his quota of eggs which means there are more for me to find when I'm gardening for the next few weeks.
We are now rushing headlong into the tennis, cricket and GCSE season and are hoping for success in all three - it may kill me!
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