Mother and daughter and mother and daughter time

I have been staying in London in what must be the only flat in Hackney without a hairdryer. In a flat where two girls and two boys live (including daughter number 1), I can count at least six rugby balls but no hairdryer. This is no surprise as all four of them play rugby but I had hoped for a hairdryer. When my children were small, I couldn't possibly have imagined producing one worldly daughter and one so unworldly that there is no hairdryer in her life. Anyway, instead I had a night's sleep (or not as it turned out) with daughter 1 and her lunatic cat.

I chose not to name my children in my blog (in case they take issue with me - I can always claim to be numerically challenged) but Spanky the cat deserves no such privilege. Daughter 1 decided to get a kitten last year to combat the mice in the flat. Spanky is now an adolescent in all the usual senses of the word and sleeps with the daughter - and on Tuesday night - with me. I now fully understand the term 'cat nap' - this means that the cat sleeps for about an hour, then attempts mining activity under my bit of the duvet, and occasional forays on to the bedside table before attempting a Tom Daley-type manoeuvre on to my head.

My London visit combined mother and daughter time of one variety with mother and daughter time of the other sort - with my mother. This involved a move from the hairdryer-free zone across town (yes, daughter number 1, I can manage buses and tubes unaccompanied) to my mother's London club. This place is great! Full of people so old that I feel like a teenager and very handily situated for my personal treat.

It's rare to find myself in London with no-one to please but me and this gave me the opportunity to take myself to the National Portrait Gallery. Big galleries are daunting and I am not artistic but it was a treat to spend an hour with the Tudor portraits. I know that none of my family would have been up for this but I have a big soft spot for Henry VIII and his three children (the legitimate ones, obviously) and it was bliss to immerse myself in my favourite dynasty.

The Gallery is divided up chronologically so I finished in the photographic portrait section from the 20th century. Two of my favourite male screen icons have stunning portraits there - Dirk Bogarde, not just a wonderful actor and gentleman but a fabulously poignant writer in his later years. If you haven't read 'A Short Walk from Harrods', it is charming. The second is the elegant David Niven, dear to my heart because he and my father had a similar look. Such style and grace puts today's so-called style icons in the shade.

My mother and daughter time with me in the daughter role also included a second visit to the brilliant 'War Horse'. Within literally moments of coming on stage, the horses are totally believable and live and breathe in front of you. Wowed for a second time, I may have to take the children later in the year.

Finally, the mother and daughter combo also visited an ice cream parlour where I chose delicious dulce de leche and my mother something called 'sex, drugs and rock and roll' - apparently it kept her awake all night but that's what happens when you have sex, drugs and rock and roll in your eighties.

Coco's Kenyan Adventure (part 3)

For the next two days, we ranged across the savannah in search, mainly, of cats. This time of year, much of the game has migrated across the Masai river to the Serengeti and the plains are empty in large areas. There is, however, a small population of wildebeest, gazelles, giraffes, zebra and waterbuck who stay throughout the year. But the cats remain and the lions are plentiful - one pride we spotted numbered 13 including cubs. Male lions tend to roam in smaller groups and we saw a group of young male lions as well as a number of fully-grown males with fine manes.

On our last day on the Mara, we visited a Masai village and school. Our group of five included Bev, a secondary school teacher (and deputy head) who was keen to take gifts to the children to help them in school.

When we arrived in the village, we were greeted by the son of the chief - although all the young men were probably sons of the chief and all the 120 residents of the village were related to him. In fact, when the young men marry they have to leave to village to go in search of a bride.

The young men of the village, Masai warriors all, were immaculately dressed in traditional costume, whereas the women sitting under a tree with their small children were obviously of much lesser importance and their dress and, more significantly, the state of the children sadly reflected this.

The young warriors treated us to a traditional dance and jumping display - this jumping is important in their selection of a bride and the highest jumpers pay a lower dowry to the father of the bride. Then we were taken into the pitch dark of the huts which are their homes. The one we entered was the size of an average room and, as well as including a cooking area and a number of hens, it slept 16 adults and children.

The young warrior hosting our visit spoke excellent English and described his journey to manhood including circumcision at 14 (don't even ask me how we got on to this) when it is considered not manly either to move or scream in pain. Then the young warriors go in groups of 40 or so into the savannah to hunt lion. Each warrior seeks to distinguish himself by being the first to stick a spear into the lion. The one who achieves this can then wear his hair long.

Although both boys and girls are allowed to go to school, it was obvious from meeting the women of the village that they have received little or no education. Whilst the men hunt and tend the animals, the women cook, care for the infants, build the huts (out of straw, sticks and cow dung), wash clothes and do a whole myriad of jobs. Not for them the fine feathers of the warrior who is, of course, able to take more wives provided he can support them. The women also walk up to two kilometres each way to fetch water daily.

The school was teeming with children proudly dressed in a range of school uniform clearly handed down many times over. Their obvious delight in the opportunity to learn was inspiring. And surprisingly, they made me realise that, regardless of my views of the exaggerated importance given to the game by the British media, football is truly a world sport and a universal language between nations.  That a small boy in a tiny village in the heart of the Masai Mara knows about and admires Wayne Rooney is surely amazing on all sorts of levels. It does make one wonder whether, if he understood this, he might give more consideration to his behaviour on and off the pitch.

Our last day started as early as ever and after our 6.30am shout of 'jambo' we were up and off, across the plains, through the shanty towns and back to the bustle and traffic of uptown Nairobi.

Looking at the westernisation of the city and the effects that our throw-away, consumerist society is having on the beauty that is Kenya, it makes me wonder how much of what we bring to them is good. I can, on the one hand, appreciate that women in their primitive tribes lead an unthinkably hard life and that we must help children living in terrible poverty in the countryside and cities. On the other hand, the proud traditions of the warriors may be lost in our drive to bring our lifestyle and aspirations to these parts of the world. And yes, all the warriors had mobile phones.

The last part of our Kenyan adventure involved a visit to the Giraffe Sanctuary in what the locals call the Karen suburb of Nairobi. This part of town was once farmed by Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame and is now a leafy suburb. The giraffe sanctuary is a unique opportunity to get really close and feed and pet these gentle giants. Their elegance and poise would make any high-heeled model look clumsy and they stand and pose for photographs with a gang of pumba (warthogs) scuttling at their feet.

Finally we went to the famous Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi - famous for its "Beast of a Feast" with meats including ostrich, camel and crocodile. Since we came here in 2003, game - zebra for example - has been taken off the menu as it is now illegal to serve it in restaurants. This is, however, a truly international experience rather than just a tourist attraction as Kenyans come here in abundance and each table strives to continue to keep the flag flying (literally a paper flag on the table) as carvers bring different meats cut directly off the bone and on to your plate. When you can eat no more, the flag is lowered and the meat stops coming - a unique experience.

And so we flew home finally reaching Yorkshire some 36 hours after leaving the Mara - tired and dirty but, I think, with our horizons broadened and perhaps with a greater appreciation of what I fear may be a disappearing world.

Special thanks to Bev for her great photographs and especially to Coco for a really fantastic, unforgettable trip.

Coco's Kenyan Adventure (part 2)

Our journey out of Nairobi took us through leafy suburbs and past many schools (which were strangely juxtapositioned by funeral parlours and driving schools!). The schoolchildren were immaculately dressed and were playing joyously - school is regarded as a privilege and the children appear to relish the opportunity to learn - a lesson for our own, perhaps. Slogans like "To read is to lead" appear outside schools and are testament to how important education is in this developing country.

We had been driving through a wooded area not unlike southern England for some time when we turned a corner and there before us lay the magnificent rift valley. This is how I remembered Kenya from our first trip  (Coco's Kenyan Adventure with child 2), flying out to our camp at Kichwa Tembo in the Mara over the valley where very few people live and the animals still reign.

As the road edged along the cliffs of valley, baboons ran out at intervals, fearless amongst the traffic. Finally making our way slowly down to Lake Naivasha, we pass dozens of greenhouses. This is a major flower-growing area, particularly for the supply of cut-roses to supermarkets in the UK. Nicholas showed us the refugee camps where Kenyans, dispossessed in the tribal wars between the Kikuyu and the Masai in 2008, are living. The memory of this is obviously fresh and recent actions from the Kenyan government suggest that there may be more unrest to come.

The lodge at Lake Naivasha was luxurious and the charming sloped huts were built in a sweeping arc around an area of grass and trees. It was raining when we arrived but we managed a short 'hippo walk' with our guide to see a pair of hippos in the lake, their snouts and ears appearing occasionally above the water.

We were advised not to walk in the grounds after dark as the hippos come up into the grounds and, as they are Africa's most dangerous animal, wandering unaccompanied at night when they are active is not advised. We were walked to and from dinner by a security guard and, on our return trip, he asked if we would like to see a hippo. We followed him into the dark and stopped a few feet from where an adult hippo was feeding unperturbed by our presence.

The next morning we were up and breakfasted ready for our 8.15am pick up to drive to our final destination, the Masai Mara. We waited for Nicholas, watching the monkeys feed. The black and white colobus monkeys looked splendid swinging from the trees like cossack tarzans!

Then, for the only time, Nicholas was late. As it turned out, he had malaria and was unable to continue - a serious reminder to keep taking our malaria pills. We were ushered into another mini-bus with a delightful Taiwanese couple (who were probably on their honeymoon) and told that a new driver from Nairobi would join us en route.

An hour and a half later, at one of the many stops for loos and shopping (it works like this: you have to go through the corrugated-iron shop full of wood-carved giraffes, jewellery, etc and persistent salesmen who make the average British car salesman look like an amateur, in order to get to the loos - which varied in health standards a lot!) James, our new driver arrived with a much better bus than our previous one (a lot less rattling and a working clutch - oh joy!). Indeed James didn't stop once to check we still had four wheels - yes, that really did occur on our first day!

We passed signposts to the Mara over an hour before we finally arrived at the game reserve. Driving across the plains, we had frequent sightings of Masai villages with their cow dung huts in a circle with the brush fence built around that. The road had deteriorated to a rutted track long before we finally reached the Reserve gates. From there it was another ten minutes to our lodge nestling on the hillside. Like the other lodges, the main buildings are conical-shaped with a high sloping roof. The sleeping accommodation was in the form of huts spread left and right of the swimming pool - ours being a good five minute walk away. Easy for child 4 and me but the undulating, uneven path was a bit of a hike for the coco.

To be continued...

Coco's Kenyan Adventure (Part 1)

When you're in a Masai village and you're told that grandparents are called 'cocos', you don't argue - well, not with a man who is carrying a spear and a knife (and I mean as in "that's not a knife, this is a knife" in the Crocodile Dundee sense of the word!) so our exciting Kenyan safari with my mother and child number 4 is henceforth to be called Coco's Kenyan Adventure...

It's hard to imagine twenty four hours of travel taking an 82 year old coco, child number 4 (some 68 years her junior) and me (the jam in the sandwich) from a snow and slush-covered Yorkshire to the warm heart of the Kenyan plains. Yet we have gone from our cold habitat to a land of giraffes and gazelles (or gazettes as the small one termed them!), where all around you wild animals are free and our guardians are the brilliantly clothed and beaded Masai warriors.

Our journey from the frozen wastes of Yorkshire included three trains, one plane and was topped off by a five hour drive in a mini-bus. We struck lucky with our companions in the mini-bus (which was fortunate as this was an up-close-and-personal tour) and Mike and Bev were excellent company throughout the trip. Our guide and driver, Nicholas was (apart from some interesting gear changes without, by the sounds of it, any use of the clutch, and overtaking manoeuvres which made your eyes water) was very friendly and knowledgeable and drove us, on our first day, to Amboseli.

We were welcomed at our game lodge by a Masai warrior who must have topped 6'6'' in sandals. He towered above the guests, welcoming each and everyone with a friendly "jambo" although fully-armed with a spear and machete.

Our thatched hut accommodation was large enough to include two double beds, one single and a bathroom - luxury indeed!

Our game drives took us to the Amboseli National Park some 20k from our game lodge but before we had gone far from the compound on the rough, gut-shaking track, we encountered our first elephant at close quarters. Nicholas refused to take the lid off the mini-bus until we had gone further down the road and left the adult bull elephant behind in case he charged whilst Nicholas was outside the bus. His caution was definitely for real!

Giraffes were next and soon we were at the gate of the Park where local women, wearing enough beadwork to weigh down mere Europeans, shouted "jambo" through the windows and tried to sell their wares. Child 4 was particularly taken with an older Masai lady who wore a wooden bowl on her head so she had her hands free for all the other items she was selling. We resisted and followed the advice of our tour rep (back in Nairobi) who had told us to shut our windows, otherwise the vendors are inclined to drop items of jewellery into the bus and insist on payment.

Each morning at Amboseli, we were greeted by the stunning site of Mount Kilimanjaro towering, snow-capped above the plains. During the course of the day, the mountain would become cloud-draped, its peak only visible now and again. And, as dusk fell, the peak would reappear in all its glory before turning dark grey and then black against the night sky.

Two days of game drives brought us sightings of a lioness and her cub, wildebeest, zebras, gazelles (gazettes!) of all varieties, pumba! (warthogs), waterbuck and fabulous, fabulous hippos - four wading nose-deep in swamp and one standing alone amongst the grasses. Birds from ostriches to the small, brightly-coloured (turquoise and red) ones which sat outside outside our dining room window each day - all for our pleasure.

On the drives, the shortwave radio would crackle constantly with chatter as the guides alerted each other to the whereabouts of game. "Simba!" was the cry to mobilise a whole pack of mini-buses and land rovers, each jockeying for position for the best view for the cluster of lenses.

Back at the compound, we were entertained by monkeys and mongeese/mongooses (?) playing together on the paths to our room and on our last night we went to a viewing platform where you can see hyena coming in to feed. A dead mammal of some variety was splayed across a stone and whilst we looked down into the shadowy clearing, first tiny kittens and then a troop of hyenas edged out of the darkness to feed on the entrails.

The next day was a long all-day drive back to Nairobi on roads which were alternately good and then, for no apparent reason, full of pot holes and unfinished. The rules of the road appear to be that there are no rules at all. Overtaking was on either side of the slower vehicle in front and sometimes we were 'playing chicken' with cars coming towards us as we laboured past heavy vehicles.

As we neared Nairobi, the townships became scruffier and more rubbish drifted across the roads. The clothes became more westernised until the frequent sightings of the colourful warriors became a memory and we were amongst the industrial sprawl of the city.

To be continued...

Game Girls go looking for Big Game

Tomorrow, child 4 and I set off to Kenya for a week's safari with my mother. This is one in a long line of grandmother/grandchild holidays which have been running in our family for the last ten years. It will be a great adventure and one which, I hope, the smallest one will always remember - not just because Kenya will be an amazing, mind-blowing experience, but because grannies are precious and one-to-one time with them on a trip like this is something really to be treasured.

These multi-generations holidays that we go on are always an adventure. It's clearly not enough for my 82 year old mother to sit on a beach for a week - no, we have to go up the Nile and visit the Valley of the Kings (very glad we're not doing this in the current climate in Egypt!), explore the souks of Marrakech, go on a lightning tour of New York City and so on. This will be our second safari in Kenya (for my mother and me) and last time we took number 2 daughter. I can still remember the realisation that, in our camp in the Masai Mara, we were the ones who were guarded and enclosed - not the animals. It was an incredible and memorable trip and when my mother suggested doing it again, I thought, nine years on, she might think better of it. It does, of course, involve a lot of hopping into and out of jeeps and getting up at 5.00am to go on game drives and is therefore physically quite demanding. But no, she is a game girl and off we go again!

We do get some interesting comments when we are on these trips. Other travellers seem amazed that we can go off to places and all get along well. Of course, we all have our moments, but generally we entertain each other pretty well - and everyone else along the way. Occasionally, mum will decide that she needs some down-time and leaves us to head off camel-riding, shopping, ice cream hunting etc on our own, and usually, by the time we get back, she has struck up a friendship with another group and we can hear their laughter as we walk back in.

While we are away, we are leaving the men of the household to fend for themselves. Both excellent cooks, child 3's major concern was that he might weigh 22 stone by the time we get back due to the enormous amounts of fattening foods which will be on offer next week. My major concerns are, in no particular order, no-one will feed/walk the dogs/cat, wash-up, wash clothes and remember to check my work emails. But I expect we'll all survive the experience and we'll all be better for it.

On a Journey to Tick the Boxes...

The twins are sitting an English module for GCSE next week on creative writing. One of the topics is 'Don't get me started on...' which is an invitation to a rant. One of my self-imposed blogging rules is never to rant. I suspect that most of my rants may be entirely peculiar to me and therefore not something that anyone else would interested in. My family get my rants (and have a fair few of their own) but this is not the place. 

However one of my micro-rants, if one was allowed such a thing, is the way that language seems to get hi-jacked by reality television. All through the autumn, X Factor and Strictly contestants harped on about their 'journey'. Do they even know they are using a metaphor? And, frankly, if they use that expression, I would like them to be on a journey  - home! So having admitted to my taste for low-brow television, I must admit to my guilty pleasure of watching Escape to the Country where the most frequently-used expression is 'tick the boxes'. 

What makes this programme the perfect accompaniment to doing the ironing is the strange ideas that people have about life in the country. It would appear that their chintzy ideas are based largely on regular doses of programmes like Heartbeat, The Archers (well, as an addict I can't argue with that) and possibly Lark Rise to Candleford (or as my son used to call it, the Post Office). This week we were treated to Aled Jones taking a couple of ladies round houses in North Yorkshire. First, Aled, dear boy thinks he's Peter Pan (all the charm of a twelve year old when his development may have been arrested, height-wise anyway), decided to conduct the entire programme with what he thought was a Yorkshire accent. Because obviously we all refer to women as 'lasses' and so on...! Then one of the ladies said she wanted to be involved with the village hall - in what capacity, letting it, hiring it, cleaning it - who knows? And so it goes on, people with rose-tinted glasses who think the countryside is all about views, cosy kitchens and growing your own veg. 

I've lived in the country nearly all my life as has my husband. Village life is something special and something we've learnt over time to appreciate. We live some way out of a village, down the most anti-socially pothole-ridden track, so we don't get many casual callers and, indeed, we like to batten down the hatches now and again and be on our own. But the four square corners of our village community are probably, in no particular order, the school, the pub, the cricket and the church. Involvement in one or more means that you get to know most people of a sociable nature and generally become a part of the community. And the community here really is something special. 

Occasionally people move to the village on roughly the same basis as the hapless punters on Escape to the Country. They fall for the house, like the idea of the village shop, love the views, fresh air etc and then... are quite surprised, and occasionally affronted, when people knock on their doors offering teenagers to babysit, invite them to church events, talk to them without introduction in the pub and so on.

If you think you're escaping to the country for a quiet life, think again. The countryside is not just about box-ticking or being on a journey (personal or otherwise), it's about knowing and looking out for your neighbours, doing your bit and joining in and as a quieter option - forget it!

Brave and Brilliant!

We have just returned from a really wonderful weekend in the Lake District - absolutely just the tonic for the January blues. 'Just the tonic' for all sorts of reasons but perhaps mostly because we have been to bear witness to our friends' brave and brilliant change of lifestyle.

David and Manda have been our friends for over 20 years. Living nearby and bringing up their family of three who are similar ages to our older girls, we have been close chums for a long time, so, imagine our surprise when they announced last year that they were heading up to the Lake District to run a B&B and change their lives. We worried for them that they would be lonely away from their busy social lives around here and that Manda, who was giving up her well-paid job, would miss her steady income. Oh, and we teased them relentlessly about being the new Basil and Sybil of Fawlty Towers.

We arrived at their new home/business on Friday night, twins in tow, in the dark and were immediately bowled over by the lovely welcoming atmosphere of Low Graythwaite Hall.  Manda is a terrific homemaker and her light touch was everywhere. I had forgotten how stunningly beautiful the Lake District is and the following morning when we woke up (me ridiculously early because I couldn't wait to see the lovely countryside) it was a clear, crisp, sunny day with frost dusting the topiary outside my bedroom window.

We walked (and climbed some very steep hills!) and talked all weekend, drank too much wine, ate too, too well and sadly watched Andy Murray bite the dust (or rather the tarmac) in sunny Melbourne. Even that didn't dampen my spirits - and I kept my usual level of shouting at the television at such times down to an acceptable level (because there were proper B&B guests in the room directly above). It was all brilliant.

It made me wonder... could we ever do something so brave? I don't know but it certainly gave me food for thought. It also reminded me of the wonderful writer, Derek Tangye who is sadly no longer with us. Derek was a Fleet Street journalist and his wife Jeannie was the public relations officer for the Savoy Hotel. They gave it all up to farm daffodils in Cornwall in the 1960s and Derek wrote some beautiful books about their experiences there. Though I haven't read them for many years, I still remember the wonderful sense of peace in a busy world that they gave me and I felt that same peace in the Lakes.

So, I've made it to the end of January (my worst month), I'm feeling better than I've felt for weeks, thanks to my Lake District jaunt and now all I have to face is ... oh, no, another birthday!