brave enough to start

family of five who can, should and definitely will, see more of the world


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Rules or guidelines?

Yesterday I finally got around to organising new passport photographs for John.  I’ve been putting it off for various reasons, the main one being that the rules around what is and isn’t acceptable in a child’s passport photograph are beyond exasperating.  I’m instinctively suspicious of rules, particularly if I think the rules are stupid and these ones strike me as the very definition of asinine.  The picture we used for John’s first passport, 10 years ago was taken when he was a couple of hours old.  That same picture would probably be rejected today because a small amount of blanket is covering his cheek.  I just can’t, on any level, get my head around that.  I mean, look at it – I’m his mother and I couldn’t swear to that picture being the same child as the one in his passport five years later!  To be brutally honest, I doubt it would be obvious to most people looking at it that the baby in the first picture is definitely a boy.  He travelled extensively between the ages of 1 and 5, all the time with that picture on his passport. And we are worried about the blanket.

Britain is not alone in this madness, I checked a few other passport agencies and many other countries have similar requirements.  Some go even further requiring that newborns have their eyes open for example, for passports in Australia or New Zealand.  Why?  All three of my kids have different colour eyes today than the colour they were born with, so why is it essential for the passport officer to be able to see the eyes of the baby in their passport photograph – is it to prove that they have eyes?!

By the time John’s first passport needed renewing, the rules about a neutral expression had come into being.  You try telling a five year old not to smile right before they have their picture taken and this is what happens – far from a natural or even neutral expression, what you get looks more like a boy in the throws of a stroke as the muscles on one half of his face conform to the rules better than those on the other!

So off we went yesterday to get the new mugshots, except ironically you can actually smile for a criminal mugshot if you so choose, it’s just the passport agency that requires you to look miserable.  Apparently, it is because the facial recognition software used in keeping us all secure in the airports works better if you are not smiling in your photograph. Seriously. So to clarify that, we must show our eyes but we must not show our teeth.

You couldn’t make it up.


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Marching on.

Rather unexpectedly I find myself in the middle of my first week off since Christmas, although to call it a “week off” is probably a bit strong; I mean I’m hardly sat on a beach with a Martini am I?  I’m still running round like the proverbial decapitated domestic fowl, I’m just not out teaching every evening, for a change.  It wasn’t planned that way, but all 4 antenatal sessions that I had pencilled in for this week have strangely been cancelled and apparently there has been some unexpected dip in the number of pregnancies conceived last Summer. So perhaps we can blame (or thank, depending upon how you look at it) Wayne Rooney and his colleagues for the unexpected hiatus? I guess if England had progressed a little further in the tournament I might be rushed off my feet now.  Not to worry, we are assured that the birthrate will peak at the end of the year following the film adaptation of EL James’ literary efforts.

Actually, the timing has been great – Spring seems to be doing its thing; the evenings are lighter and the sun has even made the odd appearance, so Alex and I headed off to the farm last week and were treated to the one day old lambs. Obviously I mean to look at, not to eat!  The boys have been able to go out and enjoy their bikes again and we even squeezed in a visit to Stonehenge at the weekend, to celebrate the passing of another year. It had been more than 30 years since my last visit and a lot has changed since then.

The new visitor centre includes a series of neolithic houses, staffed by English Heritage volunteers who chatted to the boys about how people might have lived in similar dwellings four and a half thousand years ago.  There is also a giant replica sarsen stone set up on a wooden trailer that can be pulled to give you an idea of the effort required to move the stones.  One theory is that the stones were moved by human effort, some from as far as Pembrokeshire, so this hands on exhibit gave the kids a real understanding of just what an immense job that must have been.

A bus now takes tourists from the visitor centre to the stones themselves and an audio guide is available to help explain what you are looking at.  I opted for the kids’ version and the three boys and I listened to tales of bloodshed and human endeavour, although John complained pretty quickly that the kids’ version was much too babyish for him.  All in all it was a fascinating couple of hours though and, mercifully, the rain held off until we were on our way out.

Looking forward, we are finalising details of a road trip to Germany at the end of May to see some friends we try to meet up with every Spring.  The idea is that it will be a good test of how the kids cope with long drives and how we, their parents, cope with the inevitable arguing and boredom in the car.  If there are no posts after May this year, you’ll know the outcome was not what we hoped!

As we approach the middle of March, and the halfway point of our planning, I’m trying not to feel overwhelmed with everything that is still to be done but instead to take one step at a time. I’m hoping that over the next 6 months I’ll find the time to be a bit more dedicated to the blog and with just 15 posts over the last 6 months, I don’t think I’m being wildly ambitious!

We’ll see.


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Thieves, Liars and Magicians?

On opening the kitchen blinds a couple of Monday morning’s ago, Nick and I discovered a sporty Audi A3 inconsiderately parked a few feet from the end of our driveway.  I confess I’m not at my best on a Monday morning; we are invariably running late and shouting at the kids, so having to back out around the wretched thing all day long left me a little on the short tempered side. By Tuesday it was still there and Nick and I began to wonder which of our neighbours could allow their guest to be so thoughtless.  As it happened, it had snowed overnight and the boys (all 4 of them) were outside before the school run throwing snowballs at each other. Nick opened his car ready to take the kids to school and John managed to score a perfectly timed strike on the dashboard. There was a split second moment of pride where I basked in the knowledge that John, not really known for his sporting prowess, had managed to throw straight, swiftly followed by the realisation that Daddy was not so impressed.  Actually he was mad.  The boys got in the car and Nick put the vehicle in reverse.

You know what happened next.

I saw it in slow motion, indeed, it felt like I foresaw it but was too paralysed to prevent it. Even at just a couple of miles an hour, it turns out you can do a fair bit of damage to a sporty Audi.

Still in my dressing gown I started knocking on the neighbours’ doors, angry, frustrated and ready for a confrontation.  None of the neighbours could shed any light on the provenance of the car but one pointed out the window that had been open since Monday – how odd, in snow….

Then the penny dropped.

Nick made an interesting call to work, worthy of inclusion in Forbes’ Most ridiculous excuses for missing work, that went something like this, “sorry, I’m not going to make it in today; distracted by a snowball on my dashboard, I backed into a stolen car which I’d forgotten had been abandoned at the end of my driveway and now I have to present myself at the local constabulary”.

Thieves eh?  Dante was right, it’s the 8th circle of hell for them.

I was just recovering my equilibrium on Wednesday when the phone rang.  A helpful man from Microsoft with news that there was a virus on my computer and if I would just fire up my internet browser he would talk me through sorting it out.  After the Audi debacle I wasn’t in the mood for being treated like an idiot.  A few profanities later and I felt a bit better.  Annoyingly though, they rang back again the next day… and the next.  I got to recognise the number and started answering with different salutations – “Microsoft helpdesk” just resulted in having the phone slammed down on me, which wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be, so I was wondering if I could feign an MI5 secure line, but that probably credits these fraudsters with too much intelligence.  Nick answered next time they rang and kept them on the phone for almost 10 minutes before they realised they weren’t getting anywhere.  It was entertaining though, when they thought that we had 18 computers, all of which needed fixing.

Liars and scammers, you belong with the thieves.

Clearly the week couldn’t fail to improve.  As usual, I turned to my favourite distraction at the moment and continued researching the North America leg of our trip.  All this talk of thieves and liars has given me an idea for Nick’s 40th birthday, later this year – I’m thinking David Copperfield or perhaps Penn and Teller; someone who can put the art of deception to genuinely impressive use.  At nearly $90 a ticket though, it had better be awesome or the 8th circle of hell won’t be retribution enough!


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Happy New Decade

I’ve never been a fan of January, less still February but at least that month has brevity going for it.  I guess it’s Winter that I don’t like; the shortness of the days, the greyness and constant threat of snow with all its associated inconvenience.  More than once I’ve asked myself if November in Canada is a good idea but perhaps it is exactly what we need: To embrace Winter in a country that really knows how to make the best of it.  I’ve been busy with work, the boys, a poorly grandmother who is thankfully now recovered, and trying to get my head around the fact that John will be 10 on the 31st.  I just don’t feel old enough to have a 10 year old; I can remember being pregnant with him like it was last week, so what happened? It must be worse for my parents who will have a ten year old grandchild – is anyone ever ready for that?  Come to think of it, no wonder my grandmother was ill!

These milestones seem like a good time to reflect and when I look back on the last decade I can boil it down to three children, two house moves (one of them intercontinental, the other to a house in the same street!), two university diplomas, three part time jobs and a whole lot of school runs.  If you had told me 10 years ago that I would have 3 sons, I would never have believed it: I’d have thought 3 daughters more likely, although I’m not sure why; possibly because I had always assumed that I would raise girls to be strong women – I guess Nick and fate had other ideas.  It makes me wonder what assumptions I’m making today about the future that will prove to be wildly inaccurate 10 years from now.

So in the spirit of the annual New Year’s resolution, my hopes and aspirations for the next decade look like this:

There will be more travelling (of this I am very confident) more time as a family and ideally fewer school runs.  I’m pretty sure Nick is hoping I will return to full time work, though he is not brave enough to say it out loud, since the two occasions he previously did so swiftly resulted in first Teddy and then Alex! (and if you’re reading this Nick, there is no minor surgical procedure on earth that prevents adoption – just sayin’… 😉 )

Above all, I want to enjoy being with the boys; in another decade I may only have one left at home (although my mother thinks that might be wishful thinking and actually I’m more likely to have all three for several decades yet, with the ever increasing cost of housing making empty nest syndrome much less likely for the current generation of young parents).

Whatever the next decade holds in store for us, I’m as ready as I can be, so bring on the adventure!


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The perfect Christmas?

Years ago Nick and I visited San Diego in November; the shops, in their run up to Christmas, were festively lit up and Christmas carols were playing in all the malls, songs about snow and Winter and keeping warm by the fire.  It was bizarre to us then, that the weather outside was far from frightful, in fact to your average Brit (not just those tough Northerners either, I’m including us Southern softies here too) it was beach weather.  I don’t remember doing all that much shopping; we were too busy making the most of the glorious outdoors, just hanging out by the sea.  As we caught our breath perched on a bench a (presumably) local man smiled and commented that it was just another perfect day in Southern California. We nodded politely in agreement and he continued on his way.  Wow, so many perfect days that it’s no big deal.

This time last year we had just returned home having spent Christmas in Perth, Australia; our first in the southern hemisphere. It reminded me a bit of that trip to San Diego with Christmas trees and sparkly decorations oddly juxtaposed with women in bikinis and kids eating ice creams. We noticed that it felt different; perhaps a bit less “Christmassy,” than usual but overall a great deal more relaxed. Once the kids had opened their presents we spent the morning on the beach, chatting to local families and enjoying the odd glass of something bubbly. There was no mammoth cooking session, no trying to squeeze into the oven a turkey so large that you had to start before sunrise if you wanted it cooked by lunch, we barbecued king prawns instead, and when I say “we” I mean “they” – the boys. The quintessentially English mince pie was a little tricky to get hold of (but not impossible!), and there was no point buying the kids the annual chocolate selection box as most likely it would be liquid before you got home.  All the same we had a fabulous time.

This year we have enjoyed another traditional Winter Christmas with all the things that make Christmas in England such a treat; there has been turkey and chocolates, wood fires and brisk frosty walks, more chocolates and Christmas puddings, Christmas crackers and dreadful jokes, Downton Abbey and the Queen’s Christmas message, mince pies, monopoly and more chocolates, paper hats and Bond reruns.  Did I mention the chocolate wine? (seriously, check it out: http://www.rubiswine.com/)  We have spent time with family and recharged our batteries whilst being looked after by my parents who probably now need a good rest themselves.

Now I don’t want to be accused of trying to paint a rose tinted picture here so for the sake of objectivity, there has also been headaches and hangovers, indigestion and squabbles over board games.  The older boys were allowed to stay up to see in the new year which meant they slept in late the following morning and now their body clocks are more akin to children in Toronto.  They are overtired and overdosed on sugar and Nick and I are in a similar state – lethargic almost to the point of unconsciousness (possibly on account of the aforementioned chocolate wine) so getting them back into school mode in a couple of days will be something of a challenge.

In an effort to get some much needed exercise yesterday we all headed down to the local beach and watched the annual charity New Year’s Day swim. That’s right, we watched.

We have all agreed that next year we will swim.

When we are in Sydney.

Happy New Year!


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Coasting

The last week of the school term is a strange one. It should be all fun and excitement as the Christmas holidays approach but after a long Autumn term we find ourselves struggling to fight off the coughs and colds that threaten to ruin the big day itself if we don’t slow down now.  The mornings are darker and getting out the door for the school run is even more of a battle than the rest of the year when my herding skills would impress even the Nativity Shepherds.  I know I must be tired because normally I can rant for England if the boys aren’t moving fast enough but today my heart was not in it.  They were a few minutes late, but they weren’t the only ones, as I, and several other sheepish parents who hadn’t factored in enough time to de-ice their cars, rocked up after the proverbial bell had gone.  Actually there are no bells at the boys’ school and today I realise how very grateful I am for that.

John and Teddy have both finished the infant school so there will be no nativity for them this year but tomorrow, if Alex is well enough, he will give us his interpretation of the frankincense third of the Magi; though I suspect what he understands is that he is carrying jelly tots for the plastic baby Jesus, who he is hoping will be good natured enough to overlook the fact that he plans to eat them en route.

Our tree went up a week ago, an annual tradition that exists very differently in my mind to it’s real life counterpart.  Before we start I always have high hopes: There will be Michael Bublé playing in the background, mulled wine warming on the hob and lots of laughing as we all have fun hanging the decorations on the tree, which by the way, is always a real tree in my idealised version.  Reality started off pretty well; we found the Michael Bublé tracks on the iPod in the kitchen where they have been since last Christmas, excellent.  From there though, things took a slight dip.  Nick, being the practical man he is, talked me out of a real tree – there was a perfectly good artificial one in the loft and given that I’ve made him go up there dozens of times lately, he wasn’t likely to forget it.  As he explained, we can get all the Christmas stuff out of the loft, save the cost of a real one for next year and then after Christmas chuck out all but the very nicest things, as storage will be limited.  So we compromise on the artificial tree.

I haven’t been organised enough to sort out mulled wine in advance so a bottle of room temperature Rioja will have to do.  Fruit wise, there is only a couple of mouldy strawberries and a bruised satsuma so I give them a miss, after a couple of glasses it won’t make any difference anyway.  Next I wanted laughter and fun but what I got was a few festively enhanced expletives as we realised we hadn’t tried to put up the tree for years and it is a right faff pulling all the branches into shape, trying to find the colour coded sections so that it goes up in the right order.  Despite trying to engage the kids in helping with the task, they lose interest long before it is finished and go back to arguing over the Playstation.  Meanwhile Michael is in the background telling us how it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas and, as Nick curses at the number of broken bulbs in the tree lights, the kids wrestle on the floor over the only nunchuck that still works and I head out to the kitchen in search of another bottle, I have to agree.


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On surviving Black Friday

I think I was about 12 the first time I saw QVC on television; most likely they were selling jewellery or cleaning products, after all, you need sparkly rings when you’re scrubbing the floors all day.  The presenters had a real knack for whipping up a panic as the number of items available for sale diminished before your very eyes. Like an illusionist accomplished in the art of misdirection, the presenter ensured we were all so focussed on calling in before it was too late that there was no time to consider if we actually wanted or needed the product.  Combine that with the assertion that the item is a real bargain, many times cheaper than normally available, and the pressure was almost too much to bear.

Back then I used to work on a Sunday market selling all sorts of things for 50p each; my first proper job. The market stood on an old airfield and was huge; you could easily spend all day there and not get around it all.  I loved watching the Del Boys of the day hawking the latest vegetable peeler or tomato slicer – you weren’t sure if you were buying it because you could always do with a new vegetable peeler or because of the free salad spinner that was being given away with it. Either way, both the vegetable peeler and salad spinner would soon be gathering dust at the back of a kitchen cupboard.  It didn’t seem to matter.

The 50p stalls drew crowds because everything was so cheap and it was manically busy from the moment the market opened until late into the afternoon, especially at this time of year. Unlike QVC and the vegetable peeler men, we didn’t need to artificially limit supply in order to generate demand; there was plenty for everyone.  Years later when Nick and I discovered the hyakkin, or hyaku-en (100 yen), shops all over Japan it brought back all that sentimentality.  The Japanese have a word for it: “Natsukashii” a word that is notoriously difficult to translate into English, but for me it describes perfectly how I felt remembering all those Sundays with punters buying by the bucket load because the bargains were too great to ignore.

Of course QVC thrives in Japan too, and embarrassingly I’ve got a couple of dusty boxes in the loft that stand testament to the fact that you don’t even need to understand what is being said, to feel that urge to pick up the phone.

Here in the UK, Black Friday is a relatively new phenomenon – it might have been around last year but this is the first year that it has really made the headlines. That combination of low prices and limited supply reigniting those old feelings of panic as websites crashed under the strain and senior citizens who had inadvertently gone out for milk were crushed in the scrum for cheap TVs.  Disappointment littered Facebook’s news feeds as we all began to wonder what on Earth had just happened.

And then, following a weekend of muted shame and embarrassment, we woke up to another newly designated annual event: Cyber Monday.  We have to assume that by next year, these will be followed by Embolism Tuesday and Whiplash Wednesday. Oh joy.


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Tempting fate

So we’ve been thinking about boring matters like travel insurance lately and we need to decide whether we are including what the industry term “hazardous or extreme sports” or even just “Winter sports”.  My first thought is yes, let’s include everything, just in case.  But “everything” is expensive and we don’t want to pay a lot for something we don’t need.

As Nick pointed out, it’ll be heading towards Winter by the time we get to Canada so maybe there is the potential for some Winter sports.  He and I have never been skiing; there have been opportunities but so far it’s something neither of us have ever done. I like the idea of skiing.

No, okay, I like the idea of après-ski.  In all honesty, the idea of actually skiing scares me half to death.  So far, touch wood, I have never broken a bone or been hospitalised for anything serious, and miraculously, neither have any of the boys.  With three sons I think that’s pretty good going – after all, they are incapable of sitting still; if something moves, they chase it and if it doesn’t move, they climb it.

I once ran an antenatal course attended by a professional stunt man; everyone in the group, with the exception of his own partner, was thoroughly impressed.  I got the feeling his partner hoped that the imminent arrival of their first born would lead to a swift career change to something a bit more conventional and a bit less likely to result in permanent injury, but I digress. Anyway, said stuntman shared with us the theory of relaxing your muscles when you fall to avoid hurting yourself – that if you brace yourself when you fall you increase the risk of broken bones.  Apparently it is better to try to turn the fall into a roll so that the momentum and force of the fall move you forwards rather than downwards.  I understand the theory and I’m sure it’s sound, I’m just not convinced about my own ability to execute it on a snowy mountain.  When I imagine myself skiing I’m there in all the gear but I’m never actually moving.  In the event of a fall, I don’t see myself gracefully tumbling like a gymnast, what I see looks more like a scene from the Dambusters as I bounce towards the inevitable explosion.

It did occur to me that one way that guarantees me a relaxed body is a couple of glasses of sauvignon blanc, I’ve had a fair bit of practice executing the perfect fall and roll under those circumstances but I can’t see the call to the insurance company going well:

Me: “Unfortunately I seem to have broken my legs during a skiing accident”
Insurance clerk: “Ok Mrs Jones, tell me what happened”
Me: “Well I took all reasonable precautions to ensure I was properly relaxed but it seems half a bottle of Chablis wasn’t enough”
Insurance clerk: “I see.  May I direct you to clause 6.2 of your policy excluding liability for reckless behaviour and stupidity.”

hmmm.

I’m sure my fears are irrational and I really don’t want to pass them on to the boys so I ought to try and overcome them for their sake.  I wonder if I could join a lesson for children under 5 as it surely wouldn’t be reasonable to expect Alex to go alone?  Maybe that’s the answer.


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Juggling

Another month almost over, Christmas around the corner and an overwhelming sense that every so often I’m dropping a ball or two.  Poor Teddy was distraught this morning; he’d forgotten to give in the cheque to order the Christmas cards that he’d designed at school and yesterday was the last day; by the time I found the order form still in it’s envelope after breakfast, nothing could be done. There were tears and a few of them were mine.  It really doesn’t matter – we can make Christmas cards next week but I understood his disappointment – if only we could rewind the clock and set a reminder in time.

My house is a legitimate reflection of my chaotic mind at the moment.  We’ve been trying to sort through the garage and loft and so there is junk everywhere waiting to be organised – things for selling, for donating, for cleaning and repairing and so on but after a while it’s really hard to look at it without wincing.  I need a few more lists.  Today I’ll be popping to the post office to send off some books I’ve managed to sell via an online book buying company.  Most have been valued at just a few pence each but the odd one, for example a teach yourself calligraphy tutorial book of all things, has been valued at £10 – go figure!

We are having a family lunch on Sunday to celebrate Alex’s 4th birthday and madly, I’m cooking, as if I haven’t got enough to do!  He had a little party last weekend with his friends at a soft play centre and was overjoyed at finally being able to blow out some candles and hear “happy birthday” being sung for him.  The trouble is, he now thinks he is 4 and cannot make the distinction between his party last week and his birthday this week! He hasn’t noticed that he didn’t receive any cards or gifts from his family last week – all that mattered was that we were all there celebrating with him – so he thinks that was it 🙂  It’s going to be interesting explaining that he is not 5 this weekend and he won’t be having a birthday once a week from now on: It’s so confusing when you are only 3!

So there we are, that’s the current state of play; like so many other women trying to do too much, the daily challenge of keeping all those balls moving leaves me gasping for air and longing for a reprieve.  Not long now.