Names

While we're on the subject of accents, here's a thing. When you name your children, you don't usually stop to think what their names will sound like in the accent of another country (unless you're living there already, as Jenny Rudd's comment on my previous post shows). I did think about North/South pronunciation, since we have family in both, but it didn't occur to me to think about the American pronunciation.

Your darling Scott, or John, over here will become Scaahtt, or Jaahn. Any name you chose with a T in the middle of it, risks the fate of the word dentist. So Peter will be Peder, Katie will be Kadie. A name ending -er will suffer the fate of being sucked back into the mouth and chewed around with those extra -rrrs. Esther becomes Esthrrr, Alexander becomes Alexandrrr, and Peter becomes Pedrrr (boy, am I glad we didn't choose Peter as a name). You need to watch out for extra R sounds sneaking into names such as Mark, Clare, Eleanor, Gertie, Dirk, Percy (haven't come across any of those last three, as it happens...)

Then there's the unfortunate vowel sound in Anna, or Ann. She becomes Eena, or Een. Or on a bad day, Ee-un. The same problem with Jane, which sounds like Jean.

If you agonised between Laura and Lara for your baby girl, then you'll discover what a waste of time that was when you get here. They sound the same. Joseph is pronounced with a hard S sound, as in seaside, not as we say it in England, as if with a z. Paula sounds like parlour.

Then there's the whole boy's name girl's name conundrum. I've come across two male Gails. Jamie can be male or female, and is spelt as many different ways as you can think of. It still surprises me when I hear of a boy called Erin. It's Aaron, actually, but they pronounce it Erin round here. The boy's name Sean sounds like the girl's name Sian. A girl introduced to you as Don, is in fact Dawn.

It's probably just as well I didn't know we'd be living in America. It was hard enough choosing names for our babies as it was...

A dutiful post

There are some words that I’ve never quite got to grips with, in an American accent. 'Dennist' is one of them. I need to have my teeth looked after by a fully T-ed dentist. I can’t be doing with dennal issues. Dennist sounds far too much like Dennis the Menace. Then there’s the word 'and'. I’m sorry, but I just can’t love it when it’s pronounced 'ee-und'. Sorry. I’m not too good with words that end –er either. I like those words properly clipped. Eith-a, for example. It’s just not nice when the ending is swallowed back into the mouth and chewed around with an rrrr sound. I couldn’t help flinching a little when I was at 9-yo’s school Winter Show, and 200 children enthusiastically launched into the opening numb-a, singing “In Decembrrrr, We remembrrrr…”.

There is one word which I really can’t cope with at all. It’s the word ‘duty’. That word just begs to be pronounced dyootee, as in “England expects that every man will do his dyootee.” How inspiring would that have been for the navvies if Nelson had announced “England expects that every man will do his doodie”? See my point? Doodie sounds like what you put your dog out in the back yard to perform. It’s just too close for comfort to doo-doos. I feel the meaning of the word does honestly require a little more gravitas in its pronunciation.

I had a long exposure to doodie when 5-yo was keen on the Barbie movie The Princess and the Pauper (por-pah, or pah-prrr – we’ve been through this one, I’m not doing it again for you). Both the princess and the pauper are very enmeshed in thoughts of their responsibilities and doodies. Given the choice, I have to say that I’d go for being a princess, living a life of luxury and inheriting the kingdom, even if it does mean an arranged marriage to the hunky prince Dominic who rules the neighbouring realm - frankly, what’s to complain of there? The pauper’s alternative is living in a lonely hovel, and slaving away night and day for an abusive employer, in order to pay off her parents’ debts. Hm. Tough choice.

I digress. Both girls sing of their devotion to doodie, and it made me laugh each time 5-yo watched the dvd. “It’s my doodie!” beautiful blond Princess Anneliese would chirrup prettily.

Well, now the word has come home to roost. 12-yo is playing the part of Frederick in his school’s production of The Pirates of Penzance. It’s going to be hard for me to keep a straight face when the pirate chorus opens with:

“We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship’s a boodie,
We are sober men and true, and attentive to our doodie”.

Then 12-yo has the line:

“It was my duty under my indentures, [Back to dentistry again, Ed.] and I am the slave of duty”.

Of course the audience will already adore his English accent, and if he says “dyootee” in his opening lines, he will just steal the show.

I'm not even going to get started on the whole byootee/booty issue. Barbie princesses, for example, love to assert that their booty is on the inside, which is anatomically very curious.

Oh, it’s so complicated being English.

Post-script 1: Oops. Seems Nelson didn’t say that line anyway. He signaled it from his ship with flags. They’re so clever in the navy. Thought of ways to get the word out fast, even in those pre-Twitter days.

Post-script 2: Oops. Seems “We sail the ocean blue” is HMS Pinafore, not Pirates of Penzance. Listen. I’m a blogger, not a G&S expert, not a naval battle historian. A blogger. Right? Give me a break.

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Small world

The girl who I was at primary school with was… Brit Gal in the USA. I can’t remember quite how we discovered the connection – something to do with a website that I’d typed ‘Chesham’ into. As I mentioned, Brit Gal was a couple of years below me, and I can’t honestly say I remember her. There was also a girl with the same name as her in my year, who I do remember well. That made the process of uncovering Brit Gal’s identity a little complicated. According to Friends Reunited, that girl is living in the Chesham area, divorced, with five children, whereas Brit Gal in the USA claimed to be living in Oklahoma, married to a man known as the Hubster. For a while I was confused - but I worked it out in the end.

I enjoy Brit Gal’s blog, with its friendly and open style. She talks about things that, like for me, would have been completely alien to her a few years ago: tornado warnings, trucks, the front porch. These are now the stuff of her life, as they are of mine. I read her posts about these things and think “yes, it’s just like that”. We live a few hundred miles apart, but so much of what she writes is familiar. Except for the rattlesnakes, for which I am very grateful. We don’t have rattlesnakes round here. Who needs rattlesnakes?

Brit Gal and the Hubster have an intriguing hobby. They go geocaching. I’d never come across geocaching before reading Brit Gal’s blog. I think I’d enjoy geogaching. It sounds to me like treasure hunts for grown-ups. Treasure hunts were a part of my childhood, and I often do them for my kids too. I love watching as the excitement overtakes their critical faculties. The clue says “this is where you put your dirty laundry”, and with a shriek, 5-yo exclaims “I know, I know. It’s the television!” and sprints off in the direction of the sitting room. Geocaching is a little more sedate, but I imagine there’s still a child-like thrill in finding the box you’ve been hunting for.

One thing the Midwest does very well is the sky. Brit Gal posts a photograph of the sky on a Friday: ‘Skywatch Friday’. If I’m ever feeling low about living in this part of the world, it reminds me of one of the things I will truly miss when we leave. If you think you’ve seen a big sky, let me tell you this: if you’ve not been to the Midwest, then you haven’t.

The only bad thing about your blog, Brit Gal, is that it is one of two that makes my web browser crash (Not From Around Here – you have the dubious honour of being the other one). The only way round it seems to be to read the post in Bloglines, rather than opening it up. So if I don’t comment very often, that’s the reason why. Anyone have any ideas how I can get to the bottom of this problem? It's only started happening recently and it's only these two blogs. Just as well I'm not into conspiracy theories...

So here’s to you, Brit Gal. Funny to think of us in our blue stripey dresses, running around the playground playing tag, doing ‘Music and Movement’ in our pants and vests, working our way through our times tables with the scary Mrs Edwards, she with the bouffant bleached white hair. And yes, I share your memories of the chain-smoking Mrs Davis, and Mr Kitchenman. How could one forget a teacher with a name like that? And oh indeed, the egg and spoon race too - that annual highlight. I won it one year, which is the one and only sporting achievement of my life. But I also still remember the horrible humiliation of coming last in the bunny hop race. Ah, the highs and lows.

I wonder what our head teacher Mr Ford would make of us now. He taught my class to sing ‘All Through the Night’ in Welsh. That was pretty darn PC, before PC-ness was even invented. I wonder if you learned that too?

Little Iota

Here is Iota. This is me, aged 5 or 6. In my blue stripey school uniform summer dress. I remember this photo being taken. I remember squinting into the sun, and I remember not liking that bunch of flowers. Does it show? It must have been in the days before the great industry that is school portrait photography had got started. I remember the teacher Miss Nunnerly taking the photograph, and bringing an envelope to school with money for her for the prints. Enterprising Miss Nunnerly!

We lived about a mile from that school, and in summer we would walk home, taking a short cut across the orchards you can see in the background. Those orchards were all cut down, a few years after this was taken, victims of the ‘Common Market’, and the way it favoured imported French apples over homegrown English ones. That was how I understood it at the time, but my guess is that it was less to do with the market price of the apples, and more to do with the subsidies available to farmers for change of land use. I remember the sound of the chain saws, and how sad we all were. I still miss those orchards, when I’m at my mother’s house, the same house I lived in as the little girl in this photo, and take the dog for a walk over the open fields which replace them.

What else can I tell you about Iota, aged 6? I was good at reading, and I loved spelling tests because I always found them so easy. I was a slow runner, the slowest in the class, and hated any sport or game which showed this up. I was the youngest in the year. My best friends were Catherine and Sophie, and at playtime, we would teach each other ballet and gymnastics from the classes we went to. I always felt my ballet class was rather superior to Sophie’s (Catherine was the gymnast), as we wore BLUE leotards. Sophie’s ballet class wore pink, and even in those days, I rebelled against ubiquitous girly pink. I thought pink leotards were just too insipid and twee for words. What's more, my blue one had a SKIRT. Another point which made it clearly superior.

When I was 8, fate and the school dealt me a cruel blow. They divided the year in half alphabetically, and Catherine and Sophie were in the other class to me. I thought I’d be unhappy for the whole year. I think perhaps I was. I hated my surname with loathing, and then felt guilty for doing so. I missed my friends in class terribly, but I knew it was tactless to berate my parents for the name they had bestowed on me. Loyalty to friends battling it out with family honour. It's the stuff of tragedy.

There was another girl at that school, in Chesham, Bucks. She was two years younger than me, and in all honesty, I can’t remember her at school. I know a lot more about her life now than I did then, though we haven’t met since those early childhood days. I’ll tell you who she is in my next post…

Postscript: 9-yo tells me that this picture looks like 5-yo.

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Photo meme

I’ve been tagged by Heather, at Notes from Lapland (and you think you've got lots of snow in England?), to show you my favourite photograph, and tell you why it’s my favourite. I’m going to have to cheat a little here, because I don’t think I have a favourite photograph, per se. I love the ones that sit on my desk here, but I’m not going to post them because I don’t want photos of my kids on the internet. And of course they are of my kids. I’m so predictable. So I’m not going to show them to you, but I will describe them for you.

One is a headshot of 5-yo, taken in Colorado two years ago. It’s not a terribly good photograph. There are telegraph poles and wires in the background, and she is half in shadow, half in sun. She’s wearing a baseball cap belonging to one of her brothers, and that black curly mass just below her chin is her father’s head – she’s sitting on his shoulders. But here’s why I love it. I emailed it to a friend and she said “what a great photo – when you look into her eyes, you can see into her soul”, and that’s exactly right. It’s one of those rare photos where the subject is looking into the camera, but somehow their awareness of the camera doesn’t get in the way of what the camera sees. So yes, I love her wispy blond hair, her little button nose, her smile. And yes, I love the memory of the moment I took that picture, on a sunny day in the mountains. But most of all, I love looking into her 3 year old soul. She has a beautiful soul. Yesterday she was telling me how she had had to pretend she believed in Santa, because although SHE knows the secret about it, Grandad doesn't, and she hadn't wanted to spoil it for him.

The other photo is of the two boys and me. They are 4 and 1, (I wish I had written dates on the backs of photos, and could be more precise). I’m sitting on our bed, and I have one boy on each leg. You can tell from the awkward angles of my arms and hands that it was quite a feat to keep them there. They are naked (legs are positioned to preserve modesty), and I know it is just after their bath-time, because there is a towel draped over the bedrail (which means that the younger one was sleeping in our bed at the time the photo was taken – although that bedrail probably stayed there for a while afterwards, as these things do). We are all grinning. The photo perfectly captures those fun bathtime and bedtime moments. We used to bath them together, and then put on music and let them dance around on our bed (dance, not bounce, before you throw up your hands in horror), before putting on their pyjamas and reading them stories. I can hear now in my head, as I type, the cd of Scottish Folk Music that we often put on, which I was given as something of a joke, I think, when we moved to Scotland, but which grew on me and became a favourite. It was either that, or the Gypsy Kings, or Something Fischy, or nursery rhymes, or jolly Christmas tunes.

The boys have a strong resemblance in the photo, which has faded over the years. Their bodies both have that lovely soft pudgy small-child look about them. The 1 year old has those rolls of chubb on his arms and legs, and a big tummy. He is skinny as a whip today. We all look so relaxed and happy. The photo was posed, but it captured one moment that could have been a moment from any number of evenings. The boys are looking at the camera, but you can see they’re not going to sit still for long. They are ready to get off my lap and on with the dancing. I wonder what music we were playing that night?

I am going to tag

Paradise Lost in Translation, who always has an interesting angle on things, photographically or otherwise, and who might post a photo of herself wearing a dress with a gecko embroidered on the back - or might not,

Reluctant Memsahib, who definitely knows how to post a great photo (are you still blogging out there, Reluctant Memsahib?),

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, because there should be more people who post pictures of tuna costumes, and

Elsie Button, for no particular reason. Oh, except for that memorable photograph of a malteser which she once posted.

And in case you are cross with me for not actually displaying a photograph, I will do so in my next post - promise.

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The Great Outdoors

Do you ever start writing a comment on a blog, and before you know it, you've rambled on so much that you've pretty much written a blog post on the subject?

I've just done that on Nappy Valley Girl's blog. I'm enjoying reading her blog, because she's just moved from Clapham Common to Long Island, and it's full of her early impressions of American life. I can hardly read a post without exclaiming in her comments box "oh yes, I remember that feeling so well!". It also makes me realise how far I've dug in, in three years. Things that strike her as unusual are just part of life for me now, and it takes someone else to point them out for me to notice. She surprised local American friends recently by offering them milk in their tea. I remember doing that. Now I don't, and what's more, I don't even think about it. These things become second nature.

Anyhoo, Nappy Valley Girl was cogitating today on why Americans don't seem to go outside when it's snowy, or even cold. When you're bringing up small children, it seems an essential part of a day to take them out into the fresh air, come hell, high water, or bad weather. But only if you're British.

I was commenting along my usual lines of "oh, I've wondered the same thing!" and found I'd written so much on the subject that, if I just added a tiny bit more, I could repeat it all on my own blog and call it a post. Which is what I've done.

I started off by saying I thought it was just a cultural thing. We Brits have a deep-seated feeling that fresh air is good for children, and that going outside at some point in the day is essential. The Americans don't. Simple as that.

But then I decided that actually, there's more to it than that. I think it's a reflection of a deep cultural difference between the adults. We Brits love our outdoors. We are a nation of gardeners. We like a sunny day because then we can be "out". If we go on holiday, we like to see the scenery of where we are. Our own countryside is sacrosanct.

It's just not the same here. I once tried to explain to a woman who asked me what I missed about the UK, that I missed walking down a street, walking the kids to school, going out and about at the week-ends... that it made me feel disconnected from the "real" world. I said "For example, you could easily live a life here where you literally NEVER went outside some kind of built environment. You leave the house by car from your integral garage. You can run your errands at drive-thrus. Everywhere here has convenient parking lots, so you don’t have to walk to get anywhere. Indeed you physically can’t do that. You could live without ever seeing the outdoors except for the parking lots you walk across."

She looked at me as if I was on another planet, and said "What's wrong with that?"

My guess is that this is one reason why the fear of climate change tugs at the emotions of Brits more than a lot of Americans. We would really mind if our countryside changed. For most people round here, it's a rather remote problem. If the planet warms up a little, your air-conditioning bill will be a bit higher, but it won’t significantly affect your life. No big deal.

I don’t want to get pious here, but I can’t help feeling that it’s important for us humans to be conscious that we belong to the natural world, and not the other way round. There’s a big wide world out there, and we are very small in it. How do your kids learn that, how do they come to feel that, if you don’t take them outside?

The old year ends

Well, 2009 is over. Something of a turbulent year in my life. Though I have sniffed out gains, it has largely been a year of losses. I have found strength, but I have also met some of my limitations (I hate that). I have done things, and had things done to me, that I would never have chosen. But that is how life is. It’s not a Woolworth’s pick ‘n’ mix, where you can opt out of the liquorice allsorts. It’s not a modern day Christmas present, with the gift receipt in the envelope so that you can exchange it for something else more to your taste. You take the rough with the smooth, and somehow try and find your way through.

(I think I might have used these analogies already on the blog. Anyone know how you can do a keyword search through previous blog posts, without going through them one by one? Should I be keeping them all in a large Word document? Ed.)

This year, I’ve faced things I didn’t plan to face just yet. I’ve looked into the jaws of my own mortality, and squared up with two things: how insignificant my life is, and how significant my life is. Both are burdensome truths. I’ve found that the best strategy to deal with them is to look them straight in the eyes, but not for long, and then turn away to get on with the fabulous reality of daily life. It’s like wearing sunglasses on a very bright day. If you don’t have them, you squint all the time, and your eyes hurt, and it’s a continual distraction. So you wear them, but every now and again, you feel the need to take them off and screw up your eyes against the light, just to see how intense the colour of the sky really is. The brightness is there all the time, but you don’t want to look at it too much. It’s a relief to put those sunglasses back on and get on with the day, and then you forget about the brightness.

This year, I realized more than ever how important writing is to me. This blog, and the excuse it provides for my incessant drivel, has seen me through. I would write it if nobody at all read it. But you do, and that makes it a thousand times better.

I want to thank you all so much. This isn’t a glib “Thank you, I love you all, Happy New Year”. This is a heartfelt thank you. I know that reading about someone with cancer is not a very joyful thing to do. I know that it is more fun to read about the sweet things people’s children have said or done, or tales of expat life abroad. So thank you for not clicking away. Thank you to those of you who knew me before this year. Thank you to the new people who’ve taken the trouble to get to know me. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented. Thank you to those of you who’ve emailed me. Thank you to those of you who've read and lurked. Lurkers are nice people too. In the words of Hank Williams, “Hey, good lurkin’, what ya got curkin’?”

Most of all, thank you for writing your own blogs. Reading them is like keeping busy on a sunny day, with sunglasses on. When I started this blog in the summer of 2007, I was horribly homesick, and I used to read lots of blogs about England. At that time, a large number of people had recently started blogs about country life, in response to a competition run by the magazine of that name to find a blogger for the publication. There was a real excitement around as people shared stories and pictures of their lush flower beds, their burgeoning vegetable patches, the domestic projects in their homes. It was a rather unBritish blowing of own trumpets – in a very British understated way, of course. You might have thought it would have made me more homesick – all those colourful pictures of roses in full bloom, beautiful shots of the English countryside, accounts of trips to National Trust properties, complaints about the rain (it was a record-breakingly rainy summer, 2007). But it didn’t. Somehow it helped, just knowing that it was all going on, even if an ocean away, and without me.

In the same way, this summer, your blogs kept a window open for me on normal life. I was ill, and sad, and fearful. I saw too much of my own four walls. Reading your blogs, reading about your joys, your woes, your excitements, your disappointments, the magnificent trivia of your daily lives, all of it helped me keep a hold on the fact that normality was still happening, even if it felt at times a long way away, and without me.

So thank you, for being part of my blog, and for letting me be part of yours. Happy New Year to you all.

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