I've been snooping

You can learn a lot from reading your daughter's RME exercise book (Religious and Moral Education, in case you're about to ask).

It seems they've been learning about Special Occasions recently. There's a sheet about family special occasions, and I've found out some interesting facts. Here are a couple of the questions and answers:

Does your family ever eat special food, wear special clothes, make a special journey?

We sometimes have golden syrup sandwitches (sic), J20, and brunch on Sundays.

How do you decide what you should all do on special occasions?

We try to do the same every year but sometimes we decide to change it a bit.

Lovely insight into our family's special moments.


On another subject:

Name two people you admire and say why.

1. I admire God because he created the whole world and he keeps us safe etc
2. I also admire 16-yo and 13-yo my big brothers because they teach me things and are kind to me when I am sad.

Ah, very touching.

Further back in the book, I can see the class has been doing some thinking about beliefs.

My beliefs

Three belifs (sic) for a happy school

1. be kind to everyone
2. try your best at every thing 
3. give everything a go

Three belifs for a happy family

1. don't annoy your brother/sister
2. tell your mum she is good at cooking
3. help at home

Well now, how about that? Number 2 shows pretty shrewd insight, wouldn't you say?

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Now, that WOULD make for an interesting Christmas

9-yo (looking at a flyer in the pile of junk mail): It says you can adopt a snow leopard. How does that work, exactly?

Me: Well, you send a donation to the charity, and they use the money to look after snow leopards. Maintain their habitat. That kind of thing.

9-yo: Oh... I thought you got an actual snow leopard to look after.

Photo credit: National Geographic

Driving Miss Iota: Part 2

I've thought of another manoeuvre that seems to have changed since I was taught to drive.

Imagine you are at a crossroads (literal, not figurative). You are turning right. Someone coming in the opposite direction is also turning to their right. When I learnt to drive, the correct thing to do was to wait in the middle of the junction, with the other car parallel on your right hand side, and then go round the back of each other when there was a gap in the oncoming traffic, or when the lights changed. Hard to describe, but if you  imagine the two cars to be like dogs, sniffing each other's bottoms, you'll get the picture.

Now, a lot of junctions have arrows and lane markings, indicating that you shouldn't go round the back of the oncoming vehicle, but pass in front of them. But if there aren't any arrows and markings, what's the rule? It seems to be that you go in front, and usually you have to, because the volume of traffic means that it's not just one car turning right in each direction, but a whole string of them. But has the rule changed, or just practice?

Meanwhile, I was browsing through the book I used to keep of conversations with the kids that I wanted to remember, and I found some words on the subject of driving from my daughter, when she was 4.

"When I'm an adult, you'll have to help me to drive. Then when I've got good at it, I can move away and live in my own house and get married. And then I can teach the person I married to drive too. Is that what you did when you got married?"

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Role model

Thank you, lovely Bloggy Friends, for being with me through my insecurities.

Over the past few months, I've thought it best to keep blogging, because then, at least, I am writing. And that is better than not writing. Then occasionally, just occasionally, I write a post and decide not to publish it, but to keep it for my book. So there are just a very few pages written. A very few. But that seems to be where a lot of bloggers are, if your comments are anything to go by, and it's always good to know you're not alone. Thank you.

9-yo asked me a little while ago, about jobs and being a mum. I don't know what prompted the question. I didn't want to get too heavy about it all - she's only 9 - but I said that it seems that most women have to make choices that men don't have to make in quite the same way. I said that you don't have to have children, but if you do, you either have to look after them, or have someone else do it. I said that it was super-fun and very wonderful to be able to do it yourself, but that did mean you couldn't always be concentrating on other things. I said that anyway, it might all have changed a bit by the time she's grown up, but probably not, and she will have choices to make, but it will be ok. You just do the best you can.

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then replied,

"I think I'll have children, and then I'll chillax and get a dog".

So I'm a role model... of some kind?

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Hallowe'en

Well, one culinary triumph follows another. The Bavarian chocolate cream used 6 egg yolks, and what's a girl to do with 6 leftover egg whites?

Make meringue ghosts for Hallowe'en. That's what. And here they are.



It felt all wrong, really, because in my childhood, meringues were Christmas fare. But I thoroughly enjoyed making them, accompanied by all the memories of helping my mother make trayfuls of the things, and then sandwiching them together in pairs, flat bottom to flat bottom, with whipped cream. My mother had meringue-making down to a fine art. I loved feeling the friendly ghosts of meringues past hovering around me, as I tried my own (and no, I've never done them before, since I hear you all asking, in surprised voices - listen, I'm only 45, when would I have had time to try making meringues before now?).

If I'd been writing the recipe for meringues, instead of St Delia, I'd have said something like this: "Heat the oven to 300 degrees, but the minute you put the meringues in, turn it down straightaway, immediately, right then and there, don't forget to do that, don't get on with clearing up, and have a good looky round your kitchen cupboards for black food gel icing for the eyes, because if you leave the oven at 300 for 15 minutes before you check back to the recipe and remember that it told you to lower the temperature, the meringues will still taste fine, but they will be slightly brown, instead of ghoulishly white". Which is why I don't write cookery books, because they would probably turn out rather long. On the other hand, slightly brown ghosts are good, in these politically correct days.

Here's one who didn't make it to school for 9-yo's party, because 9-yo was fond of it, and wanted to keep it at home, all for himself.



Here are some other treats I made for the party.



The website called them forked eyeballs. Forked eyeballs, peoples, forked eyeballs. I made some with red gel icing, and some with ordinary red icing.


Husband said that the ones with gel icing were more realistic, which really begs the question: how does he know what an eyeball on a fork looks like? He also said they looked more realistic than the picture on the website, which is why I married him. Well, it's not exactly why I married him. I don't remember eyeballs on forks feeding into that decision, 16 years ago. But Husband, if you're reading this, you'll be pleased to know that forked eyeballs or no forked eyeballs, I'm glad I did. Decide to marry you. Actually, I don't think websites were even invented then.

Where was I? The eyeballs weren't all as perfectly round as these ones. Dillons (who never replied to me about my query on aseptic drinks, by the way - bad customer service Dillons!) had run out of their own fresh baked doughnut holes, so I had to use the kind that have been sitting in a packet on a shelf since May, and they were so dry that when I forked them, they tended to split in half. Some I managed to catch before they were completely split, and glue together the crack with the melted white chocolate. But I ended up using some halves, to produce oddly shaped eyeballs with one flat side. But this is Hallowe'en, and oddly shaped is good too. Might even be politically correct. I mean, why should we discriminate against people with oddly shaped eyeballs?

Dillons also didn't have any black plastic forks, which would have looked much better than clear. I am falling out of love with Dillons.

Meanwhile, on the costume front, we have been decidedly lack-lustre in our efforts. 13-yo declares himself too old for dressing up. 9-yo is sporting the same alien commander costume I purchased last year from Target. It's a long black robe, with a scary mask which won't stay on very well, so in 9-yo's case, it's a long black robe. 6-yo is a fairy, in a fairy dress that is a little small for her, but looks fine over a long-sleeved stripey top and stripey tights. Originally she was going to be the tooth fairy, as she was last year, but then she thought perhaps she'd be the candy fairy. I suggested the stripey fairy, but that was met with a certain scorn - "the stripey fairy?" - and she concluded that she'd just be a plain fairy. Which suits me just fine, because I'm all out of creative juice after my exertions in the kitchen, and a plain fairy needs no accessories.

Double trouble

We've just been to a music program (concert) in which 13-yo was performing. One of the songs that the eighth grade choir sang was from the witches in Macbeth.

"Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."

When we got home, 6-yo was asking me about it, wanting to know what the words were.

"Why were the witches singing about toilet trouble?" she wondered.

Talking of phrases which get you wondering, she and 9-yo often say "on accident" instead of "by accident". Husband and I have started correcting them. Up till now, it's been one of those family phrases that we fondly think is rather sweet, but the time comes when the need for correct parlance trumps parental doting. It's been a very hard habit to break. Husband and I assumed that they were saying "on accident" because of the parallel with "on purpose", or possibly because "it was an accident" could be construed as "it was on accident". Either way, it sounds odd to us, and we just thought it was wrong usage.

But... in the past couple of weeks, I've heard "on accident" three times - on one occasion it was a child, but on the next two, it was adults (albeit young things).

Is this becoming current usage? Is it an Americanism, or have you heard it over the other side of the Pond?

Train of thought

7.35am, and I’m sitting in the Pumpkin Café, York station, with cup of tea and bacon roll. On my way to the US Embassy to renew my visa. Mine and the children’s. Probably want to take them back with me when I go. Be a shame if I had a visa and they didn’t.

Bit of an adventure getting here. Had planned to leave house by 6.10, to get 6.53 train from Malton to York. Woke up at 6.28. Don’t know how this happened. My alarm clock was set. Husband’s alarm clock was set. Did we both mis-set them? Did they both fail to go off? Freakish. Or did we both sleep through them? Perhaps we need a holiday. Oh. We’re on holiday. Does the part of me that doesn’t want to renew my visa have more say when I’m asleep? So anyway, 6.28. That left me 25 minutes exactly to get up, dressed, drive 8 miles to Malton, find somewhere to park (no station car park at Malton and I don’t know the town, only ever been to the station to pick up or drop off), and buy a ticket.

I made it. Still now quite sure how, though remember finding a miraculously free car park (didn’t know those existed any more), and running to the station, wiping tears out of my eyes as the chill morning wind whipped by my face (wind, because I was running like the, not because it was a windy morning - just to clarify). Even had time for little chat with booking office clerk, who said he’d been a bit late for work himself and it must be one of those days. Hope the Embassy staff don’t mind my hair, or my unshowered aroma.

8.05am, and I’m on the train to London King’s Cross. I love train travel. Love it with a passion that makes me wonder if I was born in the wrong era. Thank goodness I had sons, because they’re nothing if not a good excuse for the occasional steam train ride.

Got a seat with a table, and have The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I’m told (by many, though not all) I won’t be able to put down, but I know that for most of the journey, I won’t write or read. I’ll look out of the window. Why ever not? Flashing through probably the most beautiful county in probably the most beautiful country on earth.

Might have to move. There’s a woman with a mobile phone, a written report, and a very loud voice.

“Well, Jason, I think I’m just going to put 2.5 as regards that figure, because that’s what all the other sites have done, and so I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

I don’t see why she shouldn’t either, but I don’t want to listen all the way to King’s Cross. Train is remarkably empty (why?), so plenty of choice.

Power stations – one on my left, one on my right. Countryside very flat now. That’ll teach me to write “probably the most beautiful county…”.

Haven’t got a laptop. Just in case you were picturing me, all high tech and wired up. Or wire free. No, not allowed electrical things in the US Embassy. Not even allowed a clicky key fob. Lucky I had an old-fashioned turn-in-the-lock one, though intriguingly it only worked in the passenger side door. That required about 3 precious seconds in the car park. The remembering and the sprinting round to the other side.

Now, Bloggy Peeps. Should that be Peops? Trouble is, that looks like Pee-ops. But Peeps is a bit Thomas the Tank Engine. Oh, I don’t know. I’ll call you Bloggy Friends.

Now, Bloggy Friends. I know I’m on a blogging break, but I thought you might like to know about my summer so far. Just a few highlights.

Cyber Mummy
Oh my goodness, I loved Cyber Mummy (except for the name, sorry, I just can’t love that name). There was something very fulfilling, in the genuine sense of that word, about meeting women who I’d got to know so well online over the past three years. I mean, three years is hardly a whirlwind romance, so these are people who have had a window into a measurable percentage of my adult life, and I into theirs. Yours.

There were some excellent moments. One of my faves was when I won a month’s supply of Garofalo pasta in the prize draw. I and the friend I was sitting next to thought it was Gruffalo pasta, because she’d just been telling me about interviewing Julia Donaldson. Gruffalo pasta. Why the heck not?

More summer highlights:

over-riding my vertigo to go up the Eiffel Tower – to the top, mind you – and finding I thoroughly enjoyed it;

sitting in the front garden, sharing a bottle of evening wine with my husband and brother, the temperature somewhere around the high 80s, the air scented with jasmine, still, and heavy, the conversation punctuated by Parisians nodding Bonsoir to my brother as they walked past;

watching my temperature-resistant children swim in the sea with cousins in both Brighton and St Andrews (different cousins – we don’t carry a set round with us on our travels);

the mundane familiarity of small English things, like being called ‘Love’ by shop assistants;

visiting ruined abbeys and having picnics;

staying with my mum, who is quite definitely one of Britain’s National Treasures;

old friends, with their children 2 years older than last time I saw them;

going to a museum, or two or three, including the Natural History Museum in London, where 9-yo decided he wants to become a geologist;

bumping into some friends at Abington services on the M74. We were driving north from Yorkshire to the Scottish Highlands. They were driving south from Edinburgh to the Lake District. What were the chances? We last saw them in October 2006, just before we went to America. We gave them lamps that we couldn’t take with us (different voltage in the US). I’d forgotten. They now have a 2 year old.

Oh so many more, but this is a blog, not a novel, so I must stop. One low point to report: 9-yo breaking his collar bone when he fell off a bike. Hurrah for the NHS, I must say. In and out of A&E within an hour and a quarter - friendly nurses, friendly doctor, x-rays, pain-killers, and a sling - no forms to fill in, and not a penny to pay. Horrid to see him in pain and shrunk into himself, though. He's doing fine now - thanks for asking - and having an arm in a sling doesn't stop him doing much. Cricket, football, swimming, building sandcastles, DS, monopoly, sibling squabbling... all these summer activities are possible one-armed. Just as well he's not a blogger. Blogging one-handed would be frustrating.

More anon.

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