The Wild West

We have just spent two and a half weeks in America, visiting my husband's sister and brother in law, who are river guides during the summers in Idaho, on the Salmon river. We have long heard of these fantastic trips and were waiting for our 9 y-o to be old enough to enjoy and remember the experience.  So this was the year, and it was a truly amazing experience.

I must admit I have always preferred travelling to less developed, less Western countries, but either it's middle age, having children in tow, or perhaps the experience of living in developing nations for five and a half years, but I found myself relishing the American experience. I think I viewed it the same way I viewed going home for summers in the UK  in that I enjoyed a degree of comfort and convenience I wasn't used to in Sri Lanka or Albania. 

I have been to America  about 4 times, but for some reason it bowled me over this it me just how friendly and helpful everyone was. People bent over backwards to help us, people stopped and chatted to us. It made us realise what suspicious old Brits we were as it took us a little while to realise people were just being friendly, with no ulterior motives, and people weren't stopping to tell us off, move us on, ask what we were doing, they just wanted to chat. I imagine this is because we were in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming; generally more rural and slower paced.  On one occasion, we had stopped to have a picnic lunch off the main highway and an old couple on a huge motorbike stopped and said hello, which I confess,initially we felt was a bit odd, and wondered if they were checking out what we were doing. Anyway we had a really nice chat, & as he left he pointed out his house, saying if we needed anything to just pop by and ask. 15 minutes later he came back with a map of Montana which he gave to us to use for our road trip.

We flew standby as usual. No one who hasn't worked for an airline or flown standby appreciate the stress of this way of travelling. As my husband puts it, "Staff  travel (retired staff in his case) is always fantastic in hindsight." During, however, is almost always a very different matter, especially when you are flying during school holidays. We got on the Seattle flight, then got offloaded at the gate. We were booking, unbooking & rebooking hotels for our first night. Finally we got on a flight to Denver. However our luggage didn't. This has happened to us many times before, pre children, but this time, despite having been told it was a priority, as we were going on a river trip, our luggage  didn't arrive during the FOUR days before our river trip started. It was there by the end of the river trip six days later, but how many of those ten days it took to arrive, we are not entirely sure. So thank Heavens for Walmart. We each bought shorts & t shirts, and swimming stuff and 'river shoes'. Our13 y-o chose some very  fetching stars n stripes swimming shorts which he loved and the Americans on our trip were very amused by. They seemed surprised he had actually chosen them.  The worst of it was I didn't have  my contact lenses with me, so I had to wear glasses and buy those 'clip on' sunglasses. Very attractive. And not ideal for a river based trip. I also bought a strap to keep my glasses on and tried not to capsize! Fortunately for us, because our sis & bro-in-law work for the rafting company, we could borrow their gear, mats, and sleeping bags, clothes etc etc.  The funny thing was the friend who had packed clothes for me because my sister in law was already on the river, decided  i needed cute little dresses and skirts to wear at the camp each evening on the river, so whilst I had not a single t shirt and only a very itsy bitsy pair of shorts, I did have a different dress to wear each night at the camp.......

And it was magical. We rafted class 3 and 4 rapids and lesser ripples in rubber rafts & paddle boats and inflateable kayaks, called rubber duckies down a beautiful stretch of river. 100 miles in 6 days - a wilderness area with no roads at all, about 5 or 6 settlements tops; mostly old homesteads once farmed by pioneering settlers or failed gold diggers living incredibly  remotely, now in disuse, or caretakered by people with a similar adventurous and reclusive spirit.  But slightly more modern conveniences....  we saw bald eagles and golden eagles. Some of our group saw mountain lion. None of us saw bears, or rattle snakes for that matter.

We slept out under the stars, gazing sleepily at the sparkling embroidered cloths with the gauze veil of the milky way trailing across it, listening to crickets and the rush of the river. We were fed like kings. The guides used dutch ovens which they placed on charcoal and then placed some charcoal on the lid, and so they could bake! They made brownies, cornbread, huckleberry pie out in the wilderness on these dutch ovens. They also had coolers assigned to each  day which they didn't open till that assigned day, so everything stayed fridge cold.  We were in a fantastic group of people. Our son has added about 12 friends to his Facebook profile, ranging from 23 down to 13 yr olds. They loved his accent. And his shorts....

Our daughter sat on the gear boats for the first few days, the guides called it the 'princess boat', because you sat up high and just kicked back & enjoyed the view, without having to paddle and the rapids were less frightening from there too.

Our son took to the Stand Up Paddle Board and used that mostly. My husband, after being in the paddle boat for 2 days, on day three and the day of the first class 4 rapid decided to try it in a rubber duckie. He managed it fine.

I am very envious of my husband in that he is afraid of nothing. Whereas I am afraid of lots of things. And it seems to get worse as I get older. I used to be much more gung ho and dare devil ish, though never a big risk taker like him. I realised this afresh on this trip. He didn't worry about falling out in to a class 4 churning rapid, (whereas I have fallen out at the top of a nasty class 4 rapid in Chile and it wasn't fun). He didn't worry about sleeping in grizzly bear country, he wasn't at all concerned about hiking through bear country, he rode a jet ski later in the holiday, getting it up to its maximum speed of 50 miles an hour, managing to get flung off it three times at high speed because he was turning it so tightly (Our brother in law said it was almost impossible to flip them & they were so stable they were very hard to come off too) So you can see what a 'girly woos' I feel in comparison to him...But I still do everything, I'm just scared doing (some of) them & hubby isn't!

Yellowstone. I guess being British I just couldn't get used to the idea that you camped under a flimsy piece of nylon quite happily in GRIZZLY BEAR country. I mean, we Brits are just not used to large, dangerous mammals roaming the countryside freely. I couldn't work out why people were so relaxed about it. After all, warnings were everywhere about being 'Bear Aware'. We had bear lockers at each camp spot and instructions nailed to them about what we could keep in a tent and what we mustn't. Every loo, every shop, every parking area had Bear Warnings.  What to do, what not to do. You were told never to hike alone, to make a lot of noise when you did hike, (clapping, shouting, carrying a bear bell though please note they also add about the latter "This is NOT enough", to carry Bear Spray ($50 and works once, though obviously once would be more than enough. I doubt you would go hiking again after also encounter with a Grizzly) I realised that most bears would be afraid of you, and are more interested in your food. Even so, you do have to assume a degree of confidence to sleep in an area with your food near by up a tree, with only that thin bit of nylon between you & a bear hug.  But also if they are used to people camping and hearing people's noise and seeing humans around, that means they get more used to them & correspondingly less afraid of you. And they are carnivores too, of course....

I did one hike, with just the children, whilst M went back for the truck. It was late afternoon and there was no one on the trail, which was a main one near the Old Faithful geyser area. It was also through pine forest. We didn't have our bear bell. So we clapped and sang & chatted loudly. After about 15 minutes of walking, we met another family in front of us and stuck with them all the way back. At the end of the trail there was a sign which said 'Mother grizzly with cubs frequenting this area. Proceed with caution. Be alert. Make a noise."  Can't say I would have proceeded at all had I seen that notice at the start of the walk.

So, summer in the Big Country. Big distances, big cars, big breakfasts, big hospitality & big animals. To coin a phrase, "it was awesome."

Where Did The Time Go?

Ok, so it's 11 months since I last posted. I need to change my name, my blog header etc. I know. I need to start again basically.  I am just going to write a couple of posts to round this off and then publish it with one of those 'Blog to Book' packages, as a record for our children and family of our experiences overseas.  That's why I started it after all, 7 years ago.  Then I will think about reinventing myself, if I can think of a new raison d'etre for my blog.

I have loved blogging, I have just found life so busy since moving back from overseas. I didn't want to buy back into the whole frenetic rat race thing, but life just is fast paced & all consuming here. I simply don't seem to have time anymore.

We have family here, a wide circle of friends, the children have far more activity options & school clubs, they get more homework, I have no cleaner, we own our own house, so suddenly have gardening & endless DIY chores to do.  I could go on. 

Oh & we have had a few major events/life changes too.

Since I last wrote, here's what happened:
1. Sept & Oct last year I spent editing a theologian friend's bibliography for his latest massive tome on Romans.  I loved doing this & even got paid for it, but it took all my computer time.

2. Out of the blue I got a part time teaching job (through my supply agency) starting Nov 1st. It necessitated a return journey of 50 miles, four days a week. This made me very busy.... But I needed a job, and the students are lovely. The school, well that's a whole other blog post.  This post has now been made permanent. And the CRB check was a walk in the park for some reason.

3. Oh yes and did I mention we moved house? We found somewhere that's a perfect compromise between town & country.  On the edge of the city, but near a country park.  We moved 4 days before I started my new job. Timing crazy, house purchase miraculous really. We had been searching for a house for about 2 yrs from when we first knew we would be moving back to the UK. Everything got snapped up very fast, we couldn't decide where we wanted to be, couldn't find a house in our price range. We seemed to have hit a dead end.  We had found one house we liked but, though it was with an estate agent, it wasn't on the market yet and was too expensive. If we offered lower, we knew they would just wait till it went on the 'open market'. An impasse.

Then one night at 10p.m a note was pushed through our door. I wrested the paper from the eager jaws of our puppy and was about to throw it away assuming it was an advert, but something (sheer unalloyed nosiness probably) made me look at it. It was a letter from a family asking me if we were selling our house as they were interested in it. My husband told me not to get excited as the chances were very slim that it would work out. Neverthless I emailed that night (Tues) They came to look at it on Wednesday, asked to come back on Thursday. On Friday they made us a full price offer, we accepted it and on Saturday we put an offer in on the house we liked (which was rejected) However, the vendors agreed to meet us half way between ours & their price. So in five days we had bought and sold a house!

4. We are now in the throes of a 'Forth Bridge' of a decorating project, trying, and failing probably, to balance the house's demands with our children's needs, in terms of time spent on both.

5. We are having a kitchen extension done. This also seemed to be a dead end scenario. Our builder, most inconsiderately, told us in March he couldn't do our project after all, because he was retiring to become  a farmer. An original excuse at least. His previous project had taken far longer than expected.  So, suddenly we had to find a builder during the busiest time for building - over the summer. We tried all our personal recommendations; had 2 ridiculous quotes, 3 builders who said they were too busy to take it on. An impasse again it seemed. Then one Tuesday (again) as it happened an architect friend emailed to say her builders were looking for work for August & September. They came the same day, we got a quote on Wednesday, rejected it on Wednesday and told the project manager what our original builder was going to do it for. On Thursday she accepted that price and they started on the Friday!
The builders are Polish and boy do they work hard. 6 days a week, from 8-5p.m. I must say they make me feel very at home in a nostalgic way; being surrounded by concrete dust, building noise, my ears filled with the familiar sounds of an East European language. The men are all in their 40s and 50s, grey, pot-bellied and smoke constantly.  And they are phenomenally strong. My husband has been dishing out ear plugs to them because they drill with no ear protection.  So in 4 weeks the project is nearly finished.  Trying to keep up with them in terms of research has been a struggle. I hadn't realised were SO many decisions involved in such a project. It's taken Choice Anxiety' to a whole new level.

So that is why I haven't had time to blog. Instead I am marking books, preparing lessons, walking our dog, cleaning our house, keeping up with friends & family and trying to learn how to juggle with at least 10 balls. And I've never been very co-ordinated on that front....

One Down, Three to Go

Woohoo, I have my Albanian police check! One down, three to go. My former director (of the school I taught in) took my scanned passport & parents full names (that's all he needed...??) along to the scruffy little office, paid over the money & a week later they have it. And it cost about a tenth of what the international police checks website over here was going to charge. Yay!

I must say I rather enjoyed the moment when a former Albanian colleague sent me an email saying her husband had 'contacts' in the government if I wanted him to 'fix it' for me.....Ah, I felt briefly nostalgic for that Albanian way of life which relies not only, negatively, on corruption & bribes, but also is fundamentally built on relationships, networks & who you know who can sort something for you.  It made me smile.

Speaking of Albania, we have an Albanian friend staying with us for three weeks, while she finishes her PhD.  She is pregnant & is trying desperately to finish by the end of October. As a result of her arrival I have been neurotically cleaning the house. Albanians are obsessed with cleaning their homes. The day she arrived she offered to help  me with cleaning. She looked around & said "It's fine, but if you would like me to help you do a really good clean, we could put our trainers on & spend Saturday doing that'. Not my idea of a fun weekend, but clearly my idea of cleaning is not hers either.... You can take a girl out of Albania, but you can't take Albania out of the girl obviously........ I had cleaned the house from top to bottom the day she arrived. I felt a bit deflated.All that effort to waste! I clean it once a week, not everyday. I remembered how I used to move the mop round the flat to make it look like I had cleaned in between my Albanian cleaners 2 weekly THREE hour visits.

Today she came home & saw some rubber gloves on the stairs & wagged her finger at me & said "Have you been cleaning the house without me?" I confessed I had been.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I'm hoping for a lie in, but maybe I'll offer to polish the door handles, to appease her. Or maybe it's just that she's pregnant & it's the Albanian form of nesting kicking in.  In which case I should let her embrace it & get on with it. After all I'm not pregnant....or Albanian.

A Fine Upstanding Citizen in Search of Work

Just how hard can it be to work in this country? Clearly the answer is quite hard, if you work with children & need a CRB check.

First of all I discovered you can't apply for one as an individual. You can't 'submit yourself' to investigation & police checks, to prove what a fine upstanding citizen you are. . Oh no, Heaven forbid. An organisation has to do it for you. So I can't work as a freelance supply teacher without a CRB, but to get a CRB I need to have a job or work for an agency.

So I decide to apply to work for a supply agency. I fill in an application & cough up £50. I am slightly concerned that 2 of my last 3 addresses from the last 5 years are foreign ones & wonder how they will check those out.

Imagine my surprise when my CRB comes back within 2 weeks. wow, that was a bit easy I muse. Furtehrmore the Supply Agency tell me it has 'full portability' which besides meaning it's a flimsy bit of paper which tucks neatly into any handbag, it more importantly means I can use it to work in other places.Yay!

Today I spoke to the personnel manager (yes in a school - how times have changed...) of a large secondary school which needed an English supply teacher & where I had heard on my social grapevine that there was  a part time job coming up soon.

Turns out that they won't accept my agency CRB (as most schools wouldn't she said) so I need to pay out another £50 for another CRB to be done (my CRB certificate has only been in my grasp for two days & it's already out of date/invalid) & furthermore I would need police checks done for Sri Lanka & Albania too. Hmm, that could prove tricky. Then she dropped her final bombshell. "Actually, just looking at your CV, I see you worked in France & South Africa too. You actually need a police check done in every country you have worked in since you were 18"........

Long silence.

"You mean when I worked in South Africa 24 yrs ago & when I worke din Paris 23 years ago, I need a police check done?"

Yes, we wouldn't even consider you until the police checks were in place"

"But I worked for Oxfordshire for 15 years, after living in South Africa & France, &was 'CRB-ed' no problem. How come it was ok then but isn't now?"

She said, rather prissily;

"I'm not saying this is you, but look at what Gary Glitter got up to in those countries he visited years ago."

Another long silence. What can I say to that? Guilty until proven innocent.....

So even though I worked for Oxfordshire L.E.A for 15 yrs before moving abroad, complete with a CRB check, to work in Oxfordshire again now I have to have police checks for when I was abroad before I ever worked for Oxfordshire. Seems a tad illogical to me. I guess I never had an international police check done.


 I did a bit of research online & discovered that for the princely sum of £115 I can get a police check done in Albania, & for another £115 one in Sri Lanka & for another £115 South Africa. France is a 'bargain' £94.

So £439 to get 4 international police checks. And that's just to get through the preliminary application process.  To be even looked at by a school. Never mind be offered the job. Woe betide me if I got a job & then changed school, I would need another check done as they are 'in theory' only valid on the day they are issued. So the supply agency told me. Presumably I wouldn't have to do the foreign ones again would I? Though when my husband needed one done for some reason in Albania, they asked for a UK one to be done even though he hadn't lived there for 5 yrs.

I am so frustrated.  there must be a better system? 

I despair. The personnel manager did say their school was particularly stringent, but I fear until I have international police checks done for the 4 countries I worked in overseas, this will be a constant bugbear, not to say obstacle to getting employment.


Maybe I should just give up trying to teach again. Maybe I should open a teashop. I would call it Jammy Dodgers, in honour of my status as a CRB Dodger....

The thing that really upsets me about this is that we,or at least I, am paying the price for having gone abroad to do something we felt was good and worthwhile. I gave up a very good part time English post in a good secondary school, where the deputy would ask me each year whether I wanted to increase or decrease my hours, even which days I preferred to teach. I was known, respected, had good relationships & a successful job. Now I am back; my friends who were all SAHMs when I lived here & worked, are now in jobs, new careers or doing further study & I am once more out of sync, scrabbling around trying to find my place, trying to get work and trying not to wonder what on earth I am doing. Once a trailing spouse, always a trailing spouse it seems.

I don't regret going abroad. I don't regret the meaningful experiences that season of our lives enriched us with. I don't regret how it changed me, how we grew through it and most of all how it helped poor and vulnerable people through what we did.  It's just that now we are back I am counting the cost, not of moving abroad & leaving friends, family, home, job & security, but the cost of coming home & trying to make a life here. Somehow I thought this would be the easy bit.....

A Year and a Day

A year and a day ago we returned to England from 5 1/2 years living abroad.

So how do we feel  a year on? Well, firstly I can't believe it's a year already. I am still at that stage where I feel the need to get 'I lived in Albania' into the first 10 minutes of most conversations I have.  It's so much a part of my identity now. The whole living abroad thing is really.

To sum up I would say my three alliterative words are wobbly, wistful and weird!

I feel quite wobbly still, in terms of adapting to life back here. Both my husband and I would sum it up saying we feel flat, detached, as if we are observing life here but aren't fully involved. Life has been very busy and much fuller, mainly due to school and church stuff, but also because we have so many more friends here than we had living abroad, we just don't feel a part of  'Life in Britain' yet.  We still feel a bit 'The Alien Has Landed. What IS This Place?'

My husband, the introvert, who was rejoicing at no commutes, and working uninterruptedly from home, is finding the reality of it quite isolating, he doesn't feel part of a team, is working alone and could go for days without even leaving the house. In fact he has done. Some days he has been known to not even get dressed, but sit at his computer in his Boden baggies! Actually they're not Boden, but that was just to give you the mental picture, or you might be conjuring images of flannel tartan pyjamas with piping cord. Not good. we're not that middle aged. Not quite yet anyway.

He misses going 'into the field', being at the chalk face, managing people and working with a team, in a cross cultural environment. He has seemed quite unmotivated to get some exercise (very unusual), join things, meet people for coffee etc. In a way I am glad he now knows how I felt at the start of our two postings when I didn't have a ready made social /work sphere and struggled to motivate myself to make a life there and not to get down. He realises that "Snap out of it. Get out there and meet people" just doesn't cut the mustard! I'm glad because it shows it's tough, it's not just me being a wimp. These are known culture shock symptoms. They even happen to him (well reverse culture shock does, he never seemed to get the normal kind!)

We feel wistful because of course we miss the weather, the mountains, the fresh produce, the coffee, my teaching job which I loved (perfect conditions-small classes, part time,delightful kids!) being able to live within our means and eat out, have a cleaner, travel to new places, be out of the rat race etc:  all the things that helped ameliorate the trash, sewage seepage, power cuts, bureaucracy and general craziness.

We feel weird, because we feel different, we have made different choices and feel ambivalent about being back. People have been very welcoming and it has certainly been heaps easier coming back to friends and a community where we are known. But, it also feels quite boring and pedestrian back here. We even miss the craziness and unpredictability!

I had a debrief with a counsellor, who said there seemed to be a lot of stuff to do with our experiences in Sri Lanka, and in particular our daughter's heart condition diagnosis, which I hadn't processed and was still very close to the surface.  She also felt there was a lot of identity loss issues with not only having been a trailing wife and putting my husband and children's needs first, but then also coming back to a new job for him, new schools for the children and nothing for me, coupled with them growing up and being more independent of me at the same time. So at least I have an excuse for being an emotional wreck! A professional vouches for me.....

I have felt out of sync especially amongst my peers, who as I said in the last post are all working, retraining, studying and have all 'moved on' in many ways. I have moved on in myself, but not in my circumstances.  It looks (and feels) like I am right back where I was 7 years ago. I also find because I have not been working I am always the one available to look after other mums' children, fetch them from school, etc. You do rather lose yourself when all you seem to do is meet other people's needs. And now I am faced with the prospect of needing to get a job but really not wanting to go back to teaching in the UK with all its pressures, stresses and demands. But I don't know what else I would do.......

I am very proud of the children though, who, being children, have adjusted to life back here so well. They put me to shame, taking everything in their stride. They have integrated well into their schools and are both doing really well. Between them they have learnt German, French, Latin, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, netball, cricket, rugby, hockey, not to mention picked up on who's who in the pop world. All new subjects to them. I miss the tight knit family life we had, where your family are also your friends much more when in a place with no family, and fewer friends and activities around. They are both desperate to spend every available moment with their new friends. It makes me a little sad, that change. But it's all about seasons and I must learn to enjoy each one.

On the other hand, they do seem to need me for 'chats' much more than they used to. I chew the cud with them most nights before lights out. Oh and after two weeks back in England, with each having their own bedroom for the first time ever, they both decided it was a bit lonely & they preferred sharing. Not many 8 and 12 year olds would say that I imagine. Now that is a special legacy from the closeness which developed from their years abroad.

So all in all, let's just say life back here is very much a 'work in progress.'

Town or Country Living?

We're going to see a house today. Together. This is the first house my husband has got really excited about or been to view with me. He has even been doing a few sums to work out if we can afford it. We probably can't, unless they accept a lower (much lower) offer.  And then there's the issue of getting a mortgage when my husband is on annual contracts & I don't have a job.  And we've been overseas for 5 1/2 years. Off the radar.

Before we moved back to the UK we said we would definitely move house. We decided we would move to a village. It was all settled. I started looking on the Internet as soon as we knew we were moving back, so that's been 18 months now. I couldn't help it, it's one of those nesting things. Very little suitable has come up, even less that my husband would consider. Part of it is that I have much more of an eye for what you can do to a property. I still desperately want to move. It's one of the things which has made me feel much less settled and in limbo. It also feels a real step backward, being back in our old house, with the same people round the corner, doing the same things we did 6 years ago. Did those last six years really happen? They feel as though they are being compressed and squeezed into a mere hourglass of time, rather than the tome of experiences it was for us. I know I should be grateful we have a community to move back into, but I have changed & moved on, yet this just feels like I am being squeezed back into who I was & where I was in 2005.

I was hoping that moving would give me a project as well as help me put down roots and settle. My husband has his new job, my children have their new schools, I have....an over exuberant puppy & a mid-life crisis.

I want to be in the house we will be in here, so I can make it a home and get on with life. Doing a place up has always set my creative juices flowing and I would love to put my mark on somewhere rather than make do with what we inherit from the previous owners which is what we have always done before. After all I am 46 now. I've waited 21 years for this opportunity!

We have constant circular discussions about what to do. Mealtimes, late night debates. Town versus country. Which is better? My husband changes his view weekly. One week it's too expensive to move at all (stamp duty), another week it's to move way out into  the countryside to get more for our money. The next week it's to convert our cellar. And then my Country Boy decides our suburb is so convenient we would be fools to move.  It doesn't add to my feelings of security. But I feel equally paralysed by indecision.

Where we live is 5 minutes from the bus stop to school & town, a 10 minute walk to shops, library, tennis courts, six lots of friends are walking distance away. We share lifts to school, to youth group, clubs & can even have dinner & enjoy a nice bottle of wine with friends & then WALK home! BUT there are loads of student lets on our road, it's a rat run so quite a fast, noisy road and busy at rush hour. And just very urban.

Part of it is also that it's just not where I envisaged  bringing my children up, but then life often thwarts our expectations and dreams. Part of it is that I keep hoping & dreaming. Maybe I just need to let go of my dreams.  My husband is much more pragmatic & down to earth (and probably realistic)...

He had an idyllic childhood, living in a huge house, with rope ladder fire-escape from the top floor, an acre of garden, tennis court, zip wire, tree house & rope swing in the garden & what I call 'glorious isolation' - not that I would like it. I would hate to be 2 miles from my nearest neighbour!  He seems to feel if his children can't live somewhere like that, which of course they can't, then he would rather just stay put & live where we are & not try & get something a bit better. A bit more space & a bigger garden.

I did one of those pros and cons lists of 'suburb versus' village and they came out very equal but on different things. So that didn't really help either. Most people think I'm mad to consider moving and are very envious of the community we are in!  But then all my life I have felt out of sync with what everyone else is doing,  so no change there.

A few friends have said that as their kids get older, they quite like the 'limiting' nature of a village. i e their children CAN'T just be out and about all the time. You can maintain some degree of control by ferrying them around even though it is a pain. Our children have both just turned 12 and 8, so maybe we are too late for the country life and we need to be in town for the teen years......

Oh I don't know.......

What do you think? What would you do? Are you a town or country mouse?

Diamond Jubilee

Today is my daughter's school's Diamond Jubilee celebration. They re-enacted the Coronation, had a trestle table lunch outside & a crown competition (which my daughter won) and did a rendition of the National Anthem on recorder  They also had to dress in red, white and blue and bring a plate of food in for the party. Yr 3's remit was 'something sweet' Great, patriotic cupcakes it is then. Easy.

Apart from Sainsbury's having had a run on union jack decorations, it all went smoothly. These ones I used, I found away from the other sugar-bling, on a lower shelf amongst the raisins, in a broken tube. So in true Albanian fashion, I took them up to the till and asked if she could do me a 'special price' on the broken tube of red, white and blue sprinkles, as it was the only one left.

She could, and so my daughter didn't have to re-invent the union jack colour scheme, because of Sainsburys' stock crisis. Other shops seem happy to do this, however, with their sky blue, pink & cream renditions of the union jack on every kind of bag and soft furnishing imaginable. Somehow for the Diamond Jubilee celebration, it just didn't seem 'proper'.

My daughter has, of course, also been planning her outfit for weeks, asking my opinion, ignoring my opinion, tweaking the combo, trying to reduce the number of spots, stripes going on in the whole ensemble (seemingly a feature of red white and blue children's clothes- many are spotted or striped)

She has also been checking the forecast daily for slight meteorological changes. She had one outfit & two contingencies lined up you see..... So it was quite good that today was much cooler as her best outfit was the red cord skirt, blue & white striped top, white socks and shoes and a red flower slide in her hair. The only slight anomaly was the navy tee shirt she wore over the long sleeved one. It said 'Hello Paris' on it.....

Actually it is quite appropriate, as we are in fact going to Paris for the Diamond Jubilee, mainly to take advantage of the bank holiday long weekend.  Several people, however, have expressed surprise that we would choose to miss the Diamond Jubilee celebrations here. But celebrating the Jubilee in a suburb, hmm; Our street isn't having a street party and I'm quite glad. I'm just not into that sort of thing, hanging out with a bunch of strangers.  It's not that sort of street; it's a weird mix of student lets, a few family homes, empty houses, flats etc. I would actually rather be abroad for it, strangely. I wouldn't want it tobe a damp squib. Abroad, you feel special, just being British, at such a time. Everyone asks your opinion about the events.

I loved being in Tirana for Will and Kate's wedding. All the Brits were invited to a barbecue at the British embassy. It was a boiling hot summer's day, everyone was in garden party garb and some even in hats and wedding outfits, with G and T on tap, lots of wide screen TVs to watch the ceremony on, bunting, union jacks everywhere and a really festive atmosphere.

So I will enjoy, once again being abroad, with our ex pat friends living in Paris, & observing proceedings from afar and feeling, for once, a little bit nostalgic about living overseas, rather than feeling homesick for England

The Flip Side of the NHS Coin

I think I will draw a veil over the day after the operation, when my daughter was hobbling around with her catheter & bag, like a little old lady with a bad dose of piles. It was quite pathetic to see. She couldn't sit down either. However she coped well & just got on with it. I think we both thought the cystogram would be a breeze. (This was to check the reflux had been cured.) Unfortunately that wasn't to be. She was in a lot of discomfort, it didn't go smoothly & the radiographer seemed quite inexperienced, being told by the motherly, very competent nurse-in-charge how to move the bed up & down & kept making helpful suggestions about what to do next.

Thankfully, the surgeon himself arrived at the door after they called & said the op had worked. The cystogram showed no reflux. She was in the 70% of patients it works for. Hooray.

We bought a sticker book on the way out as a mini reward for being so brave & I offered my daughter a hot chocolate in the cafe but she said, still very shaky,

"Mummy I just want to go home." Who could blame her.

On arrival home she donned her beloved new dance dress, spotty tights (with no bulky 'wee' bag stuffed into them) & glittery shoes with heels & spent the day lounging glamorously on the sofa, putting her stickers in her book.

But actually, the thing I was going to write about was the less good side of the NHS: the NHS's 'low priority' policy. Or perhaps would be better called NHS Austerity Measures.

My daughter, as you may or may not remember, has a facial scar from a light fitting falling on her in Albania when my husband was changing the bulb. It slashed her cheek necessitating 3 stitches which were very quickly & ruggedly done by an American doctor there.

I went to see the GP back here & asked for a referral to a plastic surgeon. I wanted to see if the scar could be improved upon, as it is on her face & quite noticeable, particularly when she is either hot or cold it goes quite red & angry looking.

We went through all the hoops before getting a letter back saying that Oxfordshire PCT (primary care trust) has a low priority status for such things which meant, they said, they wouldn't even give her an appointment to get a plastic surgeon's opinion.

The GP was not happy about this, but said although we could appeal, it was unlikely to be successful & printed off for me the policy for 'aesthetic surgery'. This details all that they will not do.

Much of it is fair enough e.g breast 'lifts', augmentation, breast reduction (including male breast reduction..), tattoo removal, hair grafts for male baldness, laser hair removal, surgery for 'bat ears, face lift, liposuction etc.

All seems reasonable enough. But neither will they remove any warts, benign skin growths, skin tags, sebaceous cysts, pigmented or benign moles, OR keloid scars or any cosmetic 'revisions' of scars, even on the face it specifically says. I think facial scars should be an exception.

My husband gets keloid scars & 12 years ago the GP suggested to him that his keloid scar, post shoulder surgery could go on a non urgent waiting list & be dealt with. So he no longer has an ugly 5 inch caterpillar snaking across his shoulder, caused by the scar bursting open. The plastic surgeon did a beautiful job of it!

Both he & I commented on how we would be a whole lot more warty & moley given this current policy as we both had lots of finger warts, verrucas & moles removed as children, as I think many children do.

My brother is a GP & he told me he has had a verruca for 5 years. He treated it every day for about 18 months with liquid nitrogen which didn't work but even he can't get it cut out.

I had a 5 year old verruca cut out by a Singhalese dermatologist in Sri Lanka. It created quite a hole, the root was so deep. This dermatologist clearly loved her job, she used to sing as she worked & whilst removing 2 of my husband's suspicious moles on his back said "I might as well do a few more whilst I'm at it."
And she proceeded to dig away at his mole-strewn back with the passion of a person who has discovered her life's work.

So unless we pay £200 for a private consultation &, what the GP called 'substantially more', for the actual scar revision, my daughter will have to live with the scar & cover it up with make up as best she can. It is not disfiguring & people say they hardly notice it. But when near her it is very obviously there, plumb across the apple of her cheek.

At times like this I confess I pine for the health insurance we had whilst abroad, which still couldn't buy any decent treatment in Tirana, but it meant we could probably have got this seen to on our insurance if we had flown back especially. It hadn't occurred to us to do this as we assumed it could be done on the NHS once back. And we couldn't have claimed for the flights as it was non urgent.

Overall though, I think the NHS is fantastic & am so grateful for it, & for the dedicated, friendly & unstuffy medical professionals we have dealt with.

A Day with the NHS

Today was the day of our 7 y-o daughter's 4th surgical procedure in her short life. She was having a minor operation to cure her reflux, which she should have grown out of by now. She has had repeated urine infections since she was given the wrong antibiotic in Sri Lanka so the infection lingered & scarred one of her kidneys.

I am always at a loss as to how to play these occasions. I always feel I am deceiving her or betraying her trust.When I used to take her for her many vaccinations, & for all her investigations, I used to wonder just exactly when to tell her what we were doing. I am sure she doesn't remember the dreadful experiences she had in hospital in Sri Lanka but they have left a legacy of anxiety about hospitals & a need to know EXACTLY what they are going to do.

On this occasion she wanted to know how exactly they were going to get a camera inside her bladder (I think she had visions of SLRs not Borrower sized micro-cameras) & how they would make sure she didn't wake up mid operation. She mostly seemed more interested in their professional expertise rather than what they were going to 'do to her'. Fairly reasonable I guess.

She was unusually chilled & apart from a slight weepy wobble briefly this a.m, she was fine. The nurses even commented on how relaxed she was. I was amazed, & relieved. Though after several hours wait she did have a small weep & admit to being scared.

But, compared to our overseas experiences, it was great! I never cease to marvel at the amount of information given, the play nurses (play nurses?!), the caring (paediatric trained) nursing staff & non-condescending consultants. Having "Where's Moshi" read to you whilst your numbed hand has a canula inserted in all of about 10 seconds flat, with no 'brute force' or coercion in sight, was, let's say, rather a pleasant experience.

An Aussie ex-pat friend very kindly, had offered to have coffee with me in the cafe whilst Annabelle was in surgery, & was as good as her word, providing me with scintillating conversation to distract me. I have only known her a few months too. It was a really kind gesture. She also brought some chocolates for 7 y-o, the loan of her ipad for the day, & a Little Girl-Gorgeous ice-dance dress her daughter had grown out of. It had a pink velour bodice, a strappy back with a diaphanous, very short, twirly skirt. It was the perfect distraction needed when my daughter woke up.

Unfortunately they gave her a urethral catheter rather than a tummy one as the surgeon had said he would, because the consent form I had signed, had evidently specified urethral not tummy one. Who knew? So even tho I had verbally agreed, it wasn't in the dang paperwork, so urethra it was.

So the aftermath wasn't so great. In fact it gave me a flash back to her in the recovery room after her angiogram in Sri Lanka & her heart surgery at Great Ormond Street. Both times she woke up furious, (understandably after her angiogram in Sri Lanka because she was, literally, elastoplasted by both legs to a board & couldn't move.) After her heart surgery, she had been pulling at all the tubes & wires coming out of her. On this occasion today she was very weepy, sore & uncomfortable & not at all impressed by the catheter, pulling at it & the bag & trying to see what was going on.

But she was also angry. I am glad in a way. It is this feistiness & strength of will that has seen her through her chequered medical career I feel. This time the angry 7 year old version was, in a hissed whisper;
"Mummy, I thought you said these people were experts? Why am I so sore then, they didn't do a very good job."

I explained that they did do a very good job, but unfortunately operations made you sore. Oh dear, there I was deceiving her again. I hadn't mentioned this beforehand.

So she was offered pain relief, insisting it was not making any difference & said yes every time more was offered, so has happily quaffed paracetamol, codeine, nurofen & something for her bladder spasms.

I must say a girl can never seem to escape very far from wardrobe dilemmas, even at the tender age of 7 & in a hospital. We made the wrong choice this morning for 'post-operative day wear'. Trying to negotiate Charlie & Lola pants past said catheter & then stuff the catheter bag into her (tight) leggings without looking like a severe case of early onset varicose veins, was a little taxing.

We return tomorrow, hopefully in more accommodating clothing, for her micturating cystogram to check it's worked. It works in 70% of cases. This evening my daughter looked wistfully at the floaty pink velour number at the end of her bed & said;

"Mummy tomorrow for my scan, can I wear my new dance dress?"

Hmm. Concealing catheter tube & bag in such a skimpy number (when the bag has to be lower than bladder so is strapped to her leg) would be optimistic & would necessitate a similar varicose vein impression of nobbly bits under tights. Not to mention the snow outside making it somewhat impractical.

I suggested we stick to something a little more concealing. She seemed happy with that.

And I am happy to be back in a country which has health care which I really can't complain about.

In the name of....

Do you know, Iota mentioning about Daniel the Spaniel reminded me I had completely forgotten to tell you my choice of name for our dog.

I wanted to name him after the famous self-appointed king of Albania. A king whom many people have heard of even if they don't know where exactly Albania is.

His name was Zog. King Zog.

Zog the Dog. The dog for a family who once lived in Albania.

Perfect.

But the joke would probably wear off. Quite quickly.

And "Zog" is quite hard to call, & people would probably mishear & think I was calling "Dog".

Which would make me look a bit silly, & lacking in creative imagination.

I mean who has a dog called "Dog"?

Well, or Zog, for that matter.

And if people didn't know about King Zog, then perhaps they would just think it was Zog because I'm into easy rhyming doggerel. With made up rhymes. Zog -Dog. Like Dr Cheat Zeuss.

So no, fear not King Zog, I will not take your name in vain.

Puppy Power

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have been rather preoccupied....




This little 7 wk old thing came into our lives 11 days ago. As I expect some readers may remember, I rashly promised our son that when we moved back to England (in the foggy, out of focus future) , then yes we could get a dog. I have not heard the last of it since getting back from our holiday in October (the last obstacle & the other reason for my silence).

I had set him many, as I thought impossible, obstacles to over come, namely:

This dog mustn't shed hair (I do enough of that for one family), mustn't smell, mustn't slobber, not need 5 mile mile walks every day, be good with children, & be easily trainable. i.e as unlike a dog as possible really.

So my son, bless him, went away & researched it, & came up with a cockapoo (cocker spaniel crossed with poodle) It's true, they do meet all those criteria. He even did some empirical research (mainly on the beaches on the Isle of Wight) Whenever he saw a cockapoo-like dog, he approached the owner & asked questions about their canine. All in the name of research & grist for the 'Mummy Convincing' mill.

So, reader, I caved. 3 against one. The pooch won. I grew up with a dog, loved it, took it for walks, even took i t to school to give a talk about it. But since then I see it as one more thing on the 'To Do List'. One more 'person's' needs to meet. And I do a lot of that already....

So for the last few months I have been looking on the Internet but golden female cockapoos go very quickly. 2 Saturdays ago I realised I hadn't had my quick daily search, so that night i had a look & found 4 females for sale in Newark. My husband, much to his chagrin having not travelled for 3 months, also happened to be flying to Ghana that day so I drove up with the 2 children on my own to what turned out to be a bit of a puppy farm; a very nice owner & clearly full of those sorts of people who are slightly nutty about 4 legged creatures, but nevertheless a puppy factory.

We pulled up into the concrete yard & got out to a cacophony of Blood hound- Spaniel- Westie- Bassett- Poodle - & er ...other breeds barking their proverbials off. There was a farmhouse with the requisite horse brasses, horseshoes & china figurines in the windows & an outbuilding full of puppies amidst the unmistakable odour of straw & dog wee.

After years of intense longing on the part of my son, I was rather surprised at how quiet & seemingly non committal he was. Turns out he was in agonies over which to choose, the ones not chosen, what if he made the wrong decision, how would the others feel about not being chosen etc. (Oh dear anthropomorphising already.....)

Anyway as I imagine often happens in this situations, she sort of chose us. My husband had chosen the name: Bingo, after a PG Wodehouse character, a very gentle amiable soul who would frequently fall hopelessly in love. Relevance? None. Rationale? Good name for a dog. This is an unusual departure for my husband who is not an aficionado of English Literature, or anything much literary at all in fact. Science & maths yes, art & literature, no. So who was I to knock this foray into literary allusion?

And so I am a new mum again. It really is like having a needy new born & a very mobile active toddler rolled into one. I am potty training again, dealing with separation anxiety, need child locks again, must leave nothing on the floor & offer lots of reassurance & cuddles.

The first few days it was doing my head in, she needed constant monitoring, she whimpered & yelped vociferously when left, in fact she has quickly developed a quite impressive wolf howl for such a tiny animal; she kept trying to climb into my lap whilst driving, & I kept inadvertently stepping into her 'offerings'.

However she has quickly wheedled her way into my good books. It is quite sweet being adopted as someone's mum; she finds a shoe or item of my clothing to drag into her bed when I leave her. When I stand still for a few minutes she curls up on my feet or leans heavily against me for reassurance, or just because she wants to be near me. They're very cunning these animals. And it's certainly true they do give you an amazing welcome. Unconditional love has a lot to be said for it....

My son has already trained her to sit on command & I have got her (mostly) performing on newspaper now, though she does like to throw a random curve ball in occasionally (usually early in the morning when I come downstairs, the light is off & I am in bare feet.....)

And I have found a practical use for her as a hot water bottle even as I am typing now, in our very cold house.

But most of all, we have had such a laugh as a family, the children adore her. To our daughter she is a 'live teddy' who gets cradled & carried around the house incessantly. She arrives home from school & tells Bingo,

"I've misssed you SO much. You're so precious, yes you are. You're my special girl!"
I keep thinking she's got the wrong person, but no, she's definitely talking to the dog.....

She is very entertaining & we are looking forward to taking her out into the big wide world once she is fully inoculated. And a bit bigger. However, a male friend gave my husband a friendly word of advice, saying that perhaps it would be better, for the preservation of his macho image, if he waited till she had grown a little before taking her out for a walk. Or he might receive some unsolicited attention (& not from other dogs).....

Below, our puppy enjoying her "dog's life"

Shopping Errands

My husband went to the supermarket this morning. First time this century I believe. To buy bread & milk.

What did he buy?

Wine, port, pate, a size 4 rugby ball, an All Blacks rugby shirt for our 11 y-o, & a South African rugby shirt for himself (he was born there) .... so he's covering all his bases.

Honestly, I despair...

Falling Foul of Rule Britannia

Coming home should be easy right? Easier anyway. I had lived in Britain for 38 of my 39 years before we left. I knew the language, the customs, traditions etc. However, things change, things move on.

Two things which have been 'doing my head in' are recycling & health & safety.

We have been putting all our rubbish in one bin for the past 5 1/2 yrs abroad, & taking it to the roadside skip. Or if you are a very good citizen you burn it yourself, poisoning your neighbour with the fumes. If not, you dump it in the river, or throw it out of the car whilst driving along, leave it on the beach, wherever...

In fact before we left the UK, we were composting but there was no recycling collection. We took bags & cardboard & bottles to the bottle bank bins. That was it. Now we rinse, & separate our (soft) plastics, card & paper & glass. At least it all goes in one bin. But it reminds me once again just how law abiding & obedient Brits are, by & large. This would just never work in Albania.

But I have often wondered how it gets sorted & recycled. Or if it does even...My parents told me the story of how a friend in their village asked what happened to all the recycled stuff when he saw it being mashed up all together, in what looked like the regular rubbish lorry. The two Polish guys on the back of the truck said "Oh, it goes to landfill"

When this gentleman phoned the council they were, unsurprisingly, rather cagey about this, before admitting that once they had met their 'recycling quota' (for that month, year??) it all indeed went to landfill. So not only are we obedient, we are gullible & mugs too spending ages sorting stuff that is never recycled. The trouble is you don't know when it will be recycled & when it won't. I'm all for recycling, but only if it really is being recycled.


Now that we have a puppy, the recycling box is one more source of treasure & doggy delights & the cause of a few Mummy Meltdowns too as plastic chicken trays, milk bottles & cardboard get raided & strewn round the kitchen. That's not the council's fault of course, but mine for getting a dog.

Then there's Health & Safety. Where do I start? Let's just say it is a completely alien concept in either of the two overseas countries we have lived in, in recent years. So it has been a steep learning curve. I know about booster seats,, I am not sure about riding in the front seat & I definitely don't know at what age you can leave children alone in the house. But 2 health & safety rules recently took me completely by surprise.

1.) I went to fill the car up with fuel & my son got out of the car to watch & help (he had never seen self service!) Within seconds an authoritative & urgent voice came across the tannoy asking, "the woman at pump number six" to put her son back in the car immediately before any petrol defied gravity & splashed upwards into his wide eyes. Children, evidently, aren't allowed on the forecourt, I was informed. I dutifully obeyed, I was so dumbstruck (the art of public humiliation works well in Britain). My husband announced it was lucky for Tesco, he had not been there. He sees red at most Health & Safety rules in this country & can't stand any sniff of being 'nannyed'. I would love to know what he would have done! I presume though it's more an American import: the fear of litigation.

2.) I went to the tip to dump one of the many loads of abandoned tenant-detritus left in our house & my hapless son got out of the car again to help me. Within seconds a man, unmissable in his fluorescent jacket, marched over to me & told me to put my son back in the car as it was dangerous for him to be out amongst the hazardous skips of cardboard & garden waste. This was followed by "Can't you read the signs?" I had been looking right at all the skips trying to identify where a broken sandwich toaster might go, however, the signs bearing a 'crossed out child' were on the left hand side of the road, so no, I hadn't noticed.

Of course the thing I do now, which is infinitely more dangerous, is driving with a puppy in the car. Talk about distracting. She chews my hand as I change gear, tries to climb on my lap, so I have my largest handbag with me, barricading my lap. If I put her in the back she scrabbles through to the front. If I put her in the boot, the protesting howls & whines are very offputting, not to mention the sight of an off white ball of fluff pogo-ing in & out of my rear view mirror as she tries in vain to leap the back seat.

Now there should be a law about that. In fact I'm off to 'Petworld' or some such place tomorrow to find the canine equivalent of a strait jacket...
The picture is of the dog sitting on my boots (she misses me when I go out) poised above the recycling box, ready to find a delicious plastic milk container.

Observations of a OneTime Outsider.

People ask what we notice coming back here & I hardly dare mention two of the glaring ones because they are such sensitive subjects. But for the sake of documentation accuracy I will tell you. Suffice to say, I am not passing judgement, I am just observing:

1. the number of seriously obese people
2. the number of different nationalities living here.
3. the cost of living in Britain.

1. I have been to America many times & it feels like America in this way now. According to statistics 1 in 10 adults in Britain are obese. British women are the most obese in Europe, though still behind their American counterparts. In 1980 the average BMI for women (body mass index, healthy being anything between 18.5 & 25.9) was 24.2. Now it is 26.9 for British women. fro British men it is 27.4 (the 4th highest in Europe if you're interested)



2. Ok, so we live in Oxford & visit London, both of which are highly international places. We also have lived in the most homogenous society in Europe, so the contrast is stark. Nobody 'immigrates' to Albania, so apart from its handful of missionaries, NGO workers, embassy staff & for some reason a small Chinese population (the communist connection perhaps??) EVERYONE is Albanian. So much so that they really don't know how to treat ethnic minorities at all. A West Indian friend living there used to get called 'monkey' & such like in the streets.

But where I live here in Oxford, when I travel on the bus, I am a minority in terms of language certainly & colour sometimes. When I shop at Lidl, apart from elderly couples, I only hear other languages around me. I can't work out why other normal British families don't shop there. Ok so you can't get everything there but it's SO much cheaper, yet it's pensioners & foreigners who shop there, because, like me, they find Britain frighteningly expensive. Maybe other Brits aren't feelign as crunched by the economy as we are.....

The net result overall of all this is, it just feels very different &, to be frank, a bit disorienting. I am surprised it has changed so much in 6 years, but it really has. I guess living abroad you feel your 'Nationality' much more, I felt very British & identified strongly with my British roots. Coming home, I'm not sure anymore what that means....

3. As for the credit crunch, much as I said I want to have some space before commiting to anything, as well as training the puppy when we get it, decorating the whole house (which I keep putting off) & helping my children adjust, as the cracks are beginning to appear, I think I may have to go out to work to supplement the charity salary my husband earns. Maybe it's just 'set up' costs & once we have replaced the boiler, bought a car, decorated the house, things will ease up a bit.

One thing I loved about living abroad & working for an NGO, is they look after you & we could live within our means. Easily. And you could afford to have a cleaner, a shared driver, believe it or not, for the school run (it was cheaper than me driving everyday), eat out, employ babysitters frequently, travel, get private health care as part of the package, & stuff like tennis lessons etc were really cheap too. I guess I was very spoilt in some ways despite it not being an easy place to live. It's quite a shock, & one of the anomalies that whilst living in a developing country, with infrastructure issues, power cuts, pollution, horrendous traffic & much less available in the shops, you did have these significant perks, which I must admit, made the frustrations a lot easier to cope with. So I need to adjust now to a different & much more thrifty lifestyle.

The good news is I can do supply teaching, which is well paid; the bad news is it's soul destroying, & the very worst aspect of teaching there is. I have just met anAmerican woman who has moved here & put her children in the local state school (in middle class Oxfordshire. Ha!) & frankly it's horrific. The kids swear at the teachers & nothing is done about it, the walls inside the school are covered in grafitti, their daughter says there is complete lack of respect for the tecahers, the children talk all through the lessons, they have had no homework in 3 weeks, the Head of year has told the parents that they don't need to keep coming in (this was on day 2) when they have had NO information at all, the kids haven't had timetables even. her son went to the wrong lessons for an entire week. How could that happen? I couldn't believe it. Ok so not all schools in Oxfordshire are like that (though the primary schools have the worst Key stage 1 results in the country & are in the bottom 10% for Key Stage 2) I have taught in 6 of Oxfordshire's secondary schools & whilst 3 were pretty tough, none were that bad & certainly had better discipline & support structures in place.

So I am not looking forward to the prospect which couldn't be further from my 'perfect job' in GDQ International School in Tirana. I fear this reverse culture shock is going to take me a while to process....