Applying for PR

I doubt many of you will have even heard of PR (permanent residency in the UK) but if you have a close friend or family member that have led to your joining the Facebook groups: Forum for eu citizens (the3million) or UK citizenship eu nationals CEN, then you will probably have heard of nothing else since last July.

It used to be that no EU nationals applied for this piece of paper as they were allowed under EU law to work and live here indefinitely without it. It is a document aimed at migrants from places like the US or similar. Technically, until the UK leaves the EU it is still not required, and ironically, given it comes under EU law, it may not even be valid after Brexit. But the important fact is that you cannot apply for UK citizenship unless you already have Permanent Residency status, so many of the 3 million EU citizens who have been living here for decades are desperately clambering to get it and thereafter citizenship to stop the government being able to deport them in 2019 when the Brexit negotiations are due to be completed.

The process seems to be that you apply after being in the country for five years for Permanent Residency which seems to cost just under a hundred pounds, then you need to sit a language test (even if you have lived here for the whole of your life (which is the case for some EU passport holders, even if you have a degree in English from a non-UK uni, even if you work as an English translator or interpreter or you happen to lecture in say English Lit at Oxford - yes it is that absurd!) To put it in perspective, if you know me - Thomas is obliged to sit it! After knowing him fifteen years I can actually tell you every mistake he's made in English in my presence as they number fewer than the fingers on one hand. Even as a dictionary consultant who wrote his Masters thesis in English before moving here, Thomas is not exempt!

Of course, you get to pay for the privilege of sitting that too and finally you then have to take the Life in the UK test. Without beating about the bush, it is also a piece of nonsense... I am no more likely to be able to pass it than Thomas is as it is full of obscure historical facts and quotes from poems that may well be part of the ordinary English school curriculum but definitely are not part of the Scottish one! They ask questions about health and schooling and law - all of which are different up here, so if you are bright, you simply have to memorize a long list of meaningless facts to jump through a ridiculous hoop.

If you have been living here since the turn of the millennium, always working and sending your kids to the local school, you should probably be given a bye into the next round but that's been ruled out for two reasons as far as I can see - it would reduce the stress levels of the foreigner who has to sit it (and we can't be having them feel secure and comfortable in the place they used to consider as home - that just wouldn't do at all) and it would mean less money for the treasury, because these two obligatory but meaningless hoops cost the EU citizen another £150.

So already you are up at £250 before you can apply for citizenship which can set you back more than a thousand pounds itself. (In our family that is bad enough but in some families everyone, including the kids, is having to apply so we're talking £1000+ per person!) It's not a bad little money spinner for the government to suddenly require 3 million people take these tests, but I'm sure that's not why they aren't clarifying people's statuses...

Of course, back to PR - if you fill the (up-to-recently 85 page form, that wants details of every trip home to a wedding or stag weekend since the year dot, payslips and utility bills (God forbid they're in your wife's name) till you're drowning in them etc incorrectly), if you omit a p60 from 5 years ago, if you didn't take out CSI - that's private health insurance to you and I - during the week you were off on paternity leave seven years ago (and that no one knew was mandatory till they started applying for PR!) then your application is rejected, your qualifying five years reset to zero and your £70 not refunded. You are simply sent a rejection with no explanation. I have seen some applications rejected because they were sent in with a legally signed and certified photocopy of the bearer's passport giving the reason that they were unable to furnish them with the original as they needed to commute back and forth to say France on business or to visit a sick relative and couldn't be without their passport for four to six months. Thomas would certainly not feel comfortable handing his passport in indefinitely - it is only three years since his mum's stroke meant he'd to fly to Italy with less than two days warning. But nope - there are no excuses - all passports must be surrendered for as long as they want to look at them. The form itself is cumbersome, contradictory and woolly to say the least. The paperwork weighs up to 5kg in some cases. Only originals of everything - because let's  face it - who doesn't keep that ferry receipt from a shopping weekend in France twelve years ago in case some nutjobs vote you out the EU based on a bucket-load of lies a decade down the line AND the government implements some new rules retrospectively?

And that's for the lucky ones who actually might qualify. If you haven't worked five years, you can't even apply. Last week I read about a Frenchwoman who'd come 15 years ago, worked 4.5 years before going on maternity leave, her baby (a UK citizen born here with an English dad) was born disabled so she gave up work to be the carer of a disabled UK citizen. Not eligible - because the 4.5 years is all that counts! It makes you want to scream at the computer on a daily basis as each new member recounts their own nightmare scenario!

On a daily basis I am seeing people who've been here 20, even 30 years having their applications rejected on technicalities. They moan to their friends who assure them that everything will be just fine as long as your married to a UK citizen - well it won't. Having a UK partner, husband, wife or even UK citizen kids counts for nothing at all in this country thanks to May's delightful rules. You just have to read the non-EU rules this week to see what we're talking about. It does not matter at all what your spouse's earning potential is, if you are under-employed because of redundancy or similar - tough! This ruling prices 40% of the UK out of being able to marry a non-EU partner and let's face it - two years from now, all those EU spouses are potentially in exactly the same boat.

So Thomas and I looked into PR at first but we've both concluded individually and together that we see no reason to pander to their nonsense. He came here, exercising his EU citizen rights, not as a migrant, not as an immigrant but as an EU citizen working in an EU country. If that country decides to impose £1500+ bills on every EU citizen who has come here in good faith and settled many years ago, then let them seek us out, let them deal with three million 85-page application forms and 15 million kilos of paperwork. I think they are forgetting that the very people who made that move are the outward-looking, internationalists who cannot reasonably see a future in a closed, xenophobic, peripheral and pitiful state. Many people seem relieved at last when they've jumped through the last hoop and emptied their hard-earned pockets into the coffers of the treasury, but to be honest PR doesn't interest us because if this isolationist, hard-line Brexit becomes a reality and Scotland doesn't manage to find an escape route, then I can see no future for our kind of family here.

Neil Hilborn

I caught this on Facebook the other night. How can so much emotion be conveyed in less than three minutes? You laugh, you cry, you feel his pain, you get a glimpse into his mental health issues, you live his anxiety and at the end, the last two lines actually make you gasp as a coldness comes across your whole body. I dare you not to feel it.

Press and journalism

Yesterday was 'One day without us' here in the UK... not that you would know it, given 95% of the UK press didn't cover it but if you speak other languages, you might have caught it on the news in France or Germany or elsewhere as the foreign press did get round to mentioning. Basically as many EU citizens as had the ability or choice stayed home from work yesterday and gathered outside the Houses of Parliament in London to protest their rights. Many also gathered in other town centres when London was too far. Now, it wasn't as if the BBC wasn't in the area as they did cover the anti-Trump protest which also took place in London yesterday, they just happened to underplay the EU protest.

It is interesting to watch the deflated atmosphere amongst the EU citizens involved in the protest today - noticeably on the Facebook forum 'the3million' - a site dedicated to supporting EU national in the UK during the fiasco that is Brexit. They thought that if they protested in their thousands, they couldn't be ignored. I was, of course, completely expecting that they would indeed be ignored.

As a supporter of Scottish Independence, I have become a hardened cynic to the ways of the press over the years. There are many reasons for why I am in favour of indy... Firstly, I had predicted as early as 2013 that the UK might drag us out of the EU, and for me in my international family, that isn't an option. But I also simply want to live in the socially-caring and inclusive, internationalist, non-xenophobic country Scotland aspires to be rather than the current UK which is turning its back on all those things I hold so dear. I want investment in the NHS and free education to nurture the brightest lights of the next generation rather than these basics being run down and privatized. But those are the reasons you hear at pro-Indy meetings - both political and non-political while the press try always to tar us as blood and soil right-wing xenophobes rather than civic nationalists. They claim we're anti-English, when half the Women for Indy group I belong to are English-born! They just want to move towards the Scandinavian model of society and away from the Imperialist one we are slipping towards. We'd love nothing more than the English who are dismayed at the current state of affairs moving up and joining us Scottish, English and Europeans who are fighting for a better future.

I have been to countless demos, marches and protests over the last five years that have failed to be mentioned in the mainstream press. I have stood outside the BBC building singing my heart out in crowds of 1000+ in peaceful protest only to have them deny we're there or at the very most credit us with being a small but violent crowd of a hundred evil Nat men - often when the crowd is mainly couples, kids, disabled people, pensioners, babies and none is carrying anything to identify them as a 'Nat'. (These are typical examples)

I'm not parroting Donald here in a claim that the press actually lies but one thing that has been abundantly clear here over the last few years is that while insignificant things are often reported for their sensation value, other larger things can go completely unreported as it doesn't suit their agenda and their view of the current state of affairs. Let's be truthful about it. The press and importantly the BBC created Brexit. By taking the conscious decision nearly a decade ago to give much more airtime/print space over to to Nigel and his Kipper friends, rather than say, the UK Green party who were just as big if not bigger when Nigel started his almost weekly appearances on Question Time, they scared the Tories into having a Referendum that no one would have mentioned otherwise. Now, by failing to question May's Hard Brexit line, they are again setting the agenda - and this time I exempt the Guardian as it is actually beginning to brave printing many awkward questions that everyone should be asking. See this, this and this in just the last two days.

I don't really understand the plan (if indeed there is one). They can wave their flags and read how great they are but the day the UK falls off a cliff, people will actually notice and start asking why the press and the BBC didn't do its job. When did journalism become more about ratings than about holding people to account? Where other than the Guardian (and the National up here) is anyone asking why we are proceeding without a plan to ruin our children's future? One day the children will ask us what we did to stop the madness and we'll need to have our answers ready!

Guessing the flavour

Brita and Peter came over from Italy for a visit, bringing with them a large bag of assorted Italian sweets. Rather than asking them or us every time they took one, they used their knowledge of other languages to guess what they were choosing each time. It worked fine with caffè, fragola, cappuccino,vaniglia and a few others, but I wish I'd had my phone on movie mode when Léon chose 'salvia e limone' (lemon sage) assuming it was simply a lemon boiled sweet - he was beyond appalled and stopped short at washing his mouth out with soap to recover! Lol.

Ten years on

Ten years ago. I always liked this photo. I don't think anyone had ever looked at me like that before and I'd never have known, had someone not taken it.

Mini-Proclaimer

Omg. Amaia made this video for Charlotte ( who's going to Nicaragua to do some charity work in the summer ). Isn't it the sweetest thing ever?  I just love her pronunciation of a country she has never heard of till now.

Disgusted

We've sat through a good couple of weeks now of people in the UK frothing at the mouth at the sheer cheek of Donald Trump to ban US inhabitants who are legally living in the States with their green cards from re-entering the country. He's basically said that although they have obtained the legal right to work there, he will fight against their right to be there.

Last night these UK MPs took a similar view. They voted against protecting the rights of EU citizens who have come legally to this country, bought houses, paid taxes, had children and have been here for up to forty years. They claim, of course, that they want to use them to bargain with other EU governments. They aren't against their rights, they just want to wait and see. But this implies, of course, that there are circumstances where it would be ok in their eyes for these citizens to be removed from the UK. It would be ok to deport people who live and work here and whose children are UK citizens. There are circumstances where it would be ok to split a family up by deporting an EU spouse of a UK citizens. Every one of those spouses with UK citizenship, every one of those UK-passport holding children will remember this list (and the one below it of those who think people deserve to carry on living the life they have made for themselves legally), for a very, very long time. They will enter Brexit talks with 27 nations hoping to become close friends and allies with the ex-EU states having shown utter disdain for the expat communities from those countries and their families. I've never seen such poor judgement and hypocrisy.

And I'll leave you with this from the chamber yesterday - from real opposition to the current government.

Whitelee photo competition

I seem to be popular this morning :-) I expect Amaia will like the Evening Times headline best though - lol

Congratulations to our #whiteleephotocomp winner  @phylbuc with this picture of her adorable daughter Amaia on Whitelee Windfarm. #competition #amateurphotography #photography #landscape

A photo posted by ScottishPower (@scottishpowerhq) on Feb 8, 2017 at 1:03am PST

Mum's snap of her daughter wins Whitelee Wind Farm photographic competition

Competition winners turn their focus on Scots wind farm

Amaia is Whitelee Instagram star

Whitelee wind farm selects winner from awe inspiring photo content

It's funny - I assumed they would be looking for something atmospheric so entered my best shots of the farm and then as an after thought I put in a few of the kids playing there, never for a moment thinking they were actually going to use cute to sell it as a tourist destination. :-)





Here are some of my other photos that I thought were good.

I've now bought the paper newspapers (where available) and they have different headlines - no guessing needed as to which was Amaia's favourite!

Life on the roller coaster part 2: It's only a couch...

I was discussing the level of uncertainty facing mixed EU couples yesterday with my MP (and friend) Kirsten Oswald. She was asking me to describe how it is to be in a situation (ongoing for the last seven months and given every indication coming out of Westminster, continuing to be ongoing indefinitely or at least until 2019).

You don't actually know if your husband will be allowed to stay in the country after 2019, or simply if he'll continue to get the same standard of living afterwards. You don't know if you'll be able to follow him if he's sent away as your right to travel will be revoked at the same time as his.

Even if they let me travel, what becomes of the oldest of my three youngest children at Brexit point? The two oldest are over 18 in 2019 so can decided themselves, as dual citizens of UK and France, where to live, the two youngest can go or stay as they too are dual citizens of UK and Denmark, but what of the child of my first marriage who will be 14 at that point. Yes, he too is a dual national so can leave on his French passport, but until he's 18, only his French father can get him a French passport and needs to sign documentation allowing him to leave. I have no contact with him and he hasn't seen his father since 2012. If I had to bet my mortgage on him helping us out if I was to track him down, I'd bet he'd refuse to help us. Some divorces are sadly like that. So do I get to wait home with him till he turns 18 while the others all live abroad? (Not in this home of course because I can't pay for that alone...)That's fairly stressful as situations go, isn't it?

I worry too what will happen to my two student children in 2019. If I actually get to leave and they are part way through their course, are the still UK citizens as over 18s who always lived here or will they suddenly be charged the full £16K a year because mum moved abroad? No one seems to know. These questions are huge and because it hasn't happened before, no one can answer them. You're just supposed to get on with life as usual as if nothing is happening.

Thomas talks about applying for the right to remain but my gut feeling is why would you beg and grovel to stay a place that doesn't want you and where your children will be cut off from the rest of the continent where people potentially celebrate differences better...

I, then, as a light note and to add some humour to our chat, mentioned to Kirsten that my TV room couch was a bin case! It's so insignificant on the scale of things that are worrying me, but look at it! The TV room is a little den, if you like, not a living room and as such a normal three piece suite doesn't fit. Ikea sells a corner couch (Friheten - ironically in this case means Freedom in Swedish! (something I feel we have all too little of at the moment)).

This would be a perfect replacement for that mess we're sitting on. It's legs are loose so it wobbles. It looks like the cat's got it (except we don't have a cat). But we're not buying it. Spending £400 on something that fits a room in our current house seems meaningless at the moment as we don't know how long we'll be allowed to stay here. We don't know how far we'll have to take all our furniture and we don't know when £400 might become a matter of life and death. That is the reality of what's happened to us and the three million other families like us in the UK at the moment. It's funny that the big questions could overwhelm but somehow it was the simple, matter-of-fact way that I mentioned we wouldn't be buying a new couch that really brought it home to her, how precarious this situation feels (and I didn't even show her this picture!). Sometimes the small things can be larger than the big ones.

Live from the House of Commons...

Despite bobbing throughout the whole debate on the EU Nationals amendments to the Brexit Bill, myself and six other SNP colleagues were not called to speak. 
I want our EU friends and neighbours in East Renfrewshire to know that I stand with them, so I have recorded my speech anyway.
The UK Govt must see sense, and start treating people as people,mans confirm their right to stay.


I would like to thank my friend, and MP for spending the entire day in the House of Commons today trying to have my case heard and for going to the trouble of recording her speech for everyone to see when she was denied the right to give it in the House because of time constraints.

It is easy for those in charge of the Tory party to sit daily saying we are overreacting and nothing has changed in our situation (as yet anyway). But realistically who sits and wonders without a care in the world when the status of their partner is being changed after what will be 17 years in the country (despite him not having a vote on the matter) from legal EU resident to 'rest of the world immigrant' - a status which usually involves specific earnings thresholds, specific paperwork, visas and all sorts?

I don't realistically believe there will be mass deportations - that would lead to too many bad headlines - well in some of the press at least. Maybe fathers being ripped from the arms of their children and thrown onto a boat or plane would be celebrated by Express readers and similar... But insidious changes are not beyond the likelihood with a government like this. Maybe he'll need to suddenly find hundreds of pounds a month for health insurance but of course as an asthmatic (I think it's called having a pre-existing condition in the US - a lovely euphemism for please empty you bankbook into our account now) maybe he won't even be insurable... Would you live in a country where as a tax-payer you used to get healthcare, but now don't?

We've also heard ideas being flung around like fining companies £1000 for using an EU worker instead of a British one. This is particularly awful for consultants like my husband - he works for many different clients/employers every year, not one, so suddenly will all the work dry up even if he can stay? Like everyone our mortgage is based on two incomes, not just on mine so losing his would leave us homeless. So don't tell us we are worrying unnecessarily and nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

People are already leaving and yes, it'll look great for the government's headline immigration figures but only until we realize we can't attract the right calibre of teachers, lecturers, vets, specialized doctors and so on any more. No one in their right mind who isn't already here and in this mess will apply, and anyone without ties is fleeing already. Interestingly on the EU forum on facebook many, many people who are trapped here because their kids are at the wrong point in their education to change language are all planning an exodus to Dublin. If I was the Irish government I'd actually be beginning to worry about the size of the possible influx they could see over the next couple of years.

The government actually believes that letting in the right kind of people will work. Imagine I'm a Belgian vet (90% of abattoir vets in the UK are EU nationals and the entire meat industry relies on them certifying meat hygiene.) From now on if I apply to work here I am not sure my status will be guaranteed, I am not sure my partner will be able to join me or allowed to work, I am not sure if the people of the UK will be racist towards me, I can see from the drop in the exchange rate that what I would earn would be 20% lower when converted back into my national currency than it would have been last May. You as the UK government are going to have to offer me 30-40% more than I would earn in Germany, France or the Netherlands to have any chance of me even considering applying. Is May really planning that kind of financial incentives? on what budget?

It's an absolute bloody mess.

Life on the roller coaster part 1

I haven't been blogging as much as I used to for the past six months. I keep thinking to myself that I'll get back to it once I feel normal again. But I'm beginning to suspect normal is a thing of the past and that if I wait till my mood stabilizes, no one will be hearing much from me at all this side of 2020, so maybe the solution is to inflict my daily ups and downs on the world in lieu of sitting waiting on mental stability.

I have, of course, mentioned Brexit once or twice but not the full roller coaster ride it is providing on a weekly basis. I don't think going through the emotions chronologically really works. Then you end up with a mundane list of: that week I was almost ok, that week I was bloody angry and that week I hid under the duvet and cried a lot, that week every time I looked at Facebook or Twitter I panicked, that week I spent on the Internet researching international house prices...

Well that's an interesting starting point actually to get an idea of the state of mind of those of us in a mixed marriage at the moment...

It must have been a fortnight or so ago. Every piece of news was gloomier than the next, Trump was compounding everything and that embarrassment of a woman was on the first plane over to fall at his feet, humiliating us in the process. Thomas was working away from home that day - those days are always the worst for dark thoughts.

So I procrastinated at the computer starting in Dublin. I wondered what the price of a five bedroom equivalent house is in Dublin - I could be in the EU there, so could Thomas and the kids could continue their schooling in English. An hour later I had concluded, without even checking what constituted a decent school, that there were only about two houses with five bedrooms that I could afford if I sold mine, so I went back to the drawing board.

Copenhagen, of course, drew the same blank... of course the kids would be fine there at school but we need a lot of space and space is dear in Copenhagen, so where now?

My head turned to the French German border... I have lived there before, Thomas is a fluent German speaker and theoretically I could live either side of that border, though of course I'd prefer the opposite side to Thomas. The kids would have a bit of a learning curve on the schooling front but it wouldn't be unimaginable... I soon found we could afford a house this size or even bigger significantly cheaper than this one, so my mood brightened until of course it hit me for the zillionth time that although the other six members of my family would be allowed to go, seventeen million people had voted to imprison me on this effing island for all eternity. I was raging, and inconsolable in five minute bursts for the rest of the afternoon.

I think slowly over the last six months I have gone from hating what they did to my husband, potentially leading to him being thrown out of his home country, the place where he has a job and a family, a car and a mortgage, to realizing that actually he still has 27 potential home countries, I'm the prisoner. I go over and over in my head, beating myself up despite being a 'je ne regrette rien' type of girl, usually at least... why didn't I take out French nationality with my first husband when I had the chance? Because this was never going to happen - that's why!!! I try somehow to convince the Danes I deserve a Danish passport, though I know that is harder. Denmark needs you to prove you have a deeper connection to there than here, which is kind of difficult when we met here and live here. Technically, I guess, if he gets deported that might become a more obvious argument! In a panic I check the French rules and realize if I just live there two years, I can apply for citizenship as the mother of a French minor, but that means leaving before article 50 and simultaneously Charlotte needs me here as she's sitting Highers in four months - it's all one colossal, fucking, never-ending nightmare.

Then I fall apart again. I got divorced at 37. I restarted my life from scratch. I took out a new mortgage though I was thirteen years into the first one. Rebuilding everything, though it was the right decision, was tiring and I can't honestly face restarting again at 49, as that is the age I turn on Saturday. It's hopeless. Thomas too restarted his life at 30 in a new country. We're fifteen years down the line and he too would find restarting an uphill struggle. If we're both exhausted at the thought then how can we find the strength to force it on the kids? Worse still, two will be at uni and three at school at Brexit point. We can't break up a family. But if the country follows this suicidal hard vision of the Tories, we owe it to the kids to get them out and plead with the older ones to join us after their studies because there will be no future in Scotland for them if we're dragged along. It is my duty to do what's best for my kids, and that surely means giving them a future. But how? How do you start again at 49 and 45 with nothing, and no jobs and two of your kids in another country, worrying about your mum who you've left behind? I slump to the floor again in self-pity.

Later that night Thomas, always more optimistic than me, puts on an Icelandic drama to cheer me up. And there it is! Reykjavik! A sudden light bulb moment - we frantically google the exchange rate and find a rather fetching bright red B&B for sale (a bit like this) in central Reykjavik for about £300K - two problems solved - an affordable house and a job! Ok so I can only recognize maybe 5% of Icelandic words but how hard can it be? Thomas studied old Norse twenty years ago! I dream of that escape for another couple of hours before bumping back down yet again on my nasty little roller-coaster as I waken in the middle of the night to realize once again the family have all been forced out but I can't join them. Cold sweat time in the wee small hours. I'm tired of it all... and it hasn't even started yet.

So this is my day to day life since last June. It is exhausting. So who knows what Life on the roller coaster part 2 will be  - maybe one of my angry days - they're fun to watch and expletive-filled, or maybe it'll be one of my optimistic ones, or perhaps something unrelated on one of the few days where I almost push it out my mind. Time will tell, but I suppose it's better than just blogging it in my  own head.

Rhyming exercises

Thomas was asking me earlier about this video. I was sure I had blogged it last March when I filmed it but it turns out I'd simply been discussing it on Facebook with some Danish friends. The generic homework occasionally given across the UK (despite there being two completely separate education systems overseen by totally different authorities) sometimes makes my brain hurt. A Scottish child will learn nothing whatsoever from this exercise. All they will take away from it is a vague sense of amusement. If more targeted material was written for them pointing out areas of confusion that occur in their accent, they could actually learn something more pertinent! Sigh.

Going commando

Celebrating Robert Burns at school.
Amaia (skipping into school): heeheehee
Me: What? 
Amaia: I'm cheating, mum! 
Me: What do you mean? 
Amaia: I've got my pants on! 
Ha ha ha. Didn't have the heart to tell her only boys are meant to go commando!

Heterochromia

Annual new glasses day! 

A photo posted by Phyllis Buchanan (@phylbuc) on Jan 21, 2017 at 7:51am PST

I take countless photos every year of my kids and I'm always astounded at how seldom I manage to capture the difference between Anna's eyes. Unlike many people who can be described as heterochromic, Anna doesn't have two completely different-coloured eyes. Years ago I taught a boy in France who had one blue eye and one dark brown, but Anna's heterochromia stems more from proportions. Her right eye is about 70% green, 30% brown, the left is the opposite. It looks quite special in the correct light, but the fact that she wears glasses often hides it to all but those of us who know about it. I remember taking her to a swimming party once with her class, kids who've known her since she was three or four years old. Many remarked when she went into the pool with no glasses, that it was the first time they'd noticed the anomaly. I think she quite likes being different!

7 year old politics

For the first time since yesterday's Armageddon speech I just managed a laugh thanks to my kids...

Me: Anna you're on dishes tonight, get a move on! 

Anna: (moan, moan, moan, whine, whine, whine) ...but it's not faaaaair! 

Amaia: Oh come on Anna just do it, it's bad enough having Theresa May in charge of the country wrecking all our futures, without you moaning about dishes too! 

(Is this a normal 7 year old comment, or is her world view somewhat clouded by having parents in a mixed EU marriage, perhaps?)

Normalising breastfeeding

I found this old video footage the other day from January 2000. Marcel is 2 years and 5 months old, Charlotte is 7 days. Marcel has therefore only been watching me breastfeed her for about five days and yet he's got the technique of what to do without ever being shown. He even offers her both sides - wee cherub. For him, it is the most normal thing in the world. Sometimes we can learn a lot when we look at the world through the eyes of a toddler!

(For anyone who is trying to understand the conversation, by the way, 'Oodah' was a world Marcel invented for breastmilk when he was being fed himself a year earlier - my old (ex-)mother-in-law often joked it came etymologically from the word 'udder' in her dialect of German, which I seriously doubt!)

Early-life crisis

'What's wrong with me, mum? I'm like a sad old da... Not only did I buy myself a slow cooker at the age of 19... but I am actually excited about it!'

Hahahaha - I love my wee boy!

Mixed marriages

This ad and in particular the Guardian article written about it moved me because it found a way to put into words the only adult life I have known.

For better or worse both my marriages have been to 'immigrants' and as the spouse, you too are caught up in a life that is very different to the lives of those who simply married the boy or girl next door. From my eighteenth birthday on, Xmas was spent shuffling, overheated in a winter coat and rucksack from bus to train to ferry to Eurostar, from plane to plane sitting often for hours on the floor in airports waiting for the snow to stop or the plane or runway to be de-iced. Although you are one in an enormous anonymous crowd, you are also comrades in arms and you often found yourself chatting to other families of mixed souls like yourself. Xmas '96 saw me almost alone on a Boeing 747 departing Frankfurt. I remember watching from the window as an airport worker sprayed down the wings with some de-icing product while the captain explained that they were using such a large aircraft into Heathrow that night as the smaller ones could cope with -18. As I looked down through that snowstorm they confirmed they'd had to shut the airport after my departure. Xmas '97 found me sitting with a four month old baby waiting for a mini-hurricane to die down once again before flying nearly 24 hours late into London sideways through purple skies forked with lightning. Xmas '06 saw me clock up 18 hours in Stansted with numerous children while I waited apprehensively to lift off for my first ever trip to Denmark - me a not-yet fully divorced woman trying desperately to avoid bumping into my soon-to-be ex husband who was also transiting through Stansted that day.

That is the life of the mixed marriage... the warning no one puts on the label when you choose that spouse.

In 1997 I gave birth to my first child. I knew his family knew no English so painstakingly spoke to him all day every day only in the language of his family, far away who he'd see maybe once a year. My language took second place to my attempt to build that relationship and had I not, there would have been no relationship. Our family sat round the table speaking three languages at all times - French, German and English. We mixed customs and traditions and each of us became richer for it. It was my perfect life, but not my perfect partner. So second time around I chose willingly to repeat that part of the formula in my new relationship. Back we went to living between several countries and several languages - now Danish was added to the dinner table and this time the challenge was mine. I had two years of rusty, written Swedish in the far recesses of my mind from 16 years earlier. The Swedish did help me to pick up the gist of the headlines on the local newspapers but to be honest it didn't help me with sitting at a table where everyone spoke quickly around me in Danish - learning to understand that has taken many, many years of work, and I'll still be working on that till my dying day.

So I have been in this man's situation... learning a language to keep a family together, I have been in the situation of teaching a language to keep a family together. I have been the one who flies abroad with the whisky and haggis and I've been the one who sits here asking people to bring delicacies that remind me of my other homes - Mont Blanc desserts, confiture de lait, ymer and ymerdrys, pålægschokolade... 

If this is the only upbringing you've known, you often find the next generation repeats that pattern and the family becomes an even greater, more wonderful and more diverse patchwork. Both Thomas's mother and André's father had also married foreigners and lived this life. Thomas's sister has also married a half Dane half German like herself. I know there is very little likelihood all five of my kids repeat the pattern but I'd also be quite surprised if none of them goes down that route. Once the culture mix is in your bones, it's hard to escape fully. Maybe they will pick up a foreign spouse, or maybe it'll manifest itself in the form of a Scottish mixed-cultural partner - I don't know. But I think this is at the heart of why I feel more devastated by Brexit and the lurch to the insular right than many of my like-minded compatriots. I feel it is almost a personal attack on my life and lifestyle. It feels as if someone is saying that what I did with my life should no longer be a legitimate option. I feel someone is trying to force my kids into a box that is very alien to their upbringing... other languages, other passports will no longer be allowed under their roof. Their children will be forced to be monolingual. Never again will a member of my family sit in an airport waiting for a family reunion. It is as if my life choices are being outlawed and I find myself wakening some nights bolt upright in bed, panicking, desperate to scream and run away to one of my other home countries. For my sanity's sake, I only hope this mess can be sorted out in a way that makes my life choices a continued valid option.

Coping with accented characters

Charlotte: I might make something from my chocolate cookbook. (Picks up this book) Come see my book. Can you read it, Amaia? What's my book called? 

Amaia: I dunno. 'G' smiley face? Awwwwh!

Lily Hamster 9?-9-14->30-11-16

Little Lily has gone.

Whereas Rosie was a bright and wild escapologist, Lily was a cuddly, loyal and sweet pet. She loved to be taken out and stoked and put back in her cage. She never once escaped or even tried to (unlike Rosie's weekly escapades in the early days). We could even take her into our bed once the kids were asleep to play with her!

She's been noticeably aging since the end of July, no longer running for hours on her wheel and the last week or so she's been rather wobbly. On Wednesday, I thought she was older and wobblier still. I noticed she was struggling to get up her ladder, so I lifted her up and gave her a wee pat. She was quite content. Later she was sitting in her jar breathing faster than usual so I gave her another wee pat. But at dinner time when I passed she was lying motionless on her straw looking a bit too peaceful for my liking.

She had died some time in the previous hour because I had spoken to her an hour earlier.

Now we have the dilemma that Amaia is crying hysterically and claiming she can't go through this pain ever again so never wants another pet, while Anna is crying just as hard and saying the only thing that will help her get over it is - you guessed it - a new pet!

As for me - I'm going to miss my wee beast. Soft and gentle and a good listener. Already last night Charlotte was eating a pomegranate and I was upset at the thought that I never gave Lily a piece of pomegranate and now it's too late. Silly, soppy old git.

Interesting interpretation

Anna is sitting flicking through the Guinness Book of Records with Amaia. So we now know the oldest person, the person with the longest nails, the tallest dog, the smallest hamster etc. Anna read the stats out for each of these, then turning the page read out to Amaia: The longest living reigning Monarch is Queen Elizabeth the 2nd.

Quick as a flash Amaia replied: And how long is she exactly - 1 metre 50? 1 metre 60?!

Breaking

Seven or eight years ago when Marcel's voice broke, I have to say I wasn't really aware of it happening. Was I too busy with life, or did I simply not know what to look out for? Maybe he was simply quieter about it? Léon, on the other hand, is in full swing and it's so obvious he might as well have a flashing neon sign on his forehead. He's really loud, often making me jump out of my shoes if he speaks to me from outwith my line of vision and every single word he utters grates and screeches like a cat's claws against metal. I hope to god this is a swift process because it is hurting my ears!

A favourite thing to do

Sadly the Scottish climate doesn't often lend itself to marble making. It can be miserable for months on end in winter but it's usually not very cold miserable, just wet, dark or blowy miserable. But this week we've had below zero temperatures for about three days so the girls were out like a shot. First, Home Bargains for a budget pack of balloons, then, Aldi for food colouring. The coloured water was mixed and put in the balloons and then they were chucked out for the night. 

So far only the smallest one has set but hopefully it'll stay cold long enough for the rest to solidify. If not, they can stay outside till real winter hits!

Anyway - if only it was a wee bit more consistently cold this is more the effect we're aiming for!

Misheard lyrics

I showed the kids Sunshine on Leith the other week - they all love musicals, they all love Edinburgh because their big brother lives there and the littler ones are definitely interested in the linguistic differences between Scottish and English. They couldn't really fail to be, given how often it is the main topic over dinner. And I for one needed a night off the nightmare that is Brexit - for sanity's sake I needed a happy, feel-good night off. Almost instantly Léon fell in love with the Proclaimers and started trying to work out how to play the songs from their greatest hits on his violin. He's taken the cd out to the car and has it on repeat. Unsurprisingly his favourite is I'm gonna be/500 miles . Today instead of playing it on his fiddle, he was singing it. It was then I realized he was actually singing:

But I would walk 500 miles 

And I would walk 500 more 

Just to beat the man who walks a thousand miles 

To fall down at your door

He must think it is some kind of race or competition between two different guys - maybe the twins!? It lends it a whole new meaning.

Parenting

Parenting in the early years is all about paying attention. If you don't, you miss the sweetest gems...

Today's school run was done with the car registering -6 degrees.

Amaia: 'Look mum! I never noticed before but Chuggy has furry mirrors. Do all fiats have furry mirrors?'

Oh, the irony!

Amaia comes out of school today and I ask as always how her day has been.

Amaia: Well, I fell out with X (one of her best friends) - he was being a right pain!
Me: What did he do?
Amaia: Well, he had the cheek to call me a wee grassbag!
Me: What did you do to annoy him?
Amaia: I've no idea, but when he said that I just told on him and the teacher put him on an amber light!
Me: And what do you think he meant by grassbag?
Amaia: Dunno - Beats me!

Multi-cultural life

"Anyone who risks a life with someone outside of his in-group — not only across lines of nationality, but also those of religion, race and class — becomes a participant, whether he knows it or not, in a global experiment in developing empathy. The awareness and negotiation of small differences add up to a larger understanding about the complexities of the world." 

I read this today in the New York Times and thought it summed up my life quite nicely.

Henson

I can't have been a very confident child. I was never brave enough to ask my grandparents to explain half of their Scottishisms when I was a small child so constantly sat puzzling over what they were on about, as I mentioned recently.

Another amusing misunderstanding was my Gramps's name for my brother. I'd say up for 90% of the time when we were little Gramps called Derek Henson. Obviously the other 10%, he actually called him Derek.This confused me. You see, Derek's middle name is Henderson (my Granny's family name). So, what went through my eight-year-old brain was something along the lines of - Isn't it odd  a) that Gramps calls my brother by his middle name? (I don't have a middle name, so had no precedent to compare this to) b) that my Gramps gets his middle name wrong when it is after his own wife? I think I was about twelve before it suddenly dawned on me. Being a wee Glasgow man, he called me hen. Being a wee Glasgow man he called Derek son, but through habit came out with hen first (I had been around for three and a half years before Derek showed up so he was more used to addressing a grandchild as hen than son) then corrected his own mistake. So he wasn't calling Derek Henson, he was calling him hen...emm... son! D'oh!

First Bus 4

It's been a long week. No, in fact, it's been a loooooong week.

When you work from home and you have five kids, albeit only four at home term time, you need to schedule your time down to the last minute to fit everything in. You need to write to do lists all over your house so you don't forget that school meeting, that kid's party, that dental appointment, that presentation... You know there's something to hand in by the date specified somewhere... somewhere in one of those letters in one of those piles on the coffee table, or was it the dining table... or did someone stick it on  the fridge door? I swear there are weeks when I am hanging on by the tips of my fingernails and as I reach the end of my forties, I find that if I don't have my phone appointment system remind me everything not only when I waken in the morning but again ten minutes before an event, then I am doomed. And the kids - they need to all pull together or we're never going to achieve half of what is on that to do list...

So when First Bus Glasgow (grrrr, spit) gave us less than a month's warning before removing the bus (No 4) that Charlotte (and Marcel before her) has used every day since starting high school to go to and from school, I was fuming. This week marked the start of my new life with no bus. I now have to get all the kids up earlier - just what you need coming into winter. The latest we can be outside is fully 25 minutes earlier than it was last week so lunches, clothes and bags now need to be prepared the night before - but of course, there is now less, not more, time for that as we have to go to bed earlier now, to get up earlier. This is no big deal but it is a change to the routine of the last nine years (plus). And I really felt like changing a routine that has worked well for years. In the afternoon I pick up the wee ones at three and now have more than 35 minutes wait on Charlotte coming out. That's just enough time to drive them home and turn back and go back to school. That works on days Thomas is working from home but not if no one is home. On those days we all have to sit in the car and listen to the kids niggle each other. They are too tired straight after school to take out their homework books. They are too fidgety to sit and wait so if it is dry they can run round in circles, I guess but if it is raining we are caged for half an hour. Then we finally get home about 3.55... one hour and ten minutes to do a trip that used to take me thirty minutes. That's forty lost minutes every afternoon.

I'm sure after a few weeks it will be our new norm and when I have a lot of work on, I'll no doubt be found behind the wheel, in the high school layby on my laptop. But I ask you? Wasn't my life complicated enough without screwing up all my schedules? It's just so tiring.

Ironically, Charlotte herself is the only one not affected - she now gets up five minutes later than before and gets home half an hour earlier. She no longer needs to battle the elements on the way to the bus stop, because there is no bus stop. She's probably been quietly petitioning First Bus for years to drop their service!

I am considering running a minibus twice daily given how many groups of soaking kids I've passed on the 45 minute (plus) walk of the old bus route. It'd probably pay off.

Amaia's shopping list

Amaia was on dinner tonight so came up with a list of what she needed to make our meal. I miss this phonetic spelling stage once they get further into school. It has a sweet charm to it. I should savour the last months of it while I can as I sadly won't be going there again, I guess.

Trying to become Marcel

I feel these days like we're just clinging on the last seconds of childhood with Léon.

First it was his distinct lack of interest in play parks last year. He's stopped playing with all the younger kids in the street who always used to come in for him, usually claiming he's busy with some household chore. Of course, he's also grown to almost my height in the last year and has moved up four shoe sizes since Easter.

Then he and some school friends made a 'band' because it is ok to hang out with girls and talk to them on Skype as long as you have the excuse that it is because you're all in the one band.

Last week Marcel dropped by for dinner. He asked Léon if he'd like a designer t-shirt he'd grown out of. It was a size S adult, so there I was ready to put it in the loft (in a bag marked boys' clothes ages 14) when he put it on and it fits fine - arg! Mind you, I now think he might need more than one, given he's been wearing it three days solid, as he's so pleased to be in something his cool big brother recommended! I doubt there will be any further use for t-shirts with cute dinosaurs or skeletons now he's discovered plain teenager ones.

But I think yesterday was the real eye opener. He asked to go to the hairdresser... alone! And came back looking like this. It's not a huge change but I can definitely see where he's trying to go.

It is very sweet to see who his role model obviously is!

Never again

I probably didn't have my glasses on, and I like lilac so would have lifted this in my shopping rush based on its colour more than anything.

I can only assume it was possibly conceived as one of the tasks on The Apprentice or some similar show. You know, where they stick half a dozen enthusiastic but inexperienced people in a room and tell them to come up with a new fragrance, or a new shampoo, or the likes. Well, let me assure you, where lavender works well, rosemary most definitely doesn't! When you've just washed your hands, a overwhelming scent of rosemary is beyond appalling. You quickly develop a feeling greasiness, like you've been stuffing a leg of lamb for Sunday dinner. In fact, you smell like you need to wash your hands! You wouldn't use garlic or lovage in a hand soap, and I'm not sure rosemary isn't in the same category! As for using it to wash any other part of your body, I can't even imagine what experiences that could conjure up! The lipstick kiss on the bottle makes me shiver at the very thought!

Tories

I've done precious little work today and it's all the fault of those fucking Tories.

I don't remember the last time I swore in the first line of my blog. I doubt I ever have. But I have a husband who is pacing up and down, fuming and my husband doesn't fume.

Four days is all the Tory conference lasted but in those four days I have learnt that my husband has the privilege of being one of the government's famous bargaining chips, so they sure as hell are not going to reassure him he can stay despite being the father of British citizens and being half way through paying for a house here. Human shield mentality - I'm sure that's been used before in Kuwait... I have learnt that the 62% of Scotland who voted to remain in the EU and for that matter the 48% of the rest of the UK who did are not to be listened to. And despite no one even explaining what Brexit meant before the vote, she apparently now has a mandate not just to go all soft and Norwegian on us, but to go full-out isolationist with no trade deals in place for our kids' future. By the time the kids are my age, they might just have a few deals in place, so everything will be hunky dory. Companies are threatening to pull out of banking and the car industry left, right and centre but who gives a toss - we have Union Jacks and the Queen! Who needs to work with scientists, doctors or academics from all over the EU if instead we can send home the doctors who are currently saving even Tory lives in England but only till 2025, when they can fuck off back to BongoBongoland (I think that's Boris's term of endearment for where they come from.) Then they'll all be replaced by nice white English doctors who will be fined £220K should they happen to fall in love on their holidays in Tenerife and try staying there... but of course they won't be going on holiday any more because the pound has fallen about 30% already in just 3 months. Then this morning I learnt I'm to inform on my business partner for being a foreigner employed by a UK registered company that I happen to own - the fact that he set up that company, is co-director/owner and the fact that it brings money into the UK from all over Europe and the world counts for nothing. Well you know what, Theresa? He's my husband so you can fuck off. I will be clyping on no one. It's time for civil disobedience. I will not be dancing to your tune. Then I heard at tea time that she wants to run a nationalist party with the values of socialism and ordinary workers at its heart. Now where have I heard that one before??? Maybe we could call it the Nationalsozialistische ... Arbeiterpartei. Hmm, that has a nice ring to it... FFS! Hey, here's an idea - maybe I could cut out the middle man and start sewing a symbol of her choice on my husband's and my children's clothes in case any one happens to take them for fully British. We can't have that, not compared to us ethnically pure Brits!

It's reassuring at least to know the opposition are right on their backs and trying to sort it, or actually did they not bother debating Brexit at their conference? It's a shame that they don't seem to have the time to sit up and notice that the new PM is an escaped nutter.

It's why I love him

I was always fascinated by language. Even before I was taught any French or German at school, I used to spend my weekends at my grandparents' house analysing his Scots (Did he just ask me to pit ma jaiket in the press? WTF is a press???) and her idiosyncratic idioms (Jesus wept and tore his waistcoat... or was she actually saying Jesus wept and Tories' waistcoat? - well it was the late 70s, so how was I to be sure if she was discussing Maggie Thatcher or damage to clothing?... I was never really sure Jesus had a waistcoat but I was also too shy to inquire, given my heathen upbringing... It did occur to me occasionally to actually ask my grandparents what exactly they were talking about, but he'd have told me to haud ma tongue and she'd have rolled her eyes and muttered something odd about my arse being in parsley, so instead of asking, I sat in my own wee bilingual Scots/English world trying to make some sense of it all. I religiously learned all my Gramps's odd words for everything, though of course, I never used them. I learned at a very young age that young ladies from Newton Mearns (in the 70s) weren't allowed to say dug or semmit.

So when I found my first husband, a native French and German speaker, I thought I'd hit the jackpot. I forgot that just because you grow up speaking other languages, you are not necessarily interested in languages. When he got a programming job in the dictionary company where I worked not long after we married, I was more than disappointed to realise he had no interest in the linguistic side of his job whatsoever. To him, language was simply a communication tool. And when the kids came along, he'd no idea how to make them bilingual, despite his own mother speaking to him in German when he was growing up. I was the one who read up on bilingualism and spoke to the kids in French to ensure they were fluent, albeit with my flaws and accent. Anyway, at least I got to speak French at home for the next thirteen years, so that made up for it for a while.

Then one day a real language nerd dropped out of the sky and into my world. Someone (I still don't know who, though I thank them from the bottom of my heart) decided the best person for me to share with after an office reshuffle was the great Dane (as we affectionately referred to him behind his back)! He was the kind of language nerd who lists 'Danish, English, German, Esperanto, Georgian, Russian, Czech, Basque, Swabian, German, Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch, Nynorsk, Swedish, Sanskrit, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic, Yiddish and Scots' under languages he speaks on his facebook page. Of course he hasn't broken Scots up into Doric, Orkney and the likes and he hasn't mentioned things he only knows a wee bit of such as Old Norse, Icelandic, Ancient Greek, Latin and Mandarin Chinese, etc. He never ceases to amaze me when he picks something up in an exotic supermarket and can actually read text printed in Hindi out loud... or at least that's what he claims he's doing... maybe he's just making it up to impress me! Hmmm, that never occurred to me before! He lives and breathes language. When we watch programmes like Trapped, he actually pauses it to explain genitive forms of peoples' names to me and we both giggle in excitement when we understand bits from other Scandinavian languages we know better. We close our eyes and see how much we can follow without the subtitles. Our winter Saturday nights are invariably spent watching something foreign together - I'm not sure we've ever watched a movie or series in English!

And now he's gone and bought all the translations of the Gruffalo for us to analyse together in bed at night. I can see the winter stretch out before us as we look at every nuance of the words for an owl, or the woods or even the boring old definite articles. I know that isn't probably most people's idea of fun in the bedroom... but maybe we just both found the right person at last, or perhaps just the only person that could put up with each of us. (And it isn't the only fun we have - we're not that old or sad yet!)

I guess I'm just in a rather pensive mood today as I am celebrating ten years and a day since I moved into his flat. Ten years ago today I woke up to the first day of a new life. Did I make the right decision back then? Yes, I made the perfect choice, for me, anyway!

Siblings

There's nothing quite as acerbic as a smaller sibling!

Anna bounced down wearing this T-shirt earlier. Amaia read it slowly, shook her head and stated: I'm not sure why you're wearing that because you don't, you wake up moany!

Black and White

Today Thomas and Amaia went out rollerblading together. Amaia is just learning so wanted me to take photos. Afterwards, as I was uploading them to my computer, she crawled up onto the bed to watch. I decided to edit one to black and white for fun. The original was fairly bland and colourless, I thought... But kids have a great way of putting you in your place:

'Oh that's nice, mummy! Are you just making it black and white because you're more used to that because that's how photos looked back in your day?'