Doughb'

When Léon was about five or six months old, Charlotte invented the nickname 'Pudge(man) for him. Well, he was kind of pudgy back then - unfortunately he didn't shake off the name till he was about eight and people were always puzzled why the skinniest member of the family went by 'Pudge'.

For about three years he got to be Léon, but now she's come up with a new name for him. It started out as 'Doughball' because he was forever doing the daftest things, to her mind anyway. He was so consistent in his Doughballness, that she started shortening it to Doughb', which seems to be his current nickname.

On Thursday Charlotte had her Adv Higher Spanish prelim. You get disqualified from an exam if you are found to have a mobile phone on you, but as she keeps all her Spanish notes on her phone, she wanted it before the exam started, so leaving it at home was out. As S6s don't qualify for lockers at their school (fewer subjects, less need than the lower school), her original plan was to borrow Léon's locker key for the day, put her phone in there for the duration and then retrieve it, but of course 'Doughb' has managed, some time in the last fortnight, to misplace his locker key (with his PE kit inside!) so plan A was out.

Strangely, she decided to trust him to look after it while she was in the exam hall. As they got out the car, I saw her zipping it into his inside blazer pocket, not trusting him to do it himself. The plan was set, on the way up to school she had ascertained that he had Mandarin when she finished, so if she went to the Mandarin class and asked to get her phone back, all would be well. Of course, Doughb' couldn't be trusted to have remembered his timetable correctly, could he? So when he suddenly realised mid-morning that he, in fact, had French, not Mandarin when her exam finished, he helpfully sent her a text to rearrange where she had to meet him to pick up her phone. Doughb'!!!!

Chuggies

Because I am never likely to own my own vintage Fiat 500, I have a Fiat 500 key ring on my Ipsilon (as in 'Lancia') keys (sad, I know). It's very sweet and only cost a fiver off eBay a few years ago. I figured it was as close as I'd ever get. This morning I asked Léon to grab the keys to go to school. Somehow he dropped them on the wooden floor and the little car snapped off the chain irreparably 😢

Being a sweet kid, he handed me his debit card and told me to buy a new one off eBay. First, I found this,

                          

which I was on the verge of ordering until suddenly this popped up! OMG - it never occurred to me in a million years that they sold real Chuggies on eBay!!! Anyone out there want to buy me a belated birthday present? please, please, please?!!

Product review

I don't usually bother reviewing products but our  latest food processor was so spectacularly bad, I thought I'd make sure everyone was warned off it.

When I got married to my first husband in 1991, we got a Moulinex food mixer as a gift and I used it all the time - it had many different sizes of grater, a shredder, and a knife that was great for 'liquidising' old bread into wonderful breadcrumbs. It was great! Being somewhat more of a chef than him, I got it in the divorce settlement. Phew!

It finally kicked the bucket last summer at the ripe old age of 26, not bad going for a £50 machine - £2 a year, if you like.

So we replaced it with a VonShef (left). It was in approximately the same price range. It had a good, even more powerful motor, so what could go wrong? Firstly, the grater discs had a space between the edge of the discs and the bowl so nothing grated, it just got clogged up with carrot mush every time we tried to make coleslaw. 😢

Having ruled out grating anything, ever, we resorted to doing that manually (for seven portions of things, this is a pain in the backside). Always trying to see the bright side, we decided at least the spinning knife attachment could be used to make our breadcrumbs (we always dry out all our old bread for breadcrumbs - why wouldn't you?) Wrong again, large chunks simply seemed to rotate uncut till you gave up and took the bread chunks out and chopped them, again by hand, into manageable chunks.

Pushing optimism further we attempted to attack a bag of carrots with the rotating knife last Saturday... The plastic safety clip, that you need to engage before the motor will start only went and snapped off! So after less than a dozen uses, it has been chucked in the garden, where I might plant a flower in it, as that would be a more apt use of it. 😠

So, if you're looking for a fifty-quid food processor that neither grates, crumbs nor shreds, I'd thoroughly recommend you buy yourself anything by VonShef! I, on the other hand, will not be buying anything by them ever again, just in case!

Parenting

There are certain experiences in life that you just don't get if you never have kids... profound things like receiving a coffee cup in the shape of a lama for your birthday! 😀

Into the bargain, it's actually impossible to drink out of because its head gets in the way!😐

Transparent

When I was growing up in Scotland, I learned to pronounce this word with an 'a' sound like in cat, but most people older than me seemed to pronounce it with the 'a' from cake, more like today's US pronunciation. Nowadays, the kids tend only to encounter my pronunciation, but older teachers do occasionally use the other. This morning I had to laugh as Léon and Anna were having a bitch about one such teacher who they'd both encountered in primary school. Hearing it with my (dare-I-admit-to-it?) 50 year-old ears, their understanding of the older pronunciation had never occurred to me but Léon summed it up this morning as 'Of course, it's transparent (like in cat), because transparent just sounds like your dad hangs about in a dress!' 😃

One flash

It was Wednesday just after lunch. I was sitting at my living room window, reading Twitter on my computer when the hailstones began to fall. 'Wow, they're big', I thought to myself. So I picked up my mobile from the arm of my chair and pressed record, so I could show Thomas, who was in Edinburgh, the storm when he got home.

Within the first ten seconds after I started to film out my window, there was a flash and less than a second later the loudest thunder I have ever heard, including electric storms I've lived through in southern Europe. So shocked, you can see I nearly drop my phone(, while discussing religion with myself!) I continued to film for two more minutes but there was nothing. It was the most violent and the shortest electric storm of my life.

I stopped and pressed upload, but the Internet was down, which it definitely hadn't been less than two minutes earlier. I brought up the available connections, my two router extensions were listed but not the main house router that runs the whole thing... weird.

I went through to the router and no lights were on. Had the one flash blown up my router? I was seriously doubtful. I unplugged it and plugged it in again, nothing. I lifted my phone to ring Sky to report the fault, the phone was dead too. On inspection all my phones were also dead.

I got through to Sky on my mobile, they tested my lines, said they could do nothing and booked me an engineer for Friday. In the meantime, mum, who lives three streets away phoned to tell me neither of her TVs were working. Could one flash really do that?

The engineer arrived on Friday morning, exclaiming he was rushed off his feet as call-outs in my area had increased 10-fold in two days. In fact, he even had three more call-outs in my own street! I showed him the video on my phone (see above). The storm had actually hit my street!!! A house further up now had a tarpaulin on the roof where the one flash of lightning had blown a hole in their roof and unlike us they seemed fairly unconcerned, according to the engineer who had seen them, about the demise of their router. You see, the lightning had melted all the wiring in their house, inside their walls and sockets and of course had blown up everything that had been plugged in - their fridge, cooker, freezer, phones, TVs, computers, you name it. My house was just 100 metres from the strike. How scary is that?

So we're £120 down and Mum's engineer still hasn't been round so I fear her TVs may be fried but I'll update this once we hear.

Update: Final count at mum's was one satellite dish, two Sky receivers, one amplifier!

IBS

AKA irritable bowel syndrome...

I've been thinking a lot about IBS recently and researching it again. It's not because I'm hitting an age when I'm supposed to start talking incessantly about my bowels, but more because I never really do, talk about my bowels that is... Talking about your bowels doesn't tend to increase your friend numbers! The research is more to do with self-preservation.

No one who reads this blog is likely to have an inkling, given my reticence on the subject, that IBS plays a huge role in my life. I had my first run-in with it when I was still at uni in the 80s. All would be fine, then suddenly about once a month, I'd wake up bloated, in pain and unable to go to the loo. It would take a good two or three days of being extra careful before things would generally right themselves and I'd breathe a huge sigh of relief, well until the next time. And so that was the pattern I lived with through my twenties and thirties, some years worse than others, but on the whole bearable. Whenever things would get really bad, I'd be sent off for the usual, coelic and Crohn's testing, barium meal, endoscopy, colonoscopy, CAT scan or MRI and then I'd be told - 'Don't worry, it's just irritable bowel syndrome.'

Then it all changed. I contracted the worst bout of the winter vomiting virus in my life in the winter of 2012. I actually felt like my insides snapped. Sometimes I think they did. I woke up the next morning with my IBS playing up and assumed it'd all be back to normal in two or three days, it wasn't, and I'm still waiting... Every single day since winter 2012 has been marked by galloping indigestion, bloating (usually about 2 sizes over the course of a day), a feeling as if someone is sticking a red-hot poker right through the upper half of my stomach, lower back pain, muscle spasms in my intestine, an inability to go to the loo, exhaustion, need I go on? Interestingly, I recently discovered most sufferers can trace the beginning back to a viral/food poisoning episode.

The funny thing is - when you have these symptoms once a year, you take a sick day and lie in bed trying to get over them, but you can't do that when every day is a sick day, so I fully suspect those who suffer from IBS are probably amongst the workers who take the fewest sick days.

Anyway, I'm not looking for any miracle cures (unless anyone happens to have one) or sympathy. What I'm actually on to suggest is a change of name... You see irritable is just wrong - it's kind of like 'my baby's a little irritable today...' And that makes people think it is a minor inconvenience. If I had a pound for every doctor who has told me 'Don't worry, it's only IBS'... What sufferers actually need is a GP who happens to suffer from it! Irritable trivialises something that is actually quite difficult to live with. For starters, you can't wear clothes! That's a bit of a problem in a climate like Scotland. Anyone who thinks I tend to spend 85% of time in leggings because I think I have the figure for them, think again! Even the elastic in tights irritates my insides, so it's leggings all winter, dresses in the summer and pain whenever I have to dress formally for a business meeting. Then there's food - most self help books tell you to follow a low-FODMAP diet - ie eliminate these (see the lists with the reddish background) from your diet, ie eat as if you are a lactose intolerant coeliac sufferer who doesn't like spice, coffee or anything fried - that doesn't leave you with much scope! You also have to try to keep your stress levels low - it's not like my life has been in anyway stressful for the last decade, is it? (Did someone say Brexit?) It is physically and emotionally draining.


So without further ado, here's my list of suggestions:
Agonising bowel syndrome
Excruciating bowel syndrome
Red-hot poker bowel syndrome
Somebody's-tied-a-knot-in-your bowel syndrome
I'm-so-physically-exhausted-by-this bowel syndrome
Who-needs-to-poo-anyway bowel syndrome
You-can't-eat-what!? bowel syndrome
Can't-remember-what-normal-feels-like bowel syndrome
Will-this-ever-end bowel syndrome

Or in fact, maybe we could drop the word 'bowel' from it too, then sufferers might set up self-help groups instead of assuming the subject should be taboo!

I've never actually used this emoji before, but it seems kind of appropriate!

💩

Chuggy's back

Restored to his former glory - phew.

Poor Chuggy

So there I was (last week, before the snow!) minding my own business in the shopping centre car park, stopped in a long line of maybe eight stationary vehicles waiting for the front car in the line to turn into their chosen parking space when I saw a black Ford Fiesta backing out of its space cautiously. Charlotte was in the passenger seat and she turned to me and said 'I don't think they have seen us, mum!' I had come to the same conclusion at the same moment so tooted my horn to alert the driver that my Fiat (and the other eight cars he had seemingly failed to notice) were at his back. I expected he'd stop at that point but instead he pressed his accelerator fully down to the floor and flew at the side of my stopped Chuggy at a speed I had never seen a car reverse at!

Charlotte screamed, expecting the side of the car to crush her two legs. (It didn't, thank goodness). Léon, who was in the seat behind her, shouted 'Woah!', and Anna who was behind me burst into tears. I stepped out the car to see Methuselah himself step out of the Ford. He looked a bit like you'd imagine Basil Fawlty's grandfather might have looked; tall, grey, gangly, open-mouthed in shock. I was gobsmacked. 'What did you just do to my daughter?!' came involuntarily from my mouth before I calmed down enough to ask him his details. He looked surprised and managed 'I got mixed up between my pedals' before his wife ranted that he only had two given it was an automatic, so how had he managed to floor the accelerator trying to do an emergency stop!?

Anyway, he gave me his details, admitted all liability (in front of the witnesses) and trundled off (banished to the passenger seat) while I went about my shopping.

Chuggy's away now getting a new door and wing and I'm playing about with my free Nissan Juke hire car - I quite fancy trading the Ipsilon in for one of them, it's very nippy as well as feeling safe and heavy.

Interestingly, when I took my Chuggy to the coach builders for an assessment and a quote, the receptionist who was reading through my case told me that over the past decade she has seen a huge increase in the number of older pensioners in my area who run into other cars and then, because they are rather wealthy and they do not want the DVLA alerted to their little driving misdemeanours, come with the person they have hit and offer to pay their repairs and courtesy car cash so they do not need to go through their insurance. Basically they are paying to insure their car because it is illegal not to, but not reporting crashes so they don't lose their licences.

My elderly gentleman has gone through his insurance so will likely have to prove he's still trustworthy behind a wheel (I would say that if a pedestrian had been walking behind his car when he reversed, he'd easily have broken their pelvis or legs at the speed he hit me), but it is alarming to think the there are many unroadworthy drivers out there who are bypassing the system so they can keep their cars long beyond a point when they maybe should.

I fully realise that if you drive everywhere, losing that right is terrifying and isolating, but is it really as terrifying as potentially crushing someone's child against another car?

The 'Millennium bug'

It occurred to me the other day when I was mentioning Charlotte being a real 'millennium baby' that those of you who didn't have a baby that week might not have been fully aware of the ridiculous hoo-ha surrounding the millennium bug!

At my last antenatal visit before Charlotte's birth Y2K bug hysteria had reached a crescendo. The press was full of scare stories that all computer systems and all systems driven by computers were about to fail and we'd be plunged back into the dark ages! I wish I'd kept the actual hand-out I was given by the Queen Mother's hospital but I didn't realise years down the line that it might become a quirky and fun historical document. What I do remember of it is the following:

• Don't phone an ambulance to take you to hospital in labour as the system risked being down, use a taxi instead, or better still your own car
• Bring a torch in case the lighting system failed
• Bring a photocopy of your medical notes in case the hospital couldn't access them on their system
• Bring a sleeping bag in case the heating system failed
• Bring extra warm clothes and hats for the newborn
• Prepare your relatives for the possibility they might need to cook all your meals at home and bring them in to you
• Don't panic about complications as the one generator they had hired would be used to run theatre for emergency caesareans
• And finally, one that wasn't technology related: Be prepared to wait as there would no doubt be a rush given the huge number of millennium babies predicted across the world!

I was somewhat bemused and not overly worried given she was not my first baby. I went into labour at lunchtime on 3-1-2000, so they'd had fully two days plus to sort out any glitches. I made my own way to hospital (I lived five minutes away) at 8pm and it was dead. There were no other mums in labour that I could see, the lights were on, even the fairy lights on a tiny, scabby Xmas tree in the corner of the deserted ward seemed to be working. The radiators were hot, the fridges on and it was pretty much a repeat of my stay when I had had Marcel two years earlier! I was the only one in my ward as the great millennium rush hadn't materialised either. Definitely a bit of an anticlimax!

The baby photographer presented everyone born that week with one of these special frames!

The 'Millennium baby' has turned 18!

How old does that statement make you feel? Wasn't the millennium new year about five years ago?

I remember when Marcel turned 18 I did a collage of photos to see how he aged through the years. I will do the same below with Charlotte, to see how the last 18 years have changed her (or not)...

So here is her lifetime so far in 19 images:

Charlotte aged 8 weeks, 1, 2, 3 and 4 years (it's interesting to see her eyes didn't change from blue to green till she was 4!)

Charlotte aged 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years

Charlotte aged 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 years

Charlotte aged 15, 16, 17 and 18 years

It has actually been an interesting exercise. If you had asked me an hour ago, without showing me any photos, I would have said that Charlotte has not changed at all since about 2009, because she has not significantly changed her hair since then, but when I look at the photos side by side, she has actually changed quite a bit.

It will be interesting to see what the next few years have in store for her as she moves on to university. Things are still up in the air as she hasn't fully decided what or where to study, but watch this space!

Last reflections before 2018

I am utterly dreading 2018. I wish there was some huge rock I could crawl under and hide for a year or even two. I can't understate the level of horror this new year fills me with.

Before us lies the biggest decision of our life, and also of our children's lives, and it is not something we can influence in any way. Over the next few months it will become clear whether we get to continue with the life we have built up here, in a house that is already 65% paid off, where the third of our kids is already in high school, where my two oldest have already reached university (yes, I know Charlotte hasn't started yet, but with 6 A Highers, I doubt she'll be getting straight rejections from UCAS this spring). I get to find out if my my husband can continue working as a consultant in areas of linguistics where he has built up a wealth of knowledge and a name for himself in Scotland. We get to find out if our company, which has been running for nine years, will make it to ten...

I am the problem, not the other six. The other six are free to come and go as they please across Europe, they will still be EU citizens at the end of 2019; I am the only one who has had their freedom to move voted away and so it is my clock that is ticking. If we want to stay together as a family and give the kids a future in a country that isn't considering skidding off the economic rails, I have to get out by March 2019 unless things take a dramatic turn for the better.

I stupidly assumed it would have been clear by now and the government's intentions would be obvious, but a more clueless government, I have not seen in my lifetime. As recently as last month May's government signed up to not creating a border in Ireland, not creating a border in the Irish sea while emphasising that they would indeed leave the internal market and customs union. I don't know if they are incompetent or just downright liars but the first two promises make the third and fourth impossible.

So as we move towards midnight, I won't find leaving 2017 behind particularly difficult. Every day we have woken up in the stressful limbo that only those of us in a mixed EU/UK marriage know. We don't think about Brexit on bad days, or when something big is in the headlines; we have lived and breathed it every minute of every tiring day since June 2016 and we are desperate to take back some control of our lives, rather than leaving everything to the whims of the right-wing press and the most incompetent Tory government every to head up Westminster.

Sadly, I can't say I have any faith that 2018 will be any better but at least at the end of next year I may have more of a clue about where our futures lie and whether my family gets to stay together or is forced apart in the short term at least.

Life's little pleasures

When all your kids are old enough to build their own snowmen, you can take the photos and drink Glühwein in the garden - class.

Funny eyes

Léon has a strange mix of blue, green, yellow and grey in his eyes. It is often hard to put your finger on what colour they are, and they simply often reflect his clothing... he has blue eyes when he is wearing a blue t-shirt, green, when he's wearing green, so for fun I decided to put a photo of him through the photoshop filter that removes all except a specific colour from a photo - I chose blue. Interestingly, it seems the bottom half of his eyes are predominantly blue, but the top two halves have come out in grey so they must be green or grey!

That hang-up again

I've mentioned it on occasion over the years - that hang-up of mine, namely being called Phyllis... I think in my most recent rant I was finally coming to accept that as I grew older, greyer and frumpier, I would maybe start to suit my Phyllisness, and come to be at ease with it, but I hadn't factored in a new issue that would strike me. It is one that has always been there, but that is only dawning on me now.

I was named Phyllis because I was born on 4/2/68 and my gran had died of cancer on 30/1/68. At her death my granny was exactly 50 years, six months and one day old. Next year on 5/8/18, I will turn 50 years, six months and one day old... and that chills me. Strange; I've never been a superstitious person, but as Phyllis Buchanan the 2nd, I feel ill at ease with it all the same. Will Phyllis Buchanan the 2nd be a luckier Phyllis? a longer-lived Phyllis? Will she break the curse of Phyllisness?

I have a sneaking suspicion the next eight months and sixteen days are going to take a long time to get through, and I may be a bit touchy, irritable and perhaps a tad over-sensitive... I may consider coming back out to play on August 6th (if I make it through till then), but in the meantime, bear with me as I question every ache or pain I suffer in a slightly hysterical manner. (I've got five kids! I'm needed on this planet!)

It really is no fun being a replacement person for a dead one...

Weather report, school-style

Last time p6 had an assembly for the parents something big was going on. There was a good deal of whispering and giggling for the best part of a week beforehand but they kept telling us that the project 6A had been working on about natural disasters was top-secret! When we were finally let in on the game, it was awfully cute! Here, thanks to the school twitter account, is Anna's class's natural disaster presentation!

Xmas songs in Silverburn

Anna and her choir performing in Silverburn on Monday (taken from the school tweet)for anyone who missed her.

Here is a video of our Senior Choir performing at @shopsilverburn to help raise money for @PPWH, accompanied on piano by one of our P6 pupils. 😀🎶🎹🎄 pic.twitter.com/3j6yRl9XGi

— Kirkhill Primary (@KirkhillPS) December 13, 2017

Family planning

Amaia's sensible approach to future family planning, over breakfast this morning:

Amaia: When I grow up, if I decide I want to be a teacher, I am going to have a few kids. I think it is important if you decide to be a teacher that you fully understand children...
Me: And if you decide you don't want to be a teacher?
Amaia: Well, in that case I'm definitely not having any. They wear nappies, mum, don't you know?!

...No, I never noticed, pet...

Pants

Thomas has been reading his grandfather's memoirs again and was lamenting the fact that he didn't make much mention of his many siblings or their personalities. Maybe that was in case they happened upon them, as they were all alive at the point he was writing them. That got us on to discussing what might be of interest to descendants, were we to write about our own lives.

Thomas was saying it would be interesting to tell people about how fashions have changed over our lifetimes. An obvious example, he cited, was ties. When he moved to Scotland, he was expected to wear a tie to work, a few years later he was expected to keep one in his desk in case of outside visitors but in general management went without, and now they don't expect anyone to wear ties in any of his workplaces, no matter the meeting.

I thought from a Scottish perspective, I could mention the evolution of the school uniform. When I was a child, skirts were compulsory in my area. Come rain, shine or snow, nothing allowed a girl to don a pair of trousers. I remember the year our school heating system broke down (winter of '79 or '80), wearing skinny jeans (leggings hadn't been invented yet), with a slightly-too-long skirt and long woolly hockey socks on top, so no one would discover I was breaking school rules. My legs were a lumpy mess but I was deliciously warm for the first time at high school! Fortunately, when the first immigrant girls arrived from Pakistan, they fought the trouser rule on religious grounds, the school gave in and then found they couldn't allow trousers only on religious grounds, so trousers became an option. It was after I'd left, but at least I knew my daughters wouldn't be hiding jeans under socks at some future date.

The item of dress, however, that would probably shock my offspring the most was 'navy blue gym pants'! This was a compulsory item of clothing. Everyone wore blue pants to school every day (unless you could actually remember when you had PE lessons) because PE forced you to strip to your pants. Given all the underage '70s sex scandals that have been coming out in the press over the last few years, you have to wonder who ever thought it was a good idea for all girls aged 4-12 to prance about in these and a t-shirt as they vaulted over horses and climbed wall bars - it must have been a paedophile paradise! Boys, as far as I remember, wore shorts, only girls were forced to do PE in underwear! Given that many girls start their period before leaving primary, it is quite shocking to think back on. I certainly never particularly liked the big, scratchy blue pants and I'm thrilled my own daughters now get to wear shorts.

Santa Dash fun

Glasgow holds an annual 'Santa Dash' every December. It's on a Sunday morning at 10am - and it isn't just any Sunday, it's the coldest darkest Sunday of the year. Sunday is the only day we can have a lie-in because of school and violin. Every year I suggest going along (not even necessarily running or walking it, even spectating, and every year everyone in the family just looks at me as if I've asked them to poke rusty nails in their eyes! I'm sure my daddy would have come along with his camera if he'd still been here - he liked mornings and photo shoots.

Anyway, last Saturday as always I came out with my nonchalant 'Santa Dash is on tomorrow morning, we'd need to get up at 9. Who wants to come?' Thomas already had his get-out - he's been in bed on steroids and antibiotics for a week now with a bad chest infection, Marcel was home for the weekend but claimed a dissertation that happens to be part of his final degree was more important, Charlotte didn't even bother to reply, she just rolled her eyes, the girls said they'd rather sleep... Then suddenly Léon volunteered! He has a broken arm at the moment so instead of sleeping long as he usually does on Sundays, the pain has been wakening him up so he figured he might as well come along!

I got up, my phone read -7 degrees, I opened the curtains and saw nothing - freezing fog so thick I couldn't see the garden bench. Léon came down, at that point the girls came down too, having had a change of heart so the four of us went in and watched 8000 Santas, half a dozen elves, snowmen and reindeer braving the Glasgow weather for a good cause. And it looks like next year I may have to come again, as they've all asked to take part next time. 😀 Maybe then the fog will be less thick so you'll be able to see more of the Santas stretching into the distance!

And here are the photos to prove what fun it was!

Sweet Anna

Anna's choir is singing in shopping centres and at school show performance nights over the next two weeks. She's learnt a dozen Christmas songs, including the one above (which is actually called 'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, rather than alot like Christmas - hee hee - just check out my favourite point of reference on the 'alot'...) 

Anyway, taking her to bed the other night, she asked if she could sing me it, which she did until she got to the line 'And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again!' (at 1:01). She stopped, as if realising what it implied for the first time ever, lip trembling and spat out 'Omg, is that true?' I assured her it wasn't, and I meant it. I never long for my kids to go back to school after holidays; yes, I long for an evening off occasionally, or a week where evenings are not spent predominantly on homework, but they are only little once, and having a 20 year old too, I know that all too soon, 'Mom and dad' will be left home alone with their memories, while the kids are somewhere new making their own lives, so no, I genuinely don't wish for school to start again (especially not on a dark, freezing scrape-the-car Scottish January morning!)

My hamster-wheel existence

8-30 Take 3,4,5 to school, running late and ranting, return home.
10-15 School phones to say Léon is wanting to come home as he feels under the weather - cold, throbbing broken arm, temperature. Pick him up, return home. Get a long and philosophical conversation about how he wants to grow up to be a phonetician (is that normal when you are 12?!)
10-45 Charlotte needs dropped in Glasgow to sit her LNAT exam, return home, with Léon recounting more about phonetics in my ear while I drive.
11-15 Primary open day for an hour: cut, glue, glitter, colour in, melt in the heat of two overcrowded classrooms, return home.
1-00 Gulp down some leftover chilli, then work for one hour uninterrupted 🎆(glued Léon in front of a Danish movie).
2-30 Pick Charlotte up from train after LNAT, return home. Get a blow by blow account of the exam  which was much harder than all practice runs, rant, rant, rant.
3-00 Pick up Anna from school, return home. Get a blow by blow account of p6 activities and how thrilling and wonderful everything about December is.
4-00 Pick up Amaia from baking club, return home. Get a blow by blow account of baking club and how she'll just 'die' if she doesn't get into it again next term, especially with her best friends Ameya and Sophie.
5-09 Drink a (cold) cup of coffee I've been trying to reach for over an hour.

I'm half waiting on Marcel to phone and say he has a sudden desire to visit the family at short notice and needs picking up on the moon or somewhere even less convenient.

I refuse to go shopping for dinner - if we have no food, we're not eating. So there!😝

And I wonder why I never get time for the day job! I'm meant to do at least 5 hours Italian today. I need a 30hr day. Sigh

Thought-provoking

Fractured wrist

I knew as I reached the top of the hill (that the high school stands on) that something was amiss. Léon and Charlotte were standing by the roadside as they always do on a Friday, waiting for me. They were smiling, talking and joking together but I noticed immediately that while Léon was only holding his schoolbag in his right hand, Charlotte was holding both her schoolbag and Léon's PE kit bag -- that's odd, I thought. I pulled up and they got in. 'Oh by the way mum, I think I've broken my arm', Léon joked. 'Seriously? What? When?' So then I got the proof once again that he is a bit of a space cadet...

The story seems to be that he was standing in the busy Maths corridor holding his phone to check a message, between classes (which Charlotte assures me you're not allowed to do!), when an s5 kid, who was rushing to class, tripped over his own shoe and went flying smack into Léon's arm and thumped him against a wall, quickly apologising and carrying on his way, as did Léon, who hadn't realised the enormity of what had just happened. When was this? 10am!!!! He said the pain kicked in half an hour later so he asked his PE teacher if he could be excused from his social dancing class and sit and watch, after that it didn't occur to him to go to the medical room, have anyone call me or even ask a teacher what the best plan of action was... It was my left hand and I'm right handed so I didn't think breaking your arm was a reason to ask to go home! Give me strength!

So I dropped off the girls and went to the Vicky where they confirmed he had a 'buckle fracture' which would probably take three weeks to heal.

At first his main worry was that they might make him sit out social dancing and he didn't want to miss the opportunity to 'get the girls' sympathy!' (like brother, like brother 😉). It turns out they are trialling putting splints rather than plaster casts on them as they are short lived and not too dire, but I expect that isn't the best situation to be in with fifteen days to go to his orchestra Xmas performance - he'll be the first one-handed first violin in the junior orchestra's history - sigh. Mind you it apparently holds his wrist in 'waltz position' so he's pleased!

To cap it all, we don't even get the benefit of a long lie for the first time in five years of Saturday school when he misses his lesson tomorrow as it's the primary school winter gala day and Anna's choir is performing at that!

Cosy reading and baking pizza

Here are some of our other Primary 6 pupils celebrating book week by making story dens and getting cosy with their favourite books. 📚📖#BookWeekScotland pic.twitter.com/8GGcSigtwK

— Kirkhill Primary (@KirkhillPS) December 1, 2017

Isn't this just the sweetest idea for a Friday afternoon in December? The p6 teachers decided to let the kids bring in pillows and blankets and build dens under their school desks, then they got to change into their onesies and read their books with their friends. Lovely to see (half of) Anna with three of her best friends Inishka, Marie-Liang,  and Akshara in this tweet from school.💜

After discovering the tweet of den day, I looked through this week's school tweets and found little Amaia at baking club making pizza too and really enjoying it. Cute!

Here's our Baking Club with the pizzas that they made! 🍕🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/rWAlpJxXdb

— Kirkhill Primary (@KirkhillPS) November 29, 2017

New word

A great new word that I think will need to enter the general family vocab forthwith...

Amaia to Léon: 'Oh stop being sooo kiddish!' 🤣

Large families

It's funny how you become public property when you step outside the norm...

A friend (who also has five kids) posted this on Facebook today and I can really relate to it. Strangers have actually asked me every single one of these questions, unprompted - in the street, in a supermarket, at the school gate!! They did omit two extras that I've been asked; was it an accident? and were you having a midlife crisis? (and that was when I got pregnant with Léon (no 3) at a mere 37!!)

The one about daycare is actually the one I've been asked most often in recent years - well, to be honest it is usually phased something like: 'I've seen you at the school, you're a childminder, aren't you?' but that's the same idea, no?! Though you'd be surprised quite how often I've been asked if I'm Catholic or if I know what is causing them, no, seriously!

Anyway, for my friends with too many kids, enjoy... and for those with a normal family - this is what you missed out on!

It didn't drive like that in my day!

When I came back from living in Italy in 1986, I was desperate for a Fiat 500 (as you may have guessed by now). They were too old to be readily available (in a decent state), yet too new to be collectors' items yet. The majority of them were beaten and bashed and in a complete state, so I decided that as I wanted to buy a newish (and reliable (that turned out to be a joke)) vehicle, I opted for a more sensible two-year-old Fiat 126.

It coughed and spluttered. It had a top speed of 68mph (110kph)... I managed 70 in it once, (fully-loaded, downhill with a tail wind, I think!) It had a 4 speed gear box and a manual choke. It had the engine in the boot and the boot in the bonnet (opening the opposite way to a normal bonnet, like the old Saabs did in their day). I loved it because it was my first car, but it definitely didn't drive like the one in that video! What fun I could have had if mine had had a souped-up engine like that one!

Parenting a space cadet

I sometimes wonder if you need the patience of a saint to be mother to a 12 year old boy, or maybe  just a good sense of humour. I made chilli con carne yesterday and then popped out to pick Léon up from debating at school at six. On my way home I realised I needed some shopping so told him the only way dinner could be ready for seven was if I dropped him at home and popped straight to Aldi for 15 minutes. He cooks dinner at least once a week so it wasn't that he isn't capable in the kitchen, he's just lacking somewhat in the memory-span department. I emphasised how important it was to the point where he impressed me by taking out his phone and writing himself a note on it. The instructions weren't hard - Put four portions of rice in the rice cooker and press on, then relight the gas under the chilli, but quite low just to keep it warm. What could possibly go wrong? I dropped him at 6:10 and was back by 6:30. I walked in. The chilli was on (a little too high but on at least). The rice was in the rice cooker, with water (no salt), plugged in but no lights on. Léon, Anna and Amaia were happily microwaving three hot chocolates complete with mini-marshmallows, all jolly and happy. 'What was the most important thing I asked you to do, the only thing I absolutely needed you to do?' I asked 'Put on the rice', he replied proudly. 'And is it on?' I asked more tentatively... 'Well it's in the rice cooker, oh it's not on! - one out of two isn't bad, is it?' We ate half an hour late! But hey, at least they had hot chocolate!



Fast forward a few hours. After violin practice, he was last seen heading to his room with his violin carefully strapped on his back, pity he forgot to close the case, and thank goodness for that tiny little Velcro strap round its neck. He spent most of this evening trying to track down the neck rest for it which had dropped out the case as it wasn't Velcroed down... turned out to be in the cupboard with the school juices, where it had dropped out when he had been making his lunch last night while apparently wearing his violin.

Wonder what he'll forget tomorrow!

Living in the mad zone

With each passing day it puzzles me more and more why any EU nationals want to apply for PR (permanent residence) and/or UK citizenship. This week alone we have lost the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency, not that you would know it if you went on the BBC front page news summary; they've not bothered to report it, or if they have, it is so many layers down, you'll only find it if you already know it's there. Those who are reporting it are headlining with the actual number of posts lost in each agency rather than pointing out that international bodies mean international visitors which means hotel rooms, restaurant places, international schools and a whole host of knock-on effects.

And last night in the Commons they decided that one of the highlights of Brexit means not only can we scrap human rights but animals can be voted to have no consciousness of pain etc either. FFS. Who still wants to live here? It's a basket case country heading for the toilet quickly. With each passing hour, I feel more clearly that this is not the kind of country I want to bring my kids up in. I am beyond disgusted by everything the Tory government stands for and if this continues, I will have no option but to leave with the rest of my EU family.

If you do something long enough, someone will notice!

It's not often quote of the day goes to one of the biggies; they've long grown out of the cute stage. But maybe we are entering a more perceptive zone...

Suddenly, without warning, yesterday Charlotte came out with 'Oh my god, I just realized what you do, mum!' At first I figured she meant lexicography, or translating, copy-editing or even the more tedious proof-reading, but no she wasn't talking work!

It was dark, with freezing drizzle and everyone was snapping at each other and generally winding, she elaborated 'You get up to take us to school, even on days when you don't have to work first thing!' It's quite perceptive really; I've only been doing it since 1997 (with an end-date of 2028 now almost in sight)!

I think she'd been in denial till now! And her closing remark? 'And I thought I wanted kids...'

Doesn't look like I'm going to be a granny any time soon!

A weird bunch

My kids were walking down the street together in Edinburgh the other week. Thomas and I were far enough behind that we didn't look like we were together. It suddenly occurred to me that you don't see groups like that walking about. To an outsider, they must look quite a curious bunch. They obviously aren't a group of teenage friends, they can't be students or schoolchildren either, and they definitely aren't a couple with kids. They don't fit into any known mould really and people don't really expect families of five kids, let alone and age spread of 7-20. They are very cute to observe together though!

Surreal video

I was procrastinating the other day before a job when I decided to take a trip down memory lane. Obviously in my youth, you stuck on a cassette, you didn't have music videos on demand. I started looking on Youtube at the things I listened to as a child and found all sorts of amazing footage that was never available to us as kids. This Abba video from '74 definitely stood out as the weirdest one I came across. Maybe I'll set myself the task of finding myself a surreal video a week from now on to give me a laugh.

Rotting crabs

Why don't people use crab apples in Scotland? There are so many trees around where we live and many different varieties as you can see in the pictures below, that Thomas and I collect enough to make jam for the year, every year. So many trees end up looking like this one!





Are we the only apple jelly makers in Newton Mearns?

Glasgow wedding suite

I'm sad they decided to sell the Glasgow registry office not long after Thomas and I got married in it. It felt like the right place to marry and was stunning as well. It's a shame we can't go back there to share others' happy days, or even show it to Amaia who was born after our wedding.

Halloween

This year's ludicrous haul - thank goodness I only let the out alone for 90 minutes or they could have developed full-blown diabetes before they got home!

EU/UK families and Brexit

This is a must-read for anyone who doesn't grasp the complexities of Brexit for mixed UK/EU families.

It's almost laughable to admit that this MSP's situation is so much less complicated than my own that I almost envy her, though of course, I feel nothing but solidarity.

We are in exactly the same situation but a decade further on so it's much more complex. I have the issue of kids half way through the Scottish school system - should I move my 12 year old s1 to a country where he speaks the language (Danish) but has never learned to read it properly and hope he does well enough to catch up before uni entrance exams? Should I drag out primary kids, leaving behind their best friends? Should I leave behind my 17 year old who is in s6 and had planned to go to uni next summer living at home with us (and studied so hard last year to get her six A Highers to get in?), should I leave behind my Scottish mum who's had a stroke and lives alone since my dad died? Should I sell the house I've been paying for for 12 years? What do I do with our jobs, cars, possessions? I'm about to be 50 and starting over from scratch again (given I already started over in my mid-30s when I got divorced) is such an unappealing mountain to climb... I've been paying a mortgage now since 1993, am I meant to start again and pay forever?

Brexit is an absolute disaster for families like ours.

Diversity, but not so diverse

I grew up in the 70s in Scotland attending a 'non-denominational' primary school in a suburb of Glasgow. For non-denominational in Glasgow in the 70s, read Protestant (with maybe one Jewish kid per class). Catholics went to Catholic schools, Muslims and Hindus hadn't got as far as the suburbs so non-denominational meant Church of Scotland religious. Every day started with us all having to stand, bow our heads, clasp our hands and recite the school prayer. I can't tell you now the words of it, even though I was made to recite it every school day for six years. I know it had been written for the school because we definitely mentioned the school by name in it, but for the most part my early school days were marked by me standing with my eyes tightly shut, squirming and out of place, wanting to run away or scream because I felt like I had landed on an alien planet.

Every assembly was conducted by the local CofS minister, a sickly sweet, condescending man who oozed insincerity (to me anyway), most people seemed to love him. There again most people knew him from the weekends, and I didn't.

We were often read bible stories by the scary head mistress too. These made me feel less ill at ease because the stories themselves were interesting enough, but still, I always feared that the scary Mrs Scott would find me out. What would she find out? That I was the freak in the class, the one child who was being raised, unchristened and in an atheist household.

By about p5, the first Muslim and Hindu children has touched down and I often wondered if they felt like me - they had the same dirty secret, that they couldn't relate to all the Protestant prayer and worship, but I couldn't ask, without giving away my own secret.

As I reached upper primary, a quiet goody two shoes in general, I was really at odds with the religious parts of the curriculum. I remember wondering when I would be shouted at for not bowing for the morning prayer. Resolute, I stood there, straight-backed and with my eyes open, and the teacher stared me out. She could not let on she had seen me, without letting on that she too was unbowed and open-eyed. I remained silent during the Lord's prayer, I refused to let my brain parrot it as it was not who I was.

Things have come along a lot in Scotland since my childhood. Classes are mixed now - in my own kids' classes there are Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and even the odd Catholic!! Instead of being made to pray, they now teach them about each different religion and its beliefs. Kids are taught in a sensitive manner that even if they have been told at home that their god is the true one, they should treat other religions with an equal degree of respect. They encourage curiosity about each other. It is all very nice and inclusive.

Last month all the kids in p6 in our school went on a school trip called 'Diversity day' - they spent a good number of hours discussing Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and they even went into the Bahá'í faith, but here's what I don't get, they never teach kids about atheism. Not only do they not go into it in detail, they don't even touch on its existence. Looking at recent figures for Scotland, atheists account 52% of the Scottish population, so why does no one ever tell school kids that it's actually ok to be from an atheist family? In the last 5 years I have been to four funerals, three were humanitarian/atheist, one was christian and I am not sure I can even remember the last time I attended a christian wedding in Scotland.

Three or four years ago Anna asked me what our family was because they'd been learning about religions in school. She was about 6 years old. I explained that daddy's parents were christian (Protestant) and mummy's were atheist and that our own family unit was also atheist. I explained what that meant and she felt happy that we too had a label just like all the others. She mentioned it to a boy in her class the next time the topic arose. The boy, from a Christian family, looked her straight between the eyes and announced that if she didn't believe in god, she would be sent to hell and burn for all eternity! Delightful child! There is no way that child would have said that to a Hindu or Muslim child because he had been taught to respect them, but apparently it is ok to treat atheist families with contempt as they are brushed under the carpet. Because atheists don't have specific festivals or places of worship, it is somehow felt that they are not worth mentioning, but that does a terrible injustice to those kids. Until we are lined up alongside all the other faiths, schools shouldn't claim to be teaching diversity, but instead religious diversity.

Anna had a really lovely day out with her classmates, came back wearing a bindi and proudly showing me her name in Arabic, but felt a little deflated too because, as she put it herself 'it was as if we didn't exist'.

The last moments of innocence

Anna's been researching John Muir (from 1838) for school. One of the first facts she found out was that he was one of eight children. Thinking this over and analysing too that her Großvater had twelve siblings, she commented:
'And I thought I had a lot of siblings! People definitely seemed to have lots more kids in the old days, mum, why was that?'
Hmmmm. I try to answer my kids in an honest, if age-appropriate manner, wherever possible... 
'Well Anna, back then they didn't really have any way of not having them.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, you know how babies are made, right?'
'Yeah'
'So these days there are things you can do to not have babies. There are pills you can take or condoms for example'
'Sure, but why on earth would you need that?'
'Well, adults who love each other have sex, honey'
'Really, why on earth would they do that unless they wanted to have a kid?!'
'Emmm, well adults kinda find sex fun!'
'Wooooah! Really? I mean seriously???? Now, that's just plain weird!'

There is such a huge gap between ten year olds and high school kids! Hahahaha.

Red

Having some fun with autumn colours.   

Need for speed

Charlotte turned 17 in January and wanted to learn to drive immediately (not sure why given she hasn't a hope in hell of affording a car, but I guess I did the same at 17). 

In February she was too busy with prelims, March with oral exams, April and May with Highers, June with going to Nicaragua, July with going to Italy, August with settling back into school, so I figured it was off for this year... 

That was till she started asking about my availability on Thursday afternoons. I work from home so can move stuff about within reason. It turns out that Thursday afternoon is the only time she has free periods when she hasn't volunteered to be a teaching helper for the lower school. So yesterday she ordered herself a car (dual control for £11 for 2 hours). 

It's been a long time since I sat beside someone who has never ever been behind a wheel, the last time was possibly Derek in 1988! When Thomas learnt he had the basics and Marcel took some proper lessons, so there I was with my first millennium baby explaining 'that's the clutch, the brake, and the accelerator, this is the gear stick and that is the hand brake...' She surprised me with a few odd questions like 'are the three pedals in the same order in all cars?' Hahahaha - can you begin to imagine? 

But then she really threw me... I'm not much of a gamer; Candy Crush Soda on my smart phone for ten minutes at bed time is the extent of my gaming. She asked 'You press the brake to stop, right?' of course, then she followed up with 'and once it has come to a stop, if you press the brake again at the same time as putting the gearstick in reverse, you go backwards, right ?' WTAF?????? Sorry? Mind-blown! Well apparently on 'Need for Speed' (something on a PS3, I think), that's how you make your car reverse - the  L2 button (whatever that means!) Why on earth would you make a game that teaches kids that is how you drive a car? Are they insane???? She seemed a bit put out that she'd been misled! Kids today probably think they know how to fly a plane if they've got a flight simulation game 😜.

All in all it went well. She seemed to get the hang of hill starts fairly quickly, though I still need to get it through to her that you don't pull on the hand brake to stop 😂. But we definitely came top of the class that day... The other mum who hired a car with her 17 year old son at the same time as us returned it after just twenty minutes of the two hour hire, citing the fact that she'd got in such a big fight with him that he had pulled the car over and stomped off home leaving her to return it alone! She was last seen making her way to the pub, fuming 🤣.

Such a sweet boy

Léon's school has organised an s3 Maths trip to NYC for the October week... I'm not sure how they got away with that one but well done to the Maths teachers for managing to come up with a reason for needing to go to New York; I don't suppose exotic school trips are usually too high up the list of perks when you're a Maths teacher!

Léon's Maths teacher seems to be one of the lucky ones who departed yesterday, which meant his class had no teacher today. (Their half term holiday started today so this only meant one day with a sub - (apparently these are called 'please-take ( teacher)s' in today's speak, as in 'We had a please-take today' - I do try to keep up with the lingo as best someone can at my age)).

Léon was moaning over dinner that she had not only left a seating plan of his class for the please-take, but that the seating plan had a photo beside each name. I asked why this was an issue. He told me he and his friend had had the idea to swap places and names for the day (like no kid in the world has ever done that before!) but that the seating plan had ruined their fun.

Before launching into an explanation of why this was a stupid idea (citing the example of when Andrew and Dylan had done that in Charlotte's first year class many moons ago, and the wrong one had ended up with a demerit against his name), I casually asked which friend he'd been plotting with. 'Ayaan Shaik', he replied! 'Ayaan Shaik and Léon Buchanan-Widmann?' I asked. 'Yeah!' came the reply. 'The teacher would have been able to tell, Léon', I pointed out. 'Well, I have no idea how', came the sweet reply, 'not if she hadn't had photos!' I love that at 12, he can't see what is glaringly obvious to me at 49. It gives me hope for his world, especially when we are currently living in such horrible times.

The hole in the middle

Here we all are in 1990. Young, though older than we look, Linda and I are 22, Shona, Sheina and Gillian are 23. That was a great day; we sat our Senior Honours Swedish exam and celebrated with fish suppers from the Philadelphia in Great Western road, eaten straight from the newspaper on the mangy, green carpet in Linda's great Glasgow Street party flat. The accompaniment was Lucozade from plastic cups, though I suspect we moved on to wine later in the evening. Uni was over, we were six weeks away from being able to write MA(Hons) after our names and we vowed to be friends forever. 

And we are, and will be, except we now have a gaping hole in our middle... We didn't know when this photo was taken that one of us was already more than half way through her life.

Sheina was the quiet one, so politely spoken. She was the lady in the group, the one who organised dinner parties for us when we were still arranging piss-ups. That's how she came across to others, but to us she had a wicked sense of humour, especially after a wine or two. If you wanted to get us all talking about our deepest and most intimate thoughts, Sheina was the one who could steer us on to the topic without us even noticing she'd taken us there. She made us laugh and cry. Sheina lacked the self-confidence to realise she was a beautiful person, but we all saw through that. Her death five years ago this week changed us forever. Our annual meet-ups became much more frequent. We see each other many times a year a now. We are a family and will always be there for each other. But there will always be a little unspoken hole at the centre of us all.