Mini-protester?

Nursery was holding a Queen's Jubilee celebration today. As I arrived at nursery it was draped in Union Jacks, I suddenly remembered the kids were meant to come dressed appropriately for a garden party with the Queen. They were to be served cucumber sandwiches and the likes and wave Union Jacks. I get so many memos from schools and nurseries, I find it hard to always remember who is meant to wear what, bring what etc. I looked down. Anna had chosen her Saltire t-shirt - not as a republican, separatist statement but simply because her big sister had bought the same t-shirt yesterday in ASDA and she wanted to be like her! I am sure, given she has never worn it before, most of the teachers thought it was a silent protest!

I'm sure Thomas is proud of our daughter today but I have to admit it was completely accidental!

I guess this would have made my dad smile too...

Union Jacks

I was in Tesco buying my usual shopping. As I put it up at the checkout, I slowly became aware of how absurd it looked. Everything, more or less, had a Union Jack on it - I am sure that is meant to fill us with pride and enthusiasm - sorry I'm a republican (not in the American sense I hasten to add!) But if I was a monarchist - why do I want Union Jacks on my loaf packaging, my cornflakes, my potato scones, and crazier still on my toilet roll? Am I really meant to feel pride, wiping my bum with some proud, patriotic toilet paper? I mean they even had Pampers nappies with Union Jacks printed on them! So it is ok to shit on it! I am so pleased Amaia is already potty-trained because I wouldn't be indulging them in this nonsense.

It got me to thinking about why I don't feel as at ease with the flag as say Danes do with their flag, and similar. Then I realized it could be a Scottish thing - and I don't mean an Independence versus Unionist thing, I mean unlike my English counterparts, I grew up in Glasgow in the 70s. The Union Jack and the Irish flag represented the two sides of the sectarian issue. It doesn't make me feel all warm and patriotic, it feels vaguely sinister and to be avoided.

Thanks, Hazeldene!

Anna goes to Hazeldene nursery in East Renfrewshire. She absolutely loves it, with reason - it has won all Scotland's top awards.

Over the last few weeks they have had chicken eggs hatching in an incubator. The kids have all been fixated by the eggs opening and thrilled as expectant parents when Fluffy, Sporty, Minnie, Spiderman, Chook and Sunshine "cracked out" as Anna put it!

Today I needed eggs. I was in ASDA. As I handed the box of 15 over at the check-out, Anna rubbed her hands together with excitement. Oooooh pets! What are we going to call them, mummy?!


Thanks Hazeldene!

Pumpa and Amaia

For the last nearly two years of dad's life, as a result of his cancer, he always had a bottle of lucozade in his hand, wherever he went. As long as I live, I will probably associate the small lucozade bottles with dad.

Last night mum turned up with dad's golf clubs. Marcel had been taught golf by dad so was getting his clubs.

Dad's final illness, the perforated ulcer, was fairly sudden and took hold only two weeks after his last game of golf. As Marcel emptied the bags to see what they contained, he found a half-drunk bottle of lucozade. It seemed quite poignant when he took it out, but we got on with looking through them and once he had repacked the bags, he left the bottle on my patio in front of the garden chairs as dad had often done himself last summer and even this year in March. We then followed the sun round to the front garden for dinner and afterwards weren't round the back so forgot about it.

 This morning I found Amaia practically dancing in the living room, singing Pumpa's here! Pumpa's here! Pumpa where are you? I followed her eyes - she was looking out the patio door - of course fixated by the bottle. She's only two - all her life, Pumpa had lucozade. She's too old not to be aware of his absence but too young to have any concept of where he is. She's in a strange limbo that would truly break your heart sometimes.

Make a robot night at Beavers

Sometimes I have to smile about the direction life takes us. When I first shared an office with the young, 30 year old single Danish bloke, I never in my wildest dreams imagined he would one day be taking my son to Beavers and making 'Darth Robot' with him. Léon is a very lucky boy to have such a great dad.

The Takeaway Secret by Kenny McGovern

It isn't really realistic to buy takeaway food when you are self-employed (=no financial visibility) and you have five kids to feed. We bulk buy and Thomas, a brilliant cook, rustles up Indian and Chinese better than you get from the local takeaway anyway. When we were in Paris recently, we decided to let the kids have a treat and bought them kebabs for probably the first time in five years. They really enjoyed the experience. Amaia was particularly impressed, eating her own then the leftovers of both Léon and Anna. We realized after that, that although Thomas is great at the fancier end of the cooking scale, we had no recipes for the sorts of things kids love as a special treat, but in our house never get - kebabs, fish and chip shop fish, pakora, burgers, etc. Then he came across this little gem.

So, first up on Sunday night, was the doner kebab. I wasn't sure how we were going to manage that without the rotating grill but I left him to it and was more than surprised to find it tasted almost identical to the kebab I had in Paris a month ago! The kids were all extremely impressed too. I am not sure this discovery is going to be great for our waistlines...

A wee update

For anyone who was wondering what the inside of the nappy poppies look like, they opened today! Aren't they pretty? (This wee bee thought so anyway!)

Amaia

I know she's filthy in this photo - from a day at the beach, playing with sand and stones, eating ice cream but I love they way it captures her odd eyes. In photos they often just look dark, but they aren't at all - they mix yellows, and cappuccino tones with olive, light blue and more. I love my baby's eyes.

Paper poppies

And still on a horticultural note, our poppies started to come out today too. We have some new white ones I had forgotten about at the back of the garden. I had to laugh though. Anna announced 'Have you seen the new flowers at the back of the garden mummy, they are made out of Pampers nappy material!' And true enough they do feel like that kind of soft nappy paper, I remember so well from before Amaia was potty-trained.

Tulips

We have these rather odd tulips in our garden at the moment. When they first appeared - each with three or four heads per stem, I thought they were quite special but as they've gone further through their flowering cycle, they have become even more bizarre. After each of the heads has spent a three to four weeks beautifully in bloom with yellow and white striped petals, they suddenly turn pink for the last couple of weeks before they die. How fascinating! I know I planted them, but have no idea what type they are so I can't even order some more!

How vain are spiders?

I love the logic of small kids. Our Nissan Micra had a spider's web on the wing mirror today when I turned up at school to pick Léon up (don't worry Linda, I'll dust it ;-))
Léon took one look at it and concluded 'It probably built it there because it likes to look at itself in the mirror!'

Scottish is not English

I was in B&Q today. I think they've somewhat overestimated the Glaswegian enthusiasm for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. They had untouched boxes of bunting, union jack covers for your car wing mirrors and little flags you might want to wave, or might not, as the case may be - typical chain store mentality. Hell mend them!

Cycling

I said it with Léon and I am reiterating it with Anna. Balance bikes are a godsend to 40-somethings who need to teach their kids to cycle! No more back-breaking hours pushing junior round the park. Think about it logically - learning to cycle isn't about learning to pedal, it is about learning to balance. I put Anna at the top of a hill with a pedal-less bike and let her roll down it over and over till she became confident. Two days later she's on a proper pedal bike rolling down the hill, hours away from pedalling back up it under her own steam. If I was a mini-dictator I think I'd ban the sale of bikes with stabilisers as a cycle-training device - they really are much more hassle than they are worth.

Through fourteen-year-old eyes

Marcel decided to write about dad about four weeks ago. He then gave it to his English teacher to read, planning, if the teacher liked it, to let Pumpa read it himself. I can only imagine his feelings today, when it was returned to him, full of praise. 


In the last two years, and more importantly in the last ten days, I have watched this childhood ebb away. He started this journey as a child but holding dad's hand for two years as he slowly died, holding it still after death, hugging and kissing him farewell a few hours after death and then seeing the young man in the suit carry his beloved Pumpa's coffin all in the space of a week is hard to put into words. I think he would have been proud of what his grandson wrote for him.


So for what it is worth, here is a short account of dad's illness by Marcel:


Cancer. Everyone is aware of its existence, its causes, its process, its effect on life, but no-one, no-one ever thinks it will hit home. I used to be everyone, the oblivious majority, but now I'm well and truly aware of just how hard this demon lurking in the shadows can hit home.


Three years ago today, grandpa, born April 5, 1943, aged 66 at the time, had his retirement set out, golf, golf, and more golf (and of course, the weekly family visit.) He had everything enjoyable - hobbies, friends, family, holidays, monthly golfing tournaments, everything. These were soon to become the rock upon which he would rely for support.


One fateful day, life was rolling on as usual, birds chirping in the trees, sun blazing, refreshing summer breeze, lunch in the garden with the family, my favourite. I had just begun being indoctrinated, as now seems to be our tradition, into the family sport, golf. Due to the beauty of the morning I was of course out with Grandpa in the garden practising my golf swing, the casual chat that comes with golf continued as usual, this day could not have started out more ordinary. The day rolled on and the family left but what I had noticed was that mum hadn't quite been herself throughout the day, this worried me. I began to look for her in the house but before I could find her she found me. There I was, stopped, in the midst of a content childhood day, the perfect day, with the cold words I'll never forget "Marcel, sit down, you need to hear something about grandpa", her face screaming with sadness. I sat for what felt like hours, days, this couldn't be true. The man swinging the golf club with such power and glowing with health could not have, as diagnosed then, three months to live. It began to become real, I was broken. It was as if a small part of me had been ripped out and could never be put back. This image of grandpa swinging his golf club in the afternoon sunlight would be the image I would focus on whenever I was in a bad place throughout this experience. It became the embedded image of my grandpa and has remained unchanged to this day. I had now begun my long walk down the path of going from the oblivious majority to the enlightened few.


Bowel cancer. Liver cancer. Lung cancer. Three cancers that standing alone are life threatening but with a full three at once, the way the doctors saw it, he had no chance. Grandpa had gone overnight from a relaxed, care-free lifestyle to a horrible 40 pills a day routine, his diet had to be monitored and he was forever in and out of hospital, the discovery of his cancer being his first visit to a hospital in his life nonetheless. On top of all this came the dreaded chemotherapy, basically a poison designed to take you as close to death as possible in order to kill all the cancerous cells in the body. It certainly brought a great deal of misery to us all. The golf stopped due to a simple lack of strength, rarely did he manage a full game. This was painful for me to watch, a man I looked up to, a second father to me was being deprived of his lifelong hobby and there was nothing I could do. Looking back now, being able to sum up and understand my grandpa's day to day actions after being diagnosed and how he dealt and is still dealing with this really only brings one thought to my head, unwavering courage. Watching my grandpa fight this demon is the most courageous act I have ever seen by a man. Some say that once someone is diagnosed with cancer they begin to hate the world, life and everyone around them for the simple reason, "Why me? Why not them?" but not my grandpa, he blamed no one. I found strength in his strength and in turn I believe he found strength in mine. The open-mindedness and the constant hope shown by my grandpa is why my grandpa is and always will be my hero.


Days turned into weeks, months turned into years and time went by, slowly at first but things soon settled down, life had to continue so it did. Grandpa was back on the golf course on the beautiful fairways of Scotland and now much more often accompanied by me. Two years down the line he's on his 3rd batch of chemotherapy and has far outlived any of the doctors' expectations. Grandpa is still his cheery, golf-obsessed self and remains to this day one of my greatest role models in life. Sure, grandpa has his ups and downs from time to time but here we are, living to the fullest what ever time we have left with him, however long that may be.

English genes?

Here's Amaia with her big, wee cousin Alasdair. Now here's a wee prediction for the future... When Al grows up he will be a sportsman. Given he's a sturdy wee guy, I firstly thought of rugby but since he learned to walk properly a month or so ago, freeing up his hands, he seems to have developed an amazing ability to bowl balls (stones, ornaments, food and generally everything not glued down!) so I'm going to drop my rugby theory and opt for him having inherited the English genes from my father's side and become a cricketer! ;-)

Watch this space!

Optimist or pessimist?

Scotland's weather has been truly diabolical, even by our standards, this year. I think we've probably seen less than a week over 10°C. But I think I can tell who is the half-empty and who is the half-full guy in my house! When 15°C was forecast yesterday, Léon bravely opted for the clothes he got for our last trip to Tuscany, while my little nephew decided a snow jacket was probably a safer option! They did look comical playing together outside my house - though I think somewhere in the middle might have been a better bet!

Waitrose cake

We did a barbecue last night and mum decided to buy us a dessert for afters. While in Waitrose buying some items for the grill we found ourselves in front of the cake display. Running our eyes along the prices they seemed to range from £2.99 - £4.99. Mum opted for this seriously chocolatey chocolate, hazelnut and almond torte. Somewhat surprised at the final bill we later realized they'd charged her £9.99 for it. When I went back later to check, the price label for this particular cake was not underneath where it was on the shelf but almost a whole fridge further up the aisle. Mum was also a tad miffed at how much smaller it was in real life than its box. Delicious though it was, it was not worth double the price of any of the other cheesecakes and the likes they had on offer, so I wouldn't recommend it!

What happened to respect?

OK, so this isn't going to be the most pc blog-rant I've ever posted, but I'm pissed off and under present circumstances I don't see why I should smile and be quietly tactful!

So dad's last wishes were 'I want none of that religious shite!' Whether you agree with this or not is immaterial. These were the last wishes of a dying man and should be respected as such, whether you think you know better or not. So important they were to him, he made them a prominent feature of his will too. As his daughter, son and wife respecting these wishes was paramount to us. We arranged a totally non-religious funeral, spending hours with the Humanist celebrant writing the sermon with her. We had done exactly what he requested. That gave us some comfort in our darkest hour. We felt we had honoured him in that way.

Those who attended the funeral were told in the sermon that these wishes had been dear and of the utmost importance to him... so how dare a certain nameless acquaintance of my father's take it upon himself to contravene this, upsetting my mother and us in the process. After listening intently to all this on Friday, he handed my mother what she assumed to be a condolence card. Fortunately she didn't open it till she got home. It piously and condescendingly turned out to be a stamped letter from the man and his local priest, telling my mother he had taken it upon himself to have the priest in question say a private mass for my father in order to save his eternal soul from damnation! I am utterly appalled. Had he died, I would have respected his religious beliefs, so how dare he not respect those of my family. If he feels it necessary to pray to his God, that should remain between him and his priest. It should not be thrust into my mother's hand in some self-righteous, superior manner.

As I have said before - atheism is the only religion not granted the respect it deserves. It is time that changed. I am passionately atheist and fail to see why that is not respected.

Think about it

I just wanted to share a poem with you, if you missed the funeral today.

Hibiscus

You get a lot of flowers when someone dies... beautiful flowers, treasured flowers.

On Saturday, I returned home not even 24 hours into this new and frightening existence and found a dear friend had left a lovely bouquet of orange roses on my doorstep. I held them and smelled them and then with a sadness I noticed the sticker proclaiming 'Guaranteed to last 7 days'. With a huge lump in my throat I silently questioned - 'Am I only meant to think of him for seven days, surely a lifetime is worth more than seven days?'. A lifetime is worth a lifetime and much more...The flowers were beautiful but bitter-sweet.

I didn't think another thing about it till today, when I was hoovering out my car. A Yodel van came down the street and asked for directions to number 27. I told him that was me and he took out a box that was about the same size as Léon! Interflora was written on the side. The bitter-sweet thought popped fleetingly into my mind again and I set it to one side and finished my hoovering, working up the strength to re-confront the thoughts and feelings I had been trying to avoid with my little hoovering distraction...

First I opened the card and saw the names Karen (Grant) and Siobhan (Macdonald)... two of the best friends I have in the world - my breast friends - we shared having our first babies, we shared our divorces and the rebuilding of our lives. You don't get closer than that...

I took a knife and cut into the box. There stood a tree marked - Plant this in remembrance of your dad always. I fell to pieces, crying like a baby. I went up to Thomas who asked what was up and all I could manage to say was 'I got a tree!' He looked quite bemused but just held me till I calmed down.

It was beautiful, already in bloom and big and strong with roots. I wasn't going to last seven days or even seven years - it can outlast me! I didn't know I needed a tree until I got my tree, but I really, really needed a tree. My tree of remembrance. It is hard to imagine already how much the tree means to me. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to move house again, not without taking my Dougie-tree.