Thursday, September 26, 2013

Marcel

I'm so proud of my big boy tonight. Here are the photos from the senior prize-giving where he came top in English and French.

Monday, September 23, 2013

There's a difference between...



Brita and Peter are visiting so the dinner table language is currently mainly Danish. Today Thomas was speaking rather animatedly about dieting to his father. He was saying something along the lines of There's a difference between a low carb diet and a protein-only diet... The differences were discussed at length. Charlotte looked awkward. I didn't pick up on it because I was following the conversation and I knew nothing dodgy had been said. This difference and that was underlined in a loud, jolly and animated fashion. Charlotte laughed nervously and whispered to me across the table: What are they saying about foreskin, mum? Although Lots can follow a usual Daddy to kiddie Danish discussion along the lines of 'Pass me the juice and we're having chicken with rice for dinner', she is less used to adult discussions and at the speed they were speaking, she was mishearing the Danish word for difference 'forskel' as 'foreskin'! I guess it must be confusing if you think all the adults at the table are shouting at each other about 'foreskin' in a somewhat blasé fashion over dinner!

Life's never dull in a multilingual, multicultural home!

Léon's eyes


Léon asks me sometimes what he should answer when people ask him what colour his eyes are. Imagine being nearly eight and not knowing how to answer that question... but to be honest, I'm not sure I know what to tell him! Let's analyse them: the upper half of his right eye is a mid blue colour and the outer half of his left one is definitely light blue. Each eye also has a dark blue circle all the way around but the bottom of his right eye is dark orange, and the inner portion of his left one is distinctly yellow, giving a slightly greenish hue. So what should he tick on a class survey that gives brown, blue and green as the only options? :-)

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Future stand-up comic?


Amaia is at that delightful age where kids discover the concept of jokes - I don't mean the slap-stick that they all appreciate, even as babies, I mean telling a joke or pun and waiting for a reaction. It started six months ago when she learnt one joke:

Why did the mushroom go to the party?
Because he was a fun guy...


I'm not sure she understands it but she feels it necessary to begin every evening meal by telling us it quickly, with no pause before the punchline and then laughing loudly.

From there she developed on to writing her own material (sigh):
What happened when the carrot crossed the road?
It met a mushroom and they got dead!
(Hysterical laughter) (sigh!)

Tonight we have reached a new level...
Mummy sing me a song.
What song do you want?
Humpty Dumpy

So I started:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

And before I had a chance to sing the next line she sang:
But a passing zebra caught him,
so he was fine!

Then started crying with laughter at her own wit, slapping her thigh! She's definitely trying to be funny, even if she's not quite hit on the right formula as yet!

Monday, September 09, 2013

Shona and Marcel through the years!




I was watching Marcel and Shona (my old uni friend) the other night at dinner. They don't see a lot of each other as Shona lives in Cologne. Suddenly it struck me how little she's changed and how much he has since they were first photographed together in 1997! Sweet...




Monday, September 02, 2013

How Léon sees names

Léon came bouncing out of school the day Marcel changed his surname:

Léon: Hi mum! Lots says people are allowed to change their names.
Me: That's right. Marcel just changed his.
Léon: So what's he called now then?
Me: Marcel Buchanan. Charlotte says she's going to change hers too as soon as she's allowed to.
Léon: Well I don't think it would be fair to make me a Buchanan when I'm older.

Now this puzzled me given he's the only one of my big kids who has no memories of ever living with his father and none of us as a couple. Thomas has been his father all his life and the only family he's ever really known are the Buchanans.

Despite the fact that Marcel's change of name means a great deal to me (or perhaps because of that fact), I have tried to stay well and truly on the fence because I wanted it to be entirely his own choice, given the gravity of it. I gave him the pros and the cons without trying to influence him. So Léon's reaction to 'Buchanan' surprised me.

So the conversation continued:

Léon: My Danish is the best out of all of us. It's better than Anna's and Amaia's so if they are allowed a Widmann on the end of their Buchanan to show they are half Scottish and half Danish, then I should get one too. I definitely deserve the Widmann bit to show how good I am at Danish.

So it wasn't a longing to stay Gautier after all, more a perceived status symbol he attaches to the Widmann half of the girls' names! It seems to be only a matter of time before I have two 'wee' Buchanans and three wee-er Buchanan-Widmanns!

Phew, he had me worried there for a bit!

Sunday, September 01, 2013

Biggest

I need to get my hands on some money...

They've only started making a seven seater Fiat 500!!!!

Wiser than adults



Sometimes it's the youngest eyes that see the clearest.

Thomas told me yesterday about a chat he'd had with Anna, our five year old.

Already, at such a tender age, she seems sadly to have sussed what is wrong with the current world and what is really important...

Thomas always speaks to the kids in Danish, so I'll just translate it as this isn't the key point.

Thomas: 'What do you want to be when you grow up Anna?'

Anna: 'I guess I need to become a pop star so I can go on something like Big Brother and make enough money to be able to retire and do something interesting that matters like become a scientist!'

What a crazy world we live in, if this is how the youth see it.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Photos to revisit

This made me laugh today... It also got me thinking about the endless fun I'll be able to have twenty years from now - here's a small selection!


 








Thursday, August 29, 2013

0/10 for logic, dear!



I just overheard one of those wonderful bilingual conversations between Léon and Thomas - into the bargain - the logic made me laugh!

Thomas: Hvor mange ben tror du et tusindben har Léon?
Léon: Emmm, I don't know. Forty?

Shaking my head in disbelief!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

3 year old psychology



Another one of those priceless conversations that is there to remind me why I decided to become a mum!
Amaia: Nursery is kind of like my job, isn't it?
Me: Yes pet
Amaia: So why don't I get paid for coming?

Monday, August 26, 2013

My gran



A good friend posted a photo on facebook this weekend of something that brought memories of my granny flooding back! Thanks for that Karen!

What was it? Well we lived in Scotland which is a very a rather wet place, and gran had very curly hair that she liked to tame with over-sized rollers. I found that rather confusing as a child with poker straight hair. She always used to claim she needed to use rollers to straighten her hair after washing it, but it seemed to have the opposite effect when she put them in my hair! Anyway, because she went to such trouble with her hair, she couldn't contemplate being caught in a shower and having all that good work undone. She used to have several rainmates about her at all times - one in her bag, one in each pocket etc. That of course meant that when we were caught in a shower together she always had a spare and insisted on putting one on me... walking home from school in a rainmate does nothing for your self-esteem in early childhood! Worse still Gran never learned to drive so we were always on foot when we were caught in rain! Even at fifteen or so she'd try to get me into one. I always tried to make sure we shopped away from anywhere my school friends might potentially bump into us!

It's strange - looking through old photos, I have none of Granny in a rainmate - I guess I would have had one or two had she survived into the digital era!


Saturday, August 24, 2013

Demolishing my old high school

Over the last year or two tens of millions of pounds have been poured into building a new high school to replace the one I attended as a teenager. The new one has been ready for months and looks great but when they started bulldozing the place where all my memories lie, I felt strangely compelled to visit daily and watch as they pulled it apart brick by brick.

In all it only took about three weeks to take apart and recycle the place where I learnt who I was and what I would grow up to be. Three weeks to remove the building where I learnt how to speak French and German, and where I sat the exams which led to me becoming the first member of my family to go to 
university and get a degree. Everything that I have become can be traced back to that building... It was through school that I met my first husband and thanks to the French we spoke together that I got my job writing French dictionaries, where I would later meet my second husband. All my kids indirectly owe their existence to this place! 

The new one has now opened with the old name and only minor changes to the uniform. Marcel has some friends who attend it and they are all raving about the 21st century facilities but to me this decrepit old building is much more dear to me than any million pound building. At least that tall tree is still there in the background watching over it as a landmark of my past.

Have a look here.


Friday, August 23, 2013

Hamster accessories - a warning


I haven't had a hamster before. When we decided to get her, we bought one of the largest cages on offer. In addition to that we bought the only wheel available at the local pet supply shop, some tubes, a litter box and a little house. Within two months of us buying all this, our wee hamster had outgrown all of it. She didn't fit through the tubes any more. Had she tried running on the wheel, she's have snapped her spine and she could not squeeze through the door of her wee house. (No, Rosie is not an exceptionally large monster hamster, before you ask!) 

These items are not marketed as baby hamster products, merely hamster products. In addition pet stores don't actually stock anything bigger. I had to go on the Internet to find a wheel that wouldn't cripple her. I can understand if the pet shops offered both, but they don't.

Maybe it's a marketing ploy to have us believe hamsters stay tiny, but they don't so squeezing them into tiny cages where none of the accessories fit is cruelly undesirable. So if you, like me, are contemplating your first hamster, try looking on somewhere like Zooplus  instead of being duped into buying one of those tiny (and temporary) hamster torture chambers on offer locally.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Evil, and persistent instrument of torture







 Here are four photos of my childhood. The first is taken in the summer of '71 when I was three and a half years old and my brother had just been born, the second is from the following summer when I was four and a half.

We then skip ahead to a rather posed shot from the summer of '74 so I am six and a half and finally we reach the summer of '76 so I'm a ripe old eight and a half and just at the beginning of p5...

So what do you notice? Yes - I am wearing the same bikini in all of them.

It was bad enough to have to wear the same bikini from the age of three right through to primary five but more traumatic still was the major reason it fitted me so well for so long was because my granny had knitted me it! And being made of wool, it was stretchy. Now I know the UK was not and is not renowned for its tropical climate, but still you don't necessarily want to be wearing a woolly bikini every summer - that last photo was from the heatwave '76 after all! And the plot thickens... As you can see it is a pretty little thing - with a very feminine, integral woollen skirt in a rather fetching shade of indigo... And not only should you notice I am wearing the same swimwear in every photo, the other similarity is that it is always dry... Why do you think I never got my bikini wet? Wool, water, gravity... need I say more? It was an evil and long-lived instrument of torture that blighted my summers with heat, and embarrassment. No wonder I didn't become a very good swimmer till high school.

Maybe I should start a self help group for people traumatized in childhood by grannies' inescapable knitted nightmares...



Thursday, August 15, 2013

Wine caps



My old Gramps liked a drink. One of his most annoying habits was sneaking a wee mouthful out of dad's whisky after everyone was in bed and topping it up with water so no one would notice (or so he thought). Obviously this irked dad somewhat, especially when he opted for his dearest malt. If you had him for a week's holiday, the malt was almost transparent by the Friday! Occasionally, of course, he could slip up - it didn't work with Pernod, for instance!

Thomas has taken to making his own alcohol. First it was beer, then cider and finally wine. To make it as authentic as possible he bought a corker and some little plasticky caps for the top. You put them on loosely and then you put them in boiling water to shrink them on. Helping Thomas to attach them the other night, Gramps immediately popped into my mind. If these had been available in his day Gramps could easily have emptied dad's entire wine rack and refilled them all with coloured water without being caught. Dad would have been livid!














OAP mutiny at the self checkout

Just for you Rob...

So our new four course a night dinner regime necessitated my running up to ASDA last night at six for a couple of missing items... At six on a Wednesday evening ASDA seemed to think the optimum till configuration was approximately eight open basket self checkouts each with one customer, four large trolley self checkouts (which were installed less than a month ago) each with one customer, three manned trolley checkouts each with five customers (mostly over sixty) and ten closed man-able checkouts. I happened to be at the self checkout closest to the manned one with five pensioners at it. The wee man in charge of all the self checkouts approached the woman at the end of the long queue and tried to usher her towards my checkout with a smile and a 'this self checkout is moving more quickly and I can help you if you haven't used one before'. He was in his twenties. She was late 70s. She turned out to be none other than (a clone of) Mrs Richards from Fawlty Towers... (Remember the wildebeest sweeping majestically?)



'Excuse me?' she bellowed. He repeated his suggestion. She looked around wildly and then shouted as if her hearing aid was turned off 'Am I being paid to work at Asda?' The boy looked sheepish. She shouted louder 'Is Asda paying me?' He dared to ask 'What for?' She then pointed out that if the chap at the checkout she was waiting at was being paid for ringing up her groceries, she would not use a checkout where she did his job without receiving the same renumeration. '...Refuse to use the bloody things!' she muttered. Her whole queue went from staring embarrassedly at their feet to nodding appreciatively. Then she spied a poster hanging above the till with the slogan 'Asda, Happy to Help!' 'Who is it you're happy to help, young man? Because it obviously isn't the customer! Three checkouts on just before dinner time?! Happy to help indeed!!' 'Young man' scuttled off muttering about finding her a manager to speak to. As the waiting continued she whipped all the OAPs up into a frenzy ranting furiously about trying to force people onto self checkouts unwillingly and when the manager finally arrived he was almost knocked over be a herd of pensioners sweeping majestically ranting in unison about ASDA's recent attempts at staff cutting!

I had to leave then so I'm not sure if he got out with his life or if Mrs Richards is still giving him a roasting!

'J' and the Goldfish!



It's been a while since we last heard from 'J'...

Mum was out for lunch with her the other day and was recounting the story of us losing Rosie. 'J' asked if Rosie was easily replaceable in a find another hamster that looks the same, stick it in the cage and lie to the kids kind of way, so mum pointed out that because of the odd diamond on her back that might be hard.

That, of course, led 'J' onto a story of her own...

Many moons ago, when her children (who are just a few years younger than me) were still living at home, a neighbour had asked them to look after their pet goldfish while on holiday. They had two. A week into the holiday 'J' was beside herself when she found one floating lifeless on the surface of the tank one morning. She decided that goldfish were replaceable so scooped the dead body out, wrapped it in kitchen roll and stuffed it in her handbag. Later that day, she made her way to the local garden centre and took out the dead fish and asked the assistant if they wouldn't mind looking through their fish for something similar in size and markings. The manager seemed somewhat surprised she had a dead fish in her handbag but caught a few in his net before she agreed to one which was a reasonable replacement. 'J' returned home, her plot had worked.

You can guess what happened a few mornings later though, can't you? Yes, fish number two kicked the bucket too! So off 'J' went with another handbag containing a corpse and after rejecting many fishy impostors and exasperating the manager to the point of being asked not to bring any more dead fish into his shop, she returned home once again. Mission accomplished.

The friend returned from her holiday and didn't notice. Neither did her kids. Phew... 'J', of course, felt bad so took the neighbour to one side and explained what had happened and how the kids would never need to know. The neighbour didn't seem to appreciate the lengths 'J' had gone to and disapproved of lying so immediately called the kids in and used the opportunity to explain death to her kids citing what 'J' had done in their absence! 'J' was of course incensed after all the bother she'd gone to!

Note to self: Don't leave Rosie with 'J' when we go on holiday...

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

It's a gift



The newspapers and social media have been full of statuses bemoaning the ridiculous length of the school summer holidays. Six or seven weeks is completely incompatible with work and if you don't work having them under your feet that long is a nightmare. Of course, as someone who works from home the thought of five off for the summer meant facing the logistics of working late evenings, early mornings, during the night or even all three. But strangely as I dropped them all back at school this morning, exhausted from all my late-night working, the fact that I didn't get away on holiday and didn't have any time off, my overwhelming thought is 'Already?'

The summer with all my kids around me is over and I am sad because having all ages in childhood's spectrum, I know it is over in the glint of an eye. The seven weeks I had to work nights were hard but they were truly a gift because the next time I have that special time with my kids, they will be a year older, a year more independent and a year more distant. I'm thankful for every minute of those six or seven weeks because I did get to spend one of the very few summers left to me as the mum of children, as opposed to the mum of adults who drop by for a summer visit. Childhood is so precious. I didn't realize how much I missed out on when I used to take them on holiday three weeks then send them to summer clubs because I couldn't take any more time off. Working from home is stressful but it compensates in ways that are immeasurable. I wish people realized they should be arguing for work to accommodate the holidays, rather than the opposite.

It might not have been the summer of my dreams (we didn't get an all-inclusive somewhere tropical!) but I got to be a mum and that is more important than any other job I do.