Age

While watching a documentary about the history of Scotland in the year 980 last night Anna asked: 'Were you alive then, mum?' Thanks, Anna!

Maybe I'm doing something right

Sometimes the smallest comments can blow you away. That's one reason you can't blink for a minute as a parent. If you let your mind wander, you miss the gems that reassure you that you must be doing something right.

Marcel will be 17 in a few months, Charlotte is two years and five months younger. By all accounts they should be at that very age where they can barely stand the sight of each other.

Instead they often return from a friend's house puzzled by their friend's conduct towards a younger or older sibling - the snide comments, the ignoring, the pushing, poking, and all the petty one-upmanship.

My two have a solidarity that is wonderful to watch. Of course, it was in part borne out of watching out for each other at their father's house when they still had a relationship with him. They only had each other to talk to about their experiences there and that meant dropping the sibling rivalry. Still two years have passed since that issue was resolved and their bond has become closer, not weaker. They are often found laughing together. Marcel advises Lots on high school etiquette, on studies and just generally gets joy from her company. And she listens to him, trusting. She cares how he's doing and strives to emulate him and his achievements. Because it was Charlotte who ultimately solved the issue of their father, there is a great deal of respect from Marcel towards her. He defers to her in a way that underlines his gratitude and a certain awe in her silent strength of character. It isn't something you often see from older to younger - not when they are as young as this. They've probably been through a bit more than many of their contemporaries with our divorce, the breakdown in the relationship with their other family and my dad's long illness and those things have made them closer than teenage siblings often are.

So what inspired this? Charlotte came in yesterday with a form from school. She cast it nonchalantly onto the dining table muttering that they were running a French school trip to Paris next summer but at nearly £700 she had already worked out that there would be no point in discussing it. When you are self-employed and have five kids £700 is more like the annual family holiday budget, than the school trip budget. Desperately sad, as I always am to deny them what would be lifelong and wonderful memories, I started to agree with her when Marcel looked up from his dinner and said, completely genuinely 'If there's anything I can do to help - I could, like, give her all my earnings from my job for a month or something if that'd help?' How many 16 year old boys would work every Monday, Wednesday, Friday night and every Sunday morning from 5am in a shop and then offer to give up all their earnings to try to pay for their 14 year old sister to go on a school trip - no strings attached? His generosity, his selflessness and his love just blew me away. Of course, it might not get her to Paris, but it melted my heart a little, that's for sure.

I am one proud mummy.

Logic that's hard to argue with

They've been back at school two days now. They aren't overly happy to be getting up at 8am again and consequently breakfast is a constant argument: who should get bowls, spoons, cereal, who's had too much milk, who can get dressed quickest - whine, whine, grump, moan for a solid half hour. Amaia just sits shell-shocked, looking exhausted, while these two battle it out to the death. Tired myself this morning, I shouted at them to stop arguing.

Me: 'Will you two just all stop arguing and get dressed NOOOOW!'
Anna: 'It's your fault we argue, mum!'
I quickly ran a search in my head of my own behaviour to work out if I was too grumpy, shouty or argumentative myself, but before I'd analysed all the data she elaborated: 'You had us - if you hadn't had us, we couldn't argue!'

Well that's a bit drastic, if technically true...

A wicked sense of humour

So Charlotte, Amaia and I went shopping in Asda for dinner. Charlotte was in her school uniform, Amaia in normal clothes. Charlotte goes to the local school so everyone knows the uniform. Moreover the school has a colour-coding system of ties to show where in the school a child is - red ties for 12-14 year olds, blue ties for 15 and 16 year olds, black for 17 and 18 year olds. Those whose kids attend the school are obviously aware of this. I had to go to the Internet order pick-up desk for a skirt I'd ordered Amaia so I gave Lots the shopping list and Amaia opted to go with her. I'm not sure what got into Amaia's head but Charlotte said that every time they stopped to pick something up and there were other shoppers nearby Amaia turned to her in a very loud voice and called her 'mum!' 'Mum, can we get crisps?', 'What's for dinner, mum?' Lots was affronted! She said she's never had as many dirty looks in her life! Wee besom!

My first car

With Marcel reaching 17 this summer, he's started talking about saving up for driving lessons, a car and insurance. Many of his better-off friends will be given a car but rather than being down in the dumps at that prospect, Marcel just sees that as another challenge. And obviously given he's just worked enough in the corner shop to pay for a trip to India and a few other outings this summer, that possibility isn't as far-fetched as it could be (well if you ignore the potential insurance quotes anyway!)

So we got onto the topic of first cars. Somehow Marcel had managed to miss all references to my first car over the years so I hunted through some old photos till I found one of it. It was a 1988 Fiat 126. He looked surprised that something that small could actually get you anywhere. When I pointed out that Linda, Gillian, Shona, Sheina and I had been on many day trips to the coast and the likes in that little chuggy, he nearly fell off his seat in surprise.

I have fond memories of a trip to Edinburgh once: I had noticed in the handbook that its top speed was 68mph so with a tailwind on the M8 we'd tried our hardest to break the 70mph barrier - ambitions were small back then!

There was the time I had taken it to Mull on holiday with my then French boyfriend. We'd phoned ahead and booked into a bed and breakfast calling ourselves Miss De Beauvoir and Mr Sartre and they hadn't seemed to get the allusion! We drove onto the ferry, or rather we tried to but the chuggy got stuck as it was too little to drive on. Four men had had to carry it on rather than leaving it wobbling on the on-ramp - how embarrassing!

And finally in the early years in Collins, a German colleague asked me for a lift into town as his car had broken down. I'm not sure he'd have asked, if he'd seen what I drove. He was about 6'8" and I had serious trouble getting him in and out. I thought at one point I might have to drive with the sunroof open!

 These days I may be seen more often than not in my big seven-seater people carrier, but to be honest I will always be a chuggy owner at heart. One day, when all the kids have left home, the economy permitting, I'm going to buy myself a new Fiat 500!

Egg obsessed

For the past six or seven years Thomas has been obsessed with making the perfect Easter egg. I can only assume this is a hang-up from his childhood (with German aunts and uncles) rather than a new-found religious streak...

At first he banged his head up against the fact that the UK has become an almost exclusively brown egg country and brown eggs just don't colour. One year we did get six white eggs off our dear doctor (who has a home farm) but beyond that the eggs were the first hurdle.

After that the colouring of his childhood seemed to be unavailable because of all these colouring regulations these days so the first few years saw brown eggs dyed browner and that wasn't very appealing.

Then we started shopping more in ethnic supermarkets and it came to our attention a year ago that Poles love white eggs. So off he went down to Thornliebank and returned hopping and skipping (carefully) with two dozen white beauties from the Polish supermarket.

Added to that the complex plan whereby he'd ordered German Easter egg colouring six months ago, had it delivered to my friend in Cologne and had her drive it back at Xmas - bingo - everything finally fell into place for our first ever brightly-coloured Easter eggs.

It was such a success I had better order next year's already.

I did feel sorry for his other Danish expat friend who had had the same problem. Having not discovered the Polish option, she had forked out for Waitrose's most extortionate pale duck eggs. With no decent colouring to be had she tried boiling them with beetroot in an attempt at achieving pink eggs, only to find out that expensive duck eggs mixed with beetroot gives exactly the same shade of brown as Asda smartprice eggs. I reckon she'll be going down the amazon.de route next year too.

Sometimes it is the innocent conversations that teach you the most.

I was driving into town yesterday with four of the five kids in the car. Charlotte was in the front so the soundtrack from Tangled was chosen to be the in-car entertainment for the trip. We'd just listened all the way through both Mother knows best and the reprise, sung by the old witch Mother Gothel and I innocently commented that she was a bit of a bitch. Still singing along happily and innocently Charlotte stated, quite calmly and unmoved 'Yeah, she always reminds me of papa'. I quietly left her to elaborate. She commented on the way she undermines Rapunzel, the way she builds her confidence and knocks it down in the one sentence, her paranoid fluctuations between loving and downright nasty, her condescending attitude, her mad possessive steak and finally the glee she takes in telling her no one will want her.

Often when I hear how my kids talk about their father, I am shocked that he allowed their relationship to deteriorate to that level. Nothing should have been more important to him than them but by allowing his own madness to become more important than them, he lost them somewhere along the way. I would be devastated if this sort of song reminded my kids of me.

Maternal instinct

We were discussing the differences between boys and girls tonight in the car on the way to the swimming pool and Léon decided he was more than pleased to be a boy as he didn't really fancy any of that giving birth nonsense. Anna seemed more upbeat though: 'I definitely want to be a mum when I grow up' she announced - I was about to comment on the fact that she always seems to love babies when she elaborated, cackling like an old witch: 'I want little people I can use as my slaves, who can do all my cleaning and tidying up'. Patently I must be doing something wrong on the mothering front.

Money madness

I have no idea what made England decide to go down this silly road - they certainly weren't going with the flow, nor do I have any doubt that it will need rethinking once it becomes patently obvious that the majority of loans will never be repaid but given my children are in the 'guinea pig' age-group, attempting to avoid Scotland being forced into introducing this (reduced block grants and all that) will be top of my list of reasons for voting 'yes' this September...

Dream bedrooms

I was driving the kids to school the other day when they started discussing their ideal bedrooms.

Léon's taken to discussing how he'd like his room to look on a daily basis recently. He's had to share a room with the girls since the fifth bedroom became our home office a few years back and he's now getting to an age where he's desperate for his own space. So it started with him asking if we'd consider converting the loft space above Charlotte's room and the home office into two bedrooms for him and Anna, leaving Amaia in the big room they currently share. I agreed that I was happy to do that as soon as I won the lotto, not mentioning I didn't actually play lotto... so they started to describe their dream rooms.

Anna was going to have a pale blue room with dark blue hearts all over the walls and 'I love 1D' written all round the wall just above the skirting in red.

Amaia asked me to paint Mr Men on her walls. That'd be easy as I'd done that once before in a previous house. (see above)

Then Léon told me his dream room was dark blue with life-sized Gandalfs painted on the walls. How creepy would that be?! I'm suddenly very glad he hasn't a hope in hell of getting a room any time soon!

Proud of my wee boy

It seems like no time at all since I took this photo. I remember taking it like it was yesterday. It was the day France won the world cup in 1998 and also the day Marcel said his first word (pomme) at the ripe old age of 11 months!

He's come quite a long way since then on the talking front... Today his senior school debating team (along with just one other Scottish school debating team) won the Strathclyde uni school debating championships propelling them to the national debating competition in Liverpool in autumn where they will be competing for a place on the team to debate next year in Brussels at the European Youth Parliament in French and English. The head of the school debating team even insisted on shaking my hand as I picked him up and thanking me for 'having him'! I guess I should take pride in my son turning into a bit of an argumentative bugger! ;-)

It's interesting to watch his determination. He works five days a week in the local shop, he's teaching himself two extra Highers (Chemistry and Spanish) from text books without a tutor, sitting an Advanced Higher a year early, trying to shine on the Scottish debating scene and preparing for his World Challenge helping the underprivileged in India. I wish his Pumpa could have seen the wonderful young man he's become. He would be so proud.

Spaceman

I love kiddie conversations:
Léon: How would I become a space man when I grow up?
Me: Well there's always the European Space programme.
Léon: Is there? What channel is it on?

Ian Brown

On Sunday my mother-in-law sent us out for our second childfree meal in a restaurant since we had Anna over six years ago. Thomas opted for the local Scottish restaurant Ian Brown's, as he'd recently seen it recommended on Twitter by Patrick Harvie. What a treat it was to get such exquisitely-prepared and yet reasonably-priced food so close and yet so far from our daily grind. It was a real sanity break.

Happy wee soul

At the weekend Brita invited us to the Science Centre. With such a large family this has long been beyond our means (we last took all the kids in 2006!) Catching Amaia unawares as she looked into the warped mirrors was such a treat for me as a mum and as a photographer. She was so bemused, happy and proud all at the same time, and Anna looked on delighted too.

I have to say though that this one was more to my liking - I might get one for my bedroom wall - it definitely shows a preferable shape to the one that greets me these mornings! ;-)

Sweet little girl

Today Amaia proudly presented me with her first novel!

"Look mummy! I've written a book. It's about me as a princess with red cheeks... I couldn't be bothered writing it with real letters though so I just made up pretend language because that was quicker, and then I signed it afterwards!"

Mummy and daddy are married now!

Apparently according to the substitute teacher Anna had today you can't have kids unless you're married. I do hope she won't be doing their sex education when they're older - sounds like she came out the ark. (Anna of course stuck up her hand to point out she was flower girl at her parents' wedding. Gotta love my daughter!) :-)

Marcel's run for India

With just four weeks to go till the deadline for paying India and five to the big sponsored run I thought I'd redirect anyone who's interested to Marcel's fundraising page one last time
.

Here's the sponsorship link! Thanks

Working for yourself

I spent 17 years as and employee, followed by five as a freelance/self-employed person. When I was an employee I thought I knew all there was to know about the freelance life - I dealt with freelance staff every day after all - but I now know I hadn't really begun to understand that life until I had lived it. I'm not saying either is all good or all bad but I often feel the two worlds are actually more like two separate universes. You can never understand the other until you've walked in both sets of shoes...

I remember in my early days in publishing I used to stress about being on a two year contract, now a two month one makes me float with joy because it means I can plan my life, even if just a little bit. A two year contract now would be an unimaginable delight!

Of course working for yourself gives you greater flexibility. If the sun is shining (not that that happens often!), you can, of course, take your kids to the park after school and fit those four hours of work in after the kids are in bed. You do not feel stressed to breaking point on the morning your kid is sent home from school with chicken pox. Yes, the thought of a week of work with a sobbing child on your lap is stressful but you know you can be there rather than wondering where on earth to take them when you have no childcare available, without wondering whether you still have annual leave left and how mad your boss is going to be when you tell him or her you need a week off with no notice (and probably and second week off two weeks later when someone else comes down with it!) 

On top of that, you can attend any meeting your kid's school throws at you, and any hospital appointment or similar. Those are a few of the pluses, if you can call them that. 

When a relative is in hospital, you can hold their hand at visiting hour and catch up with work on your own time - there's no price you can put on that. I am unimaginably grateful that I was self-employed during my dad's cancer.

But it's not all as rosy... Firstly, you commit to projects and deadlines and no one else is responsible for them, so when your child is sick, you can't take that annual leave, you just have to work all night once they are in bed and you have to do it better than if you'd been inhouse because it cannot be allowed to affect the quality of your work. If you get sick yourself, you can't take a day off either. There's no sick leave so you work whatever is wrong with you. In loo with your laptop isn't the most fun...

Visibility is another absolute nightmare. When you are an employee, being given as much notice as possible of something helps. As a real example, we were told roughly four months before a family christening that is was going to take place. Had I still been an employee, I'd have booked the necessary four days off to go back to Denmark and not thought another thing about it, but as a self-employed person, the best I could do was say to clients that I'd rather have as little work on that week as possible. Of course, sod's law meant the week of the christening came and a customer's emergency left me with two weeks of work to fit in over the four days I had been trying to schedule no work for, followed ironically by two weeks of nothing when I could have attended the christening except I was too late. I could have refused, of course, but then that customer would have been inconvenienced and would have had to find and use a different freelancer with the same skill set - not the wisest move, so work had to come first. The other issue, of course, is that by not having the visibility to book months in advance travel always costs a premium. Travel for seven booked within a week of departure would make your eyes water! Booking non-refundable tickets for seven in advance on Ryanair and then being unable to use them is equally upsetting.

Often I'm asked what my plans are for the school's summer or autumn break - I don't even know what my plans are for the Easter one (in three weeks)! I may (or may not) be told that next week! So I'm in that difficult situation of being unable to book childcare in case I am working but being unable to refuse work should it materialize! And as for working out if I can pay a five year car loan or similar - that's a dream long rooted in my past.

On the last week before my five kids started their summer holiday last year, I was asked to work every day of the summer holiday for two different clients. So I did one during the week, and the other on weekends! It may only have amounted to a few hours each day but while looking after five kids??? Would you volunteer for that job? 

And when you don't have any work on, you don't enjoy the break because you wonder if you'll get any work again soon. Salaries have to be paid out of something, so you stress away every break trying to find work. It is great for the client because you always know you have to do better than your best to secure future jobs, so you give it your all, you spend extra time unpaid and you do a much better job than you would have done, had you not been freelance.

Then there's payment. I often see Facebook statuses mentioning 'X' days to payday! I fondly remember those! Now I wonder if clients are going to pay me on time so my salary can go through, or maybe just one month after I have completed a job, or sometimes if the client is international, I try not to invoice until I have done several jobs, simply because international transfer fees eat up so much of my fee. I can wait months to be paid.

Bereavement leave isn't something I ever had to use as an employee, but at least it existed. When my dad died in 2012, it felt wrong to discuss his funeral in the morning and work in the afternoon, but you don't get time off when you work for yourself. If I don't work, I don't get paid and losing my house would not have brought my dad back. It felt surreal to need to do translation work in those circumstances and my clients were lovely - they offered not to send me work for a couple of weeks till I felt like working again, but of course, no work, no pay, no mortgage payment, no house... Freelancing has its inhumane sides.

I think the thing I really never grasped before opting for this life was the lack of escape. When you work from home, you are always at work. You aren't just checking your email from home or finishing a wee thing - I did that as an employee. You are in your day-time office, eating, sleeping, living... You don't think 'It's Saturday, I'll go to the park', you think 'It's Saturday but if I get ahead with the stuff I need to send in next week then I'll be able to meet the deadline even if a kid is sick and my client deserves that I do my best' and so you work while stirring the dinner, you work in bed at night, you work when the baby's at nursery or when she falls asleep, you work in ten minute bursts 24/7 and when you aren't working you are working in your head and that way you meet all your week time deadlines and remain the model worker, at the expense only of your sanity, but who needs that anyway?

Do I prefer one or the other? I don't even know any more to be honest. I hate not knowing when I can book a holiday. I hate never having a day off, I hate the lack of visibility. I love being home when my kids come in from school, I love hugging them better when they are sick, I love working all day with my best friend, my lover, my husband... I don't know. Maybe working from home, on a contract as an employee would suit me best but for now, while my kids need me, working from home is the only way, for better or worse.

Misheard lyrics

I love what children hear in songs.

Tonight I was on bedtime duty as Thomas was out with his Indyref friends. I asked the girls if they'd each like to sing a song after I'd put the lights out. Anna sang 'Do you want to build a snowman' word perfect. Next Amaia volunteered to sing 'Let it go'. She was word perfect until 1 minute 55 in when she sang quite seriously 'To taste the lemons and bake stew'!

How sweet :-)

Psychic connection?

Today was world book day so the kids were meant to go to school dressed as a character they like from a book they'd read/been read.

Anna decided to be Pippi Langstrømpe as she enjoys those books in Danish and Amaia opted for Cinderella in her pale blue ballgown (we have the book in English and the Disney movie in Danish.)

Last Sunday had been Fastelavn in Denmark. It is a dressing up festival a bit like our Halloween. Today Thomas's sister sent us photos of our two nieces: Ursula (7) and Elisabeth (6 mths).

Ursula (left) had decided to dress up as Pippi, and baby Elisabeth was of course... well I'll let you guess for yourselves! It must be some sort of spooky international psychic connection, if you ask me!