Silver Lining

Well, we've exchanged.  It's all happening on Friday.  Tomorrow I put some bits and pieces in storage, and try to sort out telephones and broadband in the new place.

This is a full circle.  I started this blog in 2004, amidst the ruins of my marriage.  I documented more than I probably should have, briefly.  I exposed myself in some detail.  I catalogued the agony of going back to work, and no longer being a full time Mum.  I talked about the misery of my first job.  I detailed the couple of unsuccessful attempts at relationship building - hopefully not too much at the expense of the other parties.  I've shared the death of my stepfather, the relocation of my family.  I've skirted around court battles and financial uncertainty.  I've celebrated my successes in my new job, new life.

And now my new life is taking a complete shape.  New partner, new house, bigger family.  New challenges, certainly.  But new hope and new happiness, too.  I am beginning to be excited... 

Let the last week begin...

Well, it seems we'll be moving on Friday.  We appear to have bought a house in Rugby, HT and I.  Together.  So this is my last week in my beautiful house with a beautiful garden, which I'm selling to an old lady who will make it smell of wee and cabbage.  And it's my last week of being more or less single.

I hate moving.  I did tell HT this, but I don't think he thought I meant it.  Unfortunately for him, I'm a very literal person.  I really hate moving.  *Really* hate it.  I think this stems from when I was little.  I went to boarding school in Kent, and my parents were in the army, in Germany.  They moved every two years, and they always arranged the moves to happen in term time.  Which is perfectly sensible, as it keeps the children out of the way...

Except that it meant that I'd be at school, desperately homesick, only I wouldn't know what home *looked* like any more.  Because it would be somewhere different from the home I left.  So I couldn't picture my Mum in the kitchen.  I didn't know what my bedroom was like (after I was 11ish and till Sissy came to school, I didn't have a bedroom anyway, because we had an au pair then.  And I had the spare bedroom in the school holidays.)  I couldn't tell you where the dining room was in relation to the other rooms, or how many toilets there were, or where which picture hung on what wall.  I had no mental image of home.  And I wouldn't know whether there were other children around.  Or if there were (there usually were, to be fair) whether they'd be nice children. Or children I'd be allowed to play with.  And I'd fly home from school and worry - all the way (and it's quite a long way) - that they wouldn't be at the airport to meet me.  And then I wouldn't know where to go, because the addresses were all like Capt so and so, 36 BTY, 50 missile regt, BFPO 45, Germany - and that doesn't mean anything to a taxi driver.  And if the old house had nice friends around it, I wouldn't know whether I'd see them again (usually not), or where they were any more.  It was all terribly worrying and distressing.

I think part of the point of boarding school was to get round at least some of that - to give me some continuity of education and friendships.  But I hated boarding school, and I didn't really have friends there.  The girls in my dormitory were, without exception, such bitches that even now it would cause me no trouble to name them here.  I didn't fit in with them and their little cliques, so I was prickly and difficult (and utterly, utterly miserable) and despite the fact that it was supposed to be a school for intelligent, socially well-adjusted girls, not one of them had the nous to pick up on that and try to include me.  So for 9 years we just avoided each other.

So anyway, I hate moving.  I've hired some very nice smiley men to come and do the lion's share of it for me.  And even then I've spent the last few weeks in a weepy, tumultuous mess to the point where people are beginning to ask if I'm having second thoughts about my re-domestication.  I'm not.  I just hate moving.

The jobs I have to do, still, by Thursday morning, are to sort out Daisy's room (Dan's is done).  To encourage Moo to pack and move out all the stuff she's having (including my bed) by Wednesday.  To identify what's going into storage pending another move to a bigger house, and pack that up on Wednesday.  To identify and freecycle/ebay the stuff that's just going.  To sort out my clothes.  That's a mountain right there, folks. 

I drive a VW Polo.  In silver.  There's a lot of them around.  So I should perhaps not have been altogether surprised when I found myself putting my key in the boot lock of a not-mine car, two spaces up from where I should have been in the Sainsburys car park, this evening.  Nor, I suppose, should I have been surprised that the man next to me evinced facial expressions from shock to surprise to wrinkly, wide mouthed, wet eyed, bent double laughing.  He spent a good minute or two composing himself before he was able to drive away.

No, the only thing that surprised me, was how surprised *I* was.

It seems anonymous bloggers should be worried. It seems that anonymity can't be guaranteed (though, really, whoever thought it could??). I have been  wondering whether there's anything to be gained, these days, in keeping this place anonymous.

Initially, I didn't want to be associated with it - well, you know, identifiably so - because I wanted to hide from my ex husband who was still at the stage of tracking my every traceable cyber move.  I wanted some space of my own; it seems odd to claim privacy when you're publishing on the internet, so perhaps that's the wrong word, but something like privacy.  I wanted to exorcise some demons and log my feelings.  I can't, still, explain why I wanted to do this publicly, why the world wide web seemed like an appropriate domain for that experiment, but somehow it did, and I gained strength from some of the readers who stumbled upon me.

These days this is a far more sporadic, much more moderate place.  I have written about my relationships, but less often and in less detail.  I try very hard (and always did, to be fair) to write only about how things affect me - the relationship from my perspective - and to preserve my beloved's privacy.  I don't write about work, except in a very generic sense, and don't explore the relationships with my colleagues here; which is kind of a shame, because there would be rich pickings! 

So why maintain the anonymity?  It would be easy enough to discover my identity - I'm sure any of you could do it, without recourse to anything more sinister than a search engine and a few hours to spare.  I could simply delete the more (most) personal of the archives, and out myself.  Except that (a) I don't think there's anything in here sufficiently insightful or sensitive to warrant anyone else trying to 'out' me.  I'm no Girl With A One Track Mind, or Belle de Jour.  I don't have access to confidential, sensitive or exciting material like Nightjack or Random Acts of Reality.  I'm not political - except perhaps in the domestic sphere and I don't think even that is conveyed here.  I don't write about colleagues and workplace confidences like Petite Anglaise or Dooce (implying no judgement on the rights or wrongs of their cases!).

And (b) what there is here is stuff about the kids.  Who are too young to have a vote about whether they want their embarrassing moments held up for public scrutiny or enjoyment. 

That, in a nutshell, is why I continue to hide behind a pseudonym.  I don't care if you know who I am - the terms of engagement are clear.  If I know you, I may write about you.  You may not like my perspective on the interractions between us.  You can ask me not to do it, and I will respect that.  And if you know who I am, you probably know who my children are - I may well tell you the stories I write about here on the phone, or in general conversation.  And that's a different thing.  But those people who stumble upon this place and spend an hour or two poking through the archives - and there are a small handful - they're very welcome, but they don't need to know exactly who I'm talking about. 

When the children are a bit older, they can choose to tell their friends or not tell their friends that their mother hideously exposed all their childhood misbehaviours and misbeliefs for the world to see (or ignore).  They can share or not, as they see fit.

In the meantime, me and George Elliot.  We have our reasons.  I'll stick with the name.

Walnuts are rat heroin.  I don't know who knew, but they didn't tell me, and the discovery has been keeping me entertained all week.

Let me backtrack.

About a week ago, HT bought Joy a couple of pet rats.  A black and white, and a little white and blonde.  A pair of males.  Only, in true family form they weren't both quite as male as the pet shop represented.  I used to keep a rat at Uni, and am familiar in the way of the rat, and confirmed that one was male.  The other, however, wasn't. 

The discovery process inevitably led to me handling the rats, and remembering the pleasure of being scampered over by little ratty toes, and having a softly whispering companion on my shoulder.  Dan and Daisy, too, were taken with the rat love.  And so it was decided that we would take the female rat.

Only I had to get a cage, so HT and Joy would bring her over the next day.  And of course, rats are social animals, preferring to live in groups.  So a couple more girls slipped into the cage on the way out of the store.  And so we brought Fidget and Slipper home.  They weren't deliberately named to sound like East End post-war gangsters, but I confess I'm quite pleased with the splat gun sound of those names.  And later that evening, Rascal came to join them.

Socialising rats can take a little time.  They need to get used to your smell and are often tentative in their first approach.  That's what the owner's manual said, anyway.  Fidget, though, had failed to read the manual and made a bee line for my hands as soon as she was settled in her cage.  She is a confident little thing, and Slipper follows her lead only slightly more tentatively.  Rascal, though, is taking her time, keeping herself a little more withdrawn.  We aren't sure whether this is because she's obviously younger than the other two and an outsider to boot, or whether her unfortunate gender identity error has resulted in a pregnancy.

Anyway, while Dan and Daisy were away over half term, I've made a point of spending half an hour or so with the rats every evening.  One evening, I took a handful of chopped walnuts with me.  As usual, as soon as the door was opened, Fidget made a bee line.  She likes to climb onto my hand, and up my arm, investigating whatever I'm wearing, looking in pockets, smelling my hair and generally taking account of where I've been and what I've been doing since last she was there.  She's not a sit on the shoulder and chatter rat, she's more an explore, log and move on kinda gal.  Only this day, I had the walnuts.  She ran to my hand, as usual.  Paused.  Sniffed.  Picked up a walnut delicately in her mouth.  Held it between her two front paws and gave a tentative nibble.  Stuffed it into her cheek, and raced to the far corner of the cage.  Seeing this, Slipper came to see what was what, and repeated the exercise so far.  Meanwhile, Fidget was racing back to the cage door, apparently intent on breaking the rat land speed record.  She snatched another walnut, and raced back to the corner of the cage.  While Slipper was greedily grabbing her second, I watched Fidget spit the walnut out, spin round and race back.  This went on, the two of them grabbing, running, spitting out, wheeling round and racing back in relay until all the walnuts were gone.  Then the girls composed themselves, ran up my arms, and had a sniff and a chat.  When I went back into the room 20 minutes later, the walnuts were all eaten.

When HT got home, I wanted to show him this extraordinary behaviour.  So I took another handful of walnuts.  This time, when I opened the cage door, Fidget jumped to the ledge of it, sniffed my hand eagerly, stuffed *three* walnut pieces into her mouth and sprinted to the corner with them.  Slipper was less interested in this handful, so Fidget was left to her own devices, cramming as much walnut as she could into her mouth, sprinting round the cage, and depositing them safely for later consumption.  The entire exercise was conducted at the highest of high speeds, and obviously caused much ratty excitement!

I haven't shown the children the trick, yet.  I may keep it a secret, just to protect my ability to make coffee and walnut cake...

Breathing space comes from unexpected sources, sometimes.  While Damma was busy dying, I was running an external accreditation visit, planning the next one, selling my house, looking for a new house, and trying to find ever more creative solutions to the University's deepening financial woes.  All of which made for a fairly stressed Silver.  Then in the same week Damma died, HT was made redundant, and I had to go to Lincoln to help Mum out and try not to add to HT's woes by insisting we discuss our home buying plans before he was ready to breathe.  Which was difficult, but fortunately, he's a patient man.

When I came home from Lincoln earlier than planned, I took a day to myself - I still went back to work earlier than I had thought I would, but I just needed a day in my own head, putting myself to rights.  So I spent a day in the shed.  Sewing.  I wanted to see what I could do with only a little bit of colour.  Most of my stuff is a busy swirl; it's a struggle to know where to rest your eye and while the colours work well together, I wanted to try a bit of quiet.  Some pieced cotton peace.  So I cut a large chunk off the end of the roll of white fabric that stands in the corner of the shed, and I used up some scraps of colour from various works in progress, and I put the two together.  With a lot of white and very little colour.  And it was OK.  Then I needed to make a back.  And I like the back of my quilts to have something about them, so a bit more colour went into that.  Just a little bit.

And before you know it, a quilt sandwich was all basted and ready to go.  But if it's all plain, and white, what do you do with the quilting?  I'm not ready to embark on trapunto (see the bottom of this page for a picture) or whole cloth quilting (picture here) so I decided to try some free machine quilting.  Circles.  Squirly, whirly, scribbly circles, like doodling with a needle.  At high speed.  You drop the feed dogs on the machine, so the fabric doesn't move through automatically, so you have to move the fabric manually through the machine, at an even speed, and keep the needle moving at an even speed.  And keep breathing. It's harder than it sounds.  Particularly the breathing part.  The idea is (well, the idea kind of is) to achieve a state of zen-like calm and make pretty patterns and interesting textures on the fabric.  White thread on white fabric.

It's shaping up OK.  It's a long time since I've done it, and it is difficult to keep the fabric moving at an even speed and the needle going fast enough.  And I'd forgotten how difficult it is to move a decent sized quilt (it's only baby sized.  Or possibly small lap sized.  But it's bigger than the throat of my sewing machine) through the machine.  It hurts.  My neck hurts, my shoulders hurt, my hands hurt.  But it's looking pretty.  And by the time I've finished this quilt, I'll be good at it again, and then the next one I do - which will be large, and red, and rich, and glorious - well, that one will be gorgeous. 

I have plans.  I have plans for the border of this quilt, and plans for the design of the next one. 

But most importantly, while my little brain is fuzzing with plans for the quilts, it isn't thinking about anything more difficult or more unpleasant.  It's hard work - two hours per night to quilt a section 6" x 12" - and it's physically difficult.  But it's breathing space.  I don't know if it's any good (but the next one will be).  And it's zen-like calm.

At 1:20 this morning, my Damma blew away in a gust of wind.  She was 98 years, and one week old.  It's funny how the weeks begin to count again, at the end of a long life.

She was an indomitable woman, my Damma.  That usually means large, but she wasn't especially large - solid, but not big.  She's always been there, obviously.  My mother's mother.  My mother's father died when Mum was just a teenager, so it was always just Damma.  When I was a small child, she lived in a bungalow on a farm in Glen Lerags, just outside Oban.  We used to stay there a lot when I was very small, and once a year or so after we moved to Germany.  Her cottage wasn't part of the farm, but we were welcomed into the farm family.  Turn right out of the front door, and you were 6 steps from the farmyard - a cattle milking shed, some barns where sickly sheep were kept indoors for nursing, a stable for the bull, free ranging chickens and two or three working dogs.  The farm was run by Duncan and Tom, two brothers, while the house was managed by their sister, Annie.  You went into the farmhouse kitchen, and through the back of that into the living area.  I remember a big oven, and nice smells.  Annie was a large lady, and very generous.  Tolerant of small children.

Turn left out of Damma's front door, and down a gravelly track.  The pathway passes over a shallow burn.   The plish plosh.  Mum used to take me there when I was very small, to splash in the water. Plish!  Plosh!

Damma was a fierce kind of a granny.  She acquired her name - by popular family legend - through a childish perversion of the word "Damn!" which was the only swear word I recall her using (except, perhaps, bugger).  What she lacked in variety, she made up for in frequency and so the story goes that my eldest cousin named her Damma.  It seems equally likely that the same small person simply couldn't pronounce 'Grandma' very well.  But whatever, Damma she was, and Damma she remained.  She had rules.  And she made porridge for breakfast, with a proper porridge stick.  Lumpy porridge.  Lumpy, salty porridge.  Just as porridge should be.  She was a believer in children not being underfoot, so we were turned out of the house and left to our own devices as soon as we were old enough to be reliable.  She had a cairn terrier - Darkie - who was given free range over the farmland and highlands, and who frequently disappeared down rabbit holes.  We ran loose with Darkie.  We slept in a caravan in the garden, when we were a bit older, and when the weather was too wet for outdoors, we stayed in and played Chinese Chequers, or Solitaire, on a board with marbles.

Duncan and Tom used to take us out in the tractor.  I can remember sitting on one of their laps, my hands working the steering wheel, his feet working the pedals, a sheepdog running alongside.  The sheep needed checking, and we were eager helpers.  Duncan, Tom and Annie had broad Highlands accents and it took a while to tune into them, but I can still remember the amused disbelief of "Is thaaaart soooo, Airmilie?" when my sister was spinning yarns.  Annie, in my memory, baked scones.  But so did Damma.

Damma is where I get my artistic side - such as it is.  She was a fervent painter, embroiderer, stitcher, knitter.  She was an enormously creative producer.  She was a devoted member of the Scottish WI and contributed jams, cakes, preserves and pickles in abundance.  She stitched beautiful, beautiful pieces - tapestries, embroideries, collages - all 'signed' with her mark - a snail.  All her daughters are also creative, and she enjoyed their work immensely.  When she didn't like something we produced, she'd sniff and pronounce, "Oh what fun, darling!" - it's become something of a catchphrase with Mum and I.

As she got a (little) older, she moved to Lincolnshire, to be closer to two of her four daughters.  She lived in a bungalow, in a small village, and was the first woman I knew to have a dedicated sewing/craft room.  I have benefited hugely from access to her yarn and fabric drawers, and Daisy still has bags full of Damma's yarns.  Darkie was succeeded by a series of Yorkshire terriers, until eventually the last one died, and she decided she didn't want to be outlived by a dog, and didn't replace her.

She was a well meaning, but opinionated woman with a habit of writing 'helpful' letters which had a way of stirring up trouble and resentment.  Typically of a woman born into a privileged life before the first world war, she was a terrible snob, and could be very judgemental.  It was easy to be cross with her, and for a long time in my twenties, I was very cross with her.  But she was a very strong woman, and understood about the myriad of ways that life can be complicated for women.  When my marriage was in trouble and afterwards, she was my staunch supporter.

She became increasingly arthritic and (inevitably) older.  But she remained feisty.  Actually, feisty was a good word for Damma.  At one point, I recall, the flat roof on her garage sprung a leak.  It was about 20 years old, and owed her nothing, and the lad who came to give her a quote was hopeful of replacing it.  He quoted her £90 to patch it, or £several hundred for a replacement which would "last you another 20 years".  She said "I'm 86.  I'll take the patch." 

A hip replacement kept her going for a while, but her sight deteriorated, and then her hearing.  After several falls, Mum organised for a carer to come morning and evening, to help her wash and dress, and get ready for bed at the other end of the day.  Damma was ungrateful and unwelcoming - she had always been a fiercely independent woman - and feisty, remember - and never one to accept help from strangers.  So she was frequently rude and high handed with the carers, and it took several attempts to find someone who could tolerate her, and whom she would tolerate in return.  I don't imagine they were ever friends, but at least someone could keep an eye on her.  That arrangement lasted for a couple of years, until it became increasingly untenable for her to remain in her bungalow.  She was confused and unreliable on her feet, prone to falling, and it was decided to move her to a residential home. 

She never really took to the home.  At least, she did take to it - she made friends and was exceptionally fond of the carers there who were, in turn, cheerful and kind with her even in her more difficult moods.  But as she became increasingly senile she alternated between paranoia and total oblivion.  She would ring Mum at all hours of the day and night, unable to sleep or to find her teeth.  She developed a naughty streak worthy of Minnie the Minx.  When her hearing deteriorated sharply, Mum took her hearing aid battery out, to replace it, and discovered it was rusty... on investigation, she discovered that Damma had been putting her eye drops in it.  One of the last times I visited her there, we were sitting drinking tea in one of the lounges, and a carer breezed past, "Hello, Sylvia!" chirruped the care assistant.  "Hello, darling!" smiled Damma, charmingly.  "Who was that?"  I asked.  "Oh, I don't know" she shrugged, "I can't remember their names.  I just smile and call them all darling.  It seems to do!"  Or Mum would ask her where she'd put this or that thing of the moment.  "I can't remember, darling" Damma would say, winking broadly at me...  But her memory was deteriorating.  Mum rang her one morning:

"Hello, darling!  How lovely to hear from you!  How are you?"  Damma greeted her, like the prodigal, despite the fact that Mum rang every day and visited most days
"I'm fine, Mum.  I'm ringing to see if you want me to bring you anything when I come and see you today?"
"Well, you can't come today, darling!  I'm in Cape Town!"
"No, Mum, you're in your bedroom in the home.  That's where I'm ringing you."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, darling! I know perfectly well where I am!  I'm in Cape Town!"
Mum gave up.  "Well, that's lucky, Mummy, because I'm in Cape Town, too.  Now, do you want me to bring you anything when I come and see you today?"

Her hip replacement deteriorated over time, as they do.  She kept dislocating it, and was deemed too old to have a replacement hip replacement - she wasn't expected to survive a full anaesthetic.  So they would give her enough of a sniff to put her under for long enough to pop the hip back in.  But eventually, it began to spring out while she was asleep in bed, and six weeks ago they took her in to fuse it.  Had she come out of hospital, she would never have walked again, and so wouldn't have been able to return to her lovely care home - we'd have had to find her a nursing home. 

But she never came out of hospital.  She didn't eat again, properly, after the operation, and took very little water.  She never got out of bed - she who had always been active, bustling.  She began to really deteriorate early last week, and on Sunday her daughters were summonsed back to the hospital in a hurry.  I joined them there, having missed the opportunity to say my goodbyes during the week.  The hospital had stopped treating her, and her IV line had missed the vein, so they had withdrawn fluids, too, and were simply keeping her comfortable.  There was little left of her - scrawny little dot propped up on pillows, and she couldn't speak.  But she was conscious and seemed to know we were there.  I went home to Mum's at about 10pm, leaving my aunts with her, and they stayed until she fell asleep at 1am.  

She didn't regain conscious, and spent the next few days fading into nothing.  Mum and her sisters sat with her most of the time, talking quietly and keeping her company, watching her fight quietly on.  Feisty to the end.  And this morning, in a high wind, she blew quietly away. 

It will take a long time to get used to her not being there.

Damma.  29 April 1911 - 6 May 2009. 

What fun, darling!

The story of my grandmother - the bits of it I know, anyway - is endlessly fascinating to me.  Partly because it's sad, and I'm a sucker for a sob story - particularly a *real* sob story; partly because every time I think I know it, think I've absorbed it, a new piece is revealed and it becomes freshly incomprehensible; and partly because I feel it goes a long way toward explaining how my father was when we were young, and thus my often problematic relationship with him.  But mostly because I just don't understand it...

I met my grandmother when I was 14.  That was, I think, the first time my father had seen her since he was about the same age.  She left my grandfather when my Dad was about 4, and in doing so left two small sons behind.  She went to live in Portugal, where she re-married, and had 3 more children.  Somehow, my father made contact with her and we all went to meet her.  By then, of course, I was a teenager - eager to distance myself from my family and everything that interested them, and make my own, much cooler and more interesting way in the world.  So, beyond a slack handful (3?  4?) summer holidays at her house in France, I never really spent any time with her and it didn't much occur to me at the time that it was an unusual situation.  After all, so much of my Dad's family was unusual, and I was too much absorbed in my own small world.

She was a little, tiny woman - less than 5' - who lived in a pile of a stone barn in a village called St Astier de Duras, in the Dordogne.  She lived with two large, bumptious and stupid English setters.  There was a vineyard up the road, to which we would take empty plastic gerry cans, and return to her house with one full of rough red vin de table, and the other full of not much more refined white.  I had a bike accident there one year, and picked up two elbows, a hip and a forehead full of gravel rash.  Ouch.  The hospital experience improved my French no end, "Tu resembles à un mommi"  ????  "Tu sais?  Comme Tutenkhamen?"  Oh yes.  Je sais.

3 or 4 years later, I met my uncle  - her son from her subsequent marriage - and his wife.  My uncle was (is) very cool.  He worked in promotions/event management.  He'd been at Uni with a bloke called Simon le Bon, and had spent the last few years stage managing his friend's band's concerts.  His wife was a freelance journalist, working on various women's feature magazines.  They came to our house in London and brought Trivial Pursuit with them.  They were icy cool. 

My grandmother moved from France to England, to be closer to her children.  All five of them.  Well four, because one was in the States.  Three, because one was in Portugal, now I think of it.  Her three sons.  But England didn't suit her, and after a couple of years she went to Spain.  I don't think I saw her after she left France, but Sissy got to know her much better.

At this point, all I knew of the story was that she'd left them.  And had another family.  And that the relationships were complicated.  No kidding. 

Then my grandfather became ill, and his illness progressed, and he was going to die.  And he began making his peace with the world in his own, eccentric way.  Which involved getting in touch with my grandmother again - a process which the children of both subsequent marriages found very difficult, and which caused ripples of pain - and rifts which have never wholly healed - throughout my father's generation.  When my grandfather died, he left his sons a letter, explaining the circumstances of their mother's leaving.  Turns out she wasn't wholly to blame.  He felt betrayed and hurt, and was instrumental in ensuring that she didn't see the boys again.  And in her hurt, in turn, she felt it better to be physically distant from them rather than close by and unable to see them.  So she left Africa.  Different continents was, for her - according to my grandfather - easier to manage.  But it did leave little room for any changes of heart...

Somehow I believe that the younger of the two boys - who had been sent to boarding school in England - had always been in touch with his mother.  I think the relatives he lodged with hadn't approved of the no contact rule and found a way round it.  But my father, who remained with my grandfather in Africa, didn't benefit from this - apart from once, aged about 12, when he was staying in England and went to a farm on a family outing, where he met his 'aunt' and 3 strange 'cousins'.  I don't know - don't recall - who arranged that outing.

When I was a very small child, we used to visit an aged relative - Great Aunt Grossie - in a house with a gravel drive and a high hedge.  She was a very, very old woman, in my small eyes.  But kindly, I remember - I don't have much more than a faint impression of her.  She sent me a card and a gift every birthday and Christmas - I remember my 13th birthday card was a cut-out paper fashion doll.  Or perhaps it was an earlier birthday than that.  Anyway, shortly after that, she died.  We were in Germany and I don't remember her death being a big deal - just an old relative who died.  After we went to meet my grandmother in France, I learnt that Great Aunt Grossie was actually my great grandmother.  

So that was it.  This dysfunctional family that separated and reunited and reformed and separated again - like continental plates and, like them, threw up volcanic eruptions, and seismic events with every reformation.  Eventually, after my grandmother's death, her children (my father's generation) all got together and there was some semblance of peace.  Reconciliation.  A number of people - including Sissy - went to Spain to clear her house and say their farewells.  I didn't go, having recently given birth, but I recall her memorial service in Suffolk. 

This weekend, I wanted to show Joy some family photo albums, and Dad gave me a pile to rifle through.  Amongst which was one of my grandmother's.  It started with wedding photos - her and my grandfather in 1939, glamorous and gorgeous at the church in Walberswick.  There were baby photos of my Dad and my uncle.  Dad looking very like Dan.  And there were letters.  Birth congratulations for both boys.  Some of them really funny.  Some really touching.  All windows into another world ("Darling the damnable news is I'm being sent to some awful place called Taveta, to a damned Abyssinian refugee camp.  I hear it is damned hot and damned unhealthy.  I think I shall be there for quite some time".)  And tucked into the back, there were letters from my father.  Thank you letters from a small child to a relative who had been generous on a birthday.  'Dear Mary, Thank you very much for the 20 shillings you gave me.'  He obviously wasn't entirely clear about the nature of this particular relative.  One letter began 'Dear Aunt Mary'.  Another said "I got a cricket bat from Mum and Dad".  I found these letters particularly affecting. 

And it's another piece of the story I wasn't aware of.  There was contact - there are also photos of Grossie, in Africa, with both boys, at intervals throughout their childhood.  I still don't understand it.  I don't know that I ever will.  But it feels like an important story. And I'm aware of its ripples and echoes in my own life.  I hope not my own behaviour, but I guess time will tell...

Daisy's homework

Daisy (aged 9) had a piece of (completed) work sent home from school the other day, because her teacher thought I might like to see it.  The task she was set was "To create and describe settings to interest a reader include - interesting volcabulary (sic) - a variety of different connectives."  She had a picture of a mountainous lake scene.  I'll let her describe it.  I will try to transcribe faithfully, but there is a danger that her spelling is better than my typing...

"As the morning sun creeps around the sky, it wraps the darkness in its bright, warm blanket.  Tiny birds called plimps bow to the sun and spread their shiny blue wings in its honour.  Snow wolves howl as a greeting to their old friend.  Snowy white trees wave their branches and burst into a beautiful melody.  Beautiful flowers open their colourful petals and bathe in the morning light.  Many colours shine on the gleaming lake, making it reflect the wonders of the land.   Animals gather around the shimmering lake, bending down low, lapping up the cool, clear water.  Mountains shake away the cold and stand like soldiers, guarding their land so no harm can come to their precious landscape.  Fish swim around, avoiding the snow wolves and swerving this way and that making the water simmer in circles.  All the clouds part to make room for the sun.  The light burns through the sky, lighting even the darkes corner of the land.  Lush green grass sways in the incoming brightness, dancing to make their god happy.  A tiny doorway is carved in a tree and silk hung around as a soft door.  Fairies come dancing out of their tiny house, some with faces as soft as velvet, others with dainty white curls flying everywhere, others with faces like old hags.  Millions of them crowded out of that tiny door, flying down the lake and round the flowers.  Pixies also piled out of the tiny doorway.  The pixies started to create havoc, pulling up flowers and pulling the hair of the snow wolves.  Fairy mothers and fathers soon put a stop to that though.  They all started picking berries and pulling out petals."

She won a headmaster's award for that.  Unsurprisingly.  Proud mummy!

We went to a family party at Dad's this weekend: HT, Dan, Daisy and I.  Sissy and lovely BIL were there with the nibling (and the new nibling is well under development... very exciting); favourite aunt and uncle with their two children + one fiancee (who is the PA to a famous British artist); other favourite aunt and uncle; Dad and stepmother.  It was a lovely day - we sat on the patio, eating, drinking and shooting the shit, all day.  It was lovely.  HT appears to have been a huge success - so much so that we're going back next weekend, for an overnight visit to the Grand Designs show.

Stepmother has taken an alarming deterioration.  She goes in for a hip replacement next week, but the concern is more to do with her apparent dementia.  Which apparently isn't.  Depends who you talk to.  It's hard to be so far away from Dad when all this is going on; I have the distinct impression he doesn't want to tell me the extent of it, so it's difficult to pry too closely.  He's such a proud man, and so patient and gentle with her.  It's heartbreaking, really.

This week is going to be so difficult; I have the AMBA re-accreditation visit towards the back end of the week, a major committee meeting on Monday.  I need to appoint a solicitor to handle the sale of the house (I accepted an offer on Friday), and somehow have to keep track of all that, and keep my sanity.  I'm giving HT a difficult time at the moment; struggling to retain objectivity and distance, and taking every slight criticism as a step backwards... I must be a nightmare to live with at the moment.  He hasn't had an offer on his place, yet, so family stress levels are running high.  I think by the end of the week I will be fit for nothing but dribbling into my wineglass!

We saw a cottage last week.  I don't think it's replaced the barn at the top of our list, but it's a very close second - 550 odd years old.  Original beams and stone flagged floors.  Open inglenook fireplaces.  Thatched roof.  Huge garden.  The downside?  Essentially, no kitchen and only 3 bedrooms, and we'd need to build an extension.  Oh, and it's right on the road.  A village road, and not terribly noisy, but the road nonetheless.  It would be odd to snuggle down in front of your bright, roaring fire and watch the very 21st century muslin curtains fluttering in the breeze, wouldn't it??  We think we could, if we wanted, get it cheaply enough to be able to afford to do the things that would need doing - we're just not sure (I'm just not sure) we can sacrifice our 21' barn kitchen (with some living accommodation attached!) for that big a commitment!

The children are with their Dad, this week.  Some time ago, I gave them my old Orange mobile, with a new pay as you go sim card, so we can ring/text each other.  On Tuesday, I had a text from Daisy, via her father's phone, to say they had run out of money on their phone.  OK, that's solvable.  I thought.

The Orange website gives you a number to ring, if you don't have the 4 digit PIN number that lets you top up your phone on the web.  I didn't even know there *was* a 4 digit PIN number, so I dialled.  The call was picked up by a robot:

"Please enter the number of the phone account you are calling about, and when you have finished press the hash key."

So I enter: 077**********************

"Thank you.  Now please enter the 4 digit PIN number on your account.  When you have finished press the hash key."

Well that's a silly instruction.  I'm ringing because I don't know the 4 digit PIN.  This is the number you advertise for the 4 digit PINless among us to use.  I enter nothing.  Stay silent.  That'll fox the silly robot and she'll have to put you through to a human.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't recognise that number.  Please enter the 4 digit PIN number on your account.  When you have finished press the hash key."

*sigh*.  I pressed the hash key.

"I'm sorry.  That was the wrong number.  Please enter the 4 digit PIN number on your account.  When you have finished press the hash key."

Shhh.  Quiet.  Stay silent.  Press nothing.  Say nothing.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't recognise that number.  Please enter the 4 digit PIN number on your account.  When you have finished press the hash key."

"No!  You didn't recognise the number!  I didn't enter a number!  I don't know the number!  That's why I'm ringing you.  You are the number for people who don't know the number!  Please put me through to someone who can tell me the fucking number!  Because I don't know it!"  The office has gone quiet.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't recognise that number.  Please enter the 4 digit PIN number on your account.  When you have finished press the hash key."

Sheesh.  I pressed a random sequence of about 8 numbers, followed by the hash key.

"I'm sorry.  That is the wrong number.  I am going to connect you to a customer service operator."

About flippin' time, too.  A foolish glimmer of hope lights up in my chest.

"Hullo.  This is Brad. Who am I speaking to?"

"Oh, hi, Brad.  I'm Silver Lining.  I've got a bit of a predicament.  My children are staying with their father this week, and they have an Orange pay as you go phone.  I got a text from my daughter yesterday, saying they've run out of credit, so I want to see if I can top up the phone, but obviously they're not with me, and neither is the phone.  So I don't know the 4 digit PIN.  So I'm ringing you to see if you can fix it for me to top up the phone remotely."

"Yes, I can register a card to your account.  First I have to ask you some questions."

"OK"

"What's your full name?"

"Silver Lining.  That's L for lima, I for igloo, N for november....."

"Thank you, Silver.  And your postcode?"

"Oh, that's Sierra November 25 4 Beta Charlie"

"Thank you.  Can I take your date of birth?"

"Yes.  27th December 1988"

"And what is the number of the Orange phone?"

"077........"

"And is that the phone you're ringing from now?"

"No, because that's the children's phone, and the children aren't with me and that's why I'm in this predicament in the first place."

"Oh yes.  So can I take the number of the phone you're ringing from now?"

"07855......"

"Thank you.  And is that the Orange phone?"

"No.  The Orange phone is with the children.  Who aren't with me.  And I don't know the PIN.  Which is why I'm ringing."

"What phone is that?"

"It's an O2 phone"

"Thank you.  And can I take the 4 digit PIN for your Orange account?"

"No.  I don't know the PIN.  I am PINless.  I am ringing you because I don't know the PIN.  I'm rather hoping *you* can tell *me* the PIN."

"That's right.  How much did you top the phone up, last time you bought credit for it?"

"£5"

"And when was that?"

"Oh, several months ago."

"Can you tell me when?"

"No.  Several months.  More than 3."

"Hmmm... OK.  Can you tell me how you topped the phone up?"

"With the top up card"

"Can you tell me the 4 digit PIN on the top up card?"

*sigh* "No, because the top up card is with the children.  Who aren't with me.  So I don't know the 4 digit PIN."

"OK.  Well we can register your bank card to the phone account, so you can simply use that to top the phone up."

"Yes.  I was hoping we could.  Soon."

"What is the long number on the front of the bank card?"

"4567........"

"Thank you.  And what is the security code?"

"123"

"Thank you.  And the expiry date?"

"04/09"

"Thank you.  And is the card in your name?"

"Yes."

"Thank you.  I'm just registering this card to your account.  It won't take a moment.   Oh.   Wait.  The card is not going through.  Can you repeat the number, please?  Just in case I took it down wrong?"

"Yes, it's...."

"4577"

"No, 4567"

"Oh, OK.  I took the number down wrong.  The card is just going through."

"OK.  We've registered the card.  Now I need to take the 4 digit PIN for your phone."

My teeth are gritted so hard, I can feel them wearing away "I don't know the 4 digit PIN.  It's with the children.  Who are with their father."

"Oh, yes.  Well, do you want to think of a PIN?"

"What, just make one up?"

"Yes."

"That's all I have to do?  Make up a PIN?"

"Yes."

Good grief.  "1234"

"Thank you.  And how much do you want to put on the phone"

"£5."

"Just £5?"

"Yes."

"OK, that's done!  Is there anything else I can do to help you?"

"Please, no!!"

"Thank you for calling Orange customer services.  I hope you enjoy using our hassle free top up service."

That's not quite how I would have described it.  Neither the product, nor the emotion.  But still, I'm sure some marketing expert somewhere is very proud.

whingeing HIP

The surveyor (or whatever they are) came to do my HIP today. He graciously informed me that, as of today, it is illegal to market the house without a HIP, and looked put out when I pointed out that, since my house was on the market last week, before the new law came into force, it is perfectly legal for me to market the property while the HIP is still pending.

He was the oiliest, most graceless man I think I've ever met.  Think Alec Baldwin in The Cat in the Hat - only grey haired.  He had a ridiculous quiff, all bouffant at the front but with little to support it on the crown, so the top of his head was a ski slope, stiff with hairspray or similar.  He pulled up in a little car, driven by a younger man, which immediately made me think "uh oh.  Driving ban."  The younger man sat on the drive in the car throughout, simply reinforcing my irrational middle class prejudice.

HIP guy had one of those smiles that failed to reach the rest of his face, never mind his eyes.  So he didn't smile, so much as bare his teeth periodically conveying, I suspect, the precise opposite of what he intended.  His handshake was firm, but brief - and would have been far more impressive if he had actually stood still and looked at me while he offered it.

He wandered around the house, taking photos - with a film camera.  Apparently, those modern electronic devices simply don't take the photo you intended to take - you point and click, and end up with something you didn't intend on the film.  Hmmmm... sounds like user error, to me.  He was similarly scathing about his laser measuring beam, and backed it up with a retractable tape measure.  I suppose I should be reassured that he was, at least, attempting to be accurate.  Somehow he just came over as inept.

He had warned me that the dogs "would need to be kept out of my way", so I shut them in the garden.  We were standing in the living room at one point, and the stinky one was barking to be let in.  "I suppose I'll have to risk getting my ankles bitten, to measure up outside" he grumbled.  "Oh no," I reassured, "they're more likely to lick you to death."  "Unfortunately, they're the wrong species for that".  I was nearly sick.  So nearly.

Having looked around the house twice, poking into metre cupboards and looking at the boiler and into the attic, he reappeared in the kitchen.  "So, all three bedrooms are upstairs in the 'room in the roof', are they?"  "Um, no.  Two upstairs and one downstairs" quoth I.  You know, the one downstairs you've been into twice.  The one with the fuse box??  "OK.  And the controls on the boiler are the only controls you have for the heating?"  "No, you've taken photos of the thermostats on the radiator, and there's a thermostatic control panel at the bottom of the stairs"  "Oh.  But that's just a thermostat?"  "No, it's a thermostatic control panel.  I use it to programme the boiler."  and you've walked past it at least 4 times.  So glad you're paying attention.

Eventually, he left.  And I had to fight the impulse to wash.  So glad I won't be doing that again!

Email exchange...

Dear Silver Lining,

My name is ........ and I’m working with the Equality and Human Rights
Commission. 

On Monday we are publishing a new ‘Working Better’ report, which will take a
detailed look at what modern parents say would help them manage the work and
family commitments more effectively. As a leading parent blogger we’d like to
invite you to attend the launch event.

The event will take place on Monday at 10.30am (30th March) at the Commonwealth
Club in London.

Some of the key topics will include:

•  What affects the choices parents make in balancing paid work and care?
•  What would enable fathers to play a bigger role in parenting?
•  How do we fundamentally change our approach to work to benefit everyone?
•  How the Commission believes maternity and paternity leave can be brought
into line with the needs of modern families and businesses.

If you’re available and would like to attend, please reply to this email or
call me on 07.......

Best regards,

**************************************************************************************************************

Hi ...........

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it on Monday, as although I would have been very interested to attend, it's a bit late notice to arrange time off work and childcare!  It's a real shame you weren't able to give a bit more notice - with an extra 12 hours I could have re-arranged my appointments, but as it is I'm booked to give a talk to a cohort of Springboard students (Springboard is a women's personal development scheme) about how to balance family commitments and professional development - so I can't really just not turn up!

I hope the event runs well, and wish you the best of luck with the report

Best wishes

Silver Lining

*******************************************************************************************************************

Still, it's always nice when someone calls you a 'leading parent blogger', eh??

It's been a funny old day.  The kind of day when you begin to wonder whether, finally, you are too grownup to go to work with a hangover. 

Amidst the interminable editing of the self audit document - or rather, the inevitable Twitter-based displacement activities which accompany editing - I stumbled across an old climbing contact from the days before my marriage.  Not an actual climbing friend, you understand, merely a virtual one.  Who is now an editorial cheese at a broadsheet newspaper of my perusal.  Actually, that's not true because if I perused it nearly as often as, for example, HT does, I'd probably have realised that my virtual friend was an editorial cheese.  But where would be the fun in that??? 

So anyway, that got me to wondering.  I've never been much of a one for Friends Reunited, or the derivative offshoots thereof.  I always figure if I liked these people, we'd have stayed in touch in the first place.  And vice versa, of course.  But there are some people I do wish I'd stayed in touch with over the years.  So I went for a meander around Twitter, and it seems a number of them are there!   So I've fired off some vaguely lunatic, semi-stalkerish emails, and now I'm not sure I dare turn the machine off, for fear of missing the excitement of a reply!  Oh, and another of my erstwhile virtual climbing buddies turned up here which is a place of rare beauty.  He always did have a way with words...

Twitter actually is where I mostly am, these days.  Under my real name.  I'm occasionally tempted to link from there to here, but so far there is no link that I can establish between my real name and this site.  Not that, you know, it's a huge secret or owt.  Most of my readers - I suspect - know exactly who I am.  But if you can identify me, you can identify the kids, and some of the stories about them on here are sufficiently embarrassing that they might like to continue to hide, pseudonymously.

So, perhaps I am too grownup to go to work with a hangover.  But not, it seems, so grownup that I don't feel like jumping up and down and yelling, once in a while.  "Hey!  Look at me!  Over here!"  And any resultant impression of total loss of marbles should probably not be lightly dismissed.

So, today Daisy wants to know about puberty.  What is it?  What happens?  We're all in the car - this is where these conversations inevitably happen.  Which is good, in that it gets around the whole squirmy, 'who's making eye contact with whom' thing.  But not so good, as it means the whole subject has to be addressed with Daisy and Dan simultaneously.  No private talks.  No room for gender-specific sensitivity. 

Fortunately, they're both at an age where they don't seem to realise there are inhibitions to be had, in this area.  Which is good.

So we talk through puberty.  What happens to whom.  What the effects might be.  And inevitably, we get to babies - because how do you explain menstruation without mentioning the possibility of babies?  And how do babies happen?  Which is a question I thought they were well prepared for, but apparently not so.

A couple of explanations later.... and Dan decides to share the wisdom of his classmates.  So here it is; just for you, and so that I can recite it on his wedding day.

Apparently, you can make sperm come out of your willy without going through all the bother of sex.  "Oh, can you?"  Say I, all agog.  Wondering whether I am about to witness a 10 year old describing masturbation, and what the correct facial arrangement for such a revelation should be...

"Yes."  says Dan, in the manner of one about to impart wisdom to the less intellectually endowed.

"How do you do that, then?"

"Well, you get a bucket"

Steadfastly neutral, Silver, keep the face steadfastly neutral, "yes..."

"And you put your willy in the bucket"

Not a twitch.  Facial neutrality is my middle name.

"And you pour beer in the bucket"  - it's beginning to feel like a strain to keep my eyebrows out of my hairline

"And then you get someone to smack your bum"  Eyebrows down.  Mouth still.  Still, I tell you.

"And then sperm just shoots out your willy".

So there you have it.  That's how it's done.  You'll thank me for this wisdom, one day.

Now, think about that.  And don't smile.

I deserve a fucking medal, I tell you.