Eyes in the Back of My Head

by Mothership on June 19, 2009

Husband has been away for the last few days and will be gone for several more, sorting out rather grim affairs in Germany where his very elderly father needs care and attention and somehow nobody closer than his youngest son, some 6000 miles away, can be found to deal with the details.

I have been at home with the children who are in good spirits for the most part, but they are taking full advantage of having only one parent around to keep them in check.
Every time I turn my back they are climbing up on chairs to try and reach the sweetie tin or jumping on the beds after lights out or Five is whispering to Two to sweep the remains of his supper on to the floor when he has only eaten half, then calling to me

“Uh oh! Todzilla’s been naughty again! You shouldn’t let him have dessert!”

I tell her, as I often do, that I know what she has been doing because I have eyes at the back of my head.

And you know what? It’s true! I do. I really do. Sort of.

They don’t look like his, though.
(If you can’t see the picture, click on the title of this post – you don’t want to miss it, honest)

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Wrong Sort of Friend for Your Child

by Mothership on June 15, 2009

The Hollywood Bunny visited the other weekend for Two’s birthday and we went for a long walk along the beach. Husband took charge of the children which was fortunate. Neither she or I particularly felt like leaping over giant mounds of fetid sea kelp which had washed up on the shore creating little dank pools and dangerous swirling eddies, but the Dadster was in his element, getting wet ,sandy, whipped by seaweed and saving small personages from drowning as they flung themselves, foolhardy, into the waves with hysterical laughter. He loved it.

Meanwhile, on the shore, HB and I watched the three of them play and she commented how much the children adored him, how good he was with them. She didn’t remember her dad playing with her like that, she said wistfully; he hadn’t been that kind of father.
I, on the other hand, could very clearly remember my dad playing with me like that, but only up to a defined point. Then he lost interest.

When I look back on the fall from grace, the stark end of the golden years of childhood, I can clearly see now, with my adult’s hindsight, that none of it was to do with me.
Oh, but how it hurt to lose my place as the jewel in the crown of my parents’ marriage.

My mother left – unusual for those days. She went, ostensibly for three months, but never did come back, and I stayed with my father who brought his new lover into the house before the bed sheets had cooled, and there I was; ten years old, asking awkward questions, acting out, being needy and generally getting in the way of everybody’s new life. Not so popular.

After the shock wears off, when you finally understand that you are not A Little Princess anymore and you’re going to be sleeping in the metaphorical attic from now on, you start to develop some defense mechanisms to protect yourself from further harm and disappointment. Often this is in the form of a hard emotional carapace and a chillingly precocious self-sufficiency. I think this is what is commonly called growing up too quickly or being the wrong sort of friend for your child

What is interesting to me now, as an adult, a former wrong sort of friend for your child is what those of us who have been through similar experiences (and with the high divorce rates in the 70’s and 80’s I’m most definitely not alone) at have grown into.

Is it any coincidence that Gen X has waited longer than any previous one to marry and have children?

We’re terrified of making the same mistakes our parents made. We’re still searching for a perfect, happy family, one we can be in charge of this time, and we are absolutely determined not to pass any of the old damage on to our children, ergo the multi billion dollar industry of services/goods/parenting manuals that we are willing to buy into to soothe our anxieties and cover our shortcomings.

On a side note, I feel compelled to tell you all that occasionally I indulge in a fantasy where I sneak into Babies R Us at night and remove all the goods, leaving only a giant graffiti of This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin on the wall like some Madonna of the Banksy.
However, this is not helpful to my general argument, but it does illustrate how I am/was the wrong sort of friend for your child, and probably for you, too.

It seems to me, though, that the best opportunity for healing one’s inner wrong sort of friend for your child is by having a family of one’s own and learning all the angles while keeping your compassion for yourself and everyone else involved alive. There is no way that it does not crack open the carapace and all the old stuff comes out in ways that you could not have foreseen. It’s how you deal with it this time around that really makes the difference. Staying open, allowing ghosts out, trust and love in, letting the hard shell slowly melt. This is how we finally grow up, slowly and surely, with our families.

Hollywood Bunny is hoping to meet someone nice and have children. She has been married before and that did not work out (I’m being very diplomatic to her ex husband as she would not speak ill of anyone because she is not that type of person but because this is my blog I am going to send you a psychic message now about who behaved unspeakably and deserves a big smelly poo in a box. Ready? Did you get that? Good okay).
She wondered who was out there and whether there was anyone who is still available and not damaged.
I pointed out that if no damage was the criteria then those two giggling nonsense-wagons would not be there on the beach draping Husband with kelp because who would have had me? Had him?
And yet here we were, muddling through, working it out, loving each other and growing together despite the obstacles the past placed in our way.

I’m pretty sure that as soon as she is ready to open her heart again, the offers of love will come rushing in, and we will be walking along a different beach on a different day, watching a lovely man play with their children in the kelp.
What will not change is that her dad will still not have played with her like that, but I don’t think she’ll feel quite so wistful.

We all have our baggage. Love is when you choose someone and you help each other unpack.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Vacating the premises and evicting the ghosts

by Mothership on June 8, 2009

Our new(ish) tenant is moving out. 

Yes, this was all rather sudden as she moved in only a couple of months ago, but actually I’m not heartbroken.

In fact I’m rather glad.

Relieved, you might say.

Ecstatic is probably pushing it a bit far but I am a firm believer in all things happening for a reason beyond the mere practical and immediately obvious, and although she cited a sudden change in financial circumstances I feel that mysterious forces are at work to make this a positive move for all concerned.

I mentioned some weeks back that she was a newly single mother with part-time custody of a six-year old boy, and I thought at the time that this might prove to be a pleasant relationship for Five – the two children could play together from time to time and would be at the same school which would be nice for them both. What we did not know was that the boy, whom I shall call Kevin, had a destructive kamikaze deathwish streak and liked nothing better to break things (preferably Five’s toys or my plants) or leap off parts of buildings from great heights, and that Susan, his mother, could not rouse herself to say anything more to him about his wild behaviour than;

“Oh, Kevin, honey? I think that the tree might not like it when you break its branches? Okay? You might have an opportunity to make a different choice here? What would you like to do?” as he beat the living crap out of a sapling and stomped it to death.

Almost every day that he was home we would hear him fall down the stairs and wail, stomp ,tumble and scream through the flat.
It was a bad scene.
There was also the small issue of them failing to pay their rent regularly or on time, but we tried hard not to make a big deal of it as she was a single mum – a tough position to be in.
We sympathised

But she WAS a pain. Nearly every day there was a phonecall about something terrible happening in the apartment, usually in the middle of dinner.

Could we come that second and open a window for her?  It appeared to be stuck.

Oh, ok, I’d come over.
Oh, look, Susan. You have to unfasten the window lock and then push it open. They are all like that. We have locks on them to stop them just swinging open on their own.
(Or as I could have said but didn’t; unruly children whose parents don’t look after them properly falling out to their deaths.)

Could we come and turn the heating on? It was broken and she was freezing to death?

Yes. I could.
Oh look. Here. You can switch it on like this. Press on the button where it says “Press here and turn to ignite”. 
Or, you could, in a novel approach, put on something warmer than a bra and running shorts. I don’t want to be rude, or speak out of turn, but we do live in Southern California and it is MAY and the ambient temperature is 68 degrees.
I’m just saying.

Could we come, RIGHT NOW and put up the smoke alarms in every room that she found in one of her boxes.

Yes, of course we could. I’ll come right away.
Um, was she sure that she wanted me to take down the new smoke alarms I’d put up in every room before she moved in and replace them with some old ones? I was pretty sure they were better. Okay, yes, I’d leave them. Can I go now? Anything else?

Could we leave our social engagement THIS INSTANT as there was a swarm of bees in the apartment?

Husband will come right away, no, don’t worry that we’re out at brunch with friends, nothing is too important for you. 
Oh, Susan, did you know that a swarm is usually classified as being greater in number than five or six bees, and look, they are very happy to go outside if you open the window – remember how we open them with the window locks?

All this after having broken the lease and given us fewer than 30 days notice.

However these were all small things.

I think the worst of it was something deep and personal that affected mainly me, and that was that in the two and a half months that she lived here she had not put any furniture into her apartment except a bed and an elliptical running machine, and her little boy’s toys were scattered along the dusty wooden floor of the cavernously empty living room beside the cardboard box they had been brought in.

I know this is not my business.

It’s her life, her apartment, but it got to me, dammit. I couldn’t go in there without wincing.
She never really tried to make any kind of home for him. He never even had his own bed. We heard him shouting at her, we heard him crying, and from time to time we’d see the father drop him back with his mother and the two parents would sit in the cab of the father’s pickup truck talking for ages about their impending divorce while Kevin hung about not knowing what to do with himself.

That bit really slayed me.

It touched a deep, distant and yet still tender wound, like a cavity you don’t know you have until you eat a piece of chocolate that zings straight down to the nerve at the base of  a molar that could crush a rib, but is undone by a grain of sugar.

How many hours had I loitered, alone, while my own parents interminably discussed their awful split? The agony, the loneliness, the slow torture of powerlessly watching your life be systematically broken apart by the very people you love and need the most.
And the little shreds of childish hope you entertain that it might all go away. He is young enough to hold those. I see it in his eyes.
Hell. We’re all still young enough to hold them, even if we don’t admit it to anyone anymore.

He lolled on the balcony looking forlornly down at the children who were playing on the patio. Five asked him what he was eating. He was eating candy. A roll of mints.

Where’dja get them? She asked.

At the liquor store he said.

Five looked at me, baffled. She’s not been to the liquor store, but clearly Kevin knew it pretty well, including all of the candy selection and how it was superior to the drugstore and the supermarket offerings.
This sent another little arrow into my tender heart. I don’t like it that a little boy of six is so au fait with the boozer.
I’m all up for wine o’clock and all, but there are an awful lot of empties in our recycling bin that don’t come from our house and again, that’s just a bit of a shitty blast from the past for me. 

He asked her if she wanted a sweet and she looked at me for permission. I granted it, mainly because I felt so sorry for poor Kevin that I decided he could come down and be with us until his parents were finished their talk of doom.

But the worst thing.
I assumed that he would saunter through the gate in his usual cocky way and just hang out. But no.  He put his little hand through the crack at the side, pitifully proffering it like a prisoner. 

It broke me.

I actually had to step inside the house and wipe away a tear.
I saw so clearly that this awful split, this terrible mismanagement, this period of painful lunacy that the parents were entering (and they surely can’t help it, poor woman, poor man) was going to sentence Kevin to a lifetime of being outside the kissing gate, lonely and unsure of his place within the heart.

He didn’t even have a bed, let alone a proper home. How would he know he was welcome to spend a little time at our ours if he was not even welcome in his own because he didn’t have one?

Susan told me that Kevin was going to live with his grandma for a year so that she and Kevin’s father could each, individually, get their financial acts together over that time.
I felt physically sick when she told me that, on behalf of all of them. What a terrible loss for her, for Kevin, for the dad.
A family, broken.

I know they are none of my business.

I am glad they are no longer going to be any of my business.

That excavating of my own brutal past is something I may have to do in order to exorcise my demons one day, but I think I might prefer to do it with a little anasthetic, and in my own time. Not literally over my head and under my roof in full, living colour.

In the meantime I wish them all Godspeed on their journey. And I hope we get nice, quiet, reasonable tenants this time. I can’t help but think that because I am in a better, happier, more stable place myself we should be able to attract something better, happier and more stable to the space.

No further need to talk about Kevin

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Nostalgia – 10 a Penny

by Mothership on June 3, 2009

One thing I noticed on my recent trip to London was that the past seems to be selling extremely well.

After my previously documented trip to the retro sweetie shop – dozens of which are cropping up all over the country for eager and misty eyed forty year old schoolboys to spend their (considerably larger than yesteryear) pocket money – I wandered over the road – a lovely road, with a nice old-fashioned parade of shops, just like when I were a girl – to a trendy gift shop (not like when I were a girl) which had all sorts of enticing and designerish items for a magpie like me and her fledglings.

Among the things which caught my eye particularly was a set of mugs adorned with the old Penguin book cover design. Ooh! I remember these! Yes! I loved them! I’m sure my parents had them all! I want them! Why don’t they have these anymore?

The past is better because I was there then.

I didn’t buy them, mainly because I was concerned about suitcase breakages and also Husband’s face when he saw yet another set of whimsical mugs (already have 12 Alice in Wonderland mugs with the Tenniel illustrations that he claims make him feel like a child every time he has a cup of tea – exactly, DUH!).

Next my gaze alighted upon what I thought, with a rush of excitement, were a set of the old Ladybird books, just like the ones I used to read in school. Actually, to be honest I was always a bit sniffy about them because I could already read when I got to school and was slightly disdainful about Peter and Jane et. al. but I liked the pictures. I was a tad disappointed when I picked one up and saw that it was not a proper Ladybird book at all, but rather a notebook with the Ladybird illustration as a cover and this rather clever piece of marketing on the back:

 

If your formative years meant:??

– school dinners were liver and onions rather than Turkey Twizzlers?

– a Blackberry was something you picked in a country lane and not something you spent your weekend ignoring?

– MySpace was a den in your back garden, built with bed sheets and runner bean canes?

– Noah, Isaac and Joshua were characters from the bible rather than the kids in your class?

– Wheelies were what you did on your bike in the park and not what you wore on your feet for the weekly shop?

– And if you wanted to be an astronaut, train driver, footballer or anything other than a CELEBRITY when you grew up…??

CONGRATULATIONS! You are a product of the Ladybird generation.

 

Oh! I deserve CONGRATULATIONS!!! I am a proper person, not some young riffraff, I got up before I went to bed, lived in hole in the road, knew the proper order of things and now, I have the fabulous opportunity to BUY IT ALL BACK AGAIN! YES PLEASE!

I am not being entirely facetious. I would have bought it if it was a real Ladybird book and given it to Five. I just don’t have need of a notebook that small. My handwriting is too appalling (so much for the fabulous education of that generation).

 

Curiously, there were quite a lot of WWII era nostalgia items on sale which spoke to me, I don’t know why. You know the type of thing – Potato Pete, and Soup is Good Food etc. I suppose that memories of the war were still relatively fresh in people’s minds back in the 1970’s.  Grandparents had fought, rationing was part of some of our parents’ own childhoods, little boys still built model spitfires.
I was once again drawn to a mug, brightly coloured, and this time it simply said: 

Waste not, want not

I was very taken by this. My step-granny, the former WWII evacuee always quotes this phrase at us, anxiously snatching up and carefully folding pieces of discarded wrapping paper at Christmas, painstakingly saving leftover food in numerous bowls in the fridge (inevitably they rot uneaten, ungrateful, modern beasts, we are), and she tries very, very hard to keep everything that the unthinkingly wasteful throw away in case we might one day need it.
She is more in tune with the times than she knows.

I was about to throw caution to the wind and buy this mug in her honour when I stopped and thought a bit more about it.
Waste not, want not.
I already have a mug. In fact I have twelve. And this mug was made in China (of course), shipped over here using God knows how much fuel, packaging materials etc. (cue Husband and his in-depth life-cycle assessment, OMFG) and it had the GALL to say Waste not, want not. 
Ok, I would do just that. I would want it not and therefore waste not by foregoing the purchase.  Good on me.  But it did kick me right in the retro.

There were many other examples I could bore you with, in a long list, of items I saw for sale that targeted people just like me, like you, Gen X, maybe a few Gen Y (oh you youngsters!) now with children of our own, hoping to buy back a bit of the old days, the old order, our own youth and pass on some of that meaning, sense of the world to our children as it slips, ever faster into the distant past – the world moves at an increasingly alarming speed, does it not? But I am going to depart from my shopping list into another little nostalgia study that has interested me (and possibly me alone) in the last few days.

You are free to leave this post if you wish to commit suicide at the mention of

In the Night Garden.

Ok. I know I’m late to the party on this one. We don’t get it over here in California and my two had only seen a couple of episodes in South Africa when we were there last year at my mother’s house. I ignored it because it was basically an opportunity for me to run around containing the chaos they had caused at their Grandma’s house so I didn’t really take in anything other than kept on asking me if they could see it again.

Once or twice I let them look at the website and found it curiously appealing. I loved the music and found myself singing Iggle Piggle’s song almost daily (the possibilities for harmony are almost endless!) but I hadn’t actually watched the programme until I bought them a DVD this trip and sat down with them the other night for a few episodes.

I am aware of the awards, the fuss, the love/hate relationship that parents have with this show. I’m not going to come down for or against it – these things are so subjective, aren’t they? My children LOVE it. Husband thinks it’s the most boring programme he’s ever seen – so repetitive, he says, and why do they talk nonsense? (I ask myself this question about many of the citizens of this fine country on a daily basis, too, but neither of us has received a satisfactory answer. I digress, however)

I happen to love it and find it very comforting, despite it being very repetitive and nonsensical. There is something much more primal going on and I find myself being lulled into a similar stupor to my children as it’s showing, while Husband remains curiously immune. I have developed a (no doubt highly flawed, due to it being a sample of one) scientific theory about why this programme is so successful with parents as well as children, and it all comes down to the same subject as this post:
Nostalgia.

My quick and dirty analysis. Feel free to add your own observations.

The programme starts with the stars in the night sky pinging, one by one in time to the music. (Music is heavily Bagpuss influenced) This reminded me immediately of the opening scene of The Clangers. Not quite the same, no. But night skies. Close enough

Then we have a little child (or a baby) being sung a song, a familiar chord progression and they are turning their finger around their palm – it’s

“Round and round the garden like a teddy bear” Ahh, I like that. Comforting. Reminds me of.. my own childhood.

Derek Jacobi narrating is so very familiar to all of us, young and old, and again, this gives us all such a comforting old-school BBC children’s telly feel. I could almost weep.

Then Iggle Piggle goes off to sea in his boat in that time release photo style – Bagpuss again, anyone? Just like when Bagpuss wakes up, and the music is rather reminiscent too, come to think of it..

Those flowers – the trees – so Magic Roundabout! I’m having FLASHBACKS!

Iggle Piggle sounds like SWEEP! The Pontypines sound like the mice from the Marvelous Mechanical Mouse Organ!  Aggh!

And that bandstand thing (what is it called?) It even SOUNDS like Camberwick Green, or the other one, what was it called (Trumpton?)

I should probably study, Google it all more thoroughly and write a dissertation on all of this and use big words to make it sound more cleverer. They’d probably give me an MA!

But frankly, I’d rather just sit and watch the telly sucking my thumb with my blankie along with the real children.

Ahh. Nostalgia..

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Reflections Upon Returning Home

by Mothership on May 29, 2009

So nice to be home!

I had a wonderful welcome from the family – flowers,hugs and kisses and passionate declarations of love from Five

“I missed you and I love you more than infinity to the power of infinity!”

One clung to my hand and quietly said “Mummy, mummy” over and over again and Husband tucked my head under his chin since the rest of me had been annexed by the children and said several times that it was nice to have me back again.

Clearly I need to go away more often.

My presents were met with great approval (well really, who doesn’t like a giant tin of sweets?) and the hastily snatched up toy London bus and taxi  – £6 the pair – proved a huge hit with One who has spent many happy hours pushing them around under the table muttering “Obo, fe,peezh”  (All aboard: Fares, please) just as I have taught him. Sadly for him he will never realise his ambition to be a bus conductor but this is perhaps just as well as although I have forsworn not to interfere too much in my childrens’ life choices, I do have slightly higher ambitions for him than that. Besides, by the time he is grownup it is very unlikely any of my beloved Routemasters will have survived and he would have to become a robot. Thinking about that, though, I’m pretty sure that’s also on his list of career choices..

So, here I am, back in bed the office with Bagpurrito after my great adventure contemplating what the trip has meant to me and what I will do from this point forward.

One thing is certain: Nothing can be the same because I am not the same.

I think I had become a rather diminished, shrivelled version of myself prior to this trip: Motherhood, wifedom, Stepford had all taken their toll, but taking this time and space to reconnect with who I am has put many things into perspective for me.

I am a little reminded of those capsules which contain sponge shapes for children to play with. Five calls them “breaky things”. They look like time-release headache pills or somesuch.  You place them in warm water, the gel capsule melts and lo! A magical shape emerges of a butterfly or a safari animal or a spaceship. 

This time in London has released me from my capsule and I am the shape I ought to be, that I really am, once more. 
The trick will be to retain this sense of self now that I have found it.

One very definite part of this is that I will no longer pay attention to the smaller things – and smaller-minded people – in my surroundings. It is amusing to me now how easily affected I could become by issues and dramas not of my own making. I used to be very good at not being affected by other peoples’ shitstorms. I would note who was heavily damaged and who was not, and I would avoid the former.
Simple.
I would not get suckered in by feeling sorry for them, I would not engage in psychodrama, I would set my boundaries, and that would be that. If one does not give energy to this kind of thing, it generally diminishes.

This is only half of the solution, though. The other half is to pay attention to what I love, what I need, what I believe to be important for my own happiness and then ask the Universe to supply more.
This is what really works. That is what propelled me to London and what made my trip home so magical and full of messages from the most unexpected sources:

I went to see my old house while I was there. I steeled myself for a painful afternoon of watching strangers abusing my former home. I rattled around that vast Victorian pile for 13 years and practically grew roots into the walls which Husband had to rip out, bleeding and trailing as he packed me into the taxi for Heathrow when we left for America. I hadn’t been back since. My very good friend, D, manages the property and the tenants and she recently had it redecorated and my next door neighbor, a kindly old buffer, does the odd repair for us. We had informed the tenants, all 6 of them, that we were coming in to get some things out the loft and would be inspecting the property.  

It looked pretty shoddy. Despite the new paint and carpet (already burned by cigarettes in a couple of places; bye-bye deposit, tenants) it seemed smaller and dingier than I remembered and the garden, once my pride and joy, was dark, overgrown and full of weeds. They had also been having campfires back there which D will put an immediate stop to. It was very dirty throughout. I felt a little annoyed with the occupants, but I realised that I didn’t feel violated or outraged, as I thought I would.
Mainly, surprisingly, I felt nothing.
We got some things out the loft to be shipped to me – some prints I had stored there and some old costumes from the band for Five to put in the dressing up box- and then we went next door to have a cup of tea with Sid, repairman extraordinaire. He has acquired a new girlfriend since I left, a lovely, sixtyish lady who is a former teacher, now a watercolourist, and we sat in their conservatory and chatted. We were talking about my house, and how I felt about it and she said 

“You can return, can’t you, but you can never go back. You don’t know that you’re ready to let go until the very moment that you do. And it’s only then that you are at peace.” 

Tears started suddenly in my eyes. This total stranger had articulated it precisely. I had let go of something that I didn’t even know I was holding on to.

And yes, I had found a kind of peace.

I doubt I will have to go this far to receive wisdom every time I need to hear something important (although I’m not averse to travel – quite the contrary ) but I do think there is something essential in being open to hearing and receiving messages from unexpected sources, which is harder when one is in an everyday routine, and even more so, in a rut. That has a tendency to shut us all down.

Remaining open, this is the thing.

To stay wide-eyed, open-hearted and ready for life to take us on a flight of fancy.

This is where I want to be, and what I want to teach my children.

Keep your passport handy.

 

 

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Let me take you by the hand along the streets of London town..

by Mothership on May 25, 2009

I am having a splendiferous time.

So much has happened since I last posted that I hardly know where to start. I shall try to address it in chronological order.

First, the lunch: It was fabulous.
Mrs. Trefusis, Liberty London Girl, India Knight and Belgian Waffle at Shoreditch House.
We met at one, or we should have met at one but I was horribly late because I idiotically decided to drive, underestimated my travel time, then got confused in manner of elderly lady by the rejigging of the one way system at Shoreditch since I was last there, finally parked and then wandered around on foot looking myopically for the entrance to the place which was not where it ought to have been according to my badly self written directions. However, I got there in the end and they very sweetly waited for me to order and were very gracious about my tardiness. I was a little shy and quiet at first but soon started gabbling away, and before we knew it several bottles of wine had mysteriously disappeared and we were forced to retire from our table to a lounging position by the pool. From there we started to Twitter and even broadcast some photographs, including this very fetching one of my good self, taken by India Knight. It was a most merry and raucous time and hopefully will be repeated in the not too distant future. I am plumping for a kind of Twitter/blogging ‘conference’ next time which can be written off for tax, and therefore held in an exotic location – Bahamas? Vegas? Anguilla? Tahiti?  
Still, I’d happily come back to London for another. Any excuse..

Lunch ended at approximately 6pm, which was highly convenient as this was exactly the moment that my old friend the video director turned up to meet me for drinks so I didn’t actually have to relinquish my spot on the lounger by the pool. That would have been too difficult. We just put blankets over our knees, ordered cocktails and eventually dinner. By the time this finished I was much too tired to make it to see Jo’s show. My friend was slightly disappointed as he had been looking forward to watching naked ladies, but was far too gracious to insist – he could see the jet lag catching up with me, but I promised we would do this another time. Jo has been twirling the tassels for several decades now and shows no particular sign of stopping. God, she’s fabulous!

I had a thrilling visit to a retro sweetie shop the following day- I had promised Five I would bring her all the types of candy I used to like as a child, and as luck would have it this particular place was on the way to my grandparents’ cottage in Kent, so I stopped off in Dulwich, found a parking space right outside (of course!) and walked in to what was my idea of heaven, aged 6. This time I had more than 10p to spend. 

Oh yes!

Jars and jars of delicious sweets lined the walls. Sherbet dibdabs, pear drops, toffees, butterscotch, flying saucers, refresher chews, fruit salad, blackjacks, tom thumb pips, rhubarb and custard, foam prawns and bananas (not together, obviously), humbugs, traffic light lollies, sugar mice, drumsticks- ooh the list went on and on. Unfortunately they were out of Caramac, but you can’t have everything, can you?

I left half an hour later and £25 poorer, but it was SO worth it. I’ve been waiting a lifetime to go into a sweet shop like that and buy anything I wanted.
Did someone say teeth? Surely I won’t need those for much longer?

I spent a lovely restful couple of days in the country with the old folks, enjoying the beautiful English countryside, the birdsong, the flowers, the greenery.  
How I miss that in California! It’s so pretty here, so gentle. I took lots of photographs, including some great ones of Jessie, the naughtiest spaniel in Britain. My grandparents think she is reasonably well behaved, but actually she is quite dreadful and jumps on people, drags food off the table, runs around yelping, eyes rolling crazily, and generally makes a nuisance of herself in a puppyish manner despite being eleven years old. I’ve become rather fond of her over time, despite her unattractive qualities and have come to view her bad behaviour as a sort of conduit for all the irritation and rage that her master – a model of propriety – could not bring himself to express due to being a consummate gentleman. Sir F is a restrained, understated, elegant and literary man but he has a dark side that he no longer has the physical capability to express. What better than an uncontrolled beastie like Jessie to do his dirty work for him? It’s not that she obeys him and does bad things at his bidding. It’s that she obeys no-one and he quietly, gleefully enjoys the ensuing mayhem, clears his throat apologetically, offers the opinion that “Jessie is trying to tell you that she is very fond of you” then he slopes off for an afternoon sleep.
Genius. Passive aggression via domestic pets. I am planning this for my own dotage. 

After this pleasant interlude I zipped by Canterbury to see a cousin and then went back to London to fetch my friend – the one from the plane – to go to a party. It was an enjoyable evening, but one full of strange ghosts too.
This friend, as I mentioned in my last post, is one I have known since birth. He is actually the elder of two brothers,  his  younger brother and I being the same age, and we all spent our early years together in north west London.
As life has turned out, the younger brother and his partner now live in the flat they grew up in and have two small boys aged 4 and 2 who I have not seen since the eldest was a small baby. Although these days I am closer to the older brother, in childhood the younger brother and I were totally inseparable and many happy hours were spent playing in that flat together. 
I rang the bell- and this was odd enough, recalling the decades that I have stood by that door, and after I was buzzed in climbed the stairs up to the flat. When I came in there were lots of people milling around – the younger brother and his wife were going out to a wedding and so there was a babysitter there, several other adults getting ready to go out, the elder brother getting his jacket and phone etc. I glanced over into what used to be the playroom and saw that it was, once again, a playroom which was strange, but not strange, if you know what I mean, and then I walked into the living room and got a huge shock when I saw what at first glance appeared to be my friend, the younger brother aged 4 sitting on the sofa watching The Clangers. This was very confusing. How could he be 4, watching The Clangers, on this sofa, when I was the age I am now standing here? This was not right. Surely I should also be 4 and any minute his mother, who is the shouty type, would come in and yell at us for eating on the couch/giggling/nothing in particular.  Then the younger brother walked in, really my age,  which was further confusing and I asked him how it was possible that this had happened. He didn’t know. He really didn’t know.

The party was very nice – delicious food, pleasant people and most of all a chance to spend time with a beloved friend. In some ways it feels like no time has passed at all since we were kids, and in other ways like we are in a hiatus of time because obviously we are the age we are, at the stage of life we are at, and yet here we were, in our hometown, navigating the streets, talking our own language and comparing notes on our expat status. 
I drove him home and we passed South End Green, by the Royal Free Hospital. With a shock, we saw that the Hampstead Classic Cinema is no more, it is now an M&S Simply Food. We were deeply traumatised – how many childhood films and teenage fumblings had we both had in that cinema? Truly appalling! No doubt it’s been like that for years, but it was the first time we’d seen it and it was like a small death in the family. We agreed that we were very glad that we were together when we discovered that heart rending fact. It would have been too awful to find it out alone. We laughed on the outside at our foolishness, but inside a small part of me cried.

The next day was Sunday and I met a girlfriend in town and we wandered all over London eating, drinking and giggling in the glorious weather. It was a magical day and everything I wished for came true. Tables by the window instantly became free at the Tate Modern restaurant,  front seats at the top of a number 15 routemaster bus  presented themselves(Oh, how I love a routemaster bus! London not London without them), numerous cups of tea were drunk at various places and important conversations were held, and finally we ended up at the Edgeware Rd., a favourite haunt of mine, where we ordered a ridiculous amount of Lebanese food from gracious, besuited gentlemen and then rounded off the evening by shopping for mint tea glasses and soumak at the little arabic supermarkets that line the busy street where people sit out and smoke fruit flavoured tobacco in hookahs and drink dark, cardamom flavoured coffee late into the night. I actually thought that there was nothing that could add to the perfection of this marvelous day, but as we went into one last shop in search of the perfect glasses for my friend, I cast my eye over the selection of chocolates below the counter and there, to my delight, were CARAMAC BARS.

I bought 14.

We shared one on the train home, giggling and licking our fingers, swooning with nostalgia.They are just as delicious as they ever were.

Not quite sure any will make it back to Stepford, but I will try my best.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Felix Felicis

by Mothership on May 21, 2009

Some could say (and by some, I am referring to myself) that this trip was very long overdue and also important in some quite deep and, dare I say it, spiritual way that goes beyond just getting a break from the daily drudge of domesticity.
It also seems to have something to do with reconnecting with an essential part of myself that got left behind when Husband and I stepped on the plane to go to America six years ago with Five nestling, embryonic,within me. I think I might even be looking further back to find part of me that left the building when I made room for Husband who – dear though he is – takes up quite a lot of psychic space.

I don’t know if you ever notice this about your own life, but when I am not in tune with myself everything goes wrong and I am constantly tripping myself up or my plans are being thwarted. People seem awkward and unpleasant (not me, of course! the very suggestion!), nothing goes according to plan, I am frustrated and angry.  The car breaks down, the washing machine explodes,  the children have meltdowns in the supermarket, the cat throws up just as we are expecting guests, One develops a temperature on the day I have set aside to write, my iPod malfunctions, I lose my phone – you know the type of thing. And they all add up to making one feel hopeless and miserable because they sit on top of a general sense that life is not quite as one planned it, and the real action is happening elsewhere, just out of reach. There is a party going on in the world and everyone got invited except me. Or, in the case of my life in Stepford, the party was so fucking dire that I just couldn’t bear to go so I stayed at home and wrote my blog instead.

But when one shifts one’s perspective and reaches out to the Universe, it’s quite astonishing how swift the response is.

If you have been following this blog, you will know that a couple of weeks ago I decided, on a whim, to come to London in order to have my hair done and meet fellow bloggers Mrs. Trefusis, LibertyLondonGirl, BelgianWaffle and IndiaKnight for lunch. I do have some other reasons to be here, but mainly it was the sense of naughty glee I derived from booking a plane ticket and leaving my responsibilities in order to go on an impromptu trip for such a random reason that propelled me into action.

Interestingly there was a mixed reaction back in Stepford. Husband was supportive and urged me to go – he has been witnessing the slow descent of the caged wife-beast  – the rolling of the eyes and  frothing of the mouth followed by the hypnotic pacing back and forth in a fixed pattern and finally the disinterested slump in a corner without even a flicker towards chocolate. Some friends asked pointed questions about who would look after the children and also Husband,  as if he were not a 41 year old man, able to wipe his own bottom and patronise shops and restaurants. Others cheered me on and confided their own desire to reclaim themselves as independent people. A couple of misguided but well meaning people offered their own rather unworldly interpretations of my predicament and prescribed chrysanthemums, but I did not hold this against them.

The main thing was that I knew deep in my heart that I needed to go alone and be at home with my tribe on the soil of my birth and I would find here something I had been missing.

I last posted from the airport lounge at LAX, and since then the trip has revealed one extraordinary and serendipitous event after another. It has been as if I drank the Felix Felicis potion from the Harry Potter book and I am skipping along, completely happy and at ease and things just delightfully fall into place:

Leaving the lounge I wandered along to the gate feeling deliciously unencumbered. I stood slightly back from the crowd, waiting for them to call my seating row and idly looking at other passengers when my eye alighted on a man who was peering up at the departure board. He looked..familiar. It took me about five seconds to compute that not only did I know him but he was, in fact, my oldest friend, someone I have known since I was born, our mothers have been friends since birth and our grandparents were friends. I haven’t seen him for two years, even though he lives in LA due to busy lives, work, families etc. I ran over to him and we hugged, exclaimed, etc. It turned out that he was on my flight, in my row, and would be in London on his own at the same time as me and on the one night I was not busy he was going to the birthday party of a woman I also know and invited me to come along. Perfect! We chatted on the flight for a bit, both got some rest, exchanged numbers and I’ll see him and his brother who lives here on Saturday.

As the plane descended over London I saw my house from the window which gave me an unexpected emotional jolt, and as I waited for my baggage at Heathrow I had the strangest sensation that it would be entirely possible to walk out, get into my old car, drive home and find my cats (now dead) and go about my life as it was before I met Husband and had children. I drove to my aunt’s house in leafy Wandsworth and it was so sweet and familiar to be let in and see her and my uncle, sit in their kitchen drinking tea and eating heavily buttered brown toast and listen to the birdsong. She said to me that she also had a feeling that it was as if I had never left. So odd.

Later, I left the house and went off to take care of various errands like sort out a mobile phone and get some money, all of which proved to be astonishingly easy and hassle free, and made my way up to Chancery Lane to meet The Hair God. I was ecstatic to be walking around the city again and hopping off trains and tubes. I know that I would tire of this if I had to do it too often, but as I smelled the hot winds that mysteriously blow through the tunnels of the northern line,  I could remember as far back as aged two, clinging to my mother’s legs when the train came hurtling along the platform or running after my grandmother who would jump on to a carriage first and ask where it was going afterwards.
The sounds and smells of the underground are still the same as they ever were.

It is quite hard to believe how grotesque I looked when I walked in to Graham’s studio, and how fabulous I looked and felt when I left, but the man is an absolute genius and a total sweetie to boot.
I have rarely enjoyed a six hour visit to the hairdresser so much – didn’t have to look at a magazine once beyond establishing the right shade of blonde, we just chatted away and got on like a house on fire. He recommended a type of straightening tongs  GHD which come in dual voltage and said that I’d have to buy them at a salon. I’d probably just pass one. I thought, wistfully, that as I was leaving his place at 6.45pm I was unlikely to just ‘pass one’ on my way back to Wandsworth, but amazingly, as I walked past a little parade of shops in Clapham Junction, I did walk past a salon which was still open and had one in the window in a leopard print case.
I think that pretty much had my name on it, don’t you?

Ah, the synchronicity of it all.

So, only 12 hours on the ground and everything was pretty much perfect.

I’m off today to have lunch with the ladies and then for a fabulous evening with friends at Madam JoJo’s to see my old friend Jo King (aged 50!) perform a burlesque show. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Will report back soon.

For current blog posts, click HERE

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Airport Lounging

by Mothership on May 19, 2009

I’m sitting in the Red Carpet Club at LAX waiting to get on the first plane I have taken on my own for six long years. 

I will be able to watch a film, read magazines and books, eat my own food, go to the loo on my own and at the point of my choosing, and even more importantly I can take a sleeping pill, put in earplugs and wear a mask and pass out.

Oh the bliss!

When I arrive, I will swiftly disembark (not de-plane, as they say here – God, that irritates me. WTF is that bloody word, anyway?) skip off to collect my own luggage and not anyone else’s, buy a strong, black coffee – not milk, not hot chocolate, not snacks that will be smeared all over me – I shall not change any nappies, not take anyone for a wee right after they said they didn’t need one, and then I shall saunter over to the car rental depot and casually collect my car into which I will settle only myself.
Myself alone, not any car seats. Or toys. Or teddies. Or choo-choos. 

A week of child-free fun! So very excited!! 

Needless to say I overpacked and still have absolutely nothing suitable as all my clothes are SoCal beachwear. I have plans to shop, though, so by the time I return I’ll have a wonderful city wardrobe and will thus be forced to go back again soon in order to put it to good use. 
Makes sense, right?

On the way to the airport Five said

“Mummy, are you going to see your boyfriend?”  

*chance would be a fine thing*

” No, of course not, darling! Daddy is my boyfriend.”

” No, ”  she said scornfully, “ He’s just your husband.”

*suppress snort*

“Well, darling, when you have a husband you’re not really supposed to have a boyfriend”

“Oh.”   She thought about this for a while

” Does Daddy have a boyfriend, then?”

I am looking forward to my time alone enormously.

But at the same time I will also be looking forward to coming home because who else makes me laugh like that?

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Farewell to Four

by Mothership on May 16, 2009

And so we bid farewell to Four.
This wild, precocious, hilarious, thoughtful and surprising child has lived some 1461 days under the bright California sun.

We welcome in her stead; Five, a quantity as yet unknown.
But I’m sure that when she wakes up on her birthday in the morning she won’t be so very different from the girl who fell asleep the night before. 

Of course I am not the first to say or think this, but I am still confounded by how that tiny creature I brought home from the hospital just yesterday turned into this enormous sentient being? And by the same measure, was there ever really a time when I didn’t know her? Neither seems credible and yet both must be true because there she sleeps, beautiful and true.

Five years old. How rich I am. 

Happy birthday to us both.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Lost Bear

by Mothership on May 13, 2009

Four has lost her teddy.

Extreme heartbreak. 

All of us are devastated. She took it to school – I dropped her off – she had it afterwards – Husband picked her up. He took the children to a favourite restaurant – she had it there. They came straight home. Teddy is not at home. Or in the garden. Or in the car. 
We phoned the restaurant twice. It is not there.

What to do?

I do actually have a backup bear who is, as I write, in the dryer after a hot white boiling wash, trying to get matted and beaten up looking like his predecessor. I shall go and check his progress in a minute but I don’t hold out much hope. Teddy (original) was so severely beaten and matted that it is going to be hard to replicate.

I would feel angry with Husband, under whose watch Teddy went AWOL. but the man clearly feels so awful and wretched, that there is little point in doing anything to make him feel worse. It certainly won’t bring Teddy back.

When I was a little girl I left my bear, Huckle, in a swing at Blaker’s Park. When I remembered him I ran back to fetch him but he was gone!
Undone. 
Several weeks later I was walking home with another little girl and her mother, when the mum said to me:
“Oh, we’ve got your teddy!”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
Someone had found him at the park, thought he belonged to my friend, brought him to school and she had recognised him. She told her mother who, in turn, had told me that afternoon.
I was ecstatic, relieved, overjoyed etc.etc.
It did take quite a long time for him to smell like himself again, but that was just a piffling detail. The point was that he came home.

I am praying for a similar outcome for Four. It seems so cruelly unfair to be happening so close to her birthday.

And if the real Teddy doesn’t come home, I’m holding out for her not noticing/willing herself to believe in Teddy two.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →