Hot Tips and Cold Feet at the Fontwell Races

So yesterday, for the first time ever, we did the traditional Boxing Day thing and went to the races.

Fontwell Race Course is not far from here but getting there without a submarinewasn't easy. Part of every road was under water and so was most of the race track car park..
" You'll be fine," smiled the car park attendant,  " there are enough of you to push the car out afterwards if it gets stuck."
We squelched our way to the race course where the dress code was " smart casual with wellies," - and there it was, the BUZZ.  Lots of stands with electronic lists of horses, odds constantly changing, people with their heads lost in betting magazines, voices over the loudspeaker  giving us urgent last minute betting advice, horses from other races cantering on the big screen above our heads, children running  wildly across the soggy track, weary parents chasing after them.
The Boxing Day Races.
Ninesh had a hot tip for the second race so we all bet heavily ( £ 2 each way ). The race started, the ground near us began to slosh heavily with the fast approaching vibrations of 6 racing horses. Here they were in front of us, neck and neck, still anybody's race- until Ninesh's hot tip decided that enough was enough, dropped back and wandered off the track.
" You can't win them all," we shrugged, stoically, turning to the electronic lists to choose a likely winner for the next race.
But truthfully, we didn't win any of them.
Ninesh and I did so spectacularly badly that Amy and Barry came up with a whole list of race horse names just for us:  Bad Tip,  No Hope, End of the Line, Bottom of the Pile and Stay at Home.

After 5 races the cold and rain got the better of us and pounds lighter { money wise ) we headed back to the car. But cold and wet as we were, none of us could remember the last time we had laughed so much and the kids learnt an important lesson: when your grandparents give you some Christmas money to bet on the horses, save it for the Boxing Day Sales.
"We should have stayed at home " said Ninesh,  accelerating out of the car park mud "  and used £5 notes to light a fire.  We would have lost less money that way and at least we would have been warm! "

World Peace and a jar of Marmite

Paper is scattered all over the floor, open presents strewn throughout the house, teenagers temporarily happy.  ITS CHRISTMAS.
 Rain is beating down on the window panes, our American friends Barry and Amy are asleep in the shed, just like Jesus but without the animals, the star, the wise men and the shepherds. Coffee is bubbling in the pot. All is right with the world.
Perhaps Christmas is not so bad!
I remember one Christmas Eve, sitting on a bus on my way from Rhode Island to New York.   It was full of grumbling, tired people, dragging huge bags of wrapped presents with them. A few pieces of half-hearted tinsel hung from the luggage rack. And over the loudspeakers a DJ's voice sang out:
" All I want for Christmas is world peace and a six-pack."
And making my stop/start way towards the Big Apple, far from the dampness of England, I remember thinking:
" All I want for Christmas is a bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate, a slice of cheddar cheese and a jar of Marmite...... and world peace as well, of course!"
So here's to a happy, restful, too-much-of-all-that-is-good day to everyone... wherever you are.

Laughter and cheer and long-lost friends

You can tell it's Christmas when you are sitting, waiting for long-ago friends to arrive.  You can tell it's Christmas in England when those friends have flown seamlessly across the Atlantic but have been delayed for hours on British trains!  So I sit, watching the rain, waiting for the doorbell to ring, remembering.

Amy and Barry were my closest friends when I lived in Providence, Rhode Island.  It is so long ago now, that their 2 year old son, who I used to baby-sit, is now 25. And in all those years, we have seen each other rarely. A brief visit when we were living in California, a week's visit to England with their sons more than a decade ago. But as soon as we talk on the phone or share a glass of wine over Skype, I am immediately warmed by the pool of sunshine that was, and is, our friendship.  I met Amy in the library where we were both volunteering and on that very first day, she invited me back to her house for coffee. There is nothing more welcome than an invitation to someone's home when you are far from yours.  And so began almost 2 years of midnight cocktail parties, delicious meals and hours of laughter and conversation.  Even white-water rafting when Amy couldn't stop laughing when she told us, on the way, that there would be moose near the hotel  and my English friend who was with us said "What a shame. If I had known that, I would have brought a teaspoon!"

And the doorbell has rung!
 They are here.
 Christmas has truly begun.  

Ban the guns, end the madness

Yesterday I watched the Christmas performance of the 3 and 4 year olds in our Nursery. Each group sung a different song.
The children were so excited the songs seemed to explode out of them like slightly- out -of- time, slightly -out -of tune musical fireworks.
They have  practiced the actions to go with the songs for weeks and even though some of them did the actions in the wrong order or for the wrong song, it didn't matter.
 One boy was so excited he sang the whole thing jumping up and down  with his back to the audience.
And parents watched proudly, smiling, laughing crying a little bit.
 For some of them, it was the first time they had ever seen their children "perform."
Every year I am amazed at how something so simple can be so unforgettably touching.
 But this year, hanging over it all was the shadow a different  Christmas concert  on the other side of the Atlantic.
 The one that was rehearsed with just as much excited, happy anticipation.
The concert that was never performed  because a crazy, unhappy, man walked into a school, gun in hand, and opened fire, killing as many children as he could.
 And even though I am a complete stranger and couldn't possibly have known any of those children, my mother's heart hurt so much I could hardly breathe.
 I imagined kissing my children goodbye, not knowing it was for the last time.
I imagined standing outside the school gates,  hoping and hoping that the next child to emerge would be mine.
And it's not just sadness that I feel but a bubbling fury.
Mass shootings are only possible if you have a gun.
 And while guns are so easy to come by in America, there will be no end to the murders
. Shooting is not for fun.
It's not a leisure activity.
 If you own a gun, you have the capacity to kill someone.
" It's not guns that kill people, it's people that kill people," shout the pro-gun lobby from the rooftops and I am stunned by the short-sighted stupidity of those words.
Because it is not all people but only  "people with guns," who can kill so many people so easily .
 Of course it has to be a human who pulls the trigger.  but we hand them the tools for mass murder and pretend to be surprised when that's exactly what they are used for.
If they couldn't get hold of a gun, they wouldn't have a trigger to pull.
We can't stop people from being people but we can stop making it easy for people to become mass murderers.
I know banning the sale of firearms in America is an impossible dream.
It is a mountain so high and so impassable and guarded by so many powerful people that no one dares try.
But the greatest change begins with the tiniest step.
"In order for evil to triumph, good men must do nothing."
 It's time for the " good men ( and women)," of America to put on their bullet-proof walking boots and take the first step.
 It's time to make these young, innocent victims the last.
 It's time to ban the sale of guns.

Make it end.

Teenage tantrums and innocent lies

I am wondering if, as parents, we are biologically designed to argue with our teenage children.  Every day I vow that today will be the day that I stay calm and reasonable while my children rant and rave and are completely unreasonable.
 But somehow, it gets to the end of the day and the reverse seems to have been true.
 It begins with an unnecessary comment,  a " whatever," shrug, irritation with the constant teenage debris that seems to cover our living room floor.
And then it moves onto complaints about the the lack of favourite food in our house, the fact that breakfast/lunch/dinner isn't ready at precisely the moment they are hungry, how unfair it is that their brother or sister hasn't got into trouble for something that they " always," get into trouble for,  the injustice of having so much homework and so little money........
And suddenly, often unexpectedly for me too, I find myself exploding.
 I bring up things they have done wrong months ago or how tiring it is for me working and being their slave or how lucky they actually are.
And I am ranting, not listening, proving that I an undoubtedly right and they are definitely wrong and whatever happens, making sure that I have the last word.
And when I look round, I see my son and daughter standing there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, united for once.
"You chose to be a parent," they say,  " that's what mum's do."
And dropping a few more possessions on the living room floor, they flounce up the stairs.
And I am left wondering who is really the teenager.
 Perhaps the truth is, that we never stop being teenagers.
 Or maybe it is just that when your children are teenagers, you all regress so that everyone in the house spends part of every day railing against injustice and eating ice cream and chocolate instead of vegetables.
 The trouble is, that, as parents, the transformation is only temporary.
 As soon as we resume the cloak or responsibility and  bite into a raw carrot, we realise how foolish and wrong we have been.
Whereas our teenage children, they just never stop being right!

Was out with some friends on Friday night and we began to discuss how mean we had all been to our younger siblings when we were children, too young and innocent to know any better.
" Oh yes," said one of my friends, " I told my younger sister she was adopted."
" Really," I said, " How did she take the news?"
" Well," said my friend, " she was a bit shocked at first but when I explained that she was actually a member of the Osmond family, she felt better.
I explained that they had only put her up for adoption because her teeth weren't big enough and her hair was blonde instead of black so they thought she would never feel like she fitted in."

Christmas wrapping and cardboard beards

Yesterday I had to take Ninesh for some minor treatment at Bognor hospital.  It was the middle of the day and I had lots of presents that needed wrapping for staff at work. So I took paper, gifts, sellotape and scissors with me so that I could wrap while I waited.
" That's a good Idea," said an elderly lady, sitting with two fingers, bandaged and elevated above her head.
" Do you need some scissors?" asked the receptionist
" How many have you got to do?" asked a mum, sitting with her teenage daughter.
And gradually everyone in the waiting room was commenting or helping.
After only a few minutes, Ninesh was out again and I gathered together the  small chaos I had created.
The disappointment in the waiting room was tangible.  Now they would never see me achieve my wrapping goal.  As we left we were followed by " good luck with it all." wishes.
Perhaps it was just the boredom of waiting that made everyone so interested in what I was doing but I think it was more the activity itself.  The English are known for being " stand-offish," and unfriendly but yesterday made me wonder. Perhaps it is just that we are not very good at starting conversations with strangers.  Perhaps all it takes is somebody busy doing something that people can comment on, so that without having to look anyone  in the eye, a conversation can begin.  It's strange how quickly somewhere as small as a waiting room in a small hospital, can feel like a community. I find myself wondering about what happened to the elderly lady with the elevated fingers. Did she live by herself?How did she get home?  And the teenager? Why was she there?  And I don't think it is nosiness, I think it is because it is human nature to care, it's just that sometimes we have forgotten how.

At work , Christmas craziness is truly here.  Staff frazzled, children manic, parents exhausted. At the Children's Centre Christmas party last  Sunday morning, our " soon to be dressed up as Santa," teacher arrived.  Taking the costume, hidden away since last Christmas, out of the bag, he discovered that the beard was missing.  Santa without a beard is not a possible concept so with 10 minutes to go, he cobbled one together, using white netting and pieces of white paper and material. Sitting in his grotto, waiting for the glue to dry, the odd bit of torn white paper floating to the ground, he wasn't convinced about children believing the whole Father Christmas thing.
" Aren't beards meant to be soft?" he asked worriedly.
But the rest of the staff just laughed.
" It's Christmas," they shrugged, opening the Grotto.
And they were right.  Because that is the wonder of childhood and the power of Christmas (  especially where a sack of presents is involved). Father Christmas is Father Christmas, whether his beard is soft and curly or feels suspiciously like pieces of cardboard  stuck togethers with glue and sellotape.
Let the merriment begin.

Irresponsible surrendering

Monday morning.  The Christmas tree is up and draped in decorations. It feels like surrender.   On Saturday evening, our house was full of some friends, carol singing in fancy dress to raise money for a kids' charity,  I stood and surveyed the donkey, the Christmas present, the elves, the Christmas and the Christmas pudding that were warming themselves by our fire and realised..... there is nothing I can do! I can't stop Christmas from arriving! So I poured another bottle of mulled wine into the saucepan and joined them!

On Friday night, one of my oldest friends from Germany phoned me to tell me that, after all these years, she has officially become a responsible person. She just got a job as a headteacher. And suddenly I was lost in memories. Meeting her for the first time  on a tram in Hannover 25 years ago. We were both about to start a year 's placement in a nursery for children with additional needs. Stepping off the tram , I took a deep breath and walked up the road towards the nursery with Urte, wondering if she was as nervous as I was, wondering if we would be friends or rivals, wondering if I was going to understand a word anyone said to me.  And a quarter of a century on, I know the answers.   We were both petrified,  we are still friends and for the first few weeks of my time in Hannover, I understood about 2 words.  But often, on our most drunken nights, Urte and I would wonder what it would feel like to be responsible people. Parent, house-owner, headteacher.  The truth is, these things happen almost without you noticing. You don't go to bed one night irresponsible and wake up the next morning weighed down with responsibility. It's a gradual.  Like the making of a patchwork quilt, each new square a deeper colour and a little heavier than the last. There are days when you wish it was still small, wish you could stop anymore patches from being added on. But there are other days when you wrap it proudly around yourself and feel like you have truly achieved something.
Perhaps Christmas is a time for swapping heavy blankets for lighter covers. Perhaps, for just a little while we can all surrender and remember what it feels like to be irresponsible and free.

In the Nursery in Germany, we would write daily diaries for each of the children in our class. We would write about what the children had done or said, What they had had for lunch, who they had played with and any other important  health information.  Which is why I told all the parents in our class to look out for rashes on their children because there had been an outbreak of saucers in the nursery.

The un-wonder of modern technology and paperclip fantasies

I always like Thursday. It's so close to Friday that you can almost pretend it's the weekend!

Yesterday we had a computer  switchover at work.  All our old computers were taken away and replaced by ones that look exactly the same. Apparently though, they are so much better, they are going to revolutionise our lives.  The biggest problem I can see, is that everyone now has an identical laptop and we share such a big room, that I'm not sure how we are going to know which ones belong to who.  So while I was having  the amazing things I can now do at the touch of a finger explained to me , I was daydreaming about the patterns I could paint on the cover in sparkly silver nail varnish.  The technicians were very patient  as they showed us how to make video calls and stood by as  we spent 10 minutes video chatting with the person sitting next to us, But when they had left, the switchover mostly successful,  I was left standing alone in a huge room, scattered with shiny black laptops.  And I couldn't help pining.  Imagining surfaces scattered with different coloured  notepads, pots of pens, piles of paperclips.  Because each of those things tells you a little bit about the person who uses it.  Why did someone choose a purple, spiral pad while someone else chose a loose leaf notebook with holes in it.  And why does that person  always uses ink pens instead of  biros.  And what about the person who has a series of matching notepads all labelled and lined up in neat rows, while someone else just rips out pages and leaves the notes scattered, randomly near where they sit.  An office full of PCs and laptops looks smart and efficient and connects us to the rest of the world in milliseconds but it tells you nothing about the people who work there.   They could be anyone, working anywhere. The more efficient and  technologically modern we become, the harder we have to fight to remember who we are.
So today I will sit in front of my laptop, dreaming of notepads and fountain pens as I  paint sparkly silver stars and rainbows all over the cover.

The Christmas parties in the Nursery and Children's Centre are looming and we are desperately trying to find our Father Christmas costume. And I remember the Christmas party at the Nursery when Joss  was 3.  Bells jingled and the headteacher cupped her hand round her ears.
" Listen," she said, " can you hear the bells. Can you hear the footsteps on the roof.  I wonder who it is."
The children listened,  holding their breath, eyes sparkling.
Bursting with excitement, one of the boys started jumping up and down.
" I know, I know who it is," he shouted out, " it's Spiderman!"

Wille and the Bandits flying high

Went to see an amazing band on Saturday.  Wille and the Bandits.  They were playing in The Chichester Inn. It's only a small venue but their voices and presence and pure musicianship made you  feel as though you were somewhere much bigger.  I live in constant awe of musicians.  Their fingers flowed and plucked and strummed while they sang and harmonised and seamlessly switched from instrument to instrument.  For someone as unmusical as me, it seems like an extraordinary, almost magical talent.  Ninesh is the drummer in a band too. And I feel the same when I watch him (only prouder of course! ) so lost in the rhythm and the moment and the song that if you asked him what he had actually played, he probably couldn't tell you.  Looks amazing to me though. Drumming is in his blood and he can't hear a song without tapping out a rhythm with his fingers, a bit unnerving when you are driving.   With the exception of me, our house is quite a musical house.  Mia and Ninesh and Joss all walk around humming or singing songs with varying degrees of tunefulness.  Sometimes I think how harmonious life might be if they were all singing the same song, especially on long car journeys.  Our living room is full of vinyl records and drum kit and Mia's flute and the rest of our house is full of the latest hits, blaring out of Joss's bedroom ( some of which barely register as actual music, I feel).  But there is something about music that brings people together.  Some of my friends sing in a local community choir and they love it.  One of my best friends is a magical flute player and another has just joined a ukulele group, while Mandy, who should be writing this blog with me, is having singing lessons. And I envy them. Because  the music and the singing and the playing are an escape and for just a little while, they are flying.   But when the music is good enough and the musicians talented enough, they take their audience with them.  And on Saturday night, with Wille and his Bandits, we were flying too!

When I was much younger, I used to learn the clarinet.  I struggled with it for many years but I am not a natural musician.  My teacher, one the kindest, warmest people you could ever meet, tried his best but there were moments when even he gave up.  At one point, we turned the page in my music book and looked at the next tune I was meant to play.
" Oh," he smiled, " you're playing one of my favourites next."
Then looking at me and back at the music, he paused.
" On second thoughts," he said , " why don't we play something different!"

Frosty " I love you's," and heart-aching goodbyes

Saturday morning at last.  Fire burning, cat curled up on the beanbag, tortoise sleeping under the drumkit, teenage son asleep, coffee brewing.  Perfect!

Mia is at a sleepover to say goodbye to a friend.  Saying goodbye to friends is never easy. At 15 years old, it's heart wrenching. And this friend's story is achingly sad. Because on the 7th of July 2005 her dad was killed in the London underground bombings, taking with him everything that had seemed certain and  safe. And still there is no walking normally through life for her and her family, no peace from the pain, instead they seem to fly and spin on winds of uncertainty and sadness.  She joined Mia'a class a few years ago, when they moved from Ipswich to be nearer to her dad's family. But tomorrow they are moving on.  Another leaving, another goodbye, another ending.
I hope it is a new beginning.

 Go well Ruby. Your friends will miss you.

Getting a lift home from work with my friend the other day, we had to scrape the ice off her car.
"You know, " she said, " this morning my husband scraped the words - I LOVE YOU- into the ice on my windscreen."
" How romantic," I mused.
" I know," she said, " but all I could think was: why didn't he scrape the whole window!"