Spring in a tortoise step

I am watching Gaudi, our daughter, Mia's,  yellow footed tortoise,  pacing slowly and carefully up and down the living room floor.  He looks like something that got left behind when the dinosaurs became extinct, like a small piece of something older than time.

 But I think I know why he is pacing. Like me, he is waiting for Spring.  To Gaudi, Spring means the freedom of the garden, of fresh air, of grass and soil between his claws. He will be able to climb rocks instead of beanbags and lose himself in the shade of the lavender while he chews on leaves and flower petals. To me, Spring means longer, drier days, an explosion of deep pink blossom on our peach tree and most of all the chance that things will change, that maybe dreams will come true.

That's the strange thing about seasons.  They give you hope.  Breaking up your year so that if things are not going well, you can always say to yourself"things will be better in the Spring," "just wait until Summer, you'll see." In England we spend lots of time moaning about the Winter, it's cold and rain and long, dark nights. But sitting next to the blazing fire, chatting, watching TV, listening to music, wrapping Christmas presents -  is the stuff of memories.  There is an aura of cosiness around Winter.  Last year we spent Christmas in tropical Sri Lanka.  It was going home for Ninesh's mum and dad. It was beautiful and vibrant, full of life and colour and sunshine- and Mia and Joss missed Winter.
" Christmas is meant to be cold," they said, as we dived into a swimming pool overlooking the Indian Ocean. And a part of me knew what they meant. When Ninesh and I lived in hot and sunny California, I missed the seasons.  When days are the same length all year round and weather only changes from hot to not-so-hot, there is little to mark one day from the next. Life can stretch out before you in a long, straight, unchanging line. We measure out our lives, not in coffee spoons, but in  seasons. We know what to expect from each part of the year and so while we dream of change, we are not scared of it because we know a part of it will be safe and familiar.  So prehistoric -Gaudi and I will pace the living room floor together, dreaming of the freedom and colours of Spring.

It was my niece's 5th birthday a few weeks ago. Mia and Joss phoned to wish her Happy Birthday.
" Did you have a nice day?" asked Mia.
" Yes," said my niece " but mum and dad only gave me one present that I wanted."
In the background my sister-in-law burst out laughing.
"Not one present," she said " all but one."

It's not my fault.... and the Blockbuster disaster

I am getting worried that I am becoming a grumpy old woman!  
More and more I seem to be walking through weeks carrying an underlying sense of slight irritation wherever I go and whoever I meet! And I am not quite sure why.  Perhaps it's because I,m tired or worried or constantly trying to sort out ( and usually failing! ) my work life balance.   Perhaps it,s because  however hard I try to battle the chaos, our house never seems to be tidy. Perhaps it's because I hate the cold and the post-snow frozen slush. Perhaps it all of these but whatever the reason, it is to do with something inside me, it's no one else's fault.  
And that is what I seem to struggle with every day.  A sense of RESPONSIBILITY. Or the complete lack of it all around me.  Wherever I turn, whatever I listen to on the radio or watch on TV, there is always someone saying" " It's not my fault." 
" It all started in with the last government, when we weren't in power," says the Prime Minister, " It's not our fault. 
" The Conservatives made us do it," say the Lib Dems, in coalition, " It's not our fault."
" We would never have done it, if we were in power," say Labour, " it's not our fault."
" He was just a bad person holding a gun," says the National Rifle Association after yet another mass shooting, " it's not our fault."
" The ball boy made me kick him by holding onto the ball," says Hazard, " it's not my fault."
" She told me she was on the pill," says the teenager who's just become a dad, " it's not my fault."
" They don't listen to anything I say anyway," says the parent, watching their child hit another child, " it's not my fault."
" I can't remember to pay my rent every month when I've got so many other things to worry about," says the social housing tenant who is just about to become homeless because he has used the rent money given to him by the government, to buy something else, " It's not my fault."
" She did it," says the 3 year old, holding a piece someone else's ripped  picture and pointing at her friend."
It's everywhere and all around, this complete inability to take responsibility for our own actions. 
And I"m wondering when it happened. When did we forget how to say " sorry?"
Because sometimes that's all it takes. 
One word that means:
 " I made a mistake, I got it wrong. Now lets try to make it right!"

If only this youtube clip were true!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo

My friend recently had to go into hospital for an operation.  
" Is your son alright?" I asked. " Is he really worried about you being ill and being away from home?"
" Oh," said my friend, " he's not worried about that.  He's got something much worse to worry about.  He just doesn't know what he's going to do! 
 He doesn't know where he's going  to borrow computer games from, now that Blockbusters has gone bankrupt!

.

Pets, vets and the end of the tail

So it did snow and the children did get a day off school but Lucy, our cat still had her tail cut off on Friday.  My son and I carried her in her basket through the snow.  She was shaking and yowling softly and I, I'm ashamed to admit, was crying.  Because it seemed such a cruel thing to do to some thing so little.  As my daughter said, " if only we could ask her what she wants."  But that is the power that is the price our pets pay for being domestic; they don't have to worry about anything- food, drink,warmth,  even clearing up their excrement ( if they are a dog )- and in return, they lose their right to decide.
The good thing about the weather was that we were the only ones who made it through the snow so Lucy had the undivided attention of everyone in the surgery. We left her.  And I trudged through the snow to work. The roads were full of teenagers having snowball fights and families making snowmen and as I got nearer to the Children's Centre, laughing children being pulled on sledges. But somehow the magic had gone. I kept thinking of little Lucy waking up after the operation in a strange place with emptiness where her tail should be.

It's strange because I have always thought of myself as quite unsentimental. Ninesh and I don't even remember what day we got married, although we think it was May. I hate Valentines Day and slushy unwanted gifts.  But as soon as I became a parent, some sentimentality hormone must have kicked in.  Because now I can't even watch Finding Nemo without crying and the thought of leaving anyone, even our  cat, confused and uncomprehending, all on their own tugs constantly on my heart strings.  Other parents have said the same thing. Perhaps it is the sense of responsibility that comes with being a parent.   You have created beings completely dependent on you. And it is for the rest of your life. And there is no turning back. And they are so vunerable and there are so many things that could trip them up or hurt them, so many potential battles that could lie ahead of them and all you want to do is hold them close and keep them safe.  And that desire to protect doesn't seem to stop with your children but is transferred to anything that crosses your path, whether it is pets or cartoon fish.

But Lucy survived.
" She probably won't eat much for a day or so," said the vet " and she will feel a bit sleepy until tomorrow so don't worry if she doesn't have much energy."
Lucy sat in the basket, plastic cone round her head to stop her from biting out the stitches in the stub of tail she has left and glared at me.
At home, I opened the basket very carefully, reaching in to help her out. She ignored my helping hand, leapt over the edge, headed straight for her food bowl, ate a whole packet of food and before I could stop her, peed angrily on our beanbag.  The strangest thing of all is that she barely seems to have noticed that she is tail-less and oddly, it is not the first thing you notice when you look at her: a feisty, little black and white cat.  And I realise it is not my strange  desire to protect her or the fact that she has made the whole family care so much about her, that has got her through this. Instead it is her innately fierce, animalistic desire to survive.  Because the truth is, however much our pets belong to us, their animal spirits are not ours to own.  And that's how it should be.
Maybe that's why we like having them around!


Lucy- no tail to tell but doing very well

Hoping for snow

It's 6 a.m.. Outside our bedroom window the spiked leaves of our yucca tree are perfectly still. Not even a whisper of wind.  Like everyone inside our house, the world outside seems to be waiting. Waiting for snow.
The forecast: by this evening, Chichester should be covered in  10 cm of cold, white powder.
In some countries, 10 cm of snow is nothing.  In England, it is world stopping.  Schools close, roads are impassable, trains stop running and people fear starvation because they might not make it to the supermarket for several days.
The kids are hoping that the first flakes will fall soon.  They still have 3 hours before school starts. Just  time  for enough snow to fall, if it falls fast and furious, for a "snow day," to be declared and for their schools to be closed.
And me-self-declared snow-disliker that I am-I am looking out of the window, hoping anxiously for those first flakes to fall. Not because I want a day off work, although that is always nice, but because, if it snows hard enough, it will stop me from having to do the horrible thing that I have to do today. Today is the day that I have to take our cat, Lucy, to have her tail cut off.
It's strange how people seem to accumulate pets.  Ninesh has always hated them.  He sees them as a burden, a drain on finances and a demand on time and holiday plans.  And although part of me agrees with him, I have rarely been without pets. Even if it is just goldfish! Now, all these years into our marriage, we seem to have added a cat and a tortoise to our collection of fish.
We didn't choose Lucy, she chose us.  She turned up in our kitchen one hot Summer's day when we had only been living in our house a few months.  Our 2 year old daughter screamed the first time she saw her, a living, moving creature in our kitchen.  Her " new-to-the-world," brother sensed his sister's fear and started howling.  So I gathered the cat up and put her firmly back on the street. But cats are tenacious. They don't give up.  Every time I opened a door or a window, every time we went into the garden or chatted to neighbours, there she was.  Until eventually, she joined our family and the children only cried if they couldn't find her.  And their tears always made her come running. She seemed to love the kids and couldn't stand it if they were upset.  Sometimes, when they were looking for her, Mia and Joss would go and stand in the garden and pretend to cry and she would come bounding across gardens and over fences to comfort them.
But I am wondering if today she will wish she had never walked through our kitchen door, black and white tail held high. Because the lump on it, that has been ballooning for months, has grown so big, that we have no choice.  And it is a horrible feeling, this playing god, making life changing decisions for others, pets or humans.  I hold onto the thought that cats don't need tails to lie in front of a fire being stroked or to sleep on the grass in the sunshine.  And I hope that I am doing the right thing.
But even more, I hope for snow. Because if it snows and the world grinds to a halt and the schools and vets surgery are closed , the kids and I will light a fire and let Lucy curl up next to us while we watch rubbish on TV. And all will be well and Lucy will keep her tail for one more day.
Is that the first flake I can see falling through the darkness?

Not so beautiful snow and the right salami

The flurry of excitement that came with the snow yesterday morning has melted into a slush of disappointment today.  Perhaps because we so rarely have snow here, it is hard not to find it slightly magical: waking up to a world that is, for a few minutes at least, clean and bright and crunchy white. Although I am not generally a snow fan. Kids look at snow and see snowball fights and building snowmen and the potential for school to be closed for the day.  I look at it and see cold and traffic jams and cancelled trains.  But there is a part of me that still longs for that sense of awe and wonder that waking up to a snowy world can bring.  Yesterday morning I watched from our living room window as a mum walked along the road, carrying her 1 year old son, wrapped up warm in her arms.  As they walked past hedges, he reached out his gloved hand and touched the white leaves, giggling with excitement as the snow fell off. He and his mum were so caught up in excitement at the novelty of a newly white world, at the sound and feel of snow, that it was impossible not to smile as you watched them.
Perhaps it is not snow that I don't like snow. Perhaps it is that I don't like what it reminds me of: that the older you get, the harder it is to find things new and exciting and beautiful.

When I was only 18 and the world was still new and exciting and I had just arrived as an au-pair in the South of France, I was dispatched by the family I was working for to buy a special salami at the weekly market.  The mum was about to have a baby and hadn't been allowed to eat salami through her pregnancy because of the high salt content.  She made her husband promise to bring a baguette packed with this special salami to the labour ward so she could eat it as soon as the baby was born.  They explained carefully which stall I should the father usually bought it from at the market but when I got there, there were hundreds of different salamis.  Looking confused, I explained to the stall holder, in my broken French, that the husband always came to this stall to buy this special salami.
Sensing my foreign- ness, he replied slowly.
" Describe to me," he said.
I took a deep breath.
" Well, he has curly hair, quite short, wears glasses and a shirt and jacket ...."
I stopped. The stall holder was staring at me strangely.
" I meant describe the salami," he said.
"Well,

Old Age is not for sissies

My mum and dad have this picture in their kitchen, drawn by my niece.  It says " Old age is not for sissies." And it is so true.
 I think getting older starts to get hard as soon as you turn 30.  I know that 30 is"the new 20," but there is something about entering your  fourth decade that gives you a permanent sense of slight panic.  It is time to start living  your dreams instead of dreaming them. Time to settle down.  Time to start a family. Time to own a house, And these days, time to make sure you are paying into a pension! I remember feeling that somehow, the first stage of my life was over, a line crossed, the future less glittering and more tangible.  But, with all the hindsight of someone now well into their fifth decade, 30 is young.   40 though...

Yesterday I watched my dad struggle to shuffle from arm chair to table in their living room, observed by an Occupational Therapist.   I saw my dad's frustration as  his legs refused to do what he was telling them to do. The OT was lovely and patient and helpful. But to him, my dad was just another elderly patient, struggling to walk normally through his day. And I wanted to shout out: " he's not just anyone, he's my dad."
Maybe the hardest thing about getting older, is feeling that you are losing your identity, that everyone looks at you and sees someone "old." We have all been guilty of feeling irritated when we are stuck behind someone who  is walking too slowly or  taking too long to pay,You begin to feel that others perceive you purely as the sum of your frailties and with every fibre of your body you want to shout out "Don't you understand,  I am so much more than this."

So Happy Birthday Dad.
To me you will always be sitting singing " Oh Shenaniki Da," ( spelling?) or " 10 Green Bottles," while you drive us to school. Or standing in the garden in your motorcycle gear, drinking in the serenity of flowers and fruit trees  before heading off to work. And you and I will always be walking together  (with legs that work ) along overgrown railway tracks in French forests, as the early morning mist swirls around us.

And if it's any consolation, when I went to buy my immorally expensive running shoes, they asked me if i'd ever worn orthoptics!

Crazy pay-offs, prevailing insanity

I just heard on the radio that a director from some huge international company is going to get such a massive pay off when he leaves ( after 2 years ) that it would pay the water and electricity bill for an average family in England  for 9 1/2 thousand years! And I am thinking, there is no longer any place in this world where sanity prevails.  Either we are all killing each other or hating each other or paying each other off with huge amounts of money because we are so bad at our jobs.  And at the other end of the scale we are making it almost impossible for working parents to afford to go to work.

Also on the radio this morning, they were talking about the Universe. Apparently we have now found thousands of planets similar to earth. But I am wondering if the retiring director, about to earn more money than most of us can even dream of, actually orbits the same sun as the rest of us. It's hard to imagine them walking on the same planet as a single parent who is wondering if they will make next month's rent.  I sit and watch the sun rising from our kitchen window and hope that, when that, in 91/2 thousand years when the money would have run out, the world ( if it is still here ) has become a fairer, saner, more balanced place where the orbits of rich and poor collide.

Rant over.

I survived my first run.  My feet felt fantastic in my new shoes, not so sure about the rest of me.  Wondering if I could pay an immoral amount of money to buy a new body as well.  And taxes- 8% complete. Might not be able to pay our bills for the next 91/2 thousand years, but will soon be able to pay them for last year.

Tax form evasion and being human

A lazy Sunday. And I am doing anything to avoid doing my tax return. Every year I vow that I will start it in May and every year it gets to January and it is still there, looming like a hungry shadow at the end of the month. I so wish I could blame someone other than myself but whichever way I look the arrows are all pointing at me!  Fortunately today there are towels to be put away, handkerchieves to be folded, cushions to be plumped up....so definitely not enough time to start filling in a tax form!

Last night Ninesh and I watched the long awaited first episodes of series 2 of Borgen.  I don't know why it's so good.  But filling in a tax form definitely pales into insignificance, compared to the huge political and personal problems facing the fictional female Prime Minister of Denmark: what to do about troops in Afghanistan, who to choose as your representative in the European Parliament in Brussels, how to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, who actually are your enemies!  But as I watched I kept thinking that what is most intriguing about it, is the realisation that however much power you have, however huge the impact of your professional decisions, it is the decisions you make in your personal life that are always the hardest and most painful. Sometimes it is hard to remember that our leaders are humans too. We, the public, are quick to criticise and slow to praise.  It is hard to perceive politicians as anything other than the sum of their policies, hard to disassociate them with the latest lies they have had to tell or cuts they have had to make. But at the end of the day, they still have to go home and deal with the daily grind and heart-ache of being a wife or husband or mum or dad. In Borgen ( because it is TV and needs drama maybe  ) there is the heartbreak of divorce and children choosing one parent over another. And maybe in choosing to become  Prime Minister she chose her country over her family but that doesn't stop her crying. And that is the truth. Whether the power and fame some of us achieve is the result of luck, hard work or ( more rarely! ) pure talent, in the end, we define ourselves not by how we are judged by others but by whether we believe the personal  decisions we make are  the right ones. And if they are not, whether we are brave enough to admit we are wrong and try to put them right.

Which is why I am now going to do one of the things on my New Year's Resolution list. I'm going to put on my brand new ( immorally expensive ) running shoes and go for my first ever run. And then, of course, I will log on and start filling in my tax form, although, the kitchen floor  could do with a sweep and the fridge could probably do with a proper clean and there's that cupboard I've been meaning to empty.....

Dwarf kings and cleaning schedules

So it's the 3rd of January and I have already broken most of my resolutions. Ate loads of chocolate today and got cross with the kids yesterday. Have done no running at all and have got home late from work every day.  But.... I haven't thrown any slugs over the fence yet. So there is still hope.

Being back at work after a break is always hard. All those things that you had just managed to stop worrying about are waiting in a big pile to greet you: cleaning not done, unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls, families in crisis, staff in crisis..... and suddenly the holidays feel like a long time ago.  To try and pretend that they are not over, Mia and I and some friends went to see The Hobbit  last night.  It was amazing. An escape into  a world  of magic and make-believe and adventure, making damp Chichester seem dull and coldly real  in comparison.  So today, as I sat discussing rotas with the cleaners, I found my mind drifting, imagining handsome Thorin, the young dwarf king, riding his pony through the Children's Centre, sword in hand, ready to smite the Orcs that were bound to be gathering in the sandpit. Don't think it would make much difference to the cleaning schedule!

I've never been very good at schedules or lists but I'm quite good at clearing things away.  Too good at throwing things away, Ninesh would say, as he retrieving another important document from the recycling bin. One of the things I like best about Christmas is taking down the decorations, packing away the tree and piling up the cards.  It's always hard to know what to do with cards, birthday or Christmas.  They are so personal, you always feel guilty throwing them away.  So I usually put them in a big pile for about a month and then throw them away.  Month-on guilt is never so bad!

One of my friends was telling me that her mum once sent her birthday card. She opened it:
" Happy Birthday to my lovely daughter," it read, except her mum had forgotten to write anything in it or sign it.
" Did you get my card?" she asked when she phoned later.
"Yes," said my friend, " Thank you.  Except you forgot to sign it."
'Oh," said her mum, " how did you know it was from me then!"

New year resolutions and coconut diamonds

So 2013 has arrived in exploding fountains of expensive fireworks and a living room littered with streams of coloured  paper from all the poppers pulled by my niece and nephew. And this morning we greeted the new year, as we do every year, with traditional Sri Lankan kiribath: diamonds of coconut rice eaten with your fingers

New Year's Day is always a strange day.  Too full of looking back to be simply look forward.  As an old year ends and a new one begins, I find the last year kaleidoscoping in my head, mixing the forgotten with the remembered in a swirl of disorganised pictures and emotions.  And then the countdown reaches zero and  and for a whisper of a second, we stand astride two years, one foot planted firmly in the unchangeable past and the other trembling with potential in the unknown future. And for that tiny moment anything  seems possible! And then the clock strikes 12 and the fireworks begin and it is tomorrow and a new year has begun.

New year's resolutions are not easy.  The older you get, the harder it is to think of anything new to resolve on or to convince yourself, for more than a minute, that you will actually keep them.  I am wondering if writing them in a blog, putting them into undeletable  cyberspace , will make me try harder to keep them.  So here they are:  eat less chocolate, take up running, be a better mum, put the laundry away, work less,  day-dream more,  stop throwing slugs over the fence into the neighbour's garden.

 And, since it is still only new year's day, I am still full of hopeful optimism that I might at least manage some of them.

So here's to a happy, healthy 2013 filled with friendship, laughter, adventure and the odd day of sunshine.