Everything you need

Some friends of our friend Dan are moving closer to Chichester this week.  And we are all very pleased. For a long time they have been driving miles just to come for dinner or go out for a drink. Now, at last, they will be close by and we will see them more often. 
" Well," we asked Dan when we met him last week, " how are their moving plans going?"
Dan grinned.
" Good," he said, " all the paperwork is done.  They're moving next Friday." 
" And have they got everything?" I asked.
Dan took a sip of his drink.
" Oh I think so," he said. " They're very excited. They've been buying things for weeks. So far they've bought an untreated wooden bench riddled with wood worm, an American window that isn't a window, a vintage pencil sharpener and a gramophone that only plays 78s. So they should have everything they need."

We laughed and ordered some nachos while we planned the first party at our friends' house.  
But it made me remember my very first night in my very own flat. 
It was a beautiful flat by the canal in Kings Cross, London. It had a huge arched window and the generic magnolia coloured walls and brown carpets that come with most modern flats. I sat on the floor of the living room that first night, surveying my kingdom and my possessions proudly.  Like our friends, moving to Chichester, I had acquired the things I believed were truly important: a coffee machine, my old red futon, a pen and notepad, a fish tank with 5 fish and a picture called The Gods' Bathroom given to me by my friends on my 21st birthday.

Everything I needed to make my new home mine.
Over time you acquire all the things for day-to-day living: peelers, graters, plates, saucepans, a hoover, chairs.....But when you first move somewhere that belongs to just you, that's not what you are thinking about. You are not worrying about whether you have enough knives and forks or cleaning materials, instead you sit and dream of how you will make it yours. 
And those first few things you bring with you are important not because they are useful or just what you need. 
They are important because they are an extension of yourself, the very essence of you. And as you scatter them carefully through empty rooms, an impersonal, empty house becomes your home.

When Mia was 10 days old, she and I joined Ninesh to start our new life in Switzerland. I hadn't seen the flat and when we arrived everything was in total chaos. 
Boxes everywhere, clothes piled in a heap in the corner of the bedroom, a camping mat and sleeping bag on the floor. 
But in the middle of the living room, carefully set up, was Ninesh's record player and sitting next to it was Ninesh, putting all his vinyl records in alphabetical order.

In my arms, the tiny Mia wriggled and opened her big, dark eyes.
NInesh took her from me and hugging her tight, introduced her to his record collection.
And  suddenly an anonymous, rental flat in a strange new country had become friendly and familiar because it had just become our home.

At least, when our friends move into their new home next Friday, we will always have somewhere to go when our pencils need sharpening.

Losing the moral high ground

At the moment there is a party going on in our garden.
Ninesh has made an endless number of pizzas.
I have filled the shed with sleeping bags and duvets and mattresses.
We have pulled the chairs around the fire pit and set the dried up Summer leaves ablaze.
Everything is ready.
The guests are here.
And neither Ninesh or I nor even Mia are invited.

" Can I have a birthday party we get home?" Joss asked while we were away.
" Of course," I smile, pleased that at last he wants to have friends round to our house when we are actually at home. " What day do you want it."
" Monday," says Joss with a certainty we haven't agreed to.
" But that's our first day back at work, our first proper day home.  Don't you think we might still be jet-lagged. Why don't you wait until the end of the week?..." my words trail away.
" Everyone can come on Monday," says Joss.
"How do you know? " I say, " we're in America, they're in England and you only just asked me."
" And then I asked them," explained Joss reasonably, his fingers moving like lightening across his phone.
" And I told them it was a sleepover in the shed," he adds too quickly, " Beth and Brandon are bringing duvets."
I turn my gaze from the pelicans crashing headlong into the blue Pacific Ocean, to Joss, our just-turned-14-years-old son who has just in a casual, off-hand, social networking sort of way, completely manipulated me.
For the last year we have not let Joss stay at sleepovers where there are girls and boys. Despite his tears and his begging and his fury, we held fast to a principle we were almost completely sure was right. 
" You are a teenager Joss," we reasoned, " your hormones are raging. Things can get out of control. You're still too young."
And in the end we won a sort of victory.
Instead of letting Joss sleep over, he would let us drive along narrow, winding roads in the middle of the night, peering at doors, trying to read invisible numbers in the darkness. 
We got to know places in Chichester we didn't know existed. But at least Joss was gracious in defeat and stopped trying to battle us over it.  
He always thanked us for picking him up and never stayed longer than agreed.
It seemed that we had reached the perfect compromise.
He got to see his friends and we got to keep the moral high ground. 
But they are clever these teenagers. 
Joss bided his time
He waited until I was standing on a beautiful beach, bathed in the feeling of warm  happiness that always comes with holidays and peacefully distracted, as I watched the surf foaming to a crashing stop on the sand.
And before I knew what I was doing, I had agreed to everything that he had already planned.
And like the water pulling away the sand between my toes, I could feel the moral high ground slipping away.
And now I am sitting in the kitchen, writing this blog watching a group of carefree 14 year old friends laughing together round the fire. Wearing their pyjamas, they are wrapped in sleeping bags and duvets, planning how to stay awake all night by setting an alarm any time any one of them goes to sleep.
And it is right we were weren't invited.
We have to get used to watching from the sideline as our children stand on the cusp of their tomorrows. Always standing just close enough to catch them if they fall.
And I think perhaps we gave Joss the only birthday present that he really wanted- because we given him our trust.
The fire has gone out and as I watch 6 teenagers disappearing into the tardis-like shed, I can only hope that we were right. 

End of holiday blues and softly falling lentils

Here we are back in England. 

It's raining and the grey sky feels very close to the ground.

Already our holiday is slipping away from us. Like brightly coloured sand it is slipping through our fingers and if we don't clench our fists, we will lose it all.

And so I hold my fingers close together and clasp onto the memories that will keep me warm.

The tail of the breathtakingly majestic blue whale disappearing noiselessly into the sea, so close you could almost touch it.

LA sparkling at our feet from Griffith Park.

The simple sorrow of a single rose placed in someone's name at the 9/11 memorial

The human tenderness of pulling a blanket over a fellow down- and -out in Central Park against the defiantly inhuman height of the New York skyline. The sense of pride that  the Statue of Liberty somehow always seems to exude.

The crashing of the foaming Pacific waves and the salty honking of the La Jolla sea lions. The natural serenity of a New England, lily-filled lake and the constant movement and colour of the decidedly man-made Universal Studios.  The beauty of a stranger's home and the rekindling of almost forgotten friendships.  

Too much delicious food and not enough good radio.

All of that is becoming the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Because it's amazing how quickly a holiday can become unreal.  

A dazzling island surrounded by mundane weeks.

But the worse thing about a holiday being over is not the ending itself so much as the knowledge that it will be a long time before you can start looking forward to your next one.

Because the weeks planning and booking and shaping a holiday are almost as much fun as being on it..

Counting days forwards and anticipating before a holiday is always much better than counting days backwards and remembering afterwards.

Coming home is never easy. 

However smooth the plane landing, floating back down to every-day life is rarely pleasurable. 

But home is safe and familiar and holidays are only exciting because they are not.

" It's good to sleep in my own bed again," says Joss, patting his Arsenal duvet happily.

" Can you make your dal dad? I've missed it."

And suddenly here we are, home. 

 And as Ninesh lets the silky, orange lentils that he uses to make dal, fall between his fingers he stares dreamily into the distance.

"Where shall we go to next year?" he asks.

Empty shells and chai and chatter

We are almost at the end of this adventure and almost as far south in California as we can be without being in Mexico. It is hot and sunny. The sky is as blue as we remembered it and the sea just as wild and beautiful. It's strange being back where we lived for so long. It was the start of the life NInesh and I have shared together ever since and for that reason it will always hold a special place in our hearts. We are staying with ourfriend Gerhard, in San Clemente, catching up on old memories and creating new ones.
Friendship lends everything a richness and depth that just " visiting," a place can never have.
Friendship makes the leaving of anywhere all the harder.Friendships are what kept us so many years in Southern California.
"Why are you leaving paradise?" friends and family asked us as we packed our bags. 
" How can you leave constant sunshine and such blue, blue skies?" they wondered.
But the strange thing is, we didn't wonder at all.
Because something we realised when we lived here, is that a perfect climate, the glistening ocean and the bluest skies are not enough to create the perfect life.  For all its opportunities, there is something "empty shell-like," about the Southern Californian dream.
People own huge, beautiful houses, many with swimming pools and breathtaking views. But they never spend any time in them.
Here work comes first always. 
Work takes priority over your your family.
Work comes before your dreams.
Visiting some of our oldest friends here, Rafi and Athiya, last week, we suddenly remembered so clearly why we left. It was a Friday and Rafi doesn't work Fridays. In theory his office is closed. But often he goes into work anyway because everyone else does and it would look bad if he didn't. 
And that constant fear that somebody else might be doing something that you should be doing, casts a permanent shadow over your life. But Rafi was brave last Friday. He stayed home and only answered a few emails. He and his young son went to pray at the mosque together and we stayed with Athiya and her mother and her daughter and drank chai and chatted and remembered and dreamed. 
And that's what seems to be missing from life here sometimes. 
That chance to fill a house with chatter and laughter and to make it into a home.
And now it is time to enjoy our last day in Paradise and search out the sun.
And tonight we will barbecue in Gerhard's backyard, wrapped in a warmth that comes not from the sun, but from a friendship that has survived distance and time. 
And I will pretend that tomorrow will never come.

Dreaming California

So we are back in California, the land of blue skies, constant sunshine and infinite possibilities. Where dreams might come true if you believe for just one more day.
And here we are in the City of Angels and for just a few days we have borrowed someone else's dream. We are staying in a house of more rambling and elegant beauty than we could ever have imagined. We sit on one of the many sofas on the sun drenched terrace, drinking wine and watching the sun set. Above us, almost close enough to touch, the HOLLYWOOD sign rises gleaming white from the scrubland beneath it. And at our feet the lights of LA beckon to us through the dusty dusk. Around the pale blue of the swimming pool, humming birds hover, their wings whirring ceaselessly as they drink nectar from the pink and purple flowers. And just for now, this paradise is ours. the house once belonged to Aldous Huxley and is being 
gradually reimagined by its current owner. In true Gatsbyesque fashion we have never met her. She is a friend of a friend and all we can do is try and piece together a person from her home. 
and her home makes me wish, more than anything, that we could meet her.


We spent last weekend jumping on and off trams and cable cars in hilly, chilled out and chilly San Francisco. We stared at Alcatraz from the pier, accompanied by the honks of chatty sea lions. We played rounders in Golden Gate Park and bough t designer clothes in thrift shops. We were open and honest in Castro, full of love and peace in Haight Ashbury and cool and trendy on Polk Street. 
By the time we were winding our way along 
Pacific Coast Highway with its breathtaking views of the ocean, so blue against the pine green mountains, we were ready for the next part of our adventure.
And so we celebrated Joss's birthday in the party city of Santa Barbara. We arrived there during the big,noisy fiesta full of Tacos and tamales and Spanish music, bars full of  laughing, tipsy fiestarers.
And after a birthday picnic in a park with a pond full of basking turtles, Ninesh and Joss toured the city on Segways while Mia and I chatted on the soft-sanded beach watching the pelicans. They always seem wrong, somehow, pelicans. their heads look so much heavier than their bodies that I keep expecting them to topple head first into the sea. but they never do. One more of nature's inexplicable wonders.

And at last we arrived here, LA.
Beneath a sign more famous for what it represents than its own history.
In a hot, polluted city made beautiful by the collected hopes and dreams and aspirations of those who live in it.
And for just one more day, we will borrow the dream and make it ours.

Flawed memories and perfect moments

Returning to places where you were young, free and single is always strange when you are almost old and a parent travelling with your teenage children. that's how Providence, Rhode Island feels. for a few hours yesterday we wandered the once familiar streets lined with pastel coloured, 3 storeyed wooden houses and full of carefree Brown students and trendy RISDI ones.  

And memory is a strange thing. 

Because nothing was quite as I remembered it. 

None of the houses were in quite the same place, none of the cafes where I thought they should be. the park by the river is smarter, the main shopping street smaller and everything seemed more ordinary than it has been in my shadowy dreams.

when I lived there more then 20 years ago, I was working in a home in the community for adults with learning difficulties and behavioural problems. They had spent most of their unfulfilled lives in institutions and were struggling to adapt to lives without structure and rules. their stories were heartbreaking and their confusion often translated into bizarre and sometimes violent behaviour. Our house in Providence became our escape from all the craziness of work and we replaced it, instead, with a craziness of our own. With parties and drunken nights and trips to New York in the middle of the night. 

At least that's how I remember it.

" What did you do here everyday mum?" Asks Joss

And as I stare at the wooden house, standing alone, forlorn and shabby, that was our home for those few yearsf, I'm not sure what to say. and I can't help wondering if my memories have not been blurred with the rose -tintedness of time.

I shrug. 

" Well," I say, " we just sort of lived." Joss rolls his eyes. All teenagers know that their parents have no idea about living and didn't really exist properly until their children were 
born.

And there're is a limit to how long your family can pretend to be interested in reliving your old memories, so our friends Amy and Barry whisked us away to their camp. It is on the banks of what they call a pond, and we would call a pretty big lake, and it is beautiful. We woke this morning to the whir of hummingbird wings and the twang of pond frogs croaking from their lily pads. The tranquility is infectious. 

We have explored every corner of the pond with a pedalo and rowing boat.
 In front of us a blue heron flaps lazily and basking turtles slide silently into the water.
 It is hard to believe that we are only a few hours from New York, that we are not the only people living in a beautifully simple world.

And that is the strangeness and the wonder of America. It seems to be made up of thousands of splintered and disconnected parts. Like a colourful mosaic of states, each one believing that they are part of a slightly different whole.
Relaxed, full of the delicious food that is our friends' trademark and bottle of beer in hand, we sat last night and put the world to rights. the air around us vibrated to the boom of bullfrogs and high pitched buzz of cicadas. In front of us the black mirror of the motionless water reflected the far away stars and it was hard not to feel as though all would always be well. As though, for just a moment we had found our perfect moment.
I said as much to Barry.
He took a thoughtful swig of beer.
" I know," he said, " but I do find it hard. I have always been a much more productive complainer than enjoyer!"
And I can't help feeling that he just described mankind.

New York, New York

New York, that's where our 3 weeks of  drifting across the States is beginning and I can see already in Mia's eyes that she is hooked.
New York, the city of frenetic energy, of  constant light and sound, of people and buildings reaching for the sky. A melting pot of faces and races and sound and colour, where life is fragile and the line between hopelessness and happiness is always thin.

Gazing at the Manhattan skyline from the Staten Island ferry, it is easy to understand why people started to build upwards. How else could so many hopes and dreams be fitted into such a tiny space?  How else could it continue to grow? And even after all these years, there is something about the Statue of Liberty, golden torch shining in the sun, old fashioned and incongruous against the modern skyscrapers, that makes you believe your adventure is only just beginning..


The good thing about jet lag, is that you wake up very early. In a city that never sleeps, it's perfect. by 9 o'clock on our first morning we had watched Good Morning America being filmed thkrough the studio windows on Time Square, narrowly avoided walking through brain and guts newly splattered across a road,  walked the beautifully landscaped high line that follows an old railway line above the city, and of course, eaten the mandatory McDonalds breakfast.  We had watched trendily suited men and women rushing to work past homeless people pushing shopping trollies full of reclaimable bottles. And that's New York: hot and humid, contradictory and compellingly exciting. But beneath it all there is something else, something smaller and less tangible. Because underneath the fake smiles and the " have a nice day,"  and  the trendy village scene, there is a raw tenderness that keeps the human spirit alive. It's the white rose placed in one of the names engraved around the 9/11 Memorial, the young homeless man tenderly covering an older homeless woman with a blanket in Central Park, the lone notes of a saxophone drifting across the droning sirens and constantly rumbling traffic.


And that's what makes New York special.
Because beneath the skyscrapers and the noise and the lights, beneath the 24 hour living and the hopes and dreams, it has a heart that will never stop beating or growing or caring.
I think I can understand why Mia is hooked!

On to  Rhode Island  and old friends next. And I'm hoping I might have worked out how to upload photos onto an iPad!