Grinch empathy and friendly hedge trimmings

As it happens, I am not a big fan of Christmas.
At this time of year, on this day, I find myself siding with The Grinch in almost every way. 
I hate the crazy present buying, the unnecessary wrapping, the endless mince-pie eating.  I want to scream as I squeeze into packed supermarkets full of people panic buying because the shops will all be closed for one day and we might all starve or dehydrate or run out of alcohol.
I get embarrassed pretending to love unwanted gifts while secretly planning to drop them off at a Charity shop on the way home. 
I groan as the big day gets closer and Mia and Joss remind me that we still haven't put up our tree.
" Perhaps we don't need one this year," I suggest tentatively.
" What! " shout Mia and Joss in unison.
" Just because you don't like Christmas mum," says Joss, " doesn't mean that we don't. And we want a tree."
" He's right," agrees Mia, siding with her brother for once. " Just because you don't like Christmas, doesn't mean you have to ruin it for us."
Grumbling I drag our fake, black tinsel tree out of the cupboard under the stairs. 
After being folded up for a year its branches are bent and the tinsel looks a bit scraggy.  
Half-heartedly we hang  a few baubles from the branches.
" It looks like its been run over," says Mia, standing back and critically assessing our handiwork..
" Why is there wire instead of branches?" asks Joss.
I shrug.
" Perhaps its deciduous," I say. " At least we can put all the presents underneath it now, so we don't lose them."

But I know Mia and Joss are right.
  I'm definitely not a good mum at Christmas.
I find it hard to overcome my abhorrence of the overt consumerism and the fact that Christmas is now, more than anything else, about presents. 
Everything has to be the most up to date, the fastest, the trendiest, the coolest, the best.
 I shudder to think of the number of Play Station 4 games, laptops, mobile phones and DVDs that have been given as gifts.
Whatever happened to a new pair socks and a bar of chocolate?
And the closer December 25th gets, the more I rant and moan and the more Mia and Joss roll their eyes indignantly and disown me.
Except for Christmas Eve. 
The24th December is the one evening that we all look forward to all year. 
It's true that the "eve," of most important days is usually more exciting than the day itself. The day before something happens is generally full of anticipation and excitement without any of the disappointment that reality often brings.
But that's not the reason everyone in our family looks forward to Christmas Eve so much,  it's because it's the day we have dinner with the Medways.
The Medways are our next -but -one neighbours and they have been our friends since the moment we moved in. 
Mia was not quite 2 and Joss not quite born the day I met Gill Medway.
We had just moved in and I was walking along our new road, holding Mia's hand, feeling Joss kicking inside me.
And there was Gill, standing on the pavement trimming her hedge.
" When's your baby due," she asked,pulling a stray leaf out of her hair and smiling.
" Next week," I said. 
Joss kicked again,
" But I think it might be sooner. "
" Let me know if you need a lift to the hospital then," said Gill, calmingly. " My daughter Emily is in Holland at the moment. She'll be back next week. She's going to be so excited when she hears there are two little ones living next door.  I'll send her round when she's back."
And there was something about the welcoming warmth of Gill's smile that day, that made me realise that, even though we had no fridge, no unpacked furniture, no proper beds, everything was going to be alright.
And Emily did come round when she came back from Holland and she's never really left, not our hearts anyway.
The thought of her not being a part of Joss and Mia's life, is unimaginable to them and us. Her love and friendship is the branch that has let them grow away from us, knowing that they will always be safe.
So it's probably not strange that we started spending our Christmas Eves together,
There's no planning involved, we're none of us good at that. 
 We only decide a few hours before whose house we will have dinner at.  
Everyone cooks something, children and grown ups and in-betweens. 
And every year we create the perfect feast: starters and main courses and puddings.
And every year we eat and laugh and put the world to rights.
And every year, for one whole Christmas evening, I forget about presents and wrapping paper and overcrowded supermarkets. 
And instead I remember what Christmas really is: a time to share what you have and be together.

But then again, isn't that exactly what happened to the Grinch?

Happy Christmas!

Patrick, Jonny, Gill, Joss, Emily, Mia and  Ninesh- Christmas as it should be.

Impact measuring, Jude Law and four "sisters," from the fourth floor

I have spent a lot of the last week self-evaluating.
Nor myself but our Children"s Centre.  
Which means I have spent a lot of the last week drowning in stats and data 
How many families from our reach area attend our centre.
 How many of those families are targeted families. 
 How many of the children of the targeted families go to a nursery, a health visitor, eat healthily, weigh the right amount…….the questions are endless, the statistics screwy and our ability to change the world, limited.
But the worst part of all is when it comes to measuring impact.
How can we show that, by doing what we do, we can truly make a difference.
How has your centre changed lives for the better.
And that's where stats and data fall apart.
You can get statistics to prove almost anything.  
You can turn them into graphs or charts or percentages. 
You can even get them to predict what might happen in the future..but you can't get them to tell you what that future holds.  
Impact doesn't fit into a tickable box because impact is about something immeasurable.  It's about changing an attitude, altering an aspiration, planting a dream.
And how  do you measure that?
How do you quantify what might happen tomorrow or in a week or in a decade as the result of something you have done today?

And the more time I try to spend analysing data, the more I find myself daydreaming.
Wondering what it would be like to impact measure ourselves. 
To assess the difference we have or haven't made.

As it happens, I have been thinking about the past a lot lately.  A few weeks ago I met up with 3 long-ago friends in Dusseldorf, Germany.  We have known each other since we all met on the second floor of C block at university in Liverpool more than two decades ago. Over the years we have fallen in and out of touch and our lives have travelled in very different directs.  But somehow across oceans and countries and years, we have always found each other again. Because there was something immeasurably special about that year when we lived on the same floor and the next, when we shared a student house ( so cold that we had to burn most of the furniture to keep warm! )
 It's hard to say what it was.
 Perhaps it is because student days are the only time in your life when you spend every waking hour with your friends and friendships that can survive drunken nights, hungover mornings, love, heart-ache, exam pressure, shared cooking and the contentious splitting of electricity bills- can survive anything . 
Perhaps it is because, living so far from home, we had to grow up and become independent. And to do that we were, for a time, dependent on each other.  
We sat round the psychologically warming fake fire in the hotel, drinking champagne from ice cube filled pint glasses discussing Jude Law and whether or not he had ever  been in our garden, reading glasses, Christmas markets, the situation in the Lebanon and what to have for dinner.
And as we got out of the lift, chatting and laughing and made our way back to our rooms, someone from the lift called after us:
" Four sisters from the fourth floor."
And I thought: from the 2nd floor of C Block to the 4th floor of a hotel. We have definitely gone up in the world!
And the truth is, that we have all gone up in the world and perhaps none of us would be where we are today if we hadn't met each other. 
But then again, perhaps we would.
And that's the trouble with measuring impact.
 It is not finite or definite.  
It is the possibility that because you met someone, their lives are now different.
All that I know for certain is that all these years on with all that has happened my life is richer and slightly crazier for knowing them.But all these years on, for me at least, it is easy to measure the impact my 3 friends from the fourth floor have had: my life is richer and a little bit crazier for knowing them. 
Fit that into a tick box if you can!

 

Four friends from the fourth floor

Breakfast cocktails and perfect Sunday mornings

Last weekend I met some friends for breakfast at Canary Wharf in London.

Canary Wharf is an eerily quiet place to be on a Sunday morning. 
I'm sure Monday to Friday it's full of the buzz and bustle of smartly suited business people manically buying, selling and generally being very important.  

But the weekend is a different story.
The London Underground doors slid open automatically, revealing a completely empty platform. And as we wandered through the metalic, shiny station, we didn't see a single human being, just sign posts and big glass doors and long, silver escalators.

And outside was just the same.  
Wide empty roads. 
Tall empty tower blocks. 
And a big, empty cafe, where we were meant to be meeting our friends.
" I've reserved a table for 4," I said unnecessarily to the waitress.
" Well," she said, pointing to a table with a sofa and basket chairs, " I'd reserved this one for you, but…… basically, you can choose any table you want."
There's something about an empty cafe which makes you feel that you have made the wrong decision.
So, pretending that we hadn't noticed that we were the only people there, we flixkws through a menu while we waited for our friends.
And that's when I discovered something that made the reservation worthwhile and the  empty cafe, the best breakfast joint in the world. 
 Because after the coffees, teas and hot chocolates on the drinks list, was the list for 
" Naughty and Nice BREAKFAST COCKTAILS."
And suddenly Sunday morning stretched before us in a haze of poached eggs, toast,  bacon and perfectly blended alcohol.
Parlour Bloody Mary, Breakfast in Bloom Martini and Morning Fruit Sparkles.

Breakfast in Bloom Martini and Morning Fruit Sparkles, The Parlour, Canary Wharf

Our friends arrived and we ordered the Sparkles and Martinis ( a surprisingly delicious mix of alcohol an marmalade! ) and the morning melted into the afternoon.
And the waitress came and asked if we wanted to look at the dessert menu. 
" Does breakfast usually come with dessert?" I asked.
The waitress looked confused and glanced around the no longer empty cafe at the customers ordering lunch
" Does breakfast usually come with cocktails?," asked one of our friends.
" It should do," I said.
And ordering another round of toast and jam and breakfast cocktails, we raised our glasses to perfect Sunday mornings and almost empty cafes.

And if we had been there today, we would have raised our glasses to Nelson Mandela: 
an "almost saint," in an almost hero-less world.

RIP Nelson Mandela