Did you have a good Christmas?

It's back to work next week after 10 days "off". "Did you have a good Christmas?" folks will ask. What shall I reply? I think I'll go with "yes thanks, how about you?" rather than the longer version. In truth I kind of went away for Christmas. I was here for small person and ooh'd and ahh'd in all of the right places.  Husband spent hours roasting a turkey, I spent hours making mince pies from scratch...including the mince meat.  Weeks of watching Tudor Monastery Farm had me convinced that chucking fruit and booze in a bowl was all that was needed. The rum and brandy helped them taste right.  Santa came a left lots of lovely gifts. Small person was very happy if a little over wrought by the build up and excitement.  On a bedroom time out by 9 am cooling off from a tantrum.  And through it all I was unwell.

The weeks leading up to Christmas were extremely stressful. Work stress, awake at 4 am and down to the sofa to fall asleep in front of the TV. Then stomach flu that became head flu which for the last 10 days has meant back pain.  Two physio massages and my back and neck hurt a lot.  A routine trip to Toronto for a mammogram, just because I'm at the age when you have those. Then a call back Christmas Eve for another mammogram and an ultrasound.  The nurse telling me that that is not unusual to be called back, as they have no previous records for me, but it got me thinking...and feeling the fear.

Usually at Christmas I plan ahead - I like planning. I don't always follow my plans but I like the order that is created, all be it superficial, by making plans. Where shall we go on holiday this year? Should we get another car once our house is sold? Should I join weight watchers? What shall we do for husbands 50th birthday?  I am distracted this year by a huge self indulgence of feeling ill and worrying that I am ill'er, if that's a word.  I think that is a symptom of being stuck indoors in 12 days of Christmas limbo.

I sent small person to day camp yesterday as I had pre planned that, worried that he'd be stir crazy by now.  He's fine but I think I'm the stir crazy one. After a brisk ( not too brisk so as to fall over ) walk in the snow, to buy essentials I cleared the drive of snow.  I was ably assisted  by three small children from up the street who came with shovels. I paid them in candy.  It's the way we do things in this street.  Then I made a healthy lunch and settled down to watch Gone With The Wind. 3 hours later I remembered how it annoys me that he left her...great film though.  I cooked Chana Dal for my dinner...having made turkey stew for the guys.  It said add 7 chillies, so on the advice of the author to half the chillies, on seeing my pale Celtic skin, I added only three.  Who knew you were supposed to take the seeds out. That's one hot Chana Dal.

So today, it's me and small person, again no car and he's out up the street throwing snow around with his friends.  They'll play old school for 20 minutes then pile in and fight over the Xbox. They have a very loud and volatile relationship.... When 2 play it's okay, when 3 it gets loud, today it sounds like 5 have turned up out there.  There will be demands to "get off my property" from small person any time soon.

My plans? Tidy up a bit, take an ibuprofen, rest, cough. Drink lots of water. Maybe get the paints out...we shall see. No point worrying - worry has no value.  And when people ask "did you have a good Christmas?" I shall say yes.

Namaste

Dunkirk Spirit

We all stood at the bus stop this morning in a very mild December ( I'm still wearing my Birkenstocks, although I look like a nutter) and the kids were very excited. The big kids were off to the rink for skating - gotta love a country where PE is ice skating. The little kids were buzzing as today was the Christmas concert. No political correctness here - it's holiday season and we talk about Christmas. That's what I love about the bus line ( translate that as queue ) it's mini Canada to me.  I did a mental roll call of the parents...we have 2 white folks with studs and dreadlocks, a grandpa from Jamaica, Russians, Bhuddists, Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, a Pastor, and us. Not sure we fit in any of those boxes but I feel an affinity with each one of them.  It is such an eclectic mix.

Small person square danced to a Christmas song, wearing a tinsel elf hat.  The kid with autism wore noise dampening headphones, that I guess cut out the volume that bothers him, so he had a great time too. It's fabulous to me all of this "so what diversity". I'm the girl who grew up in the sixties and still remembers her gran saying " if you see a black man you make a wish for good luck". I don't think she was racist, simply that she was born in 1900 and society was very linear as folks had small worlds that they never left.

I may have blogged before about childhood, I can't recall, so apologies for repetition, but I am local to stories of the 2nd World War, of my dad arriving home as a small boy to find that the Gerry's had blown the door off; stories from Grandma about carrying cans of evaporated milk in a paper bag during rationing and the bottom dropping out just as a policeman walked by; my mum telling me that during the Cuban missile crisis they really did think they'd be dead within the week; being afraid to go up to London each year with school, for fear of Irish terrorists. Ironically they blew up a local bank, so there was no need to travel for terror. It came visiting. As I look back at the journey I have made I both cringe at the things that I used to think and say about others; and am proud at the progress I have made although there is still a way to go as I still have a concious bias against Yorkshireman.

Is there a point to this ramble? Well yes...as I sit here in my warm home in Canada I connect to the world via the web, via the BBC and via Facebook.  I see my awesome friend Pauline make twice weekly trips to Calais to distribute aid, feed hungry refugees and share hugs most likely with some of the poorest people on this planet. They have fled terror, travelled miles, trying to get to UK where they think life will be good. Sadly laws, red tape, lack of political will, nimbyism, racism, selfishness and ignorance have so far condemned these people to live on a rubbish dump in Calais and Dunkirk. They may never be allowed into Britain but ignoring them is not the answer. But it gets worse because the governments of France and UK have spent a fortune on security and preventative measures to stop these people from getting to a safe, warm home.  If they were dogs or horses the British would be lobbying Govt to do something now.

My head links their horror in Dunkirk to the horror of world war 2 in that place; links them living in French mud with the First World War trenches; links our fear of them being terrorists with my fear of the Irish when I was a kid; links my grans stories of milk during rationing with Pauline and her friends helping get cans of food to these people. That's almost funny- taking food to the cuisine capital of the world.  But it's not.

Maybe the links that I make in my head are just my over charged brain working overtime but to me ignoring or arguing about these folks is wrong on every level.  After a tough ( safe western tough ) few months at work I heard myself today telling some one that we have worked really well as a team, pulled together, that we have a "Dunkirk spirit"...and there it is again.  History is rewriting what it is to have a Dunkirk spirit...it should remain as a memory of strength and togetherness and must not be allowed to become " the ability to survive squalor in a muddy field, with PTSD, whilst folks sit indoors eating turkey 20 miles away".

Silent house

Eight years ago I was in the UK, in labour, tired and scared. My husband had popped out of the hospital to get food and for reasons no one will ever understand, he stopped off on the way back at B&Q to buy light fittings.  To be fair we needed those light fittings, although likely not urgently. So I spent an hour or two, no idea how long, alone apart from the machines that go ping.  40 minutes before my 40th birthday small person arrived. Face scrunched up, with lines across his brow as if to say " what did you wake me up for, I was asleep". Within two days the nurses on the Mat ward informed me "he's got a temper!" And so it began...the journey into parenthood.

On his third birthday we had Jo Jingles sing and play, so sweet. By 4 it was super heroes with the real Spider-Man. The muscles on that guy were very pleasing to the mums at the party.  For his 5th birthday they ran screaming around Manic Monsters, slides, football and sausage and chips. Off to Canada we went, so his 6th was a Star Wars art party in Ontario, with his whole class as we tried to help him make friends. The kittens actually helped there but they came the following March. For his 7th we went to Chuck e Cheese, which was the loudest, purplest party ever. He loved it. We loved that he loved it. This year, for 8th, we took the kids to Lazer Tag on a school night. It was "awesome" but a struggle to get him up and dressed the next day, for school.

 Today, on his birthday, he went to school in his pyjamas, (they spell that pajamas!) as a celebration that the class "beat the teacher". It's like Harry Potter- they get house points for being good, quiet, kind etc. So a very excited 8 year old borded the bus today, at minus 2 degrees, in his pjs.

The house is now silent. The cats have gone to sleep, likely together as they do like a cuddle. I am off to work, back into a busy and fast changing workplace. Reorganization sees colleagues and friends leaving at the end of today. This time around I get to stay, like last time, and that is a bitter pill as you see yourself catapulted into a reality that you didn't choose. Weeks ahead of working out what your role is; lots of emotions crammed into every work day spilling out into home life unless I'm super focussed on that.  Health report back from my annual medical. Not "sick" but not "well". Too heavy, too round, lacking iron, needing exercise...no more wine, liver not happy.  Hoping the iron tablets will kick in soon...a slimmer fitter me is coming to this town soon.

Namaste

Pre Coffee Rant

Great fun at art class last night.  Its an painting free-for-all - which means you paint what you want over 3 evenings.  We chat whilst we paint with our core subjects being the Blue Jays and the school strike.  I did divert the conversation to discussing how hot the PM is but apparently that's not a key asset for a leader.  Who knew?

Blue Jays won - yay!  So we talked school.  The teachers are on a work to rule, have been for months.  The Office staff the same.  Cleaners are on all out strike.  My friend recounted how she went to pick her kid up early for a dental appointment and the Principal had to open the door as the office staff can't press a buzzer under the terms of their industrial action.  It gets better.  When she asked the office worker to call the classroom to send her daughter up, she declined "work to rule!" so they had to wait for the Principal to return to have him call ahead.

Now here's my point, for I always have a point.  This is a great, free, democratic country.  Always a socialist at heart, with a very small S,  I respect people's right to take organized action to confront hardship and tyranny.  I support action like the UK General Strike of 1926 where pay was so low people in work were starving and those out of work, back for the war, were without prospects and starving.  That was a movement to say "enough inequality, enough starvation, enough!" 

Roll forward to the Miners Strikes, where the Government closed the mines without any regeneration plans for those communities.  Not cost effective to mine coal? - fair enough, I'm a capitalist too, again small C.  But to take away work without any plans for the survivors to find new work was shameful and inhuman.  Generation grew up without work.  IMO from that came "the choice to not work" as living on the state became an option for some, whilst many had no choice but to do that.

So the point in all of this - industrial action in the face of a future human and social catastrophe or as a challenge to current hardship - GOOD.  Industrial action because you aren't getting paid as much as you wish you were - NOT GOOD.

As we enter the flu season, with the schools being filthy, they are starting to ask us to donate antiseptic wipes to clean the kids desks...but they don't ask via a note home as photocopying is not allowed under the work to rule.  So, grumpy about all this for both sides - as what is the elected leader doing to resolve this?  As Maude always used to say in the Simpsons "won't somebody please think of the children"

Off to work
Namaste

Thanksgiving Weekend

That came around super fast. Getting ready to go apple picking later once small person returns from Saturday School.  That's so that he can keep up with his Peers, as youngest boy in his year, and not a faith activity at Temple. Small person is proving to be fabulous at math, outspoken and not keen to follow instructions.  No idea where that all comes from. ha!

It's been a long and enjoyable seven days for me. Last Saturday we played at the pumpkin festival which was essentially outdoor fun with orange blobs here and there. Then an overnight flight to UK and two days walking around well tended gardens and battling thorns and stings in my own back yard.  UK house is sold and we now have a paperwork mountain prior to completion. Great karma that we have sold it to a friend who asked us 5 years ago to let her buy it. Happy for us and for her. Many weeks of reading about tax and money transfers are in my future I reckon. Maybe we will be home owners again in 2016. Dunno, all too complicated with jet lag.

I spent 2 days at work in London, catching up with friends and not catching up with family. Travelling with work is full on, and meeting up with people who are 2 to 4 hours away is impossible. I imagine folks believe it's all nights out and plush hotels when infact its in bed by 8pm, laptop on, back to work. Not complaining, but increasing surprised by how little time I have away from work.

I enjoyed walking around in the drizzley rain, the silence, the beautiful manners and friendliness of people in shops and hotels. Love those Europeans with doctorates who sell coffee in Pret as that is better than being unemployed in Portugal. Everyone I spoke to had an aunt in Toronto but know one asked if I'd met them :-)

I didn't enjoy watching the news, with the party conferences.  Hours about the rights and wrongs of having to pay 5p for a carrier bag.  What the hell? Children are drowning in the Med.  Winters coming and 800k people are living in tents in Germany.  It's gonna get bloody cold for them very soon.  I wonder what their views are on 5p carrier bags?

The news was so negative, so "problem to solve", so "defending our borders from job stealing foreigners".  Maybe as a job stealing foreigner myself I am biased, but what I love about Canada is the " expand, evolve, grow" attitude that sits beneath the news stories.  There are problems here too, no one is perfect, but it feels like people solve problems to create opportunities, not to lock things down and preserve the now.

On the C4 news they had a writer who took issue with a women in a hijab winning the Great British Bake Off.  He felt that Britishness had been and was being diluted.  Less than 5% of Europeans are Muslim, and many of those in the UK are 3rd and 4th generation.

What is "Britishness" anyway?  A friend at work shared a Ted Talk video with us last week, about who you are.  The speaker proposed that you are not "from" a country. You are from a set of experiences. You are local to those experiences.  So whilst on paper I am a temporary British foreign worker in Ontario, Canada, I do not relate to the British people I saw on the news in UK. I am local to my community today and my community I had in England, local to artist friends across the world and to a Britain in the 1970s when my Grandparents told me stories of ww1 and ww2 and I wore flares and played outside and drank from hose pipes in the garden.  I am local to the islands off Scotland where I felt a spiritual connection to the past; and to a small town in Spain where I can order my breakfast in perfect Spanish.

With a blog your supposed to end on a note that shows a purpose in the writing...not too sure what that is on this one other than I feel at home with people and not places. A friend remarked that I had posted on Facebook that I was flying home to Canada...I explained that I was in fact flying home to my husband and small person as they are my home.

Off to the apple orchard...

What have we learnt?

We have been in Canada now for two years and 2 days...I can't believe it's that long and at the same time I can't imagine living anywhere else. Our town, Bolton, which always make me chuckle as it is so not like Lancashire, holds a Fall Fair this week each year.  It's like the Lingfield and Oxted show if that were 1/20 th the size, and had no animals larger than a llama.  We went along yesterday after an hour running around town dishing out leaflets for next weekends Pumpkin Fest. Small person slid down the jumbo slide 5 times- a lover of the simple rides...we avoided a big bowl thing that was like the cage from my youth.

The best part of the show for me was meeting up and talking to people that I know...#community. The cub leaders tried again to enrol me as a leader.  "Where's you red shirt" they shouted every time I walked by. I explained "I don't like kids!" But apparently that's no barrier.  I will resist.  Inside the arena, on the skating rink ( no ice yet, phew) I met up with the community farm people and we chatted about the Fest.  I met friends whilst we watched the dog show and on the way back chatted to the ladies in the wine store about an up coming toonie sale.  When we first arrived in Canada I recall that it was hard starting conversations - not sure if it was my accent or that I was a stranger but there were many monosyllabic conversations in shops.  Now small person gets cross " stop talking to everybody mom!" Can't help it, it's what I do.

So, how to capture our time here so far...blatent copying of a cool post on Facebook that listed 30 things about Britain.  Here's 30 things about Canada...

1. It's not like America
2. Crisp are called chips
3. Chips are called fries
4. No one understand you when you say "half past three"
5. Men wear baseball caps a lot, mostly backwards
6. Milk comes in plastic bags
7. People call you "Hun" but not in a German way
8. People really do say "eh?" at the end of sentences, but not all the time and not everyone
9. No one knows what a jumper is.
10. It's not like America
11. Cars run on gas, but it's not a gas, it's a liquid. What's up with that?
12. All teenagers are beautiful human beings, with Saturday job, manners and great teeth
13. Getting a coffee at the drive through is normal. Getting out of your car to get one is the strange way
14. Most people drink bad coffee from a donut chain, but no one admits it is bad. It's a patriotism thing. They've introduce a dark roast version to give it some flavour. It's not awful.
15. Canadians are as polite as you have been told they are
16. Canadians in cars are appalling.
17. Some Canadian cars have rust holes that you could put your fist through and no one minds
18. They have a really great baseball team
19. Teachers go on strike to "protect education" but that harms the kids education. No one seems that mad about it...goes to point 15.
20. They sing the national anthem in school every day
21. The language is like syrup, everything blends and flows.  "Wad hur" comes out of taps. The second city is call "Tor-on-oh"
22. Towns are named after British towns, but pronounced literally, like folks learnt English from books.  Tottenham is pronounced Tot En Ham; Scarborough is pronounced Scar Bore Oh
23. The cheese is generally bland, ever when it proclaims itself Fort
24. You can buy a tea pot and a tent in a shop called Canadian Tire
25. Some words are spelt right but they say Pross ess for process.
26. You have to buy alcohol in government owned store. It's tied to preventing young people drinking too much. Ontario has a huge under age drinking issue. Guess that didn't work, eh?
27. People smoke pot, you can smell it everywhere
28. It's not like America
29. In two years of living in the 4th most diverse area in the the world (Greater Toronto) I have only experienced one example of racism, and that was a taxi driver who smelt of beer and had issues with Judeism. There's always one looney out there
30. It's a fabulous place to live and we love it here

Wheels within wheels

Everything feels cyclical at the moment.  I planted the allotment and now we are into harvest, eat and store.  The coriander has shot off so I'm drying bunches upside down in bags, to catch the seeds.  Some for storing, some for sowing,

Every day begins with tea, then coffee, ends with wine.  That's not healthy and whilst I am working on that I do wonder how I got here. Small person was watching Kung Fu Panda fighting bad guys the  other day and in an attempt to connect with the snarling child I asked "ooh, how does he do that, does he have magic powers?" "No mom!" He snapped.  "He is using inner peace!".  Lucky him, peace and agility, mind you he doesn't have a 7 year old moaning "I'm bored" every 15 minutes.

To be clear, small person goes to various camps throughout the summer. This is week 6 of a 10 week summer break. He has been rock climbing, scooting, played floor hockey, soccer, basket ball. He has painted a cheetah, learnt circus skills, been whale spotting.  Hardship is not on his list of things to gripe about.  He also had a week hanging out with me, unplugged and "entertain ourselves".   That's when the boredom first surfaced. I was searching for a metaphor yesterday to explain to my husband what it feels like to have a bored child complaining for days.  I think I found it...imagine you are on a 8 hour flight with a kid in the seat behind who keeps kicking your seat, nonstop except when he is eating.  That's where the tea, coffee, wine come in...although that's not his doing, that's my lack of panda inner peace at play.

So what to do? We went out for a meal last night, nothing fancy.  Small person was stroppy and octopus arms.  He knocked over a glass of wine that soaked daddy chest to crotch.  So we are  now avoiding public places.  Small person has struck a deal to have "big brother play dates" with the 4 year old son of close friends.  They played together for hours on Saturday with next to no drama, so that is looking great.  Camping? We are test driving our new tent next weekend...hopefully 24 hours without electricity will bring some calm. Plus we are camping down inToronto near the British Grocer, so we can restock the beans and Branston on the way home!

I am cutting out the wine from today, for all of August. We'll see how that works out.  Work wise, still underwater but my latest plan is foolproof...go home on time.  That way I will have time to exercise and I can spend time with the small person  (short bursts...nothing too planned). He hates me at the moment because I am mean.  Daddy and I call it parenting.  Small person calls it mean. I don't think kids should play out in the semi dark at 9.30 at night; I don't care if his friends are out running the streets. don't think that watching grand theft auto is okay for kids aged 6 to 8. I don't care if his friends play it all the time. I don't agree that the TV should be on at meal times; and our latest point of contention...if we are going out somewhere as a family, daddy and I don't want to bring street kids with us.  So all in all a lot of disagreements and "mean mum", door slamming, some bad language.  So grounded a fair bit...which...wait a minute, means he stuck in with me and boredom.  Hmmm, he has his own little cycle of life going on there.

#need 2 days alone at a spa.

Talking of circles a recommend this cool online class exploring Mandalas. It's fabulous, if a little addictive

Namaste