Friday, October 15
it might as well be springStill packing. Or rather, editing the packing. The Bug doesn't get her own luggage allowance so I must not be too profligate. The sports bag I've packed her kit in is currently squatting on the bed looking more and more bloated and cumbersome every time I glance in its direction. Am waging war of attrition with it, stealthily removing an item every time I walk past.
The Bug has almost got the hang of sitting up by herself, although she tends to topple over as soon as you get more than six inches away from her. In addition, she has just pioneered a technique for rousing her parents out of bed before it is light. First, she flips over onto her front, then works her way around in the cot until she is lying crossways. As it is as broad as she is long, this doesn't leave her with much room to manoeuvre. Next, she seesaws back and forth, thrusting first her feet, then her head, in the air. (I believe this may be some sort of yoga, or possibly Pilates, move.) Unfortunately, what with the lack of space and all, each forwards rocking movement brings her forehead crashing down onto the bars of her cage. Cot. I mean cot. We have thus woken every morning this week at 6.00 am to the sound of loud rhythmic thuds accompanied by wails of distress.
This time tomorrow we'll be en route to Kuala Lumpur. Or stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow. We arrive in Auckland on Tuesday too late for breakfast and just in time to go to bed at noon. We're back in the UK on November 6. There probably won't be any blog updates until then, but you never know. So: Byeeeee! or See you in a few days! depending on which country you're in.
Thursday, October 14
Today's music to slow-dance around the living room with the Bug to: 'Oughta Be In Love', by Dave Dobbyn. In fact, I've always thought this would be a good tune to walk down the aisle to. Mind you when it came down to it I wimped out of walking down the aisle because I thought I'd feel silly with all of those people staring at me.Wait, that sounds like I left Jack standing at the altar. Which I didn't: we didn't have an altar as we got married in his parents' garden. What I mean is, I didn't kick off the ceremony by doing the big entrance thing. Anyway Jack'd already seen the frock. I know, shocking, isn't it? Quite frankly I'm surprised I didn't spontaneously combust during the ceremony. Anyway, matrimony was, and still is, the winner on the day.
Wednesday, October 13
This afternoon, while visiting her little friend Robert, Rebecca decided that she can now sit up unsupported. Without keeling over. For several minutes at a time. She's also worked out that if she starts to keel over she can stick out an arm to support herself.Heart swells with maternal pride. Again. Think I'll go and make myself a bucket of coffee to celebrate. Life is good.
Slap Upside The Head Of The Day goes to the publishers of Aron Ralston for allowing him to entitle his tell-all book Between A Rock And A Hard Place. As Charlie Brown once said, I weep for our generation.
Tuesday, October 12
packing angstWhen it comes to gardening, chaos is all very well, but when preparing for a long journey it is the way to ruination and despair. Packing is a fine art; more, it is a matter of precise mathematical calculation. We're leaving for NZ on Saturday, and for the last few days I've been rearranging trousers, bras and trainers, not to mention sleepsuits, pinafores and dungarees, in neat piles in my head. Over and over and over again, in different combinations. You see, in the past I've always made it a point of pride to pack as little as possible. One t-shirt too few, one pair of shoes too many and you upset the entire vital balance. (Especially if you're taking public transport.) And what if you get the cabin luggage wrong? Forget your toothbrush, change of undies or book and the worst that can befall you is to be bored and smelly for a few time zones. But just add an infant into the equation and it goes quadratic. Suppose she gets airsick and soaks every item of clothing I pack for her three hours into the flight? Suppose I don't pack enough formula and we run out in mid-air? She might well starve! And how are we supposed to open those nifty little tetrapaks of premixed stuff when we're not allowed to bring a pocket knife onto the plane? These questions keep me up at night. That and a certain small person deciding she wanted breakfast at 5 am.
A friend of mine always travels in a suit because she says it's the bulkiest item of clothing and saves space in her luggage. Personally I find long-distance travel such a grubby, sweaty, food-and-other-unfortunate-stained affair that I always go for something scuzzy and comfortable. This probably explains why I have never, not once in my life, been upgraded to business class.
I just know I'm going to forget something indispensable.
[later]
Ha ha! I have found the handwritten list of Bug kit I packed for our road trip to Kent! Result! Am going to make a spreadsheet. With colour-coding. And put a copy in with her luggage.
Whaddyamean, OCD?
Monday, October 11
foie grasWeekend spent celebrating Jack's birthday (twice!) and Canadian Thanksgiving. Came over all hedonistic on Friday night and decided to follow the Italian-style roast pork with bread and butter pudding made with single cream. Sat and Sun spent enjoying generous hospitality, rich food, fine wines and saucy conversation courtesy of Alison and James and then Donald and Fiona. If I were French I'd be nursing an incipient crise de foie. As it is am starting to feel like the Christmas goose.
The salvia in the garden, green-black and spiky, has reminded me of its existence by putting forth deep violet, asterlike flowers. Unless it's the aster I planted a couple of years ago and that I thought had died. Now I'm confused. This is because I tend to practise chaos gardening, randomly planting specimens I like the look of in the narrow border by the fence and letting them tough it out for space and light. Then I let the whole thing go to seed in autumn, ignore it over winter and in spring start clearing away the weeds and debris to find out what has survived. As the weather gets warmer, sunflowers, red and pink poppies and the occasional random tomato emerge from the previous year's seeds and fight their way clear of the wiry, straggling lavenders, oregano and other forgotten herbs. It's no way to treat a garden but it's curiously entertaining.
Friday, October 8
friday triptych
just when you thought it was safe
Omilawd she's got another tooth. Where did that come from? She opened her mouth just now and there it was, just sitting there right next to the first one. Phoned Jack at work and expressed amazement that there had been so little fuss; he replied 'Oh well, she was a bit narked for twenty minutes last night.' Yeah, but that was because she was having a lovely time being fussed and given presents by Auntie Alison, fresh back from her holidays, and we cruelly snatched her away, fed her and made her go to bed. Wasn't it? I'd kind of expected more, y'know, screaming and sleep deprivation with each tooth. Not that I'm complaining, mind. If she keeps this up, adolescence should be a doddle.
It's Jack's birthday today. Happy Birthday babe - I love you lots. And Rebecca says 'blthpthlpthlpthle!'
Wednesday, October 6
encomiumOn Sunday night, in a fit of Domestic Goddessness and to welcome home the conquering hero, I made a Moosewood pumpkin pie, and damn it was good. Guardian-reading wet liberal that I am, I assumed my likeminded friends over here would naturally be au fait with the Moosewood cookbooks, but the mention of it over here draws blank looks. Cranks, apparently, is the bible of choice among the gastronomically correct. Not that I've become a vegetarian, but when you live around the corner from a place that sells eleven different varieties of dried beans, it pays to have the literature.
If you're a Kiwi, chances are the literature will include the selected works of Alison Holst. Among all the food porn on British telly, there's no-one like Alison. Looks like a polyester-draped battleship with turquoise eye shadow, talks like Dame Edna's vocal coach, with a prose style so robustly lyrical you can practically hear her words ringing out across the hills of Taranaki, startling the sheep:
'Three cheers for the potato!'
'In the clean and sparkling water surrounding this country there are not only many fish, but many fish varieties too!'
'What a long way chicken has come in the last 25 years! I remember the excitement of teaching a class where we first used a young tender bird ...'
Ahem. No British TV chef comes close. Nigella*, simpering about with her fingers in her mouth is a bad drag act, while Delia's horribly mimsy in a sort of sexless fembot way - you keep expecting her face plate to swing open revealing the circuitry beneath. Unlike the Fat Ladies, Alison wouldn't be seen dead in green wellies, and all the other celeb chefs are silly boys with bad hair. Alison's recipes are impossible to cock up, are faff-free and and are the sort of things students can make large quantities of while pissed or skint. Half of them involve packet soup, and a few are downright horrible, especially the ones from the Eighties when she decided that you could microwave everything including cake. But Jack still has the Alison cookbook his mother gave him when he left home. The back cover's all charred from where we accidentally set fire to it. We still use it.
We have a motley collection of cookbooks, many of which have escaped incineration. Another favourite is Country Cooking (Christchurch, 1969), aka the Endangered Species Cookbook: its recipes include 'Black Swan Casserole', 'Pukeko** in Casserole' and, erm, 'Maori Kisses', which are a type of biscuit made with cocoa. Apparently.
*What kind of a name is 'Nigella' anyway? Why didn't her parents just name her 'Better Luck Next Time' and leave it at that?
**A native New Zealand bird similar in appearance, behaviour and habitat to the moorhen.
Bounce music du jour: 'Groove Is In The Heart'.
Carrie the Health Visitor's just been: Bug's weight gain has slowed to a crawl. Probably due to all the bouncing. And (attempted) crawling. Not having figured out how to bring in her legs yet, she's currently pivoting around her feet, which remain in the same place. Still, she is extraordinarily happy, apart from when she's face down on the floor wailing with frustration.
Tuesday, October 5
a donkey asleepAm reading Life of Pi. So far, it's about religion and zoos. Am waiting for the punchline.
The Bug has taken to tearing off her socks and attempting to eat them. Putting her in tights frustrates her no end.
Monday, October 4
running jumping climbing treesBug's quest for forward mobility proceeds apace: this morning she managed to propel herself, mainly, as far as I could tell, by means of grunts, to the edge of our double futon. Total distance travelled about six inches in five minutes, while I lay next to her keeping hold of the edge of her sleepsuit between thumb and forefinger, poised to pull her back from the brink. And, not content with a single milestone knocked over in one day, this afternoon, for the first time, she sat up unsupported. Just for a few seconds before subsiding forwards onto her own lap, but long enough to look convinced about the idea. Guess we'd better start looking out for a high chair.
Sunday, October 3
kaleidoscopizeThis morning I'm sure I heard her say 'Pizza', or maybe it's the cold medication.
As sure as night follows day, as soon as you pay a large sum of money to register the car for another year, the bloody thing breaks down in a spectacular and inconvenient fashion. Sodding physical universe, God it can be annoying. Sometimes I wish I were a little cloud... Though not in a James Joyce way, of course.
Time for my medication...
Saturday, October 2
la grincheuseHave a truly filthy cold, the sort that makes you want to take to your bed in mucus-drenched despair while the chorus of superegos in your head snarl 'It's just a cold, you wuss! Whaddareya? Get hard! People can see you!' &c &c. Parenting while ill always a challenge: wee one caring not a whit for your misery and wanting feeding changing entertaining dancing around the living room reading to singing nursery rhymes to wiping off retrieving lost toys for rocking to sleep now now now. Jack's doing the Oxford to Cambridge tomorrow and is departing at some non-existent hour of the morning so I need not to feel like this in 18 hours. As such am trying to be ill as efficiently as poss, to get it over with quickly. Which speaks volumes about my privileged Western notions of control, I guess. I hate being ill: I am the worst patient in the world because being ill provokes a sense of outrage that some impudent pathogen has had the audacity to invade my body and bring me, mighty, unassailable me, to my knees. I dread to imagine what I'll be like if I ever get anything seriously wrong with me.
Went to see Jeremy Hardy last night, presumably infecting an entire theatre in the process. My word he's short. Enjoyed the evening well enough, but Bill Bailey has ruined me for all other comedy acts, and by comparison Hardy's routine seemed lazy and wellworn. And did we really need the line about women using rear view mirrors to check their makeup? Still at least he didn't resort (much) to the stop-gap 'Oooh, hark at you clever, toffee-nosed lot' routine that Cambridge audiences always seem to bring out in the desperate. Audience well coiffed and heeled, but still capable of some serious trampling and gouging if you got between them and their pre-booked glass of half-time Chardonnay. Went straight home and washed down cold remedy with a very, very stiff voddy and orange.
Here's a picture of the gorgeous one. I'm going back to bed while I have the chance.
Friday, October 1
babelAs of yesterday I've been in Cambridge for six years. Came over to study; somehow never got around to leaving. Much has happened since September 1998: marriage, a house, a PhD, a job, a baby, and the unaccountable metamorphosis of the Granta, my local when I was living in college, into a Kiwi theme pub.
Not as much as has happened in the last few days, though. The Bug cut her first tooth (bottom gum), learned that if you roll over twice in the same direction you can cross a room, and on Tuesday she began to babble. During the babbling phase, according to my first year Linguistics paper, babies practise every phoneme that the human phonetic apparatus is capable of producing in any language, and as they do so, sift out the ones they will need in their mother tongue and discard the rest. So far she's mastered 'ra ra ra ra', 'wa wa wa wa', 'wub wub wub wub' and 'bluh bluh bluh'. Am listening out for Xhosa clicks, nasal vowels and other doomed sounds while they're briefly on the menu. Am also hoping to train her to address her grandmother by the time we go home in a couple of weeks, but so far her only response to my repeating 'na na na na na' at her is an indulgent smile.
