Monday, November 29
the beautiful thingsToday when I placed her on all fours in her cot, the Bug managed to push herself up to a sitting position - another first. This also gave her the perfect vantage point from which to pull her Australian creatures mobile down on her head.
I have finished my Christmas shopping, and it isn't even November yet. I rule! Take that, purveyors of festive tat. Mind you it helped that my mother sensibly suggested that this year we limit present-buying to the three wee grandchildren. Buying toys is fun; trying to guess whether a sibling you see every three years has this or that DVD, would like it or even owns a DVD player is a pain in the bollocks. And there are rather a lot of us. And anyway, who needs more stuff? Certainly not the family planning to change hemispheres in the next year.
Meanwhile, phase one of the DIY present experiment has gone rather well. Phase two: slosh in some booze...
Saturday, November 27
Kinder, Küche...If you roast butternut squash seeds, they explode. Cool. They also taste like popcorn. I used the low-calorie spray olive 'oil' and sea salt. Am on a cooking jag, verging on foodie: having decided to make some of our Christmas presents, I spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen on an experimental batch, getting sticky and hyped up on sugar and caffeine and feeling virtuous for not spending loads of money. Experiment culminates tomorrow: further bulletins as events warrant.
Friday, November 26
all i want for christmasWould like to say a sincere Amen to Morgue and Cal's recent posts about sane and constructive alternatives to the bloated seasonal spendfest. I believe it was that great twentieth-century philosopher Denis Nordern who postulated the distinction between 'presents' - item that the person might actually want, need or make use of - and 'gifts' - items bought in 'Gift Shoppes', which are a form of currency for exchange on festive occasions, but otherwise have no intrinsic worth.
Incidentally, and on a purely selfish note, if anyone out there would like to bring Jack and myself a little non-commercial Christmas cheer, an evening's baby-sitting is always appreciated. And will, where appropriate, be reciprocated.
Thursday, November 25
Went to visit Kathie and Robert this afternoon and the Bug kept the be-mean-to-boys streak alive by slapping wee Robert playfully around the face a few times. Maybe I read too much Jackie Fleming while pregnant. Anyway the poor lad looked very startled but refrained, chivalrously, from walloping her back.The days are closing in and as we drove back from Ely around 3:30 dusk was already falling, the sun looking like a giant red lollipop melting into the horizon. The fields, ploughed over before winter, have a freshly scarred look and the hedgerows are spindly and laced with thin mist. That's another thing I'll miss about this place: the sharp familiar contrast of the seasons.
Wednesday, November 24
there's no love song finerTook the Bug to 'Rhyme Time' at the local library, where she met another little Rebecca and tried, repeatedly, to steal her socks. Rebecca's mum was another Kiwi and had lived in Cambridge for fifteen years, she and her husband both being attached to the university. Fifteen years seemed to me an unimaginably long time to be in Cambridge, and I was all the more glad we're going home next year. In the meantime, am amusing myself, à la Lisa, by compiling mental lists of things I'll miss, and things I'll be glad to see the back of. In the former category: waking up to the Today programme; central heating; the Pipasha restaurant; Coronation Street hot off the press. In the latter: chavs; the six grudging hours of daylight you get at this time of year; waking up to the sound of John Prescott, Jack Straw, or Darth Howard being interviewed on the Today Programme.
Tuesday, November 23
A trip to the moon on gossamer wingsThe Master Plan: back home by next October, cunningly avoiding winter and hopefully scoring us two summers in a row. Here we raise the Bug as a Kiwi and buy a house with a laundry room and a garden that goes all the way around. And maybe plant a fejoa bush or two.
I'll be sorry to leave the UK, and especially the many great friends we've made here, but we both feel it's time we were off home. In the meantime, Jack and I have amalgamated our lists of last things to do. I believe there are currently 32 items. A random selection from mine: visit Pwllheli, in North Wales (my grandmother's home town); see Shakespeare at the Globe; go to a Prom; see the Eden Project. Don't what I've been doing with myself the last six years, really. Sitting in pubs, most probably.
Monday, November 22
Today Rebecca got her first library card. She got out Wibbly Pig Is Happy, Maisie Dresses Up and Farm Babies: a moderately eclectic selection, we feel.She also reduced Aidan (age 17 months) to floods of tears with a rather over-enthusiastic greeting. When I told Jack he expressed pride that she was 'punching above her weight'. Am not sure if this is the attitude we wish to foster, but at least she's proving to be no shrinking violet.
Saturday, November 20
something must be doneHave been giving further thought to the question of vice. Was doing a moral inventory this morning and realised that I have inadvertently given up my third favourite vice: buying books I don't have time to read and adding them to an already teetering pile. In fact all I could come up with was: excessive long hot baths, snaffling a garlic-stuffed olive out of the jar every time I pass the fridge, Neighbours, and Coronation Street. The last one is not inconsiderable as in our absence we asked a friend to record all three Saturday omnibus editions for us so we wouldn't miss the dénouement of the Maya psycho hose-beast storyline. Watching three weeks' worth of Coro in three days is the televisual equivalent of eating all your Easter eggs in one go - you feel all grey and twitchy for hours afterwards, but somewhow we couldn't tear ourselves away. Nevertheless I feel I can do much better, so am considering my options. Rampant footwear consumerism is out as I never wear anything I can't run for a bus in. Women's magazines make me want to set fire to things. I'd rather avoid anything illegal or politically incorrect. Have had to eschew colourful language since advent of Bug; similarly, wasting half the weekend in bed is no longer an option. In any case I'm not counting indolence or procrastination as both are too passive: vices should require the expenditure of effort. Still, at least I've got snobbery to fall back on. That and the Internet.
Thursday, November 18
the origins of virtueI seem to be running out of vices. Finally kicked cigarettes when I got pregnant, am fairly indifferent to chocolate, apart from a fervent few weeks while breast-feeding, and am no longer able to regard shopping as recreational activity. And just last night while out with the girlies was unable to summon the slightest interest in the chardonnay that was being splashed about. So now all that remains is kvetching and coffee. Jack prepared macaroni cheese for lunch claiming that he needed comfort food; I realised that my current idea of comfort food is mashed swede.
No I'm not pregnant again. But at this rate I may end up living in a cave wearing a loincloth.
Alison Holst reckons you should put tinned pineapple in macaroni cheese. Why, God, why?
Wednesday, November 17
stranger in paradiseUnusually, Jack's off sick today - he and the Bug are having a post-breakfast nap upstairs. Which means that Mummy can get stuff done. I can't help but be a little bit pleased...
Took Rebecca to be weighed yesterday. She now tips the scales at a magnificent 8.48 kg, almost a kg more than the last weigh-in 6 weeks ago. I reckon it was the kumara.
Righto, must scrub things obsessively before the magic disappears....
Tuesday, November 16
the task of filling up the blanksCurrent reading: recently-published selection of Fiona Kidman's short stories. My word but that woman did some terrible things to commas in her youth.
Have also been making lists. Not pointless Nick Hornby type 'Five Top Tracks To Have a Premature Midlife Crisis To' lists, either. Lists are good. As a great mind might once have said, they help us control the fun.
Monday, November 15
The Bug is poised, puce-faced and panting, on the cusp of her marauding career. Recently she has managed, a couple of times, to struggle onto her hands and knees, where she rocks back and forth looking confused before subsiding onto her stomach. After a lengthy bout of attempted crawling she is often to be found prostrated, head in hands, beating one little foot disconsolately on the floor like a vanquished wrestler.Today at Tesco I left a stern note on the windscreen of an SUV parked in the mother and baby space with no sign of a child seat. Also wrote 'Wanker' in the dust on the passenger side. Mighty my wrath.
Saturday, November 13
avoid the green onesanother one from the trip home...
Culinary Nostalgia Moment: fondling the kumara in Countdown. I'd forgotten that there are red ones, golden ones, orange ones... For two weeks we scoffed kumara chips with garlic mayo at every opportunity. There are few NZ foods I pine for - can do without pineapple lumps, choccie fish, Minties, L&P, and in any case you can always import them, have someone send you them or pay extortionate prices for them at NZ House if you really must. But as far as I know there's really no way of getting hold of kumara over here, and my word do I miss it. À la rigueur we still have a couple of jars of parsnip and kumara baby food, but not sure if I can take food from my baby's mouth. Still, after a mere six years over here we've just discovered that you can get Vogels bread in Sainsburys and Tesco - made in the UK under licence, apparently.
Yes folks, that really is a giant carrot. We're a simple people.
Thursday, November 11
waking dreamBest Cup Of Coffee In The World, Ever: double flat white (ah! remember them? ask for one over here and you get a blank stare. Followed, likely as not, by a really shitty cup of coffee) at Utopia in Ohakune.
Most Fortuitous Meeting: Having lost track of Blair's contact details we encounter the man himself, on his lunch break, just as we are embarking on a post Te Papa forage. Celebrate with service station style steak and cheese pies in the Bun Shop. Memories of Shell Viv at 2.00 am in a galaxy far, far away.
Baby + jet lag = a v bad combo, btw...
Wednesday, November 10
pass the courvoisierHaving been a paragon of gorgeous, tractable babyness throughout the NZ trip, the Bug, home alone once more with Mummy, is refusing to eat or sleep. And she has given me one of those hideous colds that make you want to slice off your own head.
Tuesday, November 9
even a stopped clockLucidity has not yet dawned so here are some random trip highlights:
Momentous And Timely Bug Development: at Heathrow shortly before we board our first flight, Rebecca decides she is now able to sit up happily in a high chair.
Random Flashmobbing Incident: On the way back through Kuala Lumpur we visit the Bird Park. By the parrots enclosure we encounter a group of Taiwanese schoogirls who descend on Jack and Rebecca with cries of 'Ahhhhh! Cute! Cute' and spend a quarter of an hour posing for photos with them before they manage to escape.
You Can Always Depend On the Kindness Of Strangers Moment: on a day of grubby, relentless rain, playing Hunt The Bootee* up and down Lambton Quay with most of the population of Wellington.
Cabbage Patch Kiwi Culture Moment: helping the Bug rub sand onto the pounamu at Te Papa.
Having fretted about the logistics and ease of travelling with a very small person but after this trip I can now recommend to anyone planning to fly to the other side of the world that they first take the precaution of strapping a cute baby to their person. Stony-faced customs officials smiled and cooed; the immigration officer at Heathrow actually complimented us on her passport photo; flight attendants attended at every possible opportunity. And when we arrived slightly late at KL airport for the final leg to find the queue for the check-in snaking halfway around the airport, we were spotted within minutes and whisked off to have a special desk opened up just for us.
All bets are off when she's a toddler, mind.
*Bootee, not booty, you smutty buggers.
Monday, November 8
amid the alien cornHead a-buzz with trip home and consequent jet lag. Back Saturday to grey, grim, asthmatic Heathrow, with Lake Taupo, fringed with golden kowhai, still flickering in my forebrain. Bug was an absolute trooper throughout the trip, frequently getting us promoted to the head of many check-in queues. She's now fraught and fractious with the time warp, but I can't blame her really as so am I. As far as the change goes, homewards has always been a doddle, segueing into Newzild time in a couple of days. Back to the UK invariably a complete arse and takes at least a week to realign while the ground flobbers gently up and down beneath my faltering footsteps. Bug seems to take after me in this respect: last night she faceplanted in her yoghurt and banana after only one spoonful at 6 pm, then woke at midnight and we had perform her complete bedtime ritual, including bath and 'Kahu and the taniwha' from her new book of Maori myths, to convince her back to her cot by 2:20 am.
Impressions of the holiday to follow, out of my brain like magician's hankies I guess as buggered if I can write anything structured, let alone chronological, with this head. Summary: it was lovely and I didn't want to leave. Throat-tightening highlight of the trip: seeing silver-clad Charlotte and her proud brother walk up the aisle together to Bic Runga singing 'When I See You Smile'.
