I had another 'scare' this week, although 'scare' isn't technically the right word. I was a week late and had managed to convince myself I was experiencing all sorts of symptoms - I had the full-on nausea, shortness of breath, cramps and boobage to be expected during the first few weeks of pregnancy. I took four separate tests. Four. €40 worth of tests. And each one that was negative, did it convince me I wasn't pregnant? No. The blood test finally convinced me and lo and behold, the day after, physical evidence arrived to prove convincingly that no, I am not pregnant. (I am trying to be delicate for the squeamish amongst you). My husband thinks it was a psychological pregnancy. I am afraid I sort of have to agree, although the strength of mind required to produce such physical effects amazes me.
It is my 43rd birthday next week and I suppose I am having to adjust to a totally new reality that it never occurred to me I would have to face. That of being a menopausal woman. I have so totally taken my fertility as a given that in spite of over-whelming evidence to the contrary, and reading something about older woman and fertility problems almost on a daily basis, it somehow would miraculously not happen to me. However, evidence has been mounting on my own doorstep and now it really is getting too strong to ignore. I am peri-menopausal, with all the implication to my body and psyche that that entails.
We women have a love-hate relationship with our fertility - for the best part of our lives, it is a bane and a problem to be overcome. Generally, for a very short period of time, it is either working for or against us as we decide we want to conceive and then, generally again, we go back to fighting against it. Due to the fact that I was classed as a 'mature mother' with both my boys - laughably young at 36 and 37 when I had them - I pretty much ran out of time when I decided that I would like one last chance at being a mother. After a surprise pregnancy earlier this year, I realised how much I wanted another addition to the family and when I miscarried at 10 weeks I was devastated, we both were. After overcoming the initial shock, we were so looking forward to introducing the new addition to our family. The miscarriage knocked us for six as we had had the boys with very little - ahem - effort on our behalf, arriving one after the other in such a felicitous way that they adore each other and play beautifully together - well, mostly, this isn't a blog written in Disneyworld, after all.
From then on, I joined forums for older women trying to conceive and the truth hit home - all those dire warnings about women leaving it too late to have children? They were right, would you believe it?!! There are page after page of heartfelt outpourings from poor women desperate for a child, or another one to add to their family, at an age where it is becoming physically almost impossible. So many of these hopeful women announce their pregnancy and then, so desperately sadly, announce a few weeks later that they have had, in many cases, yet another miscarriage.
And if I am honest, is 43 really an age to be bringing another child into the family? I took a look around at my youngest son's nursery parent meeting the other day and thought, I am already one of the oldest here. Is it right to have a child who will have a nearly 50 year old mother when they are starting primary school? Do I want to be surrounded by fit young women when I am starting to feel the creaks and groans of old age?
The benefits of being an older mother, which I am even having my children at the age I did, are legion. I never wish I had had them in my twenties, as my mother did. That would imply that all those years that I was living an utterly selfish life flitting around the world and having a ball would have been better served bringing up children. Woahhh there - I wouldn't hand those years back for anything. Nor am I such a subscriber to the, 'once they are grown up, you are still young enough to enjoy your life', theory because you are never 'free' of your children. Lord knows, my parents will tell you that, when yet another crisis hits and they are the first people I ring to provide a shoulder and some loving support. Once you have children, you can never go back to rediscover a selfish life because by definition, having children means that there is now someone in the world who is more important than you.
No, have children later in life, by all means, when you can dedicate your life to them without regret or a hankering to be somewhere else. Just please please, don't leave it too late. Because turning back the clock is not an option, no matter how good your doctors are.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Amanda Knox - Guilty of Not Being An Italian Woman
Well, of course I have an opinion on the Amanda Knox saga - I have an opinion on EVERYTHING, and this is a big one. Having lived in Italy, with an Italian husband, for over four years now, I felt some connection with this story. I have watched it unfold, as have most of us I think, slightly ashamed of my own prurience and yet still reading the stories, plus their sidebars. Right from the beginning I thought it damning that there was so much emphasis being placed on Amanda Knox's reported 'promiscuity' and drinking and drug-taking (as in, she liked getting stoned with her boyfriend.). I thought she didn't have a hope of getting off in an Italian court with such a profile and as it happened, she didn't. Eventually, it seems that the case fell apart at the seams and she and Raffaele - her then 'boyfriend', although they had only reportedly been together for a couple of weeks - were released.
It looked like a witch trial with additional trial by media and it felt all wrong. Jurors are not sequestered here so they were free to read all the intimate details, and form their own opinions, on Amanda Knox's life before it even got to trial,. There was from the beginning very little evidence to support the case. It seems that the fact that she 'behaved oddly' when Meredith Kercher was discovered was a major point against her. This of course is not real evidence, it is a 'gut feeling' - which works fine in a detective story where the 'gut feeling' is felt by the hero and ultimately leads to the catching of the bad guy. But this cannot work in a real-life court of law. The language used in the court of appeal was just horrific. She was accused of being given over to 'lust, narcotic substances and the consumption of alcohol'. Oh dear. In which case, 90% of the students in the UK are carrying out the same wild and terrifying behaviour.
Apart from all the legal aspects - there are some good articles about Giuliano Mignini and his own issues in knowing which side of the law he should be on - it gives a great insight into the hypocrisy of Italian society with regard to women. On the one hand, at ANY GIVEN MOMENT, I can point you in the direction of prostitutes standing by the roadside looking for business. These are main roads, one of which runs past the Sky TV HQ, outside which there are often young, scarily scantily-clad girls touting for trade. I have driven along these main trunk roads at rush hour when the famous Roman traffic permanently threatens to grind to a halt with my two young boys in the car and had the arses of said 'mignotte', hookers, grinding in my direction in their underwear. In broad daylight and nose-to-tail traffic. Alemanno, the Roman mayor, came to victory a couple of years ago and promised a 'zero tolerance' policy on the prostitutes and for several months, my husband and I didn't argue about the state of 'it' driving into town because, amazingly, it turns out that if you threaten to send a letter home about your kerb crawling and send the police in to move them on on a regular basis, it actually nips the problem in the bud. My husband's attitude is much the same as most Italians - you can moan all you like but there's nothing you can do about it. (This attitude, by the way, applies to almost everything unpleasant about Italian life). They are almost all back now, however, and just as young and just as brazen as ever they were. Seems the police have better things to do with their time these days.
I very rarely watch Italian TV either as, again, it invariably ends up in an argument. There are scantily-clad women on everywhere, often as not with an older, or at least fully-dressed, male companion. Our version of 'You've Been Framed'? Girl in a bikini top accompanied by a bloke who does stunts on a bike, in jeans and t-shirt, I may add. Our 'Live at the Apollo' equivalent? Dolly-bird, with her breasts overflowing her dress, skirt up to here, accompanied by two blokes who are, of course, fully dressed. The women, even when successful comediennes in their own right, are more often than not used for their body and beauty than for their comedic timing, as a foil for the men. Women are, in the vast majority of cases, included for their ornamental value.
Amanda Knox was held accountable for her 'promiscuous behaviour', the utterly scandalous detail that she had a 'sex toy in her wash-bag' and had her own condoms. To me, it sounds perfectly reasonable and actually, she sounds like a sensible girl sorting out her own pleasures and precautions. The Italian media and legal system took this as a sign that she was a bad sort and somehow as evidence that this is what led to her raping, torturing and killing her room-mate. Italian women who are not showing their breasts on TV or standing with all on view by the side of the road (and actually, most of the goods on view are imported into Italy) are still far from emancipated. It is rare to see groups of girls in bars, out for a night just to have fun together. Groups of boys, yes; couples, yes; but rarely will you see the common sight in the UK of a gaggle of girls laughing raucously without a man by their side. There may be a couple of girls, who will have an ice-cream or cup of coffee together, but then they head home. I believe it was a misunderstanding of the more emancipated American culture that drew many of the male, 'buon famiglie', members of the legal system into the conclusions they did.
I have a young, pretty, petite friend who is a lawyer doing further study. She has told me that a male colleague took her to one side and advised her not to wear her shirts buttoned up so tight as she would get a better showing from the judge. Another young girl who works in my hairdresser and happens to be Anglo-Italian has told me she wants to go to work in the UK when she qualifies as 'they don't judge your work by how pretty you are'. Luckily for me, my husband is utterly egalitarian in his gender views, but even he doesn't see how difficult Italian culture can be for a modern young woman taking for granted her right to have fun and enjoy life - be it sex, alcohol or the odd 'marijuana cigarette'. But then, what surprises can there be with a person such as Silvio Berlusconi and his vile, casual sexism in charge of the country?
We have an Italian friend, a record producer who has lived and worked in London for many years. He has digital Italian TV. He tells us, 'if I want to have my mind broadened or be spoken to on my level, I watch the BBC. If I want tits and arse, I watch Italian TV'. Amanda Knox, young, pretty, emancipated Amanda Knox, didn't stand a chance.
Rachael Wilkinson
Via Vincenzo Federici No. 10
Monterotondo (Roma)
00015
Italia
+39 348 3450724 (Mob)
It looked like a witch trial with additional trial by media and it felt all wrong. Jurors are not sequestered here so they were free to read all the intimate details, and form their own opinions, on Amanda Knox's life before it even got to trial,. There was from the beginning very little evidence to support the case. It seems that the fact that she 'behaved oddly' when Meredith Kercher was discovered was a major point against her. This of course is not real evidence, it is a 'gut feeling' - which works fine in a detective story where the 'gut feeling' is felt by the hero and ultimately leads to the catching of the bad guy. But this cannot work in a real-life court of law. The language used in the court of appeal was just horrific. She was accused of being given over to 'lust, narcotic substances and the consumption of alcohol'. Oh dear. In which case, 90% of the students in the UK are carrying out the same wild and terrifying behaviour.
Apart from all the legal aspects - there are some good articles about Giuliano Mignini and his own issues in knowing which side of the law he should be on - it gives a great insight into the hypocrisy of Italian society with regard to women. On the one hand, at ANY GIVEN MOMENT, I can point you in the direction of prostitutes standing by the roadside looking for business. These are main roads, one of which runs past the Sky TV HQ, outside which there are often young, scarily scantily-clad girls touting for trade. I have driven along these main trunk roads at rush hour when the famous Roman traffic permanently threatens to grind to a halt with my two young boys in the car and had the arses of said 'mignotte', hookers, grinding in my direction in their underwear. In broad daylight and nose-to-tail traffic. Alemanno, the Roman mayor, came to victory a couple of years ago and promised a 'zero tolerance' policy on the prostitutes and for several months, my husband and I didn't argue about the state of 'it' driving into town because, amazingly, it turns out that if you threaten to send a letter home about your kerb crawling and send the police in to move them on on a regular basis, it actually nips the problem in the bud. My husband's attitude is much the same as most Italians - you can moan all you like but there's nothing you can do about it. (This attitude, by the way, applies to almost everything unpleasant about Italian life). They are almost all back now, however, and just as young and just as brazen as ever they were. Seems the police have better things to do with their time these days.
I very rarely watch Italian TV either as, again, it invariably ends up in an argument. There are scantily-clad women on everywhere, often as not with an older, or at least fully-dressed, male companion. Our version of 'You've Been Framed'? Girl in a bikini top accompanied by a bloke who does stunts on a bike, in jeans and t-shirt, I may add. Our 'Live at the Apollo' equivalent? Dolly-bird, with her breasts overflowing her dress, skirt up to here, accompanied by two blokes who are, of course, fully dressed. The women, even when successful comediennes in their own right, are more often than not used for their body and beauty than for their comedic timing, as a foil for the men. Women are, in the vast majority of cases, included for their ornamental value.
Amanda Knox was held accountable for her 'promiscuous behaviour', the utterly scandalous detail that she had a 'sex toy in her wash-bag' and had her own condoms. To me, it sounds perfectly reasonable and actually, she sounds like a sensible girl sorting out her own pleasures and precautions. The Italian media and legal system took this as a sign that she was a bad sort and somehow as evidence that this is what led to her raping, torturing and killing her room-mate. Italian women who are not showing their breasts on TV or standing with all on view by the side of the road (and actually, most of the goods on view are imported into Italy) are still far from emancipated. It is rare to see groups of girls in bars, out for a night just to have fun together. Groups of boys, yes; couples, yes; but rarely will you see the common sight in the UK of a gaggle of girls laughing raucously without a man by their side. There may be a couple of girls, who will have an ice-cream or cup of coffee together, but then they head home. I believe it was a misunderstanding of the more emancipated American culture that drew many of the male, 'buon famiglie', members of the legal system into the conclusions they did.
I have a young, pretty, petite friend who is a lawyer doing further study. She has told me that a male colleague took her to one side and advised her not to wear her shirts buttoned up so tight as she would get a better showing from the judge. Another young girl who works in my hairdresser and happens to be Anglo-Italian has told me she wants to go to work in the UK when she qualifies as 'they don't judge your work by how pretty you are'. Luckily for me, my husband is utterly egalitarian in his gender views, but even he doesn't see how difficult Italian culture can be for a modern young woman taking for granted her right to have fun and enjoy life - be it sex, alcohol or the odd 'marijuana cigarette'. But then, what surprises can there be with a person such as Silvio Berlusconi and his vile, casual sexism in charge of the country?
We have an Italian friend, a record producer who has lived and worked in London for many years. He has digital Italian TV. He tells us, 'if I want to have my mind broadened or be spoken to on my level, I watch the BBC. If I want tits and arse, I watch Italian TV'. Amanda Knox, young, pretty, emancipated Amanda Knox, didn't stand a chance.
Rachael Wilkinson
Via Vincenzo Federici No. 10
Monterotondo (Roma)
00015
Italia
+39 348 3450724 (Mob)
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Summer Daze
God, I'm bored. The boys are away for their second annual Spoil-athon at Nanna and Grandad's and I've come back to keep E company during the roiling heat of the summer. I cannot complain, other than that the sunbeds by the pool are a tad uncomfy - he has to work in 39° heat, wearing a suit. I will never understand what it is about the men of Bermuda that makes them uniquely intelligent enough to wear their eponymous shorts to work and yet every other man in the world, it seems, hasn't cottoned on to the hot weather-smart shorts working combo. The Italian man, predictably, has it even worse - they insist on wearing knee-high socks at all times under suit trousers. Apparently, the flash of a hairy ankle under a trouser leg is an ascetic no-no. So, long trousers and knee-high socks in the height of summer, a winning combination.
We are not going so wild this year and trying to cram as much as we can into our 'childless' time as we did last year. I think that now the boys are bigger, we really don't curb ourselves so much in what we want to do and anyway, there's always the babysitter if we do need to go out. Hangovers, on the rare-ish occasion that they do happen these days, can generally be coped with by switching the cartoons on (kids) and crawling back to bed (us). So I am missing them rather, my special purpose is missing (not in Steve Martin kind of way) and I am literally just lying around wondering vaguely if there is something I should be doing, which is a very odd position to be in, as generally I have about 10 things at once I should be doing.
Not long now till I head back to Spain to pick them up and then a month-long jaunt round the UK. I am keeping everything crossed that the weather holds, not so much for myself - I am desperate to sleep through the night without the hot-cold-hot airconditioner game - but for E. He has had to endure working through the cauldron of a Roman summer and will not be getting his beach pay-off at the end of it. I just hope that we get some nice weather and that he is as impressed with the other bits of the UK as he has been with London and Lincoln. As long as he's getting fed well, we'll be on to a good start, but if, as is predicted, it rains all month, I think I am going to have a hard time convincing him of the joys of an English summer again and bang goes any hope of discovering other parts of the British Isles with my family.
I am hoping the boys grow with enquisitve minds and wandering spirits so I will at least have two other companions to fall back on if I can't persuade E. We do what we can now and they have seen far more of the world than alot of kids their age, I am just hoping this doesn't end in a video-game addicted backlash, which, if we are not very careful, G is likely to do. He has displayed an addictive side to him since he was capable of holding on to a spoon for long periods of time (the ''poon' period) then a hammer (the ''ammer' period), then Thomas, then Ben 10 and now we are entering the dangerous waters of Computer Games. Edo doesn't get like this, he just copies, in a watered down way, his big brother. They get 15 mins a day playing games on the computer for good behaviour ('When the buzzer goes THAT IS IT!!'). This means me not having to repeat, 'get dressed, do your teeth, do your hair', ad nauseam in the morning. And another 15 mins for esp good behaviour - me not having to repeat the mantra AT ALL. Those blessed days rarely occur but the threat of taking the 15 mins away works mirculous wonders on misbehaviour. We keep a close eye on it and so far it's under control. Lord knows what's going to happen when we finally cave in and he gets one of those X-Station Playbox things. Some serious parenting skills are going to have to be brought to bear with not a little heavy coertion, I fear. Either that or we end up with a grunting game-addict with few people skills and preternaturally large thumbs. *shudder* It is not a thought that a good mum should have I am sure, but boarding school is starting to look rather attractive about now...
We are not going so wild this year and trying to cram as much as we can into our 'childless' time as we did last year. I think that now the boys are bigger, we really don't curb ourselves so much in what we want to do and anyway, there's always the babysitter if we do need to go out. Hangovers, on the rare-ish occasion that they do happen these days, can generally be coped with by switching the cartoons on (kids) and crawling back to bed (us). So I am missing them rather, my special purpose is missing (not in Steve Martin kind of way) and I am literally just lying around wondering vaguely if there is something I should be doing, which is a very odd position to be in, as generally I have about 10 things at once I should be doing.
Not long now till I head back to Spain to pick them up and then a month-long jaunt round the UK. I am keeping everything crossed that the weather holds, not so much for myself - I am desperate to sleep through the night without the hot-cold-hot airconditioner game - but for E. He has had to endure working through the cauldron of a Roman summer and will not be getting his beach pay-off at the end of it. I just hope that we get some nice weather and that he is as impressed with the other bits of the UK as he has been with London and Lincoln. As long as he's getting fed well, we'll be on to a good start, but if, as is predicted, it rains all month, I think I am going to have a hard time convincing him of the joys of an English summer again and bang goes any hope of discovering other parts of the British Isles with my family.
I am hoping the boys grow with enquisitve minds and wandering spirits so I will at least have two other companions to fall back on if I can't persuade E. We do what we can now and they have seen far more of the world than alot of kids their age, I am just hoping this doesn't end in a video-game addicted backlash, which, if we are not very careful, G is likely to do. He has displayed an addictive side to him since he was capable of holding on to a spoon for long periods of time (the ''poon' period) then a hammer (the ''ammer' period), then Thomas, then Ben 10 and now we are entering the dangerous waters of Computer Games. Edo doesn't get like this, he just copies, in a watered down way, his big brother. They get 15 mins a day playing games on the computer for good behaviour ('When the buzzer goes THAT IS IT!!'). This means me not having to repeat, 'get dressed, do your teeth, do your hair', ad nauseam in the morning. And another 15 mins for esp good behaviour - me not having to repeat the mantra AT ALL. Those blessed days rarely occur but the threat of taking the 15 mins away works mirculous wonders on misbehaviour. We keep a close eye on it and so far it's under control. Lord knows what's going to happen when we finally cave in and he gets one of those X-Station Playbox things. Some serious parenting skills are going to have to be brought to bear with not a little heavy coertion, I fear. Either that or we end up with a grunting game-addict with few people skills and preternaturally large thumbs. *shudder* It is not a thought that a good mum should have I am sure, but boarding school is starting to look rather attractive about now...
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Life Goes On..
Not been on here for flipping ages... Not really had the time or inclination frankly, although I have one saved post I'm going to let loose once I've rambled on here for a while.
Well. I was going to say that I am slowly adjusting to life after the miscarriage 5 weeks ago but that isn't the case really. I don't ever think of myself as a particularly delicate flower. I am rather robust, rude in health and proud of my bluff Yorkshire roots. I don't tend to dwell too much on things and have only once in my life been so emotional to the extent that my appetite has been affected. So, I am not really sure what is going on here, whether my hormones are affecting me still or some deep psychological effect is taking place. All I know is, I think about not having a baby alot. I was pregnant and then I wasn't and now I have very little chance of being pregnant again and it is preoccupying many of my thoughts. The fact that DH has concluded that he doesn't want to try again, that he saw me suffering when the gynae pointed out the empty gestational sac patently devoid of the little beating heart we'd seen three weeks earlier and doesn't ever want to face going through that again... I don't know if that is making me feel so much worse or I'd feel the same, but I am fairly sure that some hope would be better than none.
I don't know if this is going to go away, I hope it will because I am worried that otherwise I will spend the rest of my life with a small but significant hole in it and a resentment for the other half that he wouldn't let me have my own way and at least try to fill it. Er... As it were...
Otherwise, we are generally back into the Summer Merry-go-round, trying to escape the heat of Rome and find somewhere with a nice breeze to keep the suffocating heat at bay. We had a lovely weekend with friends in Gaeta, a pretty town on the Latina coast. The beaches are fine and clean and the sea rolls gently out so far that the kids are able to play and run without dropping into deep water. We were with friends who are super-attentive though, helicopter parenting doesn't come into it. More hovercraft parenting, actually. Their level of anxiety is such that they rarely allowed themselves fun. The children were so constantly monitored that they also rarely got a chance just to play and not worry about the water on their heads, in their ears, the depth of the waves, the splashing... To be fair to them, their children (two) are more delicate than ours and suffer many more infections, colds etc. It does beg the question though, is a delicate constitution nature or nurture? I have not had a cold all year this year, in spite of being surrounded by flu's and colds, the boys have had a below average smattering of coughs and sneezes - I had to be half dead before I was taken out of school and I wonder if this attitude and way of caring for illness, and the way it has influenced my parenting, is a factor in our hale and hearty constitutions? If, by not stopping and molly-coddling (how old fashioned a term that is these days) and dosing and anti-biotic-ing and just getting on with it, we have strengthened our immune systems? Or maybe we are just plain lucky. Could very well just be the latter, I should be touching wood right now, I am sure.
*sigh*
I'm off to hang the towels out. Then I'm off to hoover the sand up that came off the towels. It's great getting back from holiday...
Well. I was going to say that I am slowly adjusting to life after the miscarriage 5 weeks ago but that isn't the case really. I don't ever think of myself as a particularly delicate flower. I am rather robust, rude in health and proud of my bluff Yorkshire roots. I don't tend to dwell too much on things and have only once in my life been so emotional to the extent that my appetite has been affected. So, I am not really sure what is going on here, whether my hormones are affecting me still or some deep psychological effect is taking place. All I know is, I think about not having a baby alot. I was pregnant and then I wasn't and now I have very little chance of being pregnant again and it is preoccupying many of my thoughts. The fact that DH has concluded that he doesn't want to try again, that he saw me suffering when the gynae pointed out the empty gestational sac patently devoid of the little beating heart we'd seen three weeks earlier and doesn't ever want to face going through that again... I don't know if that is making me feel so much worse or I'd feel the same, but I am fairly sure that some hope would be better than none.
I don't know if this is going to go away, I hope it will because I am worried that otherwise I will spend the rest of my life with a small but significant hole in it and a resentment for the other half that he wouldn't let me have my own way and at least try to fill it. Er... As it were...
Otherwise, we are generally back into the Summer Merry-go-round, trying to escape the heat of Rome and find somewhere with a nice breeze to keep the suffocating heat at bay. We had a lovely weekend with friends in Gaeta, a pretty town on the Latina coast. The beaches are fine and clean and the sea rolls gently out so far that the kids are able to play and run without dropping into deep water. We were with friends who are super-attentive though, helicopter parenting doesn't come into it. More hovercraft parenting, actually. Their level of anxiety is such that they rarely allowed themselves fun. The children were so constantly monitored that they also rarely got a chance just to play and not worry about the water on their heads, in their ears, the depth of the waves, the splashing... To be fair to them, their children (two) are more delicate than ours and suffer many more infections, colds etc. It does beg the question though, is a delicate constitution nature or nurture? I have not had a cold all year this year, in spite of being surrounded by flu's and colds, the boys have had a below average smattering of coughs and sneezes - I had to be half dead before I was taken out of school and I wonder if this attitude and way of caring for illness, and the way it has influenced my parenting, is a factor in our hale and hearty constitutions? If, by not stopping and molly-coddling (how old fashioned a term that is these days) and dosing and anti-biotic-ing and just getting on with it, we have strengthened our immune systems? Or maybe we are just plain lucky. Could very well just be the latter, I should be touching wood right now, I am sure.
*sigh*
I'm off to hang the towels out. Then I'm off to hoover the sand up that came off the towels. It's great getting back from holiday...
The Best Laid Plans.
I am keeping this post private for the time being while I come to terms with our news and hopefully see things settle down a bit more. By things, I mean we are pregnant and I am 42 and E is 47 and we hadn't expected this to happen and oh MY GOD oh my God OH MY GOD!!!
It has arrived at exactly the right moment. Ha. If I had a font that signified 'dripping in sarcasm', I would be using that right there. After leaving work early when I was pregnant with Giorgio, 6 years ago, I haven't worked since - unless you are an enlightened being and recognise that bringing up two vivacious boys in close succession is in fact full time work sufficient to occupy a couple of people and then some - in which case, I have been fully employed but unpaid since then. However - all this was about to change. I have had so many offers/ demands/ cajolings since I got to Italy to teach English or do private lessons, but since I taught at the boys' nursery, I have avoided it like the plague. Even grown-ups, I hate teaching full stop and wasn't about to get drawn back into it, being uncharacteristically stubborn about it when asked. Then one day, a friend rang and said she was starting a travel and events company and would I come on board? It would be a brand new office in a lovely new hotel and sports complex just down the road and if I only wanted to do mornings so I could be there for the boys in the afternoon, that would be fine too.
So tomorrow I am going to Verona for a week with her on a training course knowing that, barring any mishaps, I ain't going to be working for another couple of years yet... I feel really bad for her, I so don't want to let her down.
Of course, we were also supposed to be moving into the new house in the Autumn. It is a new build in the country, three stories with much more room and garden than we have now. Effectively a blank canvas. I have been looking forward to moving for about a year and have been steadily decorating each room in my mind and getting more and more excited the closer it got to making my ideas reality. Like that's going to happen now... *sigh*
I have gone through broody moments over the past few years, when Edo started at nursery, when friends have announced pregnancies or babies born. Much of it was born out a need for a purpose, I think now, which the new job was set to provide. We didn't expect this at all - in fact, the last trip to the gynae, he told me I was looking at perimenopause so I got all anxious about hot flushes and hair loss. Wrong!
This blog is going to take rather a surprising turn so, bear with me as I struggle to give up the lovely predicatable happy future we had for another we just can't anticipate.
It has arrived at exactly the right moment. Ha. If I had a font that signified 'dripping in sarcasm', I would be using that right there. After leaving work early when I was pregnant with Giorgio, 6 years ago, I haven't worked since - unless you are an enlightened being and recognise that bringing up two vivacious boys in close succession is in fact full time work sufficient to occupy a couple of people and then some - in which case, I have been fully employed but unpaid since then. However - all this was about to change. I have had so many offers/ demands/ cajolings since I got to Italy to teach English or do private lessons, but since I taught at the boys' nursery, I have avoided it like the plague. Even grown-ups, I hate teaching full stop and wasn't about to get drawn back into it, being uncharacteristically stubborn about it when asked. Then one day, a friend rang and said she was starting a travel and events company and would I come on board? It would be a brand new office in a lovely new hotel and sports complex just down the road and if I only wanted to do mornings so I could be there for the boys in the afternoon, that would be fine too.
So tomorrow I am going to Verona for a week with her on a training course knowing that, barring any mishaps, I ain't going to be working for another couple of years yet... I feel really bad for her, I so don't want to let her down.
Of course, we were also supposed to be moving into the new house in the Autumn. It is a new build in the country, three stories with much more room and garden than we have now. Effectively a blank canvas. I have been looking forward to moving for about a year and have been steadily decorating each room in my mind and getting more and more excited the closer it got to making my ideas reality. Like that's going to happen now... *sigh*
I have gone through broody moments over the past few years, when Edo started at nursery, when friends have announced pregnancies or babies born. Much of it was born out a need for a purpose, I think now, which the new job was set to provide. We didn't expect this at all - in fact, the last trip to the gynae, he told me I was looking at perimenopause so I got all anxious about hot flushes and hair loss. Wrong!
This blog is going to take rather a surprising turn so, bear with me as I struggle to give up the lovely predicatable happy future we had for another we just can't anticipate.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
It has been snowing in the UK for about three weeks now. I have seen photo after photo of snow-covered landscapes that frankly, would take an imbecile to make unattractive. I am DESPERATE for a flake of snow, but no, here in Rome we get snow very infrequently and even then it doesn't settle - which is almost worse. It's like having a bottle of wine with just a couple of centimetres left in the bottom and no more in the rack. You eke it out wishing there was more and that it would last longer, but no, it is what it is and it's gone far too quickly. (I'm not an alcoholic, honest). It's not a relaxing experience, watching it snowing here. Saying that, I have only seen heavy sleet, not your actual genuine Roman snow. That only happens when I go away - earlier this year there was a light sprinkling. I was in Spain. The photos were lovely.
So this year, I have been watching all the snow falling in the UK with a sinking heart, miserable that I'm not there to enjoy it. Homesickness always kicks in in the run up to Christmas. I miss how over-the-top we do things in the UK. You in the UK will scoff - and I well remember how hideously irritating Christmas can become after it's been rammed down your throat since the end of the summer holidays. Things here are much more understated. We went to the Piazza del Popolo last week and the tree there looks lovely, dominating the Piazza in an elegant way, not trying too hard to be the centre of attention. There are delicate lights which certain stores have taken it upon themselves to put up and the odd side-street which has gone the whole hog and strung lights from one end to another, but you don't get the feeling that it's something they want to shout about. You don't hear the same ten songs on a loop in every shop you go into. Which is good and bad, it's sort of a pleasure/ pain thing. Does it make me want to introduce a yule log somewhere unmentionable every time I hear bloody Mariah warbling or Jonah Louis droning? Yes. Do I miss them when they aren't around? Yes. I have a CD of Christmas songs, and yet I miss getting bludgeoned by them every time I step out of the door. It's tradition.
Anyway, as is the way with most things, Christmas is transformed since having children and I am loving preparing Gingerbread Men, coating the whole kitchen in a fine sticky layer making marmalade for presents, baking rich fruit cakes, and the tradition-in-the-making Gingerbread Cottage is in the process of being assembled. The boys have already spoken to Santa. Disconcertingly, heartbreakingly, my youngest at 4, replied to the question, 'aren't you LUCKY to have spoken to Santa?', with 'it was only DADDY, Mummy!'. How can that be?? The oldest, at 5, tried to warn him he was dicing with a sack of coal on Christmas morning, but youngest wouldn't have it. 'But I was laughing with Daddy, Mummy, he always says 'ho! ho! ho!' like that!'. I'd thought he was quite convincing. Obviously not convincing enough. I am hoping the Portable North Pole people can erase the scepticism, I can't bear the thought of innocence coming to an end so soon.
So we are heading off to Spain in a couple of days to spend Christmas with the grandparents, who are no doubt more excited than anyone, given that they get the double joy of spending lots of time with the grandchildren AND spoiling them rotten over Christmas without Enrico or I trying to rein them in and stop with the spoiling, already, because if they can't get spoilt at Christmas, they may as well give up being children and head off to work now.
And guess what? The temperature's dropping alarmingly. We are due to leave in five more sleeps. Snow is forecast - I check the Lazio weather forecast with obsessive frequency - everywhere but where we are, and I am willing to place a bet, ladies and gentlemen, that it snows with abandon in the near future. It's just saving it all up until we're on the plane. Next year, I'll be doing Christmas in Lapland. I will have snow and sleigh bells, come Hell or high water.
So this year, I have been watching all the snow falling in the UK with a sinking heart, miserable that I'm not there to enjoy it. Homesickness always kicks in in the run up to Christmas. I miss how over-the-top we do things in the UK. You in the UK will scoff - and I well remember how hideously irritating Christmas can become after it's been rammed down your throat since the end of the summer holidays. Things here are much more understated. We went to the Piazza del Popolo last week and the tree there looks lovely, dominating the Piazza in an elegant way, not trying too hard to be the centre of attention. There are delicate lights which certain stores have taken it upon themselves to put up and the odd side-street which has gone the whole hog and strung lights from one end to another, but you don't get the feeling that it's something they want to shout about. You don't hear the same ten songs on a loop in every shop you go into. Which is good and bad, it's sort of a pleasure/ pain thing. Does it make me want to introduce a yule log somewhere unmentionable every time I hear bloody Mariah warbling or Jonah Louis droning? Yes. Do I miss them when they aren't around? Yes. I have a CD of Christmas songs, and yet I miss getting bludgeoned by them every time I step out of the door. It's tradition.So we are heading off to Spain in a couple of days to spend Christmas with the grandparents, who are no doubt more excited than anyone, given that they get the double joy of spending lots of time with the grandchildren AND spoiling them rotten over Christmas without Enrico or I trying to rein them in and stop with the spoiling, already, because if they can't get spoilt at Christmas, they may as well give up being children and head off to work now.
And guess what? The temperature's dropping alarmingly. We are due to leave in five more sleeps. Snow is forecast - I check the Lazio weather forecast with obsessive frequency - everywhere but where we are, and I am willing to place a bet, ladies and gentlemen, that it snows with abandon in the near future. It's just saving it all up until we're on the plane. Next year, I'll be doing Christmas in Lapland. I will have snow and sleigh bells, come Hell or high water.
Monday, 27 September 2010
An Amateur Cook in Italy
I am actually a great cook - much to my surprise after years not doing much more than heating up the Breville. (By the way - I never realised that all the fat from the cheese that you over-stuff in those things (just me then?) runs out and collects underneath. That was NOT a pleasant surprise, who could guess that rancid fat could smell so bad?)
Since the boys were weaned, however, I really started getting into it and from my first Anabel Karmel experiences (lunatic woman, who on earth is going to spend three hours over a meal for a toddler, pur-lease?) started branching out. As I have acknowledged many, many times, Enrico is the chef in this family and that is the difference between us. He is a chef and I am a cook. I look stuff up on the internet, almost always, www.bbcgoodfood.com, all recipes infallible as well as delicious, with the comments that come afterwards the cherry on the cake, as it were. Or my old faithfuls, Nigella Lawson's How to Eat and the grandmammy of them all, Delia's Complete Cookery Course. I find something I like that matches the ingredients I have available and Jamie's yer uncle, dinner's ready. Enrico generally doesn't look at recipes. He is a savant in the kitchen and can throw things together - simple, basic, nothing flashy - and they come out delicious and perfect. He has a knack and a gift and I never stop being grateful for a husband who cooks. I have friends whose husbands barely toast their own bread, so the bonus of being able to say, 'do you fancy cooking tonight?' and having someone who actually enjoys the process is marvellous. He uses cooking as a way of relaxing and switching off. I use it to feed people and usually end up stressed myself in the process.
So arriving in Italy just when my wings were fledging in the kitchen, so to speak, was a bit of a shock. Italian supermarkets are full of great Italian stuff but very little in the way of anything more exotic or indeed that is not Italian. I missed bread - and still do, from the fantastic plastic bread that is the only thing to put around some crisp, meaty bacon and ketchup - oh and the bacon that goes with it - to wonderful poppy-seed, wholemeal, cheese, farmhouse breads, all of which are the only solution in certain sandwich situations. I decided to make my own when the boys first started at nursery and I had time on my hands. And blimey, do you need time. I needed around a loaf every couple of days, minimum, and making those loaves took up a fair chunk of my, theoretically free, time in the mornings.
They were generally tasty but I don't know what industrial breadmakers put into their loaves - whatever it is, I don't got it and they were usually a little on the dense side. Not the light, fluffy loaf I craved. Still not solved as the usual Italian loaf is made for bruschetta, but we have discovered a good bakery near E's office who do nice wholemeal and 'farro' bread - according to Wikipedia, it's an old-fashioned wheat variety - either way, it makes a tasty and moist loaf. From never really taking to them in the UK, I have also become rather fond of the wrap, for which I use a piadina, an Italian flatbread from the Romagna region, which is actually available all over Italy. When Enrico made his own one time, we realised why they are so delicious - one of the fat ingredients is lard, which takes them to a whole other level that tortilla wraps just don't seem to attain.
When Enrico and I were first together, one of our many points of difference was the fact that I can quite easily eat a sandwich and a bag of crisps or yoghurt for lunch and not think twice about it. For him, a sandwich for lunch is an aberration and only partaken in the most extreme emergencies. He is not a little chap - 6'1-ish I think, and not exactly of whippet proportions either and he does have a point when he says that it wouldn't keep him going till dinner. However - spread the bread flat, smear on some passata, a few leaves of rocket with some buffalo mozzarella on top and call it pizza: This can quite easily keep him going all afternoon. Every society has their own carbohydrate load and in Italy it's pizza. For us anglo saxons, it's a sandwich. We were watching a very good Roman comedian the other night in a TV special - his girlfriend is American and he was recounting coming home for lunch to see she'd made a toasted sandwich. He had us laughing in recognition at his horror and the thought of what his father would have said, coming home to the same lunch. It would have been assumed that the mother was having an affair that she had so carelessly and with so little time prepared such a lunch!
However, in this as in many things, I am going native. I now actually feel a little cheated if I just throw myself a sandwich together on those days that E's not home for lunch. I have caught the cooking bug and have grown to enjoy trying new things - and frankly, in the absence of ethnic or 'exotic' produce here, if I want something not Italian, I am going to bloomin' well have to prepare it myself anyway. Although I am now growing my own coriander, I don't have a chance in hell of getting hold of red or green curry paste, lime leaves, pak choi, and lemongrass but my English cravings are met by Marmite flown over from the UK (thank you, Joe, thank you Catherine) and I was utterly delighted with a pressie of a big tub of Horlicks (thank you, Loob!!). I am told there is a mythical place called Piazza Victorio in Rome where all of the 'exotic' ingredients can be bought but even the Indian man who has taken over Massimo the Grocer's shop hasn't been able to get hold of a bunch of fresh coriander for me. Little by little, though, I am sourcing things that initially I thought would be unobtainable - ground almonds (for the Bakewell Tart craving), creme fraiche, Gruyère cheese, I even found a place to get fish sauce for curries the other day, yay! So I live in hope that one day I'll be able to get a big bunch of coriander without the two month wait that proceeds it as it grows from a tiny seed. Cross fingers...
Since the boys were weaned, however, I really started getting into it and from my first Anabel Karmel experiences (lunatic woman, who on earth is going to spend three hours over a meal for a toddler, pur-lease?) started branching out. As I have acknowledged many, many times, Enrico is the chef in this family and that is the difference between us. He is a chef and I am a cook. I look stuff up on the internet, almost always, www.bbcgoodfood.com, all recipes infallible as well as delicious, with the comments that come afterwards the cherry on the cake, as it were. Or my old faithfuls, Nigella Lawson's How to Eat and the grandmammy of them all, Delia's Complete Cookery Course. I find something I like that matches the ingredients I have available and Jamie's yer uncle, dinner's ready. Enrico generally doesn't look at recipes. He is a savant in the kitchen and can throw things together - simple, basic, nothing flashy - and they come out delicious and perfect. He has a knack and a gift and I never stop being grateful for a husband who cooks. I have friends whose husbands barely toast their own bread, so the bonus of being able to say, 'do you fancy cooking tonight?' and having someone who actually enjoys the process is marvellous. He uses cooking as a way of relaxing and switching off. I use it to feed people and usually end up stressed myself in the process.
So arriving in Italy just when my wings were fledging in the kitchen, so to speak, was a bit of a shock. Italian supermarkets are full of great Italian stuff but very little in the way of anything more exotic or indeed that is not Italian. I missed bread - and still do, from the fantastic plastic bread that is the only thing to put around some crisp, meaty bacon and ketchup - oh and the bacon that goes with it - to wonderful poppy-seed, wholemeal, cheese, farmhouse breads, all of which are the only solution in certain sandwich situations. I decided to make my own when the boys first started at nursery and I had time on my hands. And blimey, do you need time. I needed around a loaf every couple of days, minimum, and making those loaves took up a fair chunk of my, theoretically free, time in the mornings.
They were generally tasty but I don't know what industrial breadmakers put into their loaves - whatever it is, I don't got it and they were usually a little on the dense side. Not the light, fluffy loaf I craved. Still not solved as the usual Italian loaf is made for bruschetta, but we have discovered a good bakery near E's office who do nice wholemeal and 'farro' bread - according to Wikipedia, it's an old-fashioned wheat variety - either way, it makes a tasty and moist loaf. From never really taking to them in the UK, I have also become rather fond of the wrap, for which I use a piadina, an Italian flatbread from the Romagna region, which is actually available all over Italy. When Enrico made his own one time, we realised why they are so delicious - one of the fat ingredients is lard, which takes them to a whole other level that tortilla wraps just don't seem to attain.
When Enrico and I were first together, one of our many points of difference was the fact that I can quite easily eat a sandwich and a bag of crisps or yoghurt for lunch and not think twice about it. For him, a sandwich for lunch is an aberration and only partaken in the most extreme emergencies. He is not a little chap - 6'1-ish I think, and not exactly of whippet proportions either and he does have a point when he says that it wouldn't keep him going till dinner. However - spread the bread flat, smear on some passata, a few leaves of rocket with some buffalo mozzarella on top and call it pizza: This can quite easily keep him going all afternoon. Every society has their own carbohydrate load and in Italy it's pizza. For us anglo saxons, it's a sandwich. We were watching a very good Roman comedian the other night in a TV special - his girlfriend is American and he was recounting coming home for lunch to see she'd made a toasted sandwich. He had us laughing in recognition at his horror and the thought of what his father would have said, coming home to the same lunch. It would have been assumed that the mother was having an affair that she had so carelessly and with so little time prepared such a lunch!
However, in this as in many things, I am going native. I now actually feel a little cheated if I just throw myself a sandwich together on those days that E's not home for lunch. I have caught the cooking bug and have grown to enjoy trying new things - and frankly, in the absence of ethnic or 'exotic' produce here, if I want something not Italian, I am going to bloomin' well have to prepare it myself anyway. Although I am now growing my own coriander, I don't have a chance in hell of getting hold of red or green curry paste, lime leaves, pak choi, and lemongrass but my English cravings are met by Marmite flown over from the UK (thank you, Joe, thank you Catherine) and I was utterly delighted with a pressie of a big tub of Horlicks (thank you, Loob!!). I am told there is a mythical place called Piazza Victorio in Rome where all of the 'exotic' ingredients can be bought but even the Indian man who has taken over Massimo the Grocer's shop hasn't been able to get hold of a bunch of fresh coriander for me. Little by little, though, I am sourcing things that initially I thought would be unobtainable - ground almonds (for the Bakewell Tart craving), creme fraiche, Gruyère cheese, I even found a place to get fish sauce for curries the other day, yay! So I live in hope that one day I'll be able to get a big bunch of coriander without the two month wait that proceeds it as it grows from a tiny seed. Cross fingers...
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Things We Hear in Our House
These are phrases we hear all the time in our house. Feel free to add any I may have missed: I am sure that we are not the only ones....
'WHY do I have to repeat myself over and over again?'
'Did you hear what I said? Am I invisible?'
'I don't know why I even bother speaking, no-one listens to me'
'I said 'get dressed' HALF AN HOUR AGO'
'Sit still while you're eating'
On a theme:
'I don't know where you put it. Where did you see it last?'
And:
'If you'd put things away when you've finished them, you wouldn't keep losing them'
And:
'Well try opening your eyes while you're looking for it'
(Putting on shoes; taking t-shirt off alone etc)
'Why is it that you, at X years old, are not able to it while Y at (less) years old can?',
'You're not getting anything till you've tidied your room'
'No you can't have a snack, you won't eat your dinner'
'You had a drink of water before you went to bed. Now go to sleep!'
'I'll play with you in a sec once I've done this' (sound of computer whirring...)
'If you don't do X (eg put your pens away), there is no way you're doing Y (eg watching cartoons)'
'All these lovely toys and you don't appreciate them!! There are children in the world with no toys at all you know, they would be happy with just one of the toys you've got!'
Alternatively:
'Right, that's it! If you can't play together nicely, I'm going to give all your toys to the poor children who haven't got any. They'd appreciate them!'
'If he's teasing you, just don't go near him!'
'Giorgio/ Edoardo, LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE'
'How would you like it if I did that to you??'
'I am SICK and TIRED of telling you - you don't bite/ scratch/ kick etc your big/ (or more usually) little brother!'
'You should think yourself lucky you've got a brother to play with!'
I am sure there are a zillion more. These just came into my head straight away, probably because they make up they make up about 90% of the things I say every day. And who said that being a mother is intellectually limiting??
'WHY do I have to repeat myself over and over again?'
'Did you hear what I said? Am I invisible?'
'I don't know why I even bother speaking, no-one listens to me'
'I said 'get dressed' HALF AN HOUR AGO'
'Sit still while you're eating'
On a theme:
'I don't know where you put it. Where did you see it last?'
And:
'If you'd put things away when you've finished them, you wouldn't keep losing them'
And:
'Well try opening your eyes while you're looking for it'
(Putting on shoes; taking t-shirt off alone etc)
'Why is it that you, at X years old, are not able to it while Y at (less) years old can?',
'You're not getting anything till you've tidied your room'
'No you can't have a snack, you won't eat your dinner'
'You had a drink of water before you went to bed. Now go to sleep!'
'I'll play with you in a sec once I've done this' (sound of computer whirring...)
'If you don't do X (eg put your pens away), there is no way you're doing Y (eg watching cartoons)'
'All these lovely toys and you don't appreciate them!! There are children in the world with no toys at all you know, they would be happy with just one of the toys you've got!'
Alternatively:
'Right, that's it! If you can't play together nicely, I'm going to give all your toys to the poor children who haven't got any. They'd appreciate them!'
'If he's teasing you, just don't go near him!'
'Giorgio/ Edoardo, LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE'
'How would you like it if I did that to you??'
'I am SICK and TIRED of telling you - you don't bite/ scratch/ kick etc your big/ (or more usually) little brother!'
'You should think yourself lucky you've got a brother to play with!'
I am sure there are a zillion more. These just came into my head straight away, probably because they make up they make up about 90% of the things I say every day. And who said that being a mother is intellectually limiting??
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Mother's Pride
E has a saying, 'Even a cockroach is proud of its offspring', which I think is a bit of artistic licence, to be fair, can't imagine that cockroaches really feel much other than rapacious hunger but that's rather beside the point. I am inordinately proud of my beautiful children, most of the time, but none more so than those moments when we sit down to lunch or dinner and the pair of them tuck in to whatever is presented before them without batting an eyelid.
I was reminded of this as last night, I made a chicken and pumpkin curry with wholemeal rice for myself and Enrico. Luckily - like father, like sons. He would eat a scabby dog if you told him it was a local delicacy. The boys, I swear, polished off more than I could have managed and declared it delicious. I know how fortunate we are, I also know it is something I have engineered right from the beginning. Giorgio was weaned purely on vegetables, broccoli and spinach and Edoardo's first baby food was avocado mashed with banana. Both of them were later introduced to other foods but even now will eat the veg before the meat at mealtimes. They will also eat sweets and chocolate and fizzy drinks - but not to excess, and I have often been in the absurd position of having to almost force-feed them cake because they've filled themselves up with the main course. They are also aware that this ain't no restaurant - if they want to leave the meal I have lovingly and time-consumingly prepared for them, then that's fine by me (er - apart from the fact that I will probably have to eat it myself as I can't bare to see good food wasted. That's not so fine by me). Just do not be expecting me to rustle up anything else till the next mealtime. Going to bed hungry? Shame about that, should have eaten your dinner, shouldn't you?
One of the big differences between me and most of my Italian friends is the importance of routine at home. From the age of 4mths both boys have slept in their own cots then beds and very rarely, apart from illness, have spent the night in bed with us. For two reasons - once they get their grappling hooks into our bed, it's hellish trying to get them back into their own beds, and secondly - well, mum and dad need some privacy too. Not as much, frankly, these days, but I would say that's fairly typical of most older parents of young kids, honestly, that's what I tell Enrico, anyway. I need my sleep, dammit. Anyway - I have so many friends who still let their kids sleep in their beds. One of Giorgio's best friends is six years old and has never slept the night in his own bed. Enrico and at least two of his friends have called me 'Commandante' on more than one occasion (and if that's what they're saying to my face...) due to my insistence, particularly when the boys were smaller, on a strict feeding/ napping/ bath-story-bed routine. However, it's paying off now that they sleep 12 hours a night with rarely an interupption other than the odd pee or drink of water needed, and mealtimes are generally a pleasant affair conducted in a relatively civilised manner. Civilised as far as young boys can be, clearly.
A friend whose four year old sleeps between her and her husband tells me how lovely it is to have him there and he'll only be little once and we will miss them when they grow up and away and don't want cuddles from Mummy anymore - and I totally agree. Particularly as our younger son is a cuddly hot water bottle to sleep next to - the older one however being a sweaty, wriggling starfish. But although my reasons are also selfish, I believe that it's better for them too to learn independence and the absolute joy of sinking into one's own bed of an evening. Most of the time we still have the 'I'm not tired' argument, which when accompanied by sobs is the most evident sign of tiredness there is. However, once again, I think it's better for them in the long run to be given a routine to stick to - they can fight within the confines but there is a reassuring barrier there - and it's Mum, so don't even think about it, son!
I was reminded of this as last night, I made a chicken and pumpkin curry with wholemeal rice for myself and Enrico. Luckily - like father, like sons. He would eat a scabby dog if you told him it was a local delicacy. The boys, I swear, polished off more than I could have managed and declared it delicious. I know how fortunate we are, I also know it is something I have engineered right from the beginning. Giorgio was weaned purely on vegetables, broccoli and spinach and Edoardo's first baby food was avocado mashed with banana. Both of them were later introduced to other foods but even now will eat the veg before the meat at mealtimes. They will also eat sweets and chocolate and fizzy drinks - but not to excess, and I have often been in the absurd position of having to almost force-feed them cake because they've filled themselves up with the main course. They are also aware that this ain't no restaurant - if they want to leave the meal I have lovingly and time-consumingly prepared for them, then that's fine by me (er - apart from the fact that I will probably have to eat it myself as I can't bare to see good food wasted. That's not so fine by me). Just do not be expecting me to rustle up anything else till the next mealtime. Going to bed hungry? Shame about that, should have eaten your dinner, shouldn't you?
One of the big differences between me and most of my Italian friends is the importance of routine at home. From the age of 4mths both boys have slept in their own cots then beds and very rarely, apart from illness, have spent the night in bed with us. For two reasons - once they get their grappling hooks into our bed, it's hellish trying to get them back into their own beds, and secondly - well, mum and dad need some privacy too. Not as much, frankly, these days, but I would say that's fairly typical of most older parents of young kids, honestly, that's what I tell Enrico, anyway. I need my sleep, dammit. Anyway - I have so many friends who still let their kids sleep in their beds. One of Giorgio's best friends is six years old and has never slept the night in his own bed. Enrico and at least two of his friends have called me 'Commandante' on more than one occasion (and if that's what they're saying to my face...) due to my insistence, particularly when the boys were smaller, on a strict feeding/ napping/ bath-story-bed routine. However, it's paying off now that they sleep 12 hours a night with rarely an interupption other than the odd pee or drink of water needed, and mealtimes are generally a pleasant affair conducted in a relatively civilised manner. Civilised as far as young boys can be, clearly.
A friend whose four year old sleeps between her and her husband tells me how lovely it is to have him there and he'll only be little once and we will miss them when they grow up and away and don't want cuddles from Mummy anymore - and I totally agree. Particularly as our younger son is a cuddly hot water bottle to sleep next to - the older one however being a sweaty, wriggling starfish. But although my reasons are also selfish, I believe that it's better for them too to learn independence and the absolute joy of sinking into one's own bed of an evening. Most of the time we still have the 'I'm not tired' argument, which when accompanied by sobs is the most evident sign of tiredness there is. However, once again, I think it's better for them in the long run to be given a routine to stick to - they can fight within the confines but there is a reassuring barrier there - and it's Mum, so don't even think about it, son!
Back to Life...
The stinking roiling heat is mostly abating now and the holidays are most definitely over - which means back to school time for our boys. State schools here have stupendously long holidays - from mid-June to mid- Sept, as a coping mechanism for the heat, I think. Any family who has any money or connection to family either in the mountains or by the sea clears off as soon as is possible and returns as late as possible. I had a peripatetic time, starting in late June with a visit to friends in the UK, then to the Dolomites then to Spain to stay with my parents. It meant that this year, I have not noticed the heat half as much and hence am (relatively) sane going into Autumn.
Private nurseries start back earlier here, as a response to parents returning to their jobs, I expect. So Giorgio and Edo have already started back at a new nursery this year. It is one of the hardest things to do, leave your children in the care of, effectively, strangers, and I struggled again with it after such a long time together. The problem for me is that there are no half measures. You can't just drop your child off for a couple of mornings a week, there is no structure for it. It is all - in our case 9am till 2pm - or nothing. I even thought of just not sending them this year. But then the thought of us all at home alone through the dark days of winter soon sent me scurrying back to the school gates. Which relates to another feature of life as a mum in our part of Italy - I am in a party of one here. Every other mum friend of mine works, so is obliged to send their child to nursery. There just don't seem to be stay-at-home mums around. If I go to the park during the day during school-time, by far the majority of carers there with the children are grandparents. A distant second are foreign mums - by which I mean, generally, young Romanian, Albanian etc mums. So even if I didn't send the boys to nursery - what on earth would do every day?? There are only so many trips to the same parks you can make and they need to play with other children. There are no playgroups, no music groups to speak of. They are starting with swimming lessons soon, so great, that's two hours a week occupied, what do we do for the other gazillion hours a week we are home alone?? If it sounds like I'm justifying myself, well, I suppose I am, but times have changed and little kids can't just go out in the morning with their bikes and roam around with their mates all day before heading in for dinner in the evening. It definitely would end up with one or both of them being scraped off the road below in a very short time, apart from anything, but also - what responsible parent doesn't know where their children are every hour of every day these days?
So the new nursery is lovely, a Montessori with different games and things to do on every table, a big room for painting and drawing, sand boxes, a big park with swings and slides and wendy houses outside. We are really happy with it and so were the boys at first... They went in with great enthusiasm, even with tears when they had to go home but as reality bites, that they are there for the duration, we've had the odd collywobble of a morning... As I walked out this morning past the nursery for very small children, all I seemed to hear was the little ones crying for their mummies. Mine had been given lots of hugs and promises of things to do when they get home and seemed happy, finally, to get down to some painting - but the sound of so many tears on the way out very nearly made me wheel around and go to scrape them up in my arms and leave and never come back. I am hoping that we settle into the routine happily, both me and the boys, and get used to the mornings away from each other again. Of course we will but in the back of my head, there is a little voice that says, 'they're only young once, what are you doing sending them to school already???'. I am also hoping that that little voice quietens down too once they get properly settled...
Private nurseries start back earlier here, as a response to parents returning to their jobs, I expect. So Giorgio and Edo have already started back at a new nursery this year. It is one of the hardest things to do, leave your children in the care of, effectively, strangers, and I struggled again with it after such a long time together. The problem for me is that there are no half measures. You can't just drop your child off for a couple of mornings a week, there is no structure for it. It is all - in our case 9am till 2pm - or nothing. I even thought of just not sending them this year. But then the thought of us all at home alone through the dark days of winter soon sent me scurrying back to the school gates. Which relates to another feature of life as a mum in our part of Italy - I am in a party of one here. Every other mum friend of mine works, so is obliged to send their child to nursery. There just don't seem to be stay-at-home mums around. If I go to the park during the day during school-time, by far the majority of carers there with the children are grandparents. A distant second are foreign mums - by which I mean, generally, young Romanian, Albanian etc mums. So even if I didn't send the boys to nursery - what on earth would do every day?? There are only so many trips to the same parks you can make and they need to play with other children. There are no playgroups, no music groups to speak of. They are starting with swimming lessons soon, so great, that's two hours a week occupied, what do we do for the other gazillion hours a week we are home alone?? If it sounds like I'm justifying myself, well, I suppose I am, but times have changed and little kids can't just go out in the morning with their bikes and roam around with their mates all day before heading in for dinner in the evening. It definitely would end up with one or both of them being scraped off the road below in a very short time, apart from anything, but also - what responsible parent doesn't know where their children are every hour of every day these days?
So the new nursery is lovely, a Montessori with different games and things to do on every table, a big room for painting and drawing, sand boxes, a big park with swings and slides and wendy houses outside. We are really happy with it and so were the boys at first... They went in with great enthusiasm, even with tears when they had to go home but as reality bites, that they are there for the duration, we've had the odd collywobble of a morning... As I walked out this morning past the nursery for very small children, all I seemed to hear was the little ones crying for their mummies. Mine had been given lots of hugs and promises of things to do when they get home and seemed happy, finally, to get down to some painting - but the sound of so many tears on the way out very nearly made me wheel around and go to scrape them up in my arms and leave and never come back. I am hoping that we settle into the routine happily, both me and the boys, and get used to the mornings away from each other again. Of course we will but in the back of my head, there is a little voice that says, 'they're only young once, what are you doing sending them to school already???'. I am also hoping that that little voice quietens down too once they get properly settled...
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Thoroughly Modern Bride
At 7am the morning of the wedding, I was on the phone, making sure E was awake. I would have been delighted with up-and-about, but awake was the minimum I was hoping for. No answer. I started to get myself ready, get the kids up, organise them and point lovely helpful Mum in the right direction to help me with them, still no call. Finally, as we are getting to be about half way ready, he rings, all fine, all going to Schedule...
Did I mention I can be a total control freak? I subscribe little to horoscopes but I do like the duality of the Libra sign - I am either micro-managing or SERIOUSLY couldn't give a toss. This morning, I was micro-managing on crack. My main fear was the horror that is the Gibraltar border crossing. Getting out seems to be no major problem but they really don't like to let you in there. It's not like you're getting into the garden of Eden, ffs, in fact quite the opposite. Gib is a strange place where the locals speak a strange Welsh-accented (what's that all about?) English that's organically intertwined with Spanish, which gets chopped and changed around according to no particular logic that I can establish. It's like Blackpool (sorry Blackpudlians) with mangy monkeys, sunshine and bloody great tankers parked in the sea. Not a pretty place. So why they feel the need to build up so much anticipation with hour-long queues is quite beyond me.
SO. The plan is we all leave at 8am to get there for 10am. In theory, an hour and bit away but I have made lots of allowance for traffic jams, always a possibility as it was nominally rush-hour. We are a little way behind E as - as tradition dictates! - he has stayed, at my suggestion, at a friends' house for the night, in order not to 'see the bride' in the morning. Did I mention this friend of his is a notorious party animal, famous for his ability to cajole E into most anything?? His sweet gf was there too but I had my doubts, let's put it like that, as to her efficacy with the pair of them.
We are all to Schedule, in the car, heading down the mountain from Mum and Dad's house. Time for another call, just to make sure they are keeping to the Schedule too. 0815hrs. THEY HAVE STILL NOT LEF THE HOUSE!! Claudia is putting her make-up on!!!!! Total freak-out. What if the traffic's bad? What if we can't get into Gib?? What if we miss our slot??
My pep talk left something to be desired, consisting as it did with, 'dump her, get in the car, you're ruining everything!!!!!!'. Hmmm..... I think a touch of subtlety was the main lacking ingredient, perhaps with a hint of moderation, could have been useful. All the way to the border I had sweaty palms - I seriously have not felt that stressy for so long, my life consisting as it does of doing nothing really important, just getting myself around on a day to day basis.
Despite my doom-laden predictions, we got there - and it was empty. There were a couple of cars in front of us and that was it. I have NEVER, in all these years of doing UK supermarket runs over the border, ever, ever, ever seen so few cars. It was clearly meant to be. So, we took the car over instead of dumping it and making a run for a taxi once through the border crossing, and parked in a large multi-storey carpark not far from the grotty main street, at the end of which was our destination. Most brides probably prepare in their homes, not far from the venue and then enter serenely in some appropriate mode of luxury transport. My first time was with a horse and carriage, as it happens. I hadn't actually changed before leaving as I didn't want my dress to resemble a used paper bag. So I got changed in the carpark. I am nothing if not adaptable. We then headed down through Bhs into Main Street to have a leisurely stroll past the unloading lorries and early-bird tourists out for a bargain.
I was keeping my eye out the whole time for E's little party of three: Our total guest list consisted of Mum, Dad, our boys and Claudia and Gigi, at whose house he'd stayed the night before. Walking towards the registry office, I spied them all at a café just ahead. So we made a quick detour into Marks and Spencers and hid out until Dad cried, 'Cave chaps!', at which point we made the final stretch.
Dad was walking ahead and by now, my hat was on and my bouquet was in place. Mum was slightly behind walking with the boys, bemused and already with their white shirts smudged with oil. I rounded the corner and Enrico was waiting - what a lovely memory, all in white with his hands to his mouth and tears in his eyes.
Anyway, there was lots of hanging around as the fastidious to the -nth degree registrar ('Your usual signature here please. What does that represent?', 'it says your father is a managing director - was? What kind of company was that?' SHEESH already) ensured the couple before us took happy memories away.
Then it was our turn. I can't really say I remember much about the ceremony, other than hoping that the fastidious to the -nth degree registrar wouldn't object to E's accented English and cancel the ceremony. And I had Gigi mugging and clowning around just in my eyeline by E's side. It was over quickly, but the registrar was a sweetie, very Old Skool, like a little red-haired vicar-y character from a 1950's farce. He smiled alot and wanted to make sure that we didn't feel rushed, there were lots of pics and it was all relaxed and just how we wanted it really. The boys, still bemused, handed over the rings and then it was over. We are husband and wife.
One problem with this kind of informal ceremony is just that - there is no pattern to follow, no reception to head to, nobody waiting for the photos to be taken, just the reason we did it like this of course, but it hadn't even occured to us what we were going to do between the end of the ceremony and the lunch we had booked at a Thai restaurant on the beach in Estepona. So we headed to a pub and Dad had a pint of John Smiths (and took a photo of it) and then we moved on to the restaurant.
The venue for lunch could not have been more stunning and more suitable. A gorgeous Thai restaurant by the Kempinski in Estepona, giving right onto a practically deserted beach with a glass-calm sea. The food had yet to arrive - when Enrico stood up to make a speech, which took us all by surprise. Before he even started to speak, I could feel a lump in my throat. When he started to speak about how his Mum would have loved to be there, he had to sit down to compose himself and Mum and I were already in full flow. He did a very traditional 'thanking everyone, so happy to be part of a new family' speech - but it was so full of emotion, so heart-felt that even Claudia, who doesn't speak English, was blowing into a hankie.
We ate, we went for a drink on our own then we went back to Mum and Dad's to see the kids and return to real life. It wasn't a traditional day. But frankly, as it's our second time for both of us, I would have felt faintly embarrassed and a bit of a fraud to stand up in front of a load of people repeating words I've said once before but with little conviction. This time, it was a ceremony for Enrico and I, making promises in public that we had made in private when the boys were born. Enrico's emotional words made it so special. Our lives haven't changed since, of course, it was more of a formality than anything but what a lovely, sentimental husband I have, I'm lucky and grateful for him, for better and for worse.
Did I mention I can be a total control freak? I subscribe little to horoscopes but I do like the duality of the Libra sign - I am either micro-managing or SERIOUSLY couldn't give a toss. This morning, I was micro-managing on crack. My main fear was the horror that is the Gibraltar border crossing. Getting out seems to be no major problem but they really don't like to let you in there. It's not like you're getting into the garden of Eden, ffs, in fact quite the opposite. Gib is a strange place where the locals speak a strange Welsh-accented (what's that all about?) English that's organically intertwined with Spanish, which gets chopped and changed around according to no particular logic that I can establish. It's like Blackpool (sorry Blackpudlians) with mangy monkeys, sunshine and bloody great tankers parked in the sea. Not a pretty place. So why they feel the need to build up so much anticipation with hour-long queues is quite beyond me.
SO. The plan is we all leave at 8am to get there for 10am. In theory, an hour and bit away but I have made lots of allowance for traffic jams, always a possibility as it was nominally rush-hour. We are a little way behind E as - as tradition dictates! - he has stayed, at my suggestion, at a friends' house for the night, in order not to 'see the bride' in the morning. Did I mention this friend of his is a notorious party animal, famous for his ability to cajole E into most anything?? His sweet gf was there too but I had my doubts, let's put it like that, as to her efficacy with the pair of them.
We are all to Schedule, in the car, heading down the mountain from Mum and Dad's house. Time for another call, just to make sure they are keeping to the Schedule too. 0815hrs. THEY HAVE STILL NOT LEF THE HOUSE!! Claudia is putting her make-up on!!!!! Total freak-out. What if the traffic's bad? What if we can't get into Gib?? What if we miss our slot??
My pep talk left something to be desired, consisting as it did with, 'dump her, get in the car, you're ruining everything!!!!!!'. Hmmm..... I think a touch of subtlety was the main lacking ingredient, perhaps with a hint of moderation, could have been useful. All the way to the border I had sweaty palms - I seriously have not felt that stressy for so long, my life consisting as it does of doing nothing really important, just getting myself around on a day to day basis.
Despite my doom-laden predictions, we got there - and it was empty. There were a couple of cars in front of us and that was it. I have NEVER, in all these years of doing UK supermarket runs over the border, ever, ever, ever seen so few cars. It was clearly meant to be. So, we took the car over instead of dumping it and making a run for a taxi once through the border crossing, and parked in a large multi-storey carpark not far from the grotty main street, at the end of which was our destination. Most brides probably prepare in their homes, not far from the venue and then enter serenely in some appropriate mode of luxury transport. My first time was with a horse and carriage, as it happens. I hadn't actually changed before leaving as I didn't want my dress to resemble a used paper bag. So I got changed in the carpark. I am nothing if not adaptable. We then headed down through Bhs into Main Street to have a leisurely stroll past the unloading lorries and early-bird tourists out for a bargain.
I was keeping my eye out the whole time for E's little party of three: Our total guest list consisted of Mum, Dad, our boys and Claudia and Gigi, at whose house he'd stayed the night before. Walking towards the registry office, I spied them all at a café just ahead. So we made a quick detour into Marks and Spencers and hid out until Dad cried, 'Cave chaps!', at which point we made the final stretch.
Dad was walking ahead and by now, my hat was on and my bouquet was in place. Mum was slightly behind walking with the boys, bemused and already with their white shirts smudged with oil. I rounded the corner and Enrico was waiting - what a lovely memory, all in white with his hands to his mouth and tears in his eyes.
Anyway, there was lots of hanging around as the fastidious to the -nth degree registrar ('Your usual signature here please. What does that represent?', 'it says your father is a managing director - was? What kind of company was that?' SHEESH already) ensured the couple before us took happy memories away.
Then it was our turn. I can't really say I remember much about the ceremony, other than hoping that the fastidious to the -nth degree registrar wouldn't object to E's accented English and cancel the ceremony. And I had Gigi mugging and clowning around just in my eyeline by E's side. It was over quickly, but the registrar was a sweetie, very Old Skool, like a little red-haired vicar-y character from a 1950's farce. He smiled alot and wanted to make sure that we didn't feel rushed, there were lots of pics and it was all relaxed and just how we wanted it really. The boys, still bemused, handed over the rings and then it was over. We are husband and wife.
One problem with this kind of informal ceremony is just that - there is no pattern to follow, no reception to head to, nobody waiting for the photos to be taken, just the reason we did it like this of course, but it hadn't even occured to us what we were going to do between the end of the ceremony and the lunch we had booked at a Thai restaurant on the beach in Estepona. So we headed to a pub and Dad had a pint of John Smiths (and took a photo of it) and then we moved on to the restaurant.
The venue for lunch could not have been more stunning and more suitable. A gorgeous Thai restaurant by the Kempinski in Estepona, giving right onto a practically deserted beach with a glass-calm sea. The food had yet to arrive - when Enrico stood up to make a speech, which took us all by surprise. Before he even started to speak, I could feel a lump in my throat. When he started to speak about how his Mum would have loved to be there, he had to sit down to compose himself and Mum and I were already in full flow. He did a very traditional 'thanking everyone, so happy to be part of a new family' speech - but it was so full of emotion, so heart-felt that even Claudia, who doesn't speak English, was blowing into a hankie.
We ate, we went for a drink on our own then we went back to Mum and Dad's to see the kids and return to real life. It wasn't a traditional day. But frankly, as it's our second time for both of us, I would have felt faintly embarrassed and a bit of a fraud to stand up in front of a load of people repeating words I've said once before but with little conviction. This time, it was a ceremony for Enrico and I, making promises in public that we had made in private when the boys were born. Enrico's emotional words made it so special. Our lives haven't changed since, of course, it was more of a formality than anything but what a lovely, sentimental husband I have, I'm lucky and grateful for him, for better and for worse.
Monday, 23 August 2010
Dum dum di DUUMM!
It's 12.30am and today I'm getting married!! So bizarre, we envisioned the whole thing as an ironic paper-signing event conducted in the most un-romantic fashion possible: 10.30am in the Gibraltar registry office. If you haven't been to Gibraltar, let me tell you - there are few more unromantic places in the world. We have been telling ourselves, and everyone else, that it's just a formality, nothing important, just a legalisation of the life we have been living for the past six and a bit years.
That said, I have no idea why I should be here, typing, with snakes slithering in my stomach. I have also spent the better part of the past three days traipsing round shopping centres and boutiques in Marbella (air conditioning, anyone?? No, fine, I'll be the one sweating like a stuck pig then) trying to find shoes and a dress and earrings and etc etc... For a five minute service in a lime green registry office with rising damp and plastic flowers.
I think logically that it isn't a big deal and it isn't, not really. Nothing changes, we just have rings on our fingers and all the legal bells and whistles that go with that. But I am actually excited! I am looking forward to all the usual things that brides look forward to - when he sees me in my dress (Barbarella-style shift, white of course, ha!), when we say the words (what they will be, I have no idea, but I know there aren't many of them cos the service itself actually lasts about 5 minutes) and the throwing of the bouquet (Claudia, get ready, luv!). I need to sleep as we have to get up at the crack of dawn to get there but I find that I am too agitated. Playing it down so much, I have come to believe my own hype. You can't fool your heart though. I am marrying a lovely man who is a fantastic father to our children. He takes over when I need him to, looks after me so well in so many ways (a particular episode of gastro-entiritis when I was pregnant comes to mind. I know I couldn't have cleaned that bathroom...) and who makes an effort to make me laugh - although I could have done without the image of him in my bikini bottoms he gave me today, thanks all the same. We have had some rotten times but we both believe in the same things: being there for the children and working hard at what you've got. I am enough of a realist, and a divorcée, to realise that things can always change, but I hope to goodness they don't. And I hope that we both continue to work hard to make sure that we are as happy now in the future. Things aren't always perfect but sometimes they go your way and we are lucky to have each other. Unusually soppy for me, but in this case, I feel the occasion justifies the sentiment! Wish us luck!!
That said, I have no idea why I should be here, typing, with snakes slithering in my stomach. I have also spent the better part of the past three days traipsing round shopping centres and boutiques in Marbella (air conditioning, anyone?? No, fine, I'll be the one sweating like a stuck pig then) trying to find shoes and a dress and earrings and etc etc... For a five minute service in a lime green registry office with rising damp and plastic flowers.
I think logically that it isn't a big deal and it isn't, not really. Nothing changes, we just have rings on our fingers and all the legal bells and whistles that go with that. But I am actually excited! I am looking forward to all the usual things that brides look forward to - when he sees me in my dress (Barbarella-style shift, white of course, ha!), when we say the words (what they will be, I have no idea, but I know there aren't many of them cos the service itself actually lasts about 5 minutes) and the throwing of the bouquet (Claudia, get ready, luv!). I need to sleep as we have to get up at the crack of dawn to get there but I find that I am too agitated. Playing it down so much, I have come to believe my own hype. You can't fool your heart though. I am marrying a lovely man who is a fantastic father to our children. He takes over when I need him to, looks after me so well in so many ways (a particular episode of gastro-entiritis when I was pregnant comes to mind. I know I couldn't have cleaned that bathroom...) and who makes an effort to make me laugh - although I could have done without the image of him in my bikini bottoms he gave me today, thanks all the same. We have had some rotten times but we both believe in the same things: being there for the children and working hard at what you've got. I am enough of a realist, and a divorcée, to realise that things can always change, but I hope to goodness they don't. And I hope that we both continue to work hard to make sure that we are as happy now in the future. Things aren't always perfect but sometimes they go your way and we are lucky to have each other. Unusually soppy for me, but in this case, I feel the occasion justifies the sentiment! Wish us luck!!
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Footloose and Fancy Free
Due to the great fortune and inspired suggestion (mine) that the Grandparents take the children back with them from our holiday in the Dolomites, Enrico and I have been having a nice time 'dating', doing stuff that we couldn't normally do with the little ones in tow. So we went to a couple of concerts, stayed out till 5.30am after going late-night swimming at a friend's house (seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so good by about 3pm), having dinner out and even just walking out to get a bottle of water together. It's been lovely really, and a bit of a relief that it's so, to be honest. As the day for the children going drew closer, I have to admit hearing a little whisper in the back of my head which asked me, 'What on EARTH are you going to talk about/ do with yourselves without the kids??' after their constant presence for the past 5 years. Nearly six if you fancy counting in vitro.
It is a common problem, I think, in parents with young children, to find that their whole lives are just taken up with, consumed with, the little ones and not much else. I have noticed that even when I go shopping for our meagre two-people rations while they're away, I am having to consciously not buy things that have free gifts in them cos the boys might like them. Or that by far the majority of stuff I buy is bought with the boys in mind. 'Meagre rations' is not an exaggeration - for two little boys, they really do seem to require unfeasibly large amounts of groceries.
All our conversations revolve around the children too. A large part of Enrico's repertoire is taken up with impressions of the boys, so it was a worry that we would be left bereft of things that make us laugh together. But no, we are lucky, we are laughing just fine without the, 'Mummy!' or 'Daddy!' noise buzzing in the background.
I am starting to notice how boring the days are though. I find myself wanting to sleep for large portions of it (boredom, but also because it gets the hottest part of the day out of the way with the least discomfort, I think) and have little motivation or structure to my week. Where normally I would be getting breakfast ready, tidying the kitchen, general 'getting on with stuff', I'm not. I'm having lie-ins, doing bits and bobs till lunch then gearing myself up for a snooze with the aircon on.
I am sooo going to look back at this entry in about 3 months time and wonder what in heavens could possibly be wrong with such a blissful scenario! However, at the moment, I am rather looking forward to seeing their little faces and hearing all their stories in their stuttery, stumble-y voices. Only four more sleeps...
It is a common problem, I think, in parents with young children, to find that their whole lives are just taken up with, consumed with, the little ones and not much else. I have noticed that even when I go shopping for our meagre two-people rations while they're away, I am having to consciously not buy things that have free gifts in them cos the boys might like them. Or that by far the majority of stuff I buy is bought with the boys in mind. 'Meagre rations' is not an exaggeration - for two little boys, they really do seem to require unfeasibly large amounts of groceries.
All our conversations revolve around the children too. A large part of Enrico's repertoire is taken up with impressions of the boys, so it was a worry that we would be left bereft of things that make us laugh together. But no, we are lucky, we are laughing just fine without the, 'Mummy!' or 'Daddy!' noise buzzing in the background.
I am starting to notice how boring the days are though. I find myself wanting to sleep for large portions of it (boredom, but also because it gets the hottest part of the day out of the way with the least discomfort, I think) and have little motivation or structure to my week. Where normally I would be getting breakfast ready, tidying the kitchen, general 'getting on with stuff', I'm not. I'm having lie-ins, doing bits and bobs till lunch then gearing myself up for a snooze with the aircon on.
I am sooo going to look back at this entry in about 3 months time and wonder what in heavens could possibly be wrong with such a blissful scenario! However, at the moment, I am rather looking forward to seeing their little faces and hearing all their stories in their stuttery, stumble-y voices. Only four more sleeps...
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
The Summer Tussle
Last year, summer started in May here. It was hellish and in fact, I think I may have been a bit scarred for life. I know that by the end of it, I was a leeetle beeet crazy. I was longing, desperate for a bit of rain and to feel a chill on my bones when I walked out of the door. It started at 40° in May and pretty much carried on that way till October, apart from our annual respite in August at Mum and Dad's in Spain. I used to love the hot weather - that first warm, damp intake of air as you get off the plane at the start of your holiday.
Well, let me tell you - that heat when you have to live in it can drive you insane. It's as bad as having rain all summer because you sure as hell can't go out and do anything. So, as I think I have previously mentioned, summer here is Not Fun. This summer is better, though. We got AIRCON. Praise be to Heaven, we have little white units delivering pure bliss in the flat that mean that I can hunker down all day, praying for Winter (Autumn's still a bit too warm for me these days) and the walls to stop burning my hands when I touch them.
To me, aircon units are a divine gift. To others, they are the Devil's work, sent to deliver pestilence and plague unto the population. Well, a sore throat and a bit of a sniffle actually, but you would think it was the former by the conversations that go on. And in fact, now I think about it, Italy isn't the only place where you'll hear this conversation. I'm remebering conversations when I lived in Bermuda fairly similar to the ones we have here. Or the ones I am forced to smile along, nodding my head to, if I don't want to get scoffed out of town. Aircon dries your throat, you see, amongst many many other horrors it delivers. A friend came round for one of the World Cup matches and we had to switch the aircon off for him as - no word of a lie - it was 'making him sweat'. He'd come out of the 30° evening air, and my lovely cool air was making him sweat. This in turn would give him a bad back. I am not kidding!!! My step-mum-in-law came out with a similar thing the other day while we still in the mountains - it was in the high 20°'s and I said, 'for Heaven's sake, take your shirt off', (she was in a t-shirt with a shirt over). She said no, don't think I will, 'because the sweat will dry on my neck and I'll get a chill'. The body doing it's natural cooling-mechanism-thing seems to be a terrible burden to Italians.
Of course, my dearest other half is Italian and not immune to the fear of the aircon. He is better than most - and indeed, mostly tolerates my need to have frost on the end of my nose in the car, for example. But the Summer Tussle gets down and dirty in bed of a night. It's the Tussle over who does what - with the airconditioner. My secret fantasty? It's to be in pj's in the middle of summer, tucked up in a quilt with the aircon on FULL blasting out freezing cold air all night. Of course, it's never going to happen: Economically, we'd be bankrupt after a week with the high energy prices here, and ecologically, I am fully aware (though don't care as much as maybe I ought) that there is a hefty price to pay for my frosty nose. Enrico could well sleep in the stifling heat, no probs. He could probably sleep through a nuclear war balanced on a high beam, to be honest, so the heavy stifling nights don't really bother him. Before Aircon, I would sleep on the cool(er) tiled floor, now though, we have the discussion: At what speed does it go on? What is the lowest temp I can get it on while he's negotiating the maximum? Do we go for automatic (of COURSE we don't, it would never get the place cool enough to reach the cut-off point due to the 3 foot thick bricks that are super-heated all day) or do we keep it just on Low Fan? Should I, ethically, economically and just to keep the old sod happy, switch it off once I start to feel a bit nippy? So many considerations. It's the same argument and it will probably be the same every night of every summer of our lives, because it seems that men don't feel the extremes of temperature like women do and because it isn't affecting them, it isn't happening. Enrico will actually tell me that I am feeling cool when of course I am not, at all, feeling cool, as if I am suffering from the heat just to spite him. I KNOW when I am feeling hot or when I am feeling cold, thanks, you telling me that I can't possibly still feel hot does not alter my body chemistry in the slightest.
Anyway, I've just hopped out of bed to write this while it was still fresh in my mind (from this night's Tussle: 26°, Low Fan, switched off once need for quilt kicks in, in case you're wondering). He should be asleep by now though, so I'll just be grabbing this remote control....
Well, let me tell you - that heat when you have to live in it can drive you insane. It's as bad as having rain all summer because you sure as hell can't go out and do anything. So, as I think I have previously mentioned, summer here is Not Fun. This summer is better, though. We got AIRCON. Praise be to Heaven, we have little white units delivering pure bliss in the flat that mean that I can hunker down all day, praying for Winter (Autumn's still a bit too warm for me these days) and the walls to stop burning my hands when I touch them.
To me, aircon units are a divine gift. To others, they are the Devil's work, sent to deliver pestilence and plague unto the population. Well, a sore throat and a bit of a sniffle actually, but you would think it was the former by the conversations that go on. And in fact, now I think about it, Italy isn't the only place where you'll hear this conversation. I'm remebering conversations when I lived in Bermuda fairly similar to the ones we have here. Or the ones I am forced to smile along, nodding my head to, if I don't want to get scoffed out of town. Aircon dries your throat, you see, amongst many many other horrors it delivers. A friend came round for one of the World Cup matches and we had to switch the aircon off for him as - no word of a lie - it was 'making him sweat'. He'd come out of the 30° evening air, and my lovely cool air was making him sweat. This in turn would give him a bad back. I am not kidding!!! My step-mum-in-law came out with a similar thing the other day while we still in the mountains - it was in the high 20°'s and I said, 'for Heaven's sake, take your shirt off', (she was in a t-shirt with a shirt over). She said no, don't think I will, 'because the sweat will dry on my neck and I'll get a chill'. The body doing it's natural cooling-mechanism-thing seems to be a terrible burden to Italians.
Of course, my dearest other half is Italian and not immune to the fear of the aircon. He is better than most - and indeed, mostly tolerates my need to have frost on the end of my nose in the car, for example. But the Summer Tussle gets down and dirty in bed of a night. It's the Tussle over who does what - with the airconditioner. My secret fantasty? It's to be in pj's in the middle of summer, tucked up in a quilt with the aircon on FULL blasting out freezing cold air all night. Of course, it's never going to happen: Economically, we'd be bankrupt after a week with the high energy prices here, and ecologically, I am fully aware (though don't care as much as maybe I ought) that there is a hefty price to pay for my frosty nose. Enrico could well sleep in the stifling heat, no probs. He could probably sleep through a nuclear war balanced on a high beam, to be honest, so the heavy stifling nights don't really bother him. Before Aircon, I would sleep on the cool(er) tiled floor, now though, we have the discussion: At what speed does it go on? What is the lowest temp I can get it on while he's negotiating the maximum? Do we go for automatic (of COURSE we don't, it would never get the place cool enough to reach the cut-off point due to the 3 foot thick bricks that are super-heated all day) or do we keep it just on Low Fan? Should I, ethically, economically and just to keep the old sod happy, switch it off once I start to feel a bit nippy? So many considerations. It's the same argument and it will probably be the same every night of every summer of our lives, because it seems that men don't feel the extremes of temperature like women do and because it isn't affecting them, it isn't happening. Enrico will actually tell me that I am feeling cool when of course I am not, at all, feeling cool, as if I am suffering from the heat just to spite him. I KNOW when I am feeling hot or when I am feeling cold, thanks, you telling me that I can't possibly still feel hot does not alter my body chemistry in the slightest.
Anyway, I've just hopped out of bed to write this while it was still fresh in my mind (from this night's Tussle: 26°, Low Fan, switched off once need for quilt kicks in, in case you're wondering). He should be asleep by now though, so I'll just be grabbing this remote control....
Monday, 19 July 2010
Lord, Give Me Wisdom
I wish I'd had a girl. Two boys are lovely but I wish I'd had a girl. I have lots of things I want to pass on and I don't think that boys are the right recipients for, ''Celebrity' is NOT a job description.' Or, 'he's just not that into you' is a phrase you should hold dear. Or, 'relationships are like success and can only work with 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration.'
I never really wanted children in the first place, but once persuaded by my handsome Italian boyfriend that it would be a good idea, we started trying. I reckoned it would take ages, if at all, for me to get pregnant, due to some gynae probs when I was younger. It took that month for me to fall pregnant. So, it was a boy and I was OK, no worries, if I'm going to have children, I'll better make the next one a girl. Another boy. I am now getting long in the tooth to be searching for the illusive female progeny, and the way things are looking, it's more than likely it would be another boy. Statistically, it's an interesting one: There's always a 50/50 chance of boy or girl. But after two boys, there's more of a chance of having another boy. Even though there's still a 50/50 chance of boy/ girl. I am not a mathmetician, it's a conundrum I don't get.
So anyway, here we are with two boys and all this stuff I've been storing, subconsiously, for years waiting for a person to hand it over to. I do know that this mythical daughter would probably have far too many of her own ideas for her own good - she is my mythical daughter after all - but as long as she liked shoes and books, I think we could get along. I want to say that once you get older, you realise that all that glitters is not gold. That being famous is not a good thing to be - it just means that someone follows you everywhere you go and every mistake you make is set down in perpituity. Being stupendously rich is not generally as great as it's cracked up to be too - rich and famous is probably one of the most hazardous occupations there is. Unless you have a VERY good head on your shoulders and a great group of sensible people around you, generally you will go off the rails and do too much of something harmful.
I want to say that you should go out and travel, most importantly of all. This I can give to the boys. I didn't achieve all that work-wise, but I've seen lots of the world and I don't think I've ever been disappointed. I have a full album when I look back. Sometimes I daydream that I never left Lincoln, got married and had kids. The kids go to Scouts and we have a nice holiday every year somewhere. I maybe have a nice little job but am mainly there as mum and wife. It's a lovely little daydream and I find it really comforting. But it's not me. I wanted to leave home from the minute I realised that I could, not because I was running away from something, but because I wanted to see what else there was that I could run to. Regret the things you don't do, never the things you do do, because everything you do makes you what you are. Something else that occurs to me though on this theme is that you need to be good in your own skin - one thing you always always take with you when you travel is yourself. You can be in the most wonderous place in the world but you will only ever see it through your eyes and process it with your brain. You will never escape yourself so make sure you like who you are.
I have always loved those films and books where the lead character just comes out with these amazingly instructive aphorisms or stunningly pithy truisms, and would love to just throw a few out here now. However, I am English and therefore have been born with a fully developed sense of irony - I would make myself laugh, never mind any one else. I will be trying to covertly slip the odd bit of wisdom into my conversations with the boys as they are growing and hopefully they will take them on board, although as is the way of the world, they will no doubt either not listen or just dismiss me out of hand. From my own Mum, amongst other things, I have learnt empathy and from Dad, well, the deepest lesson of all is 'The Higher The Fewer'. Thanks, Dad. It means alot.
I never really wanted children in the first place, but once persuaded by my handsome Italian boyfriend that it would be a good idea, we started trying. I reckoned it would take ages, if at all, for me to get pregnant, due to some gynae probs when I was younger. It took that month for me to fall pregnant. So, it was a boy and I was OK, no worries, if I'm going to have children, I'll better make the next one a girl. Another boy. I am now getting long in the tooth to be searching for the illusive female progeny, and the way things are looking, it's more than likely it would be another boy. Statistically, it's an interesting one: There's always a 50/50 chance of boy or girl. But after two boys, there's more of a chance of having another boy. Even though there's still a 50/50 chance of boy/ girl. I am not a mathmetician, it's a conundrum I don't get.
So anyway, here we are with two boys and all this stuff I've been storing, subconsiously, for years waiting for a person to hand it over to. I do know that this mythical daughter would probably have far too many of her own ideas for her own good - she is my mythical daughter after all - but as long as she liked shoes and books, I think we could get along. I want to say that once you get older, you realise that all that glitters is not gold. That being famous is not a good thing to be - it just means that someone follows you everywhere you go and every mistake you make is set down in perpituity. Being stupendously rich is not generally as great as it's cracked up to be too - rich and famous is probably one of the most hazardous occupations there is. Unless you have a VERY good head on your shoulders and a great group of sensible people around you, generally you will go off the rails and do too much of something harmful.
I want to say that you should go out and travel, most importantly of all. This I can give to the boys. I didn't achieve all that work-wise, but I've seen lots of the world and I don't think I've ever been disappointed. I have a full album when I look back. Sometimes I daydream that I never left Lincoln, got married and had kids. The kids go to Scouts and we have a nice holiday every year somewhere. I maybe have a nice little job but am mainly there as mum and wife. It's a lovely little daydream and I find it really comforting. But it's not me. I wanted to leave home from the minute I realised that I could, not because I was running away from something, but because I wanted to see what else there was that I could run to. Regret the things you don't do, never the things you do do, because everything you do makes you what you are. Something else that occurs to me though on this theme is that you need to be good in your own skin - one thing you always always take with you when you travel is yourself. You can be in the most wonderous place in the world but you will only ever see it through your eyes and process it with your brain. You will never escape yourself so make sure you like who you are.
I have always loved those films and books where the lead character just comes out with these amazingly instructive aphorisms or stunningly pithy truisms, and would love to just throw a few out here now. However, I am English and therefore have been born with a fully developed sense of irony - I would make myself laugh, never mind any one else. I will be trying to covertly slip the odd bit of wisdom into my conversations with the boys as they are growing and hopefully they will take them on board, although as is the way of the world, they will no doubt either not listen or just dismiss me out of hand. From my own Mum, amongst other things, I have learnt empathy and from Dad, well, the deepest lesson of all is 'The Higher The Fewer'. Thanks, Dad. It means alot.
Going Native
Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's because I have been on lots of holidays recently, or even it could be that Enrico's work is finally going well, but I have to admit that - ooo, it hurts, it's so hard to do - I think I am going native. A little bit. Just a smidge.
Aieee. There, I've set down in black and white what I haven't admitted to anyone so now it's out there. I don't know when I began to realise it but it's slowly dawning on me that I am totally used to eating seasonal, regionally specialised ingredients - that don't have, 'locally sourced!', 'Seasonally produced!', 'Only organic products used, don't worry!', 'Feel free to be smug about your diet to your friends!' 'This will cost you twice as much as a normal product!' (I made up a couple of those) stickers all over them. I am truly blessed having a wonderful cook as a partner and I am conscious of this on a daily basis - 'cos he cooks most meals on a daily basis. Because of him, I've got used to eating high quality produce and recognising anything inferior. Italian people really do eat so well, yes, it's regional, seasonal and limited in scope to an English person used to eating a huge variety of international cuisines, however, the meals cooked in our house could easily win awards. The food is often very simple - we had spaghetti with olive oil and truffle today for example, simplicity itself - but E had bought the truffles from a friend who had a friend go over his land in Tuscany with a dog to get the fresh truffles, the olive oil we get by the jerry can from a mill down the road - simple, seasonal and delicious.
I can't believe it's possible, but I am even getting used to the driving. I don't like it any more than I did, but I am wise in the ways of the Italian driver now. Returning from a week in the UK recently, after a smooth, worry-free, civilised drive on the M25 to Stansted Airport, E picked us up at Ciampino and we headed home. I actually laughed. It was like a scene out of Grand Theft Auto (I imagine) or grown-up bumper cars at the very least. Don't try to tell me that UK drivers are bad either, until you have driven in Italy. The rule to driving in Italy is that there are no rules and once you get used to it, you are fit to drive here. On a journey recently I saw a beautiful example of this - an articulated lorry blocking a slip road because the lorry driver had clearly realised he'd taken the wrong direction, so instead of carrying on and coming off at the first opportunity, he was going to reverse back up the slip road and head on down the right way by hook or by crook. In his articulated lorry. I see so many cars parked, hazards flashing, on the chevrons between motorway junctions, I could well believe that in Italy, they are taught in their Highway Code that the chevrons are actually another symbol for Parking. Last minute swerving is commonplace too. I don't get it - is everyone just really indecisive ('Ooo, this way this way this way NOOOO, I'm going to go THIS WAY!!'), or just so busy talking on their mobile phones while driving that they are paying no attention to the road signs? I'll go for the latter - it's 5 points and a fine for talking on mobiles while driving, not that anyone cares less. Children apparently should be strapped in at the back too but again, it's normal to see kids stood chatting to parents in between the two fronts sears. Yikes.
I am falling deeply in love with the Italian countryside and the amazing variety it holds too. There are still so many areas to visit, but so far I am loving the opportunity to see more. My latest favourite place is the Dolomites, where we recently spent a week near Cortina. Wow. Probably one of my all-time favourite places at the moment, actually. Beautiful, clean, breathtaking scenery, an amazing wealth of things to do. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the winter and hopefully getting some skiing in too. Of course, there's Tuscany, and Puglia, and Umbria, Lazio too has some really special places. We are so lucky to be able to explore them and as soon as the kids are old enough, I am hoping they will appreciate us carting them around with us. I am really hoping that they don't turn into the kind of adults who say, 'well our Mum and Dad made us go on route marches up mountains at the age of three', which while technically is true, doesn't capture the beauty and splendour of the mountains they were being route-marched up...
So, there. It's out in the open and I can finally say it. I am happy in Italy. At the moment. I have to attach caveats because, by it's very nature, Italy is transient, volatile and prone to throwing curveballs at you from no-where. Come over and see for yourselves. We'd love to have you. Just, I still wouldn't recommend coming to this actual spot. It's full of dog-crap and graffiti, but for all that, it's finally starting to feel a bit more like home...
Aieee. There, I've set down in black and white what I haven't admitted to anyone so now it's out there. I don't know when I began to realise it but it's slowly dawning on me that I am totally used to eating seasonal, regionally specialised ingredients - that don't have, 'locally sourced!', 'Seasonally produced!', 'Only organic products used, don't worry!', 'Feel free to be smug about your diet to your friends!' 'This will cost you twice as much as a normal product!' (I made up a couple of those) stickers all over them. I am truly blessed having a wonderful cook as a partner and I am conscious of this on a daily basis - 'cos he cooks most meals on a daily basis. Because of him, I've got used to eating high quality produce and recognising anything inferior. Italian people really do eat so well, yes, it's regional, seasonal and limited in scope to an English person used to eating a huge variety of international cuisines, however, the meals cooked in our house could easily win awards. The food is often very simple - we had spaghetti with olive oil and truffle today for example, simplicity itself - but E had bought the truffles from a friend who had a friend go over his land in Tuscany with a dog to get the fresh truffles, the olive oil we get by the jerry can from a mill down the road - simple, seasonal and delicious.
I can't believe it's possible, but I am even getting used to the driving. I don't like it any more than I did, but I am wise in the ways of the Italian driver now. Returning from a week in the UK recently, after a smooth, worry-free, civilised drive on the M25 to Stansted Airport, E picked us up at Ciampino and we headed home. I actually laughed. It was like a scene out of Grand Theft Auto (I imagine) or grown-up bumper cars at the very least. Don't try to tell me that UK drivers are bad either, until you have driven in Italy. The rule to driving in Italy is that there are no rules and once you get used to it, you are fit to drive here. On a journey recently I saw a beautiful example of this - an articulated lorry blocking a slip road because the lorry driver had clearly realised he'd taken the wrong direction, so instead of carrying on and coming off at the first opportunity, he was going to reverse back up the slip road and head on down the right way by hook or by crook. In his articulated lorry. I see so many cars parked, hazards flashing, on the chevrons between motorway junctions, I could well believe that in Italy, they are taught in their Highway Code that the chevrons are actually another symbol for Parking. Last minute swerving is commonplace too. I don't get it - is everyone just really indecisive ('Ooo, this way this way this way NOOOO, I'm going to go THIS WAY!!'), or just so busy talking on their mobile phones while driving that they are paying no attention to the road signs? I'll go for the latter - it's 5 points and a fine for talking on mobiles while driving, not that anyone cares less. Children apparently should be strapped in at the back too but again, it's normal to see kids stood chatting to parents in between the two fronts sears. Yikes.
I am falling deeply in love with the Italian countryside and the amazing variety it holds too. There are still so many areas to visit, but so far I am loving the opportunity to see more. My latest favourite place is the Dolomites, where we recently spent a week near Cortina. Wow. Probably one of my all-time favourite places at the moment, actually. Beautiful, clean, breathtaking scenery, an amazing wealth of things to do. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the winter and hopefully getting some skiing in too. Of course, there's Tuscany, and Puglia, and Umbria, Lazio too has some really special places. We are so lucky to be able to explore them and as soon as the kids are old enough, I am hoping they will appreciate us carting them around with us. I am really hoping that they don't turn into the kind of adults who say, 'well our Mum and Dad made us go on route marches up mountains at the age of three', which while technically is true, doesn't capture the beauty and splendour of the mountains they were being route-marched up...
So, there. It's out in the open and I can finally say it. I am happy in Italy. At the moment. I have to attach caveats because, by it's very nature, Italy is transient, volatile and prone to throwing curveballs at you from no-where. Come over and see for yourselves. We'd love to have you. Just, I still wouldn't recommend coming to this actual spot. It's full of dog-crap and graffiti, but for all that, it's finally starting to feel a bit more like home...
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Here Be Dragons.
Any time I see anything on t'internet about and/ or for expats living in Italy, I always click on the link and join straight away, whatever it is. I therefore get spammed on a regular basis by expat journals a 6th former would get ridiculed for and have yet to find something that really reflects my experience of living here. Maybe I am just too old and cynical, however my take on it is that actually I have travelled alot more than many people and crucially, have actually lived in alot more countries than many people, so feel more qualified to comment than most. I heard a quote the other day from Somerset Maugham, 'One never knows one's own country until one has lived in at least two others', which I feel is entirely true. Studying Antropology at University, one of the very few things that got through my fuddled, addled, above all, young and inexperienced, brain was that you should never look at things through your own cultural spectacles. You must always try to see things through a local's perspective.
I try to bear this in mind living here but I find that all the things that drive me potty also drive our friends here potty too which is somewhat reassuring. Some of them. Well, a couple of them. But at least I am not alone. At least my other half agrees with me. For instance, we met a very good friend of ours today with his son and daughter at the tennis club. We had arranged to go to see some other friends and to let our kids play together, it being lovely weather. Turns out that the lovely weather was the problem. It was too hot. The children would SWEAT, for the love of GOD what were we thinking??? Our friend started low and then carried on complaining until it got to the point where he just couldn't cope with it any more, scooped his daughter up and took her to the car. Got her settled, then came back to fetch his son, who was by now very dirty and sweaty. Which meant that he was wide open to 'get sick'. I tried - not subtly at all because I was incredulous by this point - to inquire what form of illness sweating during a hot day playing with little friends could take, but he was incable of coming up with anything other than, 'well, he'll get sweaty and... well, we're off, you always choose rubbish places for the kids to play'. The latter comment was because the last time we arranged to meet up was at the Piazza del Duomo when there was a 'do' on. There were too many people and too much noise on this occasion. And a couple of gypsies and have you heard that a child was found in a supermarket toilet with its' hair cut after being stolen by a gypo so it wouldn't be recognised? Actually, I've heard the same story repeated as truth in the UK, Spain and now Italy. I keep meaning to check out Snopes but have yet to get round to it.
The point is that this is one of the many great bloody irritations of living here. Your choices and actions are always commented on and an opinion is freely expressed whether it's wanted or not. And generally the opinions are negative ones. For every, 'what gorgeous little boys you have,' you can bet there will be at least two, 'you're sending them outside in THAT?? But they'll catch their death/ get too hot/ develop a severe speech impediment if they go outside like that!!'. We were dicussing this with friends, all Italian and local, yesterday and they were also coming up with 'advice' they'd been given, or heard from other parents to their kids. They ranged from the classic, 'now go and play but don't sweat'!, to the surreal, 'Mario! Mario! Shout quietly!!!!!'.
This along with the incessant traffic, ubiquitous smoking, triple-price everything seems to be my experience alone because every other expat I read appears to be meeting charming, cultured, interesting locals. We clearly got landed with the crappy end of the stick because frankly, our part of Italy sucks and I feel that finally I am able to speak my mind without fear of someone accusing me of not having given it a chance. I have given it a chance and now I've had enough, thanks! We are all - including my Italian, local born and bred other half - longing to get away from here and be able to breathe more freely again. Everything we do is noticed and commented on. And not in a good way. All these bloody glossy, glowing views of Italy just aren't true - in my experience. Yes, the food is great, but the people are generally opinionated and in Rome and around Rome at least, just plain rude. I suppose if they were Yorkshiremen, they would say they 'speak as they find', but we are not in Yorkshire, Toto, and I have had a bellyful today. Can you tell? I think I am hiding it quite well...
I try to bear this in mind living here but I find that all the things that drive me potty also drive our friends here potty too which is somewhat reassuring. Some of them. Well, a couple of them. But at least I am not alone. At least my other half agrees with me. For instance, we met a very good friend of ours today with his son and daughter at the tennis club. We had arranged to go to see some other friends and to let our kids play together, it being lovely weather. Turns out that the lovely weather was the problem. It was too hot. The children would SWEAT, for the love of GOD what were we thinking??? Our friend started low and then carried on complaining until it got to the point where he just couldn't cope with it any more, scooped his daughter up and took her to the car. Got her settled, then came back to fetch his son, who was by now very dirty and sweaty. Which meant that he was wide open to 'get sick'. I tried - not subtly at all because I was incredulous by this point - to inquire what form of illness sweating during a hot day playing with little friends could take, but he was incable of coming up with anything other than, 'well, he'll get sweaty and... well, we're off, you always choose rubbish places for the kids to play'. The latter comment was because the last time we arranged to meet up was at the Piazza del Duomo when there was a 'do' on. There were too many people and too much noise on this occasion. And a couple of gypsies and have you heard that a child was found in a supermarket toilet with its' hair cut after being stolen by a gypo so it wouldn't be recognised? Actually, I've heard the same story repeated as truth in the UK, Spain and now Italy. I keep meaning to check out Snopes but have yet to get round to it.
The point is that this is one of the many great bloody irritations of living here. Your choices and actions are always commented on and an opinion is freely expressed whether it's wanted or not. And generally the opinions are negative ones. For every, 'what gorgeous little boys you have,' you can bet there will be at least two, 'you're sending them outside in THAT?? But they'll catch their death/ get too hot/ develop a severe speech impediment if they go outside like that!!'. We were dicussing this with friends, all Italian and local, yesterday and they were also coming up with 'advice' they'd been given, or heard from other parents to their kids. They ranged from the classic, 'now go and play but don't sweat'!, to the surreal, 'Mario! Mario! Shout quietly!!!!!'.
This along with the incessant traffic, ubiquitous smoking, triple-price everything seems to be my experience alone because every other expat I read appears to be meeting charming, cultured, interesting locals. We clearly got landed with the crappy end of the stick because frankly, our part of Italy sucks and I feel that finally I am able to speak my mind without fear of someone accusing me of not having given it a chance. I have given it a chance and now I've had enough, thanks! We are all - including my Italian, local born and bred other half - longing to get away from here and be able to breathe more freely again. Everything we do is noticed and commented on. And not in a good way. All these bloody glossy, glowing views of Italy just aren't true - in my experience. Yes, the food is great, but the people are generally opinionated and in Rome and around Rome at least, just plain rude. I suppose if they were Yorkshiremen, they would say they 'speak as they find', but we are not in Yorkshire, Toto, and I have had a bellyful today. Can you tell? I think I am hiding it quite well...
Monday, 26 April 2010
Now I Know How Charlie Brown's Teacher Felt
Oh blimey, looking down the barrel of another class tomorrow morning and already I can feel a big, huge, 'but do I HAVE to?' welling up in my chest. I started teaching at the boys' Montessori nursery after being asked last year. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though I knew - from bitter experience over the years - that I absolutely LOATHE teaching. I agreed because it meant that I could contribute pretty much the full cost of the boys' fees to the household income and because I thought it would be nice to get to know the children that my boys are spending their mornings and lunchtimes with.
So, it started off well, with hope and optimism. It has since developed into a grim battle for the most part, with me spending most of my time trying and, on a depressingly regular basis, failing, to control the little buggers. I have two groups of around eight children, aged from 2 - 5 years old. This may not seem much if you don't have experience of small children, but in fact, the huge develpoment that goes on in these years is remarkable. A two year old will barely be speaking their own language, while a five year old is generally writing their own name and takes on a teenager-level of knowledge in comparison. What will hold the attention of the older ones just won't cut it. Mind you, if it lasts more than 5 seconds with the little ones, you've lost their attention.
One of the central tennets of the Montessori method is the prohibition on shouting at the pupils. Believe me, I've tried but I just don't seem how this is possible. Is this the same in the UK? I have nothing to compare it to but these children are just totally undisciplined. They really couldn't care less if I sit and say nothing and just watch them, calmly, hoping that this will make them realise that I have stopped talking and therefore so should they. HA. In fact this seems to be a signal to start having chats with their next door neighbour, play with each other's hair or throw themselves on the floor and pretend to be a wild animal. I've seen it performed by the head-teacher/ owner, and it seems to work a treat for her. Well, it worked really well on the parents at the last parent's evening. So how exactly do I control the kids without shouting? They can't hear me when I am politely asking them to listen rather than chat because they are chatting too loudly. Eventually, I shout. Loudly. Not too often because then of course, it doesn't mean anything, it's just the normal level of discourse. But when I need to, sod Signora Montessori, I bellow that now is the time to be quiet, close mouths and open ears. Seriously, I am repeating the old chestnuts from my own schooling.
Of course, there are some children who you can really tell are getting something great out of the lessons. One girl regularly greets me with 'good morning', always in the right context and with a beaming smile on her face. When they remember something that I know we did a long time ago, those moments are lovely. One particular pupil, one of the oldest, we know personally out of school as we also know his parents. He's a typical spoilt rotten only-child, totally out of control and while he's five years old, he's a sweetie, though the handful he is now needs to be steered in the right direction to avoid any problems in the future. But he's bright as a button. If something catches his attention, and really most new things do catch his attention, he will pick it up so quickly while concentrating and seeming to really enjoy it. If only I could find more of these precious lessons, we would be laughing. And of course, whipping ahead to keep him and others like him interested would invariably mean leaving the younger and slower ones behind.
The interesting thing is that the classes are mostly girls. The school is mostly girls. I have done my bit for the male population but it seems that most of the other mothers were hogging the females. They are just as difficult to occupy but mostly they are a bright bunch. The few boys there are a real range of oddballs though, I have no idea why. One of them is incapable of looking me in the eye most of the time, prefering to look down slightly to the side of my foot, while repeating, loudly and repetitively, 'this isn't fun AT ALL,' to the extent that it becomes a little chant. Which, if I am not careful, catches on quickly with the rest of the class. Another one just sits there with a great beatific smile on his face, fixing my face with his eyes. And does precisely NOTHING. He doesn't speak, rarely joins in and cannot be coaxed to take part in anything. He just grins. I say that, although finally we are getting somewhere and he will let his hand be taken in the 'greeting' beginning of the lesson so progress is being made. After a year... Then there is the four year old who can't speak his own language properly because of shameful over-use of a dummy, who talks only of his grandfather and appears to believe that he is the only child who exists in the class. So just chatters all the way through to me, having a one sided conversation that never ever ever ends. God help me.
So maybe the problem I have is that there aren't enough of the bright, interested ones and far too many of the disruptive, uninterested ones. Sounds like a familiar lament of an old friend of mine who teaches secondary kids in the UK. The trick is in enjoying teaching and not just enjoying getting enthusiastic responses. Ah, now I see why I hate teaching so much...
So, it started off well, with hope and optimism. It has since developed into a grim battle for the most part, with me spending most of my time trying and, on a depressingly regular basis, failing, to control the little buggers. I have two groups of around eight children, aged from 2 - 5 years old. This may not seem much if you don't have experience of small children, but in fact, the huge develpoment that goes on in these years is remarkable. A two year old will barely be speaking their own language, while a five year old is generally writing their own name and takes on a teenager-level of knowledge in comparison. What will hold the attention of the older ones just won't cut it. Mind you, if it lasts more than 5 seconds with the little ones, you've lost their attention.
One of the central tennets of the Montessori method is the prohibition on shouting at the pupils. Believe me, I've tried but I just don't seem how this is possible. Is this the same in the UK? I have nothing to compare it to but these children are just totally undisciplined. They really couldn't care less if I sit and say nothing and just watch them, calmly, hoping that this will make them realise that I have stopped talking and therefore so should they. HA. In fact this seems to be a signal to start having chats with their next door neighbour, play with each other's hair or throw themselves on the floor and pretend to be a wild animal. I've seen it performed by the head-teacher/ owner, and it seems to work a treat for her. Well, it worked really well on the parents at the last parent's evening. So how exactly do I control the kids without shouting? They can't hear me when I am politely asking them to listen rather than chat because they are chatting too loudly. Eventually, I shout. Loudly. Not too often because then of course, it doesn't mean anything, it's just the normal level of discourse. But when I need to, sod Signora Montessori, I bellow that now is the time to be quiet, close mouths and open ears. Seriously, I am repeating the old chestnuts from my own schooling.
Of course, there are some children who you can really tell are getting something great out of the lessons. One girl regularly greets me with 'good morning', always in the right context and with a beaming smile on her face. When they remember something that I know we did a long time ago, those moments are lovely. One particular pupil, one of the oldest, we know personally out of school as we also know his parents. He's a typical spoilt rotten only-child, totally out of control and while he's five years old, he's a sweetie, though the handful he is now needs to be steered in the right direction to avoid any problems in the future. But he's bright as a button. If something catches his attention, and really most new things do catch his attention, he will pick it up so quickly while concentrating and seeming to really enjoy it. If only I could find more of these precious lessons, we would be laughing. And of course, whipping ahead to keep him and others like him interested would invariably mean leaving the younger and slower ones behind.
The interesting thing is that the classes are mostly girls. The school is mostly girls. I have done my bit for the male population but it seems that most of the other mothers were hogging the females. They are just as difficult to occupy but mostly they are a bright bunch. The few boys there are a real range of oddballs though, I have no idea why. One of them is incapable of looking me in the eye most of the time, prefering to look down slightly to the side of my foot, while repeating, loudly and repetitively, 'this isn't fun AT ALL,' to the extent that it becomes a little chant. Which, if I am not careful, catches on quickly with the rest of the class. Another one just sits there with a great beatific smile on his face, fixing my face with his eyes. And does precisely NOTHING. He doesn't speak, rarely joins in and cannot be coaxed to take part in anything. He just grins. I say that, although finally we are getting somewhere and he will let his hand be taken in the 'greeting' beginning of the lesson so progress is being made. After a year... Then there is the four year old who can't speak his own language properly because of shameful over-use of a dummy, who talks only of his grandfather and appears to believe that he is the only child who exists in the class. So just chatters all the way through to me, having a one sided conversation that never ever ever ends. God help me.
So maybe the problem I have is that there aren't enough of the bright, interested ones and far too many of the disruptive, uninterested ones. Sounds like a familiar lament of an old friend of mine who teaches secondary kids in the UK. The trick is in enjoying teaching and not just enjoying getting enthusiastic responses. Ah, now I see why I hate teaching so much...
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Clingfilm and Thomas The Tank
Thomas the Tank Engine is wrapped in clingfilm, has been since yesterday. Buzz Lightyear is also wrapped in clingfilm, but that's just a copycat gesture. My eldest gets more eccentric by the day. He's only 4 but I am sure that by the time he reaches puberty he'll either be genius level at whatever subject draws his massive intellect or sat in a dark room reciting only prime numbers and pulling his hair out one by one.
Having children was not on my list of things to do, climb to Machu Picchu, yes (done); see Carnivale in Rio, yes (done); marry an insanely wealthy ex-model with an IQ of 170, yes (still looking). Having children, no. Mum had already been warned not to expect any more grandchildren from her barren eldest child. It was Enrico who convinced me that it would be a good idea and frankly, I was getting towards a certain age and looking forward, the future looked just a bit too much, 'same-old same-old' tending worryingly towards the 'oldest swinger in town'. Not ever for one second expecting it to really happen, we started trying and within one month - Giorgio! Ha! Dig that one out of the back of the net, Trevor!
We were really really not prepared and when he arrived a month early, this strange, baby-spider-monkey-like little beast, we were just utterly unprepared. Enrico manifested this by carrying on going out every weekend and I manifested this by - well, I don't know really. It is just such a crazy thing, having a baby. All of a sudden whole worlds open up you never knew existed while many previous worlds are closed and gone forever - not a bad thing in many cases.
A whole new world of GUILT opened, for example, and is pretty much a constant companion these days, now more familiar and therefore easier to cope with but I remember calling my brother and telling him how guilty I felt for everything, from having a drink of wine to leaving the TV on standby (yikes, all those precious resources wasted). His reply has stayed with me since: 'Welcome to being a parent'. Apparently, it's normal to feel guilty all the time. I sit here - even though it's a Saturday and E's sat next to me watching the news and the boys are playing quite happily in their room - and feel guilty I'm not whipping up an exciting activity to stretch their little minds. Or that I haven't yet started a programme to get Giorgio reading properly. Or that I don't give Edoardo enough time to help him colour inside the lines better. Or that this week I gave them pretzels and Cheesy Wotsits for dinner because I was just sooo tired. I don't like sending them to nursery every day, even though I have a fairly convincing argument why it is a good idea (I would kill the pair of them if I had to be with them all day every day) and hate leaving them there sat on their little tiny-person chairs, dear GOD it feels terrible, and yet it is no doubt better for them in the long run... Logic seldom enters into discussions where parent-guilt is involved...
The older they get, the more fun they are though, and the more they express themselves, the more you realise that you're not doing too badly. Really. All things considered. I am sure there's a good reason for Thomas being wrapped in clingfilm, and the fact that the number 1 has such significance. And that everything has to be blue. All perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about here. Probably. Who am I kidding. Whatever it is, it's all my fault!!!!
Having children was not on my list of things to do, climb to Machu Picchu, yes (done); see Carnivale in Rio, yes (done); marry an insanely wealthy ex-model with an IQ of 170, yes (still looking). Having children, no. Mum had already been warned not to expect any more grandchildren from her barren eldest child. It was Enrico who convinced me that it would be a good idea and frankly, I was getting towards a certain age and looking forward, the future looked just a bit too much, 'same-old same-old' tending worryingly towards the 'oldest swinger in town'. Not ever for one second expecting it to really happen, we started trying and within one month - Giorgio! Ha! Dig that one out of the back of the net, Trevor!
We were really really not prepared and when he arrived a month early, this strange, baby-spider-monkey-like little beast, we were just utterly unprepared. Enrico manifested this by carrying on going out every weekend and I manifested this by - well, I don't know really. It is just such a crazy thing, having a baby. All of a sudden whole worlds open up you never knew existed while many previous worlds are closed and gone forever - not a bad thing in many cases.
A whole new world of GUILT opened, for example, and is pretty much a constant companion these days, now more familiar and therefore easier to cope with but I remember calling my brother and telling him how guilty I felt for everything, from having a drink of wine to leaving the TV on standby (yikes, all those precious resources wasted). His reply has stayed with me since: 'Welcome to being a parent'. Apparently, it's normal to feel guilty all the time. I sit here - even though it's a Saturday and E's sat next to me watching the news and the boys are playing quite happily in their room - and feel guilty I'm not whipping up an exciting activity to stretch their little minds. Or that I haven't yet started a programme to get Giorgio reading properly. Or that I don't give Edoardo enough time to help him colour inside the lines better. Or that this week I gave them pretzels and Cheesy Wotsits for dinner because I was just sooo tired. I don't like sending them to nursery every day, even though I have a fairly convincing argument why it is a good idea (I would kill the pair of them if I had to be with them all day every day) and hate leaving them there sat on their little tiny-person chairs, dear GOD it feels terrible, and yet it is no doubt better for them in the long run... Logic seldom enters into discussions where parent-guilt is involved...
The older they get, the more fun they are though, and the more they express themselves, the more you realise that you're not doing too badly. Really. All things considered. I am sure there's a good reason for Thomas being wrapped in clingfilm, and the fact that the number 1 has such significance. And that everything has to be blue. All perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about here. Probably. Who am I kidding. Whatever it is, it's all my fault!!!!
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Italian Politics.
Last night I was almost literally dragged, kicking and screaming, to a political dinner by my other half. I wasn't so much kicking and screaming but I was moaning and throwing really mean looks at him - I have no interest in English politics, so why on earth should I take an interest in Italian politics? Apart from the obvious theatre of the whole thing, of course - every week gives up a new reason to throw your hands in the air and say, 'SHEESH', but rarely for reasons of politics. Berlusconi is like a one-man vaudeville show. I saw his latest regional candidate in the papers this week who was actually his recent dental nurse following the miniature-Cathedral throwing shenanigans. She was also aged 32 and dressed in a mini-skirt short enough to ensure that the electorate was left in no doubt as to her credentials.
So last nights' do was a fund/ awareness raiser for the centre-right candidate for regional presidency following the, er, stepping down of the last president. This was occasioned by the fact that he was caught in a private apartment taking cocaine with transvestite prostitutes. I mean, SERIOUSLY?!! Fiddling the bird-feeder on the old expenses is just so uninspired compared to this stuff. These boys really know what they are doing. And of course it generally appears to be the boys getting up to this kind of nonsense. With the exception of Mrs Robinson in Northern Ireland apparently feeling it was her destiny to take a much younger lover, there is a real gender inequality in the ability to create sexual scandals. As far as I am aware, there were no whispers of Margaret Thatcher in a gimp mask with rent boys, or Mo Mowlam partying with teenagers, and yet there seems to be an epidemic of men with an inability to keep it in their pants. That's another story for another day however.
So we are on our way to the dinner at a local restaurant and there is some discussion as to why the venue has changed. Apparently, either because the strength of interest in the candidate is so strong or because the dinner is free, there has a been such demand that there are actually two dinners in two different restaurants. We arrive at the restaurant to find it is already two thirds full and to find that E and myself are the youngest there by about twenty years. It appears the younger political activists are actually able to pay for their own dinner. Not to worry, we seat ourselves with E's father and step-mother and a friend of theirs and wait and wait for the candidate to arrive and launch into his spiel. I actually am waiting for the wine which finally arrives and doodling on a picture of the candidate. He really does look quite cute with bunches and no doubt at some point in the future, if he gets elected, there will be photos to prove it.
Meanwhile, the Olds are chatting. It is really something to finally be able to understand the conversations that are going on around me, albeit sketchily at times, but I generally get the gist of most that is said. And I still find it surprising how the men compete in terms of how fit they are well past the age that most English men have given up. I was party to a conversation between two male retirees that sounded more like a pair of schoolgirls - A: 'Well of course, usually in the evening, I eat very little, very little indeed.' B: 'Oh, me too, I only ever have a light dinner'. A: 'Maybe a salad'. B: 'I had just raw fennel for dinner last night!' Hilarious. An English male conversation would probably have been more focused on how many pints were managed and as for that pie...
So the main conversations usually, as always, centred around food, preparation and eating of and the other favourite of old people the world over, who is still alive and who is dead and who is somewhere in between. Spiced up with the occasional gossip as to who is doing what with whom - although the latter conversations now tended towards who's daughter is doing what with who's son.
Finally our candidate arrives and in he bounces surrounded by his team - chaps who fashionably need a shave carrying multimedia equipment. Whatever scale it is on, politics is a funny thing to be involved in. It is basically a constant needy cry of, 'vote for ME! I'm great, I can make you happy, vote for MEEEEE!'. I am assured that this chap is already rich and therefore cannot be in it for the money (has anyone heard of the Billionaire Berlusconi?) so maybe he really is in it because he can see how behind we are here and someone finally needs to solve the transport problem (Public: Woefully inadequate. Private: It doesn't move but when it does get where it wants to go, it parks wherever it damn well pleases) and the infrastructure etc. I just found it odd and interesting to watch him go about his spiel as an outsider with no stake in what he has to say. He was an actor on a stage looking for approbation and I sincerely hope that there is more than his ego involved here as we do seriously need a serious politician who can pull off the modernisation of the region that it desperately needs instead of getting in and handing out jobs for the boys while looking to Caligula for tips on Politician Deportment. We can live in hope but the candidate leaping about calling a roomful of old people 'youngsters' and shoving fistfuls of cards with his face on them, begging us to vote for him? I won't be holding my breath.
So last nights' do was a fund/ awareness raiser for the centre-right candidate for regional presidency following the, er, stepping down of the last president. This was occasioned by the fact that he was caught in a private apartment taking cocaine with transvestite prostitutes. I mean, SERIOUSLY?!! Fiddling the bird-feeder on the old expenses is just so uninspired compared to this stuff. These boys really know what they are doing. And of course it generally appears to be the boys getting up to this kind of nonsense. With the exception of Mrs Robinson in Northern Ireland apparently feeling it was her destiny to take a much younger lover, there is a real gender inequality in the ability to create sexual scandals. As far as I am aware, there were no whispers of Margaret Thatcher in a gimp mask with rent boys, or Mo Mowlam partying with teenagers, and yet there seems to be an epidemic of men with an inability to keep it in their pants. That's another story for another day however.
So we are on our way to the dinner at a local restaurant and there is some discussion as to why the venue has changed. Apparently, either because the strength of interest in the candidate is so strong or because the dinner is free, there has a been such demand that there are actually two dinners in two different restaurants. We arrive at the restaurant to find it is already two thirds full and to find that E and myself are the youngest there by about twenty years. It appears the younger political activists are actually able to pay for their own dinner. Not to worry, we seat ourselves with E's father and step-mother and a friend of theirs and wait and wait for the candidate to arrive and launch into his spiel. I actually am waiting for the wine which finally arrives and doodling on a picture of the candidate. He really does look quite cute with bunches and no doubt at some point in the future, if he gets elected, there will be photos to prove it.
Meanwhile, the Olds are chatting. It is really something to finally be able to understand the conversations that are going on around me, albeit sketchily at times, but I generally get the gist of most that is said. And I still find it surprising how the men compete in terms of how fit they are well past the age that most English men have given up. I was party to a conversation between two male retirees that sounded more like a pair of schoolgirls - A: 'Well of course, usually in the evening, I eat very little, very little indeed.' B: 'Oh, me too, I only ever have a light dinner'. A: 'Maybe a salad'. B: 'I had just raw fennel for dinner last night!' Hilarious. An English male conversation would probably have been more focused on how many pints were managed and as for that pie...
So the main conversations usually, as always, centred around food, preparation and eating of and the other favourite of old people the world over, who is still alive and who is dead and who is somewhere in between. Spiced up with the occasional gossip as to who is doing what with whom - although the latter conversations now tended towards who's daughter is doing what with who's son.
Finally our candidate arrives and in he bounces surrounded by his team - chaps who fashionably need a shave carrying multimedia equipment. Whatever scale it is on, politics is a funny thing to be involved in. It is basically a constant needy cry of, 'vote for ME! I'm great, I can make you happy, vote for MEEEEE!'. I am assured that this chap is already rich and therefore cannot be in it for the money (has anyone heard of the Billionaire Berlusconi?) so maybe he really is in it because he can see how behind we are here and someone finally needs to solve the transport problem (Public: Woefully inadequate. Private: It doesn't move but when it does get where it wants to go, it parks wherever it damn well pleases) and the infrastructure etc. I just found it odd and interesting to watch him go about his spiel as an outsider with no stake in what he has to say. He was an actor on a stage looking for approbation and I sincerely hope that there is more than his ego involved here as we do seriously need a serious politician who can pull off the modernisation of the region that it desperately needs instead of getting in and handing out jobs for the boys while looking to Caligula for tips on Politician Deportment. We can live in hope but the candidate leaping about calling a roomful of old people 'youngsters' and shoving fistfuls of cards with his face on them, begging us to vote for him? I won't be holding my breath.
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