a pox on your yoga mat

I did some yoga today, it's the first time since we arrived that I've managed to get myself into gear, find a class and get myself along. Now, I love yoga, did it for a year under the tutelage of the wonderful Gloria, an Argentinian ex yoga student who taught various classes in Canyelles and in & around Vilafranca. It was the full-on yogic experience with Gloria, which was just great for me. Classes were in the municipal gym, in a very large and airy room. You went in, took off your shoes, spread your towel out on a mat and waited there in your comfy clothes and (clean) socks (coming to that in a bit...) while Gloria put on some lovely relaxing music, lit an incense stick and did the roll call. Then class would begin, sometimes stretching, sometimes getting rid of the bad karma we had collected since the last class, sometimes simply jiggling about a bit. There was always a rhythm and a pattern, you always felt as though you were being prepared for the class coming to some sort of crescendo, whether it be for a posture, or some balancing, and we also did quite a bit of pair work. Gloria was great, helping us with breathing techniques and making us think of our bodies in relation to the movement we had made - she even made us chant... I'm going on a bit I know, but there IS a point!

So today I was really looking forward to it, learning some of the names of the positions I know so well in Spanish and getting the old bod moving a bit, feels so nice after an hour of yoga... anyway, even though it was nice, it wasn't quite what I expected. I'm really not sure what I'd expected, but this was more of a paramilitary yoga workout than reaching for inner peace. Fifteen of us crammed into a tiny, windowless room. The teacher, a guy who looked as though he'd be more at home teaching 5-a-side football, put us through our paces like we were in combat training. No towel on the mat. Faces on the mat... and it's here I finally get to my point. In Spain, when you go swimming or take part in some other sport, HYGIENE plays a significant part in the activity. When swimming (indoors) you need to wear sandals and a hat. Not here. I'm so much in the habit now that I get funny looks for walking to the side of the pool in my flip-flops, but it feels Wrong not to. And the floor is slippy. Hats, I know we look silly when we wear them but there is a good reason and everybody looks just as silly so you don't mind really. In the yoga class people were barefoot and it clearly wasn't a problem for them to lie on the mat without having a towel there. A lovely, clean towel you brought from home. I don't know, am I being pernickety? I came out at 6.30 and immediately took a great big breath. I was feeling better in body but needed a lungful of our lovely rural air... breathed in through the nose and ahhhhh, the sweet, sweet smell of freshly cooked fish and chips filled my head. Not quite what I was after, but I went and got some for tea anyway... and had a shower ASAP afterwards!

Other news. My police check is through and it looks like there might be 5/6 weeks work for me in one school nearby – hurrah! – but I don't know much about it yet. Excited all the same. And our Oscar has got chicken pox, bless the poor spotty bugger. So far he only has a few spots on his torso, we're hoping it won't get much worse. He is off his food but otherwise seems in good spirits. Elly is good, loving school and making up for Oscar's lack of appetite by eating anything that isn't nailed down. Fab. It was just a snacky tea tonight, a boiled egg and soldiers followed by peach chunks, which last month would have been a chore to get her to swallow. Today it was gone in a flash, followed by demands for more soldiers with jam on. And then some more soldiers, please, this time with Vegemite on. All of which turned out to be a diversion, a way of distracting our attention while little brother upended his egg-in-a-cup and spread it into a perfect semicircle. Thankfully we'll be over the worst of it soon, just as soon as he is.

Googling any kind of pox is bound to turn up some slightly off-the-wall results, and chicken pox is no exception. Most disturbingly, it seems a person from Ashford saw some profit in it, as did someone at Zapf Creations. The other bizarre thing is the amnesia it creates in adults, such that when your poorly kids grow up and have kids of their own, you can't remember them ever having it. At least that's the case with my parents, and Mick's, and pretty much everyone either of us talk to. It seems the only way to be sure is to wait a fortnight and see if you come down with shingles, which is a sure-fire way of remembering, if ever there was one. It also gets you to thinking about highly contagious diseases and, inevitably, full-circle to unprotected yoga on a mat of indeterminate cleanliness...

Plastic goods

We were so incensed by the realisation that our new home town doesn't provide facilities for recycling plastic, that we actually sat down and wrote a letter of complaint. It's not something I'd normally do; I generally see no point, myself, having zero faith in inter-election accountability. Getting some kind of response wasn't the motivation, we just wanted to shout at someone.

I mean really... go to the bottle bank down at Tescos there & you get three flavour options (white, green and brown) for glass, but there's nowhere for plastic. When we rang up to find out where to take our burgeoning polyethelene collection, we were told there was no such facility. Surely this couldn't be the case. But it was true: the council website offered up such incredibly lame excuses we were spurred into action and a Mr Angry email was duly sent last Thursday. It was quite polite, really, as complaints go, just a bit of a why, oh why accompanied by links to learned articles and some basic facts and figures. Apart from completely trashing suggestions that plastics recycling is uneconomic, these stats inform us that it only takes 250 polyethylene pop bottles to make an adult's fleece coat. Whey, where there's muck there's brass, as they say down south.

Anyway, imagine our surprise etc when the Durham Advertiser appears via our letterbox not two days later with a prominent article on the merits of recycling, and exactly how, from 16th April next, the lovely council will be arriving to collect all our washed & squashed from the comfort of our very own kerbside. One feverish logging onto the council website later, and there it is – a shiny new page has appeared, complete with some answers to questions they claim are "frequently asked", despite... never mind, suffice to say, none of our why, oh whys were among them, confirming the likelihood that they were completely superfluous to the democratic process. And what's more, it seems they weren't collecting cardboard beforehand, either. I can almost hear the sighs of relief over at county hall, as they narrowly avoid another, entirely pointless tongue-lashing from the keyboard of yours truly.

It's not all good news, though. I nearly choked on my Fruit Wheats when our town was mentioned on the national news the other morning, in the completely unexpected context of personal debt levels. It seems Chester-le-Street has the highest, per capita, in the entire country, at an impulse buy over five grand. It got a by-line in a few of the national papers, but the best coverage was in the Echo, who point out that it's more likely the commuter-belters (who can afford it) than irresponsible Poor People (who should know better) tarnishing the good name of the town. Someone's quoted as blaming Young People (which might have some validity, to be fair) but I'd basically argue that the advent of doorstep collection facilities provides the perfect opportunity to ditch the plastic once and for all, and all for one.

And there's more. Hot off the press, the results of the British Cleaning Council 2007 Loo of the Year Awards last week awarded the facilities on nearby Foundry Lane the gold medal in the Loo Attendant Team (Individual) category. I had no idea we were living in such a hotbed of national pre-eminence. We should probably shut up in future and thank our lucky stars we're living on the right side of town.

BTW, the doggy bag was photographed in a particularly posh shop window in Venice, one of those ludicrously expensive places just off St Mark's Square which prey on passing tourists all a-swoon with the romance of it all, to the point where they completely take leave of their senses and max out their plastic on hand-made novelty shopping accessories. It just seemed appropriate, somehow.

nutty kids & fruit wheats

We had a busy weekend, or at least some of us did... the little buggers never stopped. Saturday mornings generally offer a rare period of calm, or at least the now-routine visit to the library, this time making bunny shaped Easter cards, seem to promise as much. It was quiet this Saturday, so Oscar made one too, although it wasn't long before he got back to playing "guest librarian". Elly borrowed an idea that a little boy there had, creating a card where the poor old Easter bunny had a left eye made up of around 8 of those goggly eyes things, with just the one goggle eye on the right. She gave that one to her cousin Daniel, I do hope it hasn't given him nightmares! Straight after the library was her trial dance class with the Lilian Aubrey School of Dancing, which sounds very grand but is actually held in the local community center. Very sweet though. I was allowed to stay and watch as it was her first time, it was fab watching her skip around and try out 'first position', bless. There are no classes until the middle of April because of the holidays, but the form is filled in and she's keen to go again. Time to shop for blue leotard and tutu, little pink ballet shoes, and of course red tap shoes. She'll be all poise and and pointy toes in no time.

We had a lovely lunchtime as usual at Anne and Sid's, and afterwards went to the Brighton for Asian spices - cheap and plentiful! Mick, needless to say, was in his element. Most of his spice collection was chucked out before we moved and this was the first chance we've had to re-stock. We've been inventing spicy dishes and eating yummy stir fries ever since. My mouth's still zinging following tonight's Aberdeen Angus sausages (a co-incidence, honestly, that whenever I mention food it involves sausages) with stir-fried sugarsnap peas, baby sweetcorn, field mushrooms and peppers, all with lashings of garlic, chili and ginger, of course.

On Sunday, Elly was invited to a birthday party at a Leisure centre in Durham. There was a bouncy castle & soft play stuff, princess cups, plates and napkins, and she was truly en su salsa. I'm so relieved really. She has adapted really well, they both have, but there have been moments when I've thought that it's all been a bit much for her in particular. And then she bounces off the bouncy castle, bounces over to me and exclaims, " I'm sooooo happy!!!!" before bouncing off to bounce some more. We headed off to my Mam's for lunch – very yummy – so nice to have had lots of food cooked for us this weekend! It was Sunday papers and a very laid-back, post-prandial Sunday afternoon for us, while the kids buzzed around like flies and generally messed the place up. That's their handywork on the windows in the photo.

The week began as a mish-mash of banking and posting stuff off here & there and outrage at the news (take your pick: the Shannon saga, plans to catch them young, or the realisation that our local council refuses to recycle plastics) and realising that I'm beginning to get a bit twitchy, so I offered to do some volunteer work at the school where my auntie teaches. I had a great day today in Year 3 (bit weird resisting the urge to translate everything into Spanish) and I'm going back tomorrow for more! Y3 are off to Penshaw Hill to roll Easter eggs, weather permitting. Should be fun.

Aside from that, I'm definitely getting more used to the scary amount of choice in the supermarkets. We tried Sainsbury's today. Hypermarket-scale grocery shopping is finally becoming less confusing; at least when confronted by an entire kilometer of cereals I don't suffer a breakdown and flee from the supermarket muttering "I knew where I was in Esclat!" Striking muesli alone from the shopping list narrows the options down considerably. No hardship, we're all addicted to fruit-filled shreddies anyway. This weeks new flavour sensation is apricot, made even more yummy with the Jersey Gold Top organic milk that accidentally fell into our trolley.

Ok, that's it for now, apart from mentioning the lovely emails we've recieved over the last few days. It's just fab hearing from friends back in Spain. We think about you all lots and talk about you and tell stories about Spain and miss you. Keep on keeping in touch!

Treading water

What a mad week. This time last week, I had nothing planned. It ended up being so mad, I'll be lucky to have it all done this time next week. Apart from a trip to Argos for a disturbingly cheap shower head and tea with Auntie Margaret, it's been all work. And when you consider that I can see Argos from our front door, it's kind of left me a blog entry short of anything worth writing about.

The weather (ever-ready fallback topic) has been really great, as in Great Britain. Amazing clouds made for dramatic skies, which were perfect for some work I had to do but also ideal for getting wet while doing it. The highlight was probably holding onto my tripod on a dark, puddly Newcastle quayside, waiting for the wind to stop howling. It did, as it happens, but not until the following evening...

So, true to English sporting tradition, rain (and work) stopped play as far as getting some nice shots for the blog was concerned. The one above is a late substitution from August last year; one of our top players who takes a canny photo. It reminds me, even in the shade of our old back yard, how fabulous the light is compared to here, and how similar the light in New South Wales was, just a month later. Sometimes, Australia seems so close I feel like we should be thinking about packing; other times, I can see all ten thousand miles stretched out before us.

We're still no nearer getting a visa, but it's proving to be quite entertaining, treading water over here. Our little town is a constant eye-opener, a wild mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. You could never accuse it of being boring. Tonight and tomorrow night, the streets are minging with a rich mix of happy-hour pub crawlers and wine bar types; there's a bit of everything, really, and as this discerning culinary review site points out, it's largely a question of knowing which bits to avoid.

jumping through hoops

It's the things you have to do in order to simply exist that are driving me mad at the moment. Can't just open a bank account, oh no, there are (apart from the plethora of banks competing for your custom) too many choices (there I go again) as to which account(s) you may open. I do feel like an imbecile at times, the look on my face when people say things clearly quite ordinary to them, like, 'That'll be 72 pence please' (ok I'm exaggerating a bit but you get the drift...), they must think I've just landed from another planet, which is of course exactly what it feels like at times. Opening a bank account involves proof of everything, of address, marital status, even that I am who I say I am. I totally understand their need for all those copies of all those documents that English people know are important and consequently keep in one safe place, but in our case end up scattered over six different folders marked IMPORTANT/AUSTRALIA/JOB and so on.

Even within these categories I find myself short of the necessaries. To register with a supply agency in Sunderland today I needed a an entire forest of documents from a range of sources, and then there were still more forms to fill in - my most hated job since burping Elly!
• CV (WHY do they ask for it if they are going to make you copy it all out onto yet another form???)
• degree certificates (fair enough)
• TWO proofs of address (which of course, if I had a bank account, would be no problem)
• passport AND driving licence
• £36 for the CRB, which may take 2 weeks, maybe more, but it isn't considered urgent until 8 weeks have passed. Ho hum.

The good news is, there is work. Fingers crossed those folks at the CRB aren't busy at the mo, and the relevant Spanish people are feeling in an efficient mood, and I might manage to get a couple of weeks in before it's time to move to Oz.

What was lovely though, positively sigh-of-relief easy, was going to the doctors today. I don't really do doctors and never thought of it as problematic in Spain but oh, how blissfully simple to talk about your womanly bits in a language you know almost as intimately, without having to think of all the proper words for them or where they belong.

Other things are becoming more 'normal' now, even routine, largely thanks to the kids. The library I've mentioned before; the school is a model of regimented efficiency; even the local baths enforces its timetable. It dedicates both pools to swimming lessons every evening from 4 except on Monday's, so I've been picking Elly up and going to the pool straight from school. The first two weeks were a bit of a hassle, especially coming out as Oscar refuses to be wrapped in a towel and consequently turns a rather scary shade of purplish-blue, vibrating as violently as our washing machine and Elly resisted every effort at getting her showered and ready. Also the sharing of the armbands was a major diplomatic issue. Something had to be done.

So I went to Mothercare. It rained, properly, for the first time since we arrived & I'd popped in to buy a raincover for the buggy (I suggested to Elly on the way to school this morning that it wasn't a very nice a day but was quickly corrected: she thinks the rain is great. So does Oscar come to that, it was like he'd never seen it before. Wonder how long all that will last?) More excitingly, Mothercare had the perfect pair of swim shorts for Oscar – they're fabulous, like little Bermudas – and another set of armbands. Well the whole swim session went like a dream. Oscar practically sprouted fins and was just away, playing with Kerry's eggflips and going up and down the steps, while Elly must have jumped in about 20 times, simultaneously yelling, "MAAMAAA, LOOOK!!" and inhaling large quantities of pool. Getting ready was ok too, I even managed to offset an Oscar fit when it was time to go by having some biscuits at hand! I love it when a plan comes good.

The perfect antidote to a week full of piddly little jobs is a weekend with nothing to do. I didn't get one, needless to say, but we did finally get to the Angel for a run about. Apparently, it's the biggest sculpture in Britain, and it does have its detractors, but I love it.

The curious matter of the wardrobe fridge

The new place is working out pretty well. We have the high street right on our doorstep & even if it isn't exactly Northumberland Street, I have to admit everything from bridalwear hire to bicycle parts is very conveniently located. The number 21 bus goes right past our front door, so we've been making good use of the bus service into Newcastle (which is really entertaining, even if it is, mile for mile, around 3 times the price of the equivalent trip into Barcelona) and I've already mentioned the joys of rediscovering fish & chips and English beer, but probably not the fact that there's no worries about getting either of them home before they get too cold ;o)

It's properly cozy too, being roughly the size of our place in Daltmar and actually insulated. Bristling with radiators, it is. Even during the day, when they're off, I often forget I'm now in the freezing north and get a real shock when I open the front door. I've certainly remembered why the phrase "wind chill factor", coined by an Antarctic explorer, pops up so regularly in UK weather forecasts.

We have the heating turned all the way down and it still has us begging for mercy by bedtime, so the curious matter of the wardrobe refrigerator was a real puzzler.

Our bedroom has fitted 'robes running the full width of the room, kind of over the bed. It's great, providing more storage than even we can use all at once. The curious thing is that on my side the biggest section (running floor to ceiling, where I think I'm supposed to hang a suit) is as warm as the rest of the flat, while the corresponding cupboard on Niki's side is like a tomb. Odd too that the possibility of some kind of presence never crossed our minds, as we're quite prone to assuming this sort of thing in these circumstances. When we moved into our old place it took a good fortnight to realise that the eery smell of fish in the storage space under the spare room was actually a decaying lightbulb fitting, which fully explained why the mysterious apparition only appeared when we ventured in there.

Anyway, the upside of the chilly wardrobe is that we now have a copious overflow area for our hilariously small fridge. For personal hygene reasons, we won't be using it for cheeses and preserved meats , and it's actually a bit warm for milk and yoghurts and wot not, but it seems to be ideal for bulky essentials like beer. And it will definitely hold lots of chocolate... that's another long-forgotten aspect of living here: Niki's Mam's Chocolate Club. I promise you, you haven't lived 'til you've tried these. Worth converting a wardrobe especially for the purpose.

Btw, the indoor chill factor turned out to be down to the exterior wall it was mounted onto, which runs just far enough out from our neighbour's place to catch the full force of the almost incessant north-easterly wind. So it has it's uses after all.

the toon, the night bus and mother's day

This weekend my lovely sister-in-law Meryl invited us into Newcastle to celebrate her birthday. Saturday night on the Toon! It had been a long time... we spent the whole day running around like the proverbial chickens but we managed to fit everything in and had great night out to finish it off.

Chester-le-Street library does a "story and craft" activity for kids on a Sat morning that we've been to for the past couple of weeks. This Saturday it was Mother's Day cards of course – wallpaper cut into a bag shape and decorated with all manner of paper shapes and plastic jewels – even Oscar had a go, very funny, especially with the felt tip pens...
Elly insisted I 'forget' about the bag card so it could be a surprise, but kept on reminding me to forget throughout the course of the day! And then gave the card to my Mam!

Then it was time for our sausage-egg-and-chips lunch at Anne and Sid's; as you might have gleaned, this is a regular event which is great for the 4 cousins, who get together and proceed to run riot around Anne's neat-as-a-pin house. The highlight, as ever, was Anne's apple tart :-)

So after a quick lunch (they're usually more leisurely) we dashed off to Dunston to see our good friend Roger. He lives right next to the river, near the Staithes (see pic). I'd never seen them before, these massive wooden structures up close, nor actually thought what they were and I fell in love with them, if indeed it is possible to fall in love with an inanimate soon to be national monument. Speaking of which, I'm also very fond of the Angel of the North, even if it does cause a regular tailback (mostly due to rear-end shunts) on the A1 as motorists speed round the bend and come face to face with this colossal, looming, rusty angel. I love it, me. It was fantastic to see Rog and he gave us some of the best sausages (yes, more sausages) from the award-winning and locally renowned Rothbury Family Butchers. Very Yummy, and also a Very Good Hangover Cure, as it turned out :-)

After a quick stop-off with Rog, we hot-footed it to my Mam's to leave the kids; they spent the night there and Im told they all enjoyed it (I reckon we might make it a regular feature as we enjoyed it too!). Then back to the flat to get changed and out for the bus into town. Mik was unconvinced, I have to say, mumbling things about the car and the perils of night busses, but it was as smooth as could be. Geordie buses nowadays have cctv cameras on them, and we were through Gateshead before he got bored of playing with it! All of these trips down Memory Lane are funny (peculiar), it makes me feel both young and old, changed and the same. Not easy to get a handle on, but anyway, so far it's being fun.

Typically, it was raining sleet when we got into Newcastle, absolutedly perishing and I couldn't help sounding off a bit about all of the nutters in short-sleeved shirts, vests and no tights or jackets! And that was just the men... haha. Dean Street was slippy with the wet and we couldn't get into the lovely old Crown Posada cos there'd been a footie match. But we had the best night! Lots of laughs, lovely food (at the Thali, a Thai-Indian restaurant with a very entertaining Stannah stairlift down to the loos) and then the night bus home, which turned out to be very civilised indeed. Great fun, but I don't think we could manage it every week...

Thank god for Mothers, or at the very least Mother's Day, which provided the perfect excuse for an intensive-care, hangover-nursing, do-nowt Sunday morning and leisurely "thank-you" Sunday lunch at the Butcher's Arms with my Mam. No sausages, unfortunately, but the roast chicken was just the ticket.