The world according to Oggis

I'm guessing a bit of light relief from all the pontificating would be welcome, and it just so happens I have here a compilation of 26 selected words currently in the Oscarian vocabulary. As he's on his way over to visit distant friends and family, it's quite likely that someone reading this might be subject to a barrage of undecipherable gibberish in the none-too-distant future, so this will hopefully be useful both as a guide and a warning*.

Phonetic key: vowels mainly as per Spanish pronunciation, but allowance should be made for the occasional Northern twang.

Conversational tips: none. Just say "yes" a lot, assuming you can stop laughing long enough to actually speak.

• oggis (Oscar)
• ey-ee (Elly)
• me oggis (this belongs to Oscar)
• hursh (it hurts)
• ducks / dux (I'm stuck, also ducks)
• mine (flawess pronunciation)
• dus (juice)
  
• peees (please)
• ah-gew (thankyou)
• dow (I want to get down)
• ab (I want to get up)
• adiding (I'm hiding)
  
• oh-ka (there's a car)
• oh-ka (there's another car)
• oh-ka (there's yet another car, etc, etc)
• towsis (trousers)
• shus (shoes)
• tox (socks)
• docdit (chocolate)
• bigis (fingers)
• bidis (sweeties)
• horsh (horse)
• mooo (what the horse says - an Oggis joke)
• dak-dak (tractor)
• beebeesh (cbeebies)
• herberdy (happy birthday)
• pish (fish)
• beewee (wee-wee, on the rare occasion of it landing in his potty)

*Disclaimer: due to a rapidly accelerating rate of uptake, the author disclaims all responsibility for the completeness and accuracy of the above lexicon. You engage in conversation with the Oggis entirely at your own risk. Thank you.

Cake and eat it, with extra waffle

Keeping a blog updated is turning out to be a bit like keeping a hardy houseplant. Let's face it, there's always a whole raft of better things to do, so you neglect it, keep it low on the to-do list, aware that it needs regular attention but feeding it just enough to stop it expiring completely. Then there's the inspiration factor: you need something to write about. Our problem here is that we're now thoroughly over the golly gosh, isn't England different to Spain? shock horror surprise, so it's more a case of thinking what's new – and not very much is, generally speaking. This is England after all, nothing's new, it's all worn out, clichéd and held together with little more than blind faith and a large box of zip ties. The only thing that changes regularly is the price on the display board of the petrol station on the corner of our street. Which, in turn, is slowly changing the way we get about, or at least it is for me. I'm gradually re-establishing an affinity with the bicycle which has been dormant for quite a bit longer than the blog has. Whether I use it enough to make a dent in our fuel bills is another matter, but it definitely helps that I have a friend "on the inside" and he's been giving me some bike-related work.

Normally, this would be a problem – that's to say, unless you're really lucky, work and play are mutually exclusive. I always considered myself lucky to be able to take photos for a living, but the reality is the divide between the photos you'd like to take and the ones you're paid to take is as big as any work vs play dilemma. Putting an even finer point on it, just because you're really into cycling doesn't mean you'll enjoy working for a bike shop as much as you enjoy riding a bike, no matter how wacky and wonderful the place might be. I spent a week in the shop itself, which as I mentioned a blog or two ago is in Sunderland, a small town near Newcastle (sorry guys, couldn't resist ;)) – basically cos they were short-staffed, but also to get a handle on the EPOS system which also drives the shop website. There are a good number of pics needed too, once the refurb is complete, but there's plenty to be getting on with for now getting their web presence up to the standard of their service. So far, it looks like this (which may be the finished article if you're reading this in 2009...) with the homepage more-or-less finished, barring clearance of some bugs helpfully built in to the EPOS software.

The best thing about all this is the shop cycling club, which is a big incentive to get out once a week, and the generosity of Ian the Boss, who keeps offering me the use of some very nice bikes, which in turn inspires yet more riding. I was out on Saturday and I'm out again tomorrow on one of these lovely machines. A bit of a climbdown from the hand-built race bike I'd been hoping to ride but this one just fits so much better... I'll spare you the tech spec and review. I'm hoping to do a 35 mile loop down to Durham, up to Tow Law and along the moors via Lanchester back to Chester-le-Street, and praying that the muscles which (I noted yesterday) appear to be specific to road-riding (...) have been rejuvenated sufficiently such that I don't double up in agony on the first serious climb of the day.

Anyway, enough about bikes, this was supposed to be about blogs. There's something ironic about trying to find time amongst all your Real Life activities to write a post, when Real Life ends up being no more Real than the blog is. I was on about the time I spend on the computer, how everything seems to have a digital heart these days, or at least the way so many RL activities involve at least some physical inactivity, parked in front of this screen. If/when you get to this state, as I seemed to be heading, I reckon it's a good idea to set yourself a corresponding physical activity for every prolonged period of inactive computing. So the many days of web design for the bike shop are complemented by regular days out cycling; hours and hours processing images for one project or another are (thoeretically) balanced up with time out to get out with the camera and take some more. On paper, so to speak, it works. While taking pictures feeds the digital machine, emailing, blogging and the like are fed by RL interaction with Real People. Hmm.

This could mitigate one of the big hazards: ending up a Billy No-Mates or worse, lapsing into mild sociophobia. I was just reading about Alan Turing, the founder of modern computers (it says here), how he bizarrely envisaged the advent of a machine that would think and interact just like a real human. Not, I reckon, to give the machine a place in the human world, more to develop a digital brain for humans, a virtual mind, a comforting and familiar retreat when RL gets too much to handle. In a recent book he's been characterised as being socially inept, among other things, and given his ideals it all seems eerily prescient re the problems his machine seems to be generating. Using the machine has become a new form of interaction in itself, in both human and digital realms, and the big machine – that interweb – has an insatiable appetite, devouring RLs at an astonishing rate. Predictions abound of collaborative working taking over the world (or at least a big human part of it) with web-based life potentially changing "every aspect of our [real] lives". I could live with that, I'd even be happy to be part of it, but I'd want my cake and eat it. I realise blogs were conceived as a way of keeping track of online "events" (from "web log", innit?) and even though these days a blog can be everything from online diary to photoblog to a kind of social medium (and ours is a bit of all of these) it all takes up valuable time. With a bit of effort and a bit more awareness, it's got to be possible to feed the machine just enough that it feeds you in return, and even if it does become the source of your bread and butter, it has to be possible to restrict it to being a life tool, rather than your whole life itself.

Hasn't it?

four let-downs and a birthday

No matter how well-prepared I am (and I think I'm generally pretty well prepared...) the week always starts off mad. It would help of course, if I didn't feel like I have to do everything. It's a part of my nature I would like to get control of. Geddit?!
ANyway, I'd been booked in weeks ago to do a week's supply in a Washington school. Sunday saw us do a bit of a dry run to find the place and time the journey from Houghton, where I'd be dropping Oscar off at my Mam's, and Monday saw me leaving 10 minutes later than I should have done and arriving at the school as the agency were calling me to see where I was, at 8:45. Schools starts at 9, but nowadays supply teachers are meant to be in school for 8.30, and having worked in Spain for the last 9 years and not once arriving earlier than 8:50 on a good day, it has come as a bit of a shock to the system to say the least. Combine that with the control freakery and the fact that Elly turned 5 on Tuesday, and guess what? On Tuesday I was late again, 8:50 this time, making a courtesy call at 8:30 to say I was terribly sorry, but traffic was a nightmare and I wouldn't be there until then. As I pulled into the car park, Anthony from the agency called me.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the school, I'm there now."
Awkward 5 second silence.
"Erm, they don't want you anymore..."

All because I arrived 'late' for 2 days running and the Deputy Head had seen me leaving at 3:20 the day before. As everything was finished, what was I to do? Twiddle my thumbs until 'at least' half past 3? Which is what the kind secretary told me when I went in to 'face the music', or in this case, extremely black looks from aforementioned Deputy. No verbal warning, not even a written warning, nor even a ticking off. Sacked. So I came home, cleaned the windows and got the place ready for Elly's birthday party. The worst of it is, it was a really nice school and they made me (initially) feel very welcome. It was the nicest of all of the schools I've so far been in... Typical. Also, Monday, Yoga was canceled which I found out at 6.30 as I walked into the Community Centre. Then I've had to cancel the Yoga class I booked at the leisure centre for tomorrow because there's no-one to look after the kids. Yet I still have to pay for it because I didn't call within 24 hours (22 and a half, but let's not split hairs...). And so on. It's basically been one of those weeks and I'm feeing not a little bit peed off and homesick.

Elly's party, thankfully, was a raging success. We took a bit of a gamble and invited 7 of her friends from school to tea. Two of them couldn't make it, so there were 6 little girls and Elly's new best friend Abigail's big brother Kieran, and Oscar running around the flat, all screaming simultaneously and having a wonderful time. My favourite (quiet) bits include painting all of their faces to look like princesses (although I did think it was a bit of an odd request and as you can see if you look at the photos they turned out looking like mini aspiring Baby Janes complete with 'crowns' on their foreheads... it was all Ely's idea..) and teatime, when they all sat on the picnic rug on the lounge floor (weather: cloudy for a change and a teeny bit too chilly for the paddling pool...) where they polished off the entire spread of sausage rolls, heart shaped (if you please) ham sandwiches, chocolate sandwiches, strawberries, crisps and the like. I thought, as you do, there'd be loads of food left, but they scoffed the lot and jelly and birthday cake besides! Godfather Michael came, which was great, as we'd seen him only once since we've been back and thought he'd fallen off the face of the planet sometime since. Elly got loads of lovely presents too; the only problem is, where on earth are we going to put them?

Incidentally, a huge thank you to the person/s who sent the lovely bag and purse for Elly. She's thrilled, but can Mik remember who pressed it into his hands so that we can thank you properly? Will pigs ever fly? Things like that only get remembered if I do the remembering myself – but hey, a girl can't be expected to do everything, however compelled she might be to try.

Back to my routes

I really hit the ground running when I got back. Straight to my folks' house demanding lunch, despite it being almost 5pm, and although it's their fault for living so close to the airport, it did occur to me that I'd been entirely spoilt by everyone back in Spain. Maybe it's a(nother) cultural thing (and no reflection on me Mam's hospitality) that it really does feel like I couldn't have expected such treatment when visiting England in years gone by. I'd never dream of just turning up as I did last week, without arranging anywhere to stay, no itinerary to speak of, a load of presents in one bag (felicidades to Anita, Liza, Gabe, Ruby for Saturday and – lest we forget (!) – Elly for Tuesday) and far too many pairs of shorts in the other. I remember the Spanish spring being much warmer; by the end of April the last of the heating oil's usually gone, excursions to Vilanova nudie beach start in earnest, sandals get dusted off and thermal vests & long pants get shelved. Not this year. It was so chilly, I returned to England in the same single pair of long pants I'd left in and worn for the entire trip. Yesterday we finally cornered them and forced them into the washing machine. Ever since I landed, it's been warm and sunny here, even hitting 20-odd degrees last Monday. The world's all upside down.

It was spring bank holiday on Monday, and although the forecast wasn't great (as is traditional on bank holidays) it did look good further north. I'd been to Ingram Valley once, as a teenager over 20 years ago ('hem) and couldn't remember it at all, not the place itself nor the first idea how to get there. The main thing was that it's waay up north, close to the Cheviot hills on the Scottish border, and there's only one main road up there, so it was hard to go wrong and the sun would likely be out. While the A1 heads straight off up the coast and gets increasingly boring, the A697 is a lovely, winding, picturesque route through the best of the Northumbrian countryside. Ingram village is a tiny little place and the river there is just idyllic; shallow and stony, fast-running and stained red with iron deposits – not, as I joked to Elly once I'd persuaded her to taste it, due to the area's vast sheep population. There's no concession at all to its popularity as a picnic destination: no tables, bins or parking lots, with a tucked-away visitor centre the only evidence that it's any more than well-sheltered grazing land. If you arrived early enough of a morning you might easily convince yourself that you were the first to discover those broad, grassy banks, overrun with yellow-flowering broom and dotted with little copses of Scots pine, beech and hawthorne. My abiding memory of this springtime visit will doubtless be the smell of coconut, which was so strong we seriously thought it must have been drifting over from a nearby sunbather, larded up with Ambre Solaire. It was the broom, something I'd never noticed before, despite its being heavy with bright yellow blooms... it was everywhere, humming with bees and stinking in the sun like a tropical market stall.

From the woolly wilds of Northumberland to darkest County Durham, it's all daisies and dandelions, at last. The trees, spiky and bereft of greenery when I left, are all leafy and rounded now, as if they'd been transplanted from somewhere else while I wasn't looking. Buildings I'd just begun to get used to are hidden behind these heavy curtains, the always-wet roads have tuned into dusty shaded avenues and everyone is out in short sleeves and skirts. Oh, hang on, that was the case back in February ;o) it's maybe because I've been out from in front of the computer for such a time that I've had a chance to take it all in & in some ways it's clear that we're not all that far removed from the Mediterranean spring. While lowland Spain is already well into the growing season with the vines shooting away in all directions, up in the cooler mountain climes it's more like here, just about woken up from a long winter hibernation. I know where I'd rather be (answers on a postcard etc) even if it is a subtle difference rarely appreciated by those with TFT displays glued to their foreheads, wherever they may be.

This is the first chance I've had to do the blog in weeks. I'd half expected to be helping out at Ian's bike shop this week and barely finished uploading my Spain photos when I got the call. It's an expensive bus ride to Sunderland – about five euros each way – or a painful stop-start car journey, but about 20 km of railway line have always connected our town to the coast, and now that it's disused, rails removed, it's a very pleasant and relatively brisk cycle commute. You climb up from Chester marketplace to the scary estate overlooking the town, press quickly on to the overpass where you join the railroad trail. From there on it's a straight, flat ride, partly sealed where the bods who oversee the C2C route have deemed it necessary. Under the A1 and the Washinton Highway, past the gas works and into the rural bit that separates Durham and Tyne & Wear, you eventually head down to the Wear river at Cox Green. This is a very pretty spot & vaguely reminds me of the boaty nooks and crannies around Pittwater in NSW; I must take a camera one day and get some pics. It gets hillier from here on as you climb up from the river and enter progressively more urban/industrial areas, although in so many ways it's all downhill from Cox Green to Sunderland ;o)

It has to be said, it's an odd place. Residential zones like Grangetown and Ashbrooke rank among the most pleasant Victorian housing areas I've ever seen, but the city itself is just a bit of a mess. Planning seems to have been carried out with the merest nod to a wider urban "identity", with all sorts of incongruous bits & bobs cribbed from other, equally cut 'n' paste city centres. There's the mall, of course, looking like a monument to uPVC conservatories, pedestrianised areas weaving in and out of a completely unfathomable one-way system, and a Marks & Spencer all resplendent in green marble. Despite occasional flashes of architectural finesse, the collective whole looks about as cosmopolitan as an African souk, populated almost entirely by the singular tribe known hereabouts as the Mackems. I've never met a bad 'un, but that's mainly because you can spot the real crazies a mile off. I should probably leave it there... let's not forget the fact that, for all I might have mixed feelings about their city, I did end up marrying one.

home alone with the clippers

Awww... how could anyone mistake him for a little girl..?

The first day/ night we were ok. I'd been to work all day and Mum had been with the kids. I felt tired but ok. Jan, Tony and Aimee came round for a (not very good) tea, especially for poor Aimée who, of all of us, needed a good feed. She doesn't eat tomatoes in any way, shape or form – pizza was out, as was the salad I prepared in front of her with cherry toms in it... but it was great to see them, if at times very sad, talking about all the stuff that's happened to Jan over the past few years, and great to catch up.

Going to bed the first night was... odd. I sort of put it off for a bit, and then a bit more, but eventually, locking all of the doors and turning off all of the lights, I got into bed. It was so strange to lie there wearing Mik's 'nightie' knowing that it was just me in charge, that he wasn't going to soon be totally comatose on the sofa in front of some film he's already seen but can't remember because last time he tried to watch it exactly the same thing happened, nor would he be staggering to bed an hour and a half later complaining about a stiff neck.

The next morning was odd too, although Oscar slept until 7.30 which meant I could job the jobs I had to without fielding him too, which was nice. It's all gone pretty smoothly apart from the second night when I found it difficult to turn off the telly and go to bed alone again, and then there was the incidence of the enormous wee on the third evening. Elly and Oscar played for ages in the bath and the water had long since gone cold when they got out. Elly was all cosy on the sofa while I dried Oscar, who as always complained and wriggled. He managed to break free, ran into the living room and jumped onto the other sofa, and was sitting looking very suspicious in the corner of it when I came into the living room. "You had better not...!" was all I managed to get out before I saw he was sitting in a pool of wee. Not your little boy, 27-wees-a-day sort of a puddle either, a huge man-sized Dr. Forster kind of puddle. There were amazingly no expletives but the voice was raised. I mean really. Why not in the bath? Or even on the bathroom rug? Either would have been preferable, with, I have to say, the potty being my #1 choice, but no. Save it up, sit on the sofa and then let it aaaalllll go... he had to have a shower. Then, after another drying drama, pyjama-ed and most importantly nappied, he proceeded to sit on the wet part of the sofa. The cushion was off but there had been sooo much wee it had gone through and soaked the bit that the cushion rests on. Not once did he do that but twice. Little Bugger.

On the subject of LBs, Elly had the day off school today and I had the afternoon off, and for once, apart from a wee shower the weather was lovely (short sleeves and everything!) so we went to the park. For ages. It was fab, we played ball, played on the parky things, with the sand, had 'merienda' on a bench, an apple and a shared ice-cream (very funny). We bought duck food and fed the swans, Elly all the time complaining about the swans and wanting the ducks to come over, but being unable to stop throwing the food for them. She got pecked last week when Mik took them (in the rain...) to do the same, and it was the main topic of conversation.
Anyway, it was whilst we were running about on one of the parky things that a man with his little boy said, "Watch out for the little girl". Nothing odd about that you might think, except Elly was nowhere to be seen and the remark was directed at Oscar! "I know he's beautiful, but he's a little boy!" I wailed, and as I walked away with my little pretty one, madly muttering under my breath, "Right, that's it, you are so getting your hair cut when we get home", mutter mutter... it's been bandied about as an idea for a while, but that was the final straw. I decided to not even wait for Mik Scissorhands, and got straight to it. He was lovely, even with the clippers, and now looks like the little piddling thug he is! Gorgeous.

Elly had a wee wobble tonight. In general she's been ok about Papa being away, but tonight we chatted to him and Virginia on Skype. That was odd in itself as they could see us but we couldn't see them and there was a mad delay so we didn't really 'chat' as it were. More, they laughed at the faces we pulled in the camera. It's funny how self-conscious you become when you can see yourself on a Skype video feed, it isn't exactly flattering, and I normally look as though I'm staring off into space. But as I couldn't see how daft I looked I ended up doing some very odd things, not least because of the delay... aaanyway. Elly was in and out of view and after a while came and told me in no uncertain terms, "Stop ringing people!". Then there was a lip wobble as we said goodbye to Papa and she said she was all sad and could I make her a card to tell her how much I love her. I'm filling up just remembering it. Bless. How could I refuse? That and the request for some of my 'special' chocolate that Rog had brought round. Lindt Orange if you please, I'm sure I wasn't indulged such eclectic tastes at the age of nearly 5.

I have to say it all sort of runs like clockwork, thanks to my amazing organisational skills and the wonderful help of Mum. One more sleep; the kids are already there & I'll be joining them soon. No trouble getting off tonight, I think; while I'm hoping it'll be a long time before we have to do it again, I'll be (not too secretly) plotting and planning how I can repay the favour :-)