When your boat comes in

Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy,
Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing;
Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy,
Thou shall hev a bloater when the boat comes in.
(trad. Northumbrian folksong)

Our boat's already in, we're just not sure what to expect. For all the old Geordie song pops into me head when I hear the phrase, in both verse and real life there's always a hint that it might not all be good news, as if your fishy might end up slapping you in the face rather than filling your belly. The way I remember it, most of the verses describe the kids of the house farting about with their mam, until the man of the house staggers in from the pub with their supper, stone cold and far from sober.

To be fair to respectable Northumbrian folk, this is quite possibly a bastardised version of a rather more quaint and tasteful seafaring ballad but then again, it's probably not ;) I mean it's not an unfamiliar scene. Not that my dad ever, y'know... well, not regularly. I remember the first & last time he rolled in late a bit worse for wear, clutching two bags of crisps and a Fry's Chocolate Creme. He certainly wasn't allowed to forget in a hurry ;)

The more conventional maritime meaning of your boat coming in evolved around the settling of a debt and the reaping of rewards, cos for centuries merchants have borrowed money to finance shipments from the other side of the world and paid off the loan once the lucrative cargo docked. Of course much depends on the quality of the merchandise and whether it's actually worth the initial investment, ie whether you end up lumbered with stuff no-one wants, worse off than you were before. It's in this sense that the phrase applies to us, as were equally unclear whether our boat coming in is a blessing or a curse, and the heartening fact that we've paid for it all upfront kind of fades when we recall what we've actually paid for.

And it wasn't cheap. (I have to get this down before the stuff clears quarantine and ends up in our garage: by then it'll be too late to think of it in abstract terms, cos we'll be up to our necks in it) If anyone reading this ever considers something as daft as moving their entire home and contents across the globe, please, don't. Just don't do it. Sell the lot.

Don't be fooled into thinking you have to buy Gizmo X cos they won't sell them where you're going: not only is that highly unlikely, when you get where you're going your needs will almost certainly shift enough to make X obsolete before it arrives.

Remember that the clothes you absolutely can't do without will fit into a standard suitcase. Anything and everything that ends up shoved into black bin liners clearly isn't going to be worth removing from them at the other end.

Books: sell them or give them away, you'll never read them any more than you'll miss them.

CDs, DVDs etc: rip them to your hard drive, then sell them.

Ornaments: looked great in your old place, so leave them there, or try eBay.

Electrical, soft furnishings, kitchenware: sell, sell, sell!

There's just no point shipping stuff when it costs $15 per cubic foot (once you've insured it) and your average washing machine is 12 cu ft. If it cost you $600 a year ago, by the time you ship it, battered and bruised, to your destination, it'll have cost you a another $180. Instead, just sell it, put the proceeds and savings – say $350 – towards a nice new one that'll actually work, or at least have a warranty that you could actually claim on, and save another $350 in repairs and prescription valium.

Yes, I'm looking forward to having my bikes, tools and er, well, bikes and tools, that's it. The rest could have been hijacked by Somalian pirates for all I care. In fact we should have paid the buggers to do just that. One forty-five grand insurance claim later, I think I could bear the loss. The two of us are almost indignant that it's all arrived at all, especially since all we're going to do is stack it in the garage and wonder what on earth possessed us to rent a furnished house.

It's due to be delivered on Tuesday, possibly even Christmas eve.

Bah.

On the bright side, the summer holidays started today, the weather's lovely and we have a new gas barbecue. Yes, that really is a barbecue in the pic (the house came with a ceramic hob [curse, spit] which is a complete and utter waste of perfectly good benchtop space. I won't let on how I came to buy a stainless steel six-burner with accessory ring, when all I wanted was an accessory ring... I have no doubt Nik'll relish telling the tale when she gets a minute) And the December iPhone pics are up. All that remains is to wish my reader (sic) a fabulous yule: hope you have a bloater, just like us.

The kids are alright

It's normal to be concerned about kids, I mean they're a worry aren't they? One of the hardest things about being a dad (or a mam) is accepting that your son (or daughter) is actually doing fine at school (or nursery), plays nicely with the other kids and is generally, as far as there can be a definitive standard, behaving "normally". Even leaving aside the fact that you the parent are being progressively relieved of any responsibility for your child's behaviour (it's all down to your child's birth weight, not your being a selfish, lazy, chain-smoking binge drinker, etc etc) there's a feeling of helplessness that stems directly from not being around for best part of your lad's (or lasses) (sorry, I'll stop that now) working day, or even more wishfully, wondering what on earth is going thorough their heads. Ok, now fold that mixture into this whole big disruption thing (cf previous blog posts) and we wouldn't be normal ourselves if we weren't extra concerned, a bit over-watchful and occasionally verging on neurotic about their well-being. Well, after a shaky start and in realising all of the above, I think we can finally rest in the knowledge that both E and O are properly grounded at last, even if we are none the wiser in the child development stakes.

We were just agreeing today that Elly seems happier than we've ever seen her; fabulously five, classically blonde and yet not completely dizzy, full of life and about as self-centered as she'll ever be. I hope. She seems to be charging ahead with schoolwork and friendships and has that brash, me-first, super-critical, cry-at-the-drop-of-a hat first-grader thing off to a fine art. If anything, she's very mature for her age and seems to be well in with the alpha females in her class. She likes swimming (every day in the school pool) scooters, gourmet food (ahem) Pixar movies, trampolines and arguing.

I may have already mentioned that Oscar is two. There isn't really anything more to say.

Oh, alright then.

He can be as infuriating as any kid his age, but he's mostly gorgeous. He spends two days a week at nursery, which has been his biggest challenge by far since we got here. It would have been much easier with even one more day but nurseries are so busy here, regulations (children per tutor) are strict and there's just not been the space for him. This week, at last, he seems to have settled in there and we can actually mention the place by name without him crying... in fact he gets quite chirpy about it. Please may he not learn to speak properly just yet; Oggis-speak is so meltingly cute and totally hilarious. He's moved on, at last, from vocabulary building to sentences, thanks to liberal use of the indefinite article – "a want a go a play a bings a park a pees daddy" (bings = swings) – which has opened up a whole world of communication for him. And occasionally for us.

Oscar likes everything that Elly likes plus soil and raisins.

There's a bunch of other kids that have been the source of some anguish and they're more or less the same as they were when we got here, according to Niki. Her school is still in turmoil, and although the eye of the storm seems to have passed, there's still a lot of negativity among the upper management in the wake of it and the going remains tough. As you'd expect, her class of 10-year-olds have meanwhile learned the hard way that there's Nik's way or the highway, and they're pretty much on-side now. They're clearly going to be a challenge but that's the stuff of teaching as far as she's concerned. You'd have to ask her yourself, but I get the impression that they've got under her skin a bit and she under theirs, which is all they need to start turning themselves around. They're just kids, after all, young enough that every day can be a fresh start if they really want it to be.

I'm hoping you're never too old for that to hold true :) finding work was always going to be slow but I'm forging ahead with plans A B and C as & when the kids permit. All will be revealed shortly. Meanwhile, the last of the November "iPhone moments" are up on picassa, hope you're enjoying them as much as I am.

Facebook scam warning

I've never liked the idea of Facebook purely from a security point of view. If you have a FB page or are thinking about getting one, there have always been several things you should be aware of and they've always seemed to me to be very good reasons not to sign up. Now all that paranoia is coming home to roost. If you do FB, I sincerely hope you've not been bitten by this yet. Whether you have or not, I hope you can see the writing is now plainly, er, on the wall.

Like a lot of people, I signed up with its spiritual forerunner, FriendsReunited.co.uk, way back when this kind of networking was a novel idea and despite niggling privacy concerns, because I simply had to know what became of all the nutters I went to school with (they're all either accountants or dropouts now, predictably enough) and signing up was the only way to find out. It actually felt quite "safe", with its double-blind email and school-register-type format. Still, I avoided giving away any real information about myself and I'm glad I did, as it's since been sold to ITV.com and (ab)used for other purposes. Unlike classmates.com, the US site that inspired it, FR never really followed up on its early success. Classmates.com now gives us all a clear indication of what would have happened if it those Other Purposes had been allowed to flourish. Not pretty at all.

Anyway I'll not harp on about it any more. Just be careful what you post up on these sites and be even more careful what you respond to there. Facebook in particular is now so huge it's just begging to be targeted by spammers and scammers who will look to exploit the friendly bonhomie there, first and foremost. When it happens, as with all these things, the more you give away, the more you stand to lose.

[/rant]

Weekend recipes & stuff

Cucumber Raitha by François-Xavier at fxcuisine.com. I tip my hat and dip my naan :)

Just a quickie again: had to share these blogs and their fab recipes. To be honest, I've not tried the Spanish one yet but it all looks dreamily familiar... just looking at the index has me lusting after butifarra, arroz a la cubana and lashings of pimienton picante. The title, Las Recetas de Mama, says what it is: a homesick Cordobese is progressively posting all his mother's recipes for us all to enjoy. Check it out before she cottons on why he's on the phone so much these days and clips his ear for him.

The other one is a bit different, in fact it really is something else... I made this guy's cucumber raitha for a curry night last week and it was sublime. His photographs are very nice too. If you've ever tried to make raitha and come up with something you thought was pretty good, you'll hate him. If you've ever wished you had a ready way of photographing your better culinary creations, you'll want to track him down and kill him. His amazing blog is here. His utterly infuriating About page is here. I'm still trying to find his home address... ;) He merits a permanent place among the Canny Good Links, I think.

Finally, there are some more iPhone moments on the November Picasa page.

Bon profit!

Things not being what they seem

We're both missing the autumn like a weird form of late-onset jetlag. It's getting hotter, not cooler, and the trees are sprouting green rather than glowing red and orange. Christmas decs everywhere look waay out of place. This time next month, when you're all roasting chestnuts on an open fire, we'll be roasting our chestnuts on the open beach. A lovely thought, if not a particularly pleasant image :) It does have a disorienting effect, a sort of dream-like unreality where you're double-taking a lot more than usual.

Kids are good for making you look twice at the best of times but this week's been mad. Imagine your typical house husband's mid-week afternoon: you've done the washing-up and there's a nice half-hour window before you pick up the big one from school. Just enough to leaf through the news with a nice cuppa tea. By the time the kettle's boiled and you slowly become aware of the eery silence it's too late... it's not like you forgot about the little one, he just slipped under your radar long enough to wreak his revenge for not paying him attention. Even before you even raise your head, somehow you just know it's gonna be bad. Well, on this occasion it's the dreaded Felt Pens, today's favourite clearly being a nice big red one. "A tiger," he says, and for once I don't need the hint; I'm actually quite impressed. It's not a bad tiger at all, the stripes up the arms and legs are neatly spaced and his paws are coloured in black, just like a real big cat. As toddlers are naturally ambidextrous, the work is more-or-less symmetrical from a whole-body perspective and stops only where the clothes start. This is impressive toddling, and it's not even the end of the ruse.

I put off washing him cos it's time to get Elly, so I just shove him in the pushcair and leave. We return to afternoon snacks and he's sitting at the breakfast bar with a glass (I know, I know..) of milk when he leans over to reach something and the glass shatters under his hand. It must have been cracked or something. Milk and glass fly everywhere and I instinctively grab his arms above the elbow to staunch the blood from all the cuts... which... aren't... cuts... they're red marker pen! Unconvinced and still shocked, I yell to Elly to get some paper towels while I check again and again each of the hundreds of red stripes all over him, for way longer than it would take for real blood to flow, but due to some kind of miracle he's completely unharmed. The panic over, he finally takes a deep breath, looks up at me and lisps, "ooh, a thcary tiger!"

Once I fully realised his incredible good luck I did the sensible thing and got straight down the shops to get him to pick some Lotto numbers. Which was hopeless of course, as he can't hold a pen properly, and Elly picked them for him. She was pretty good and only spoiled one card, so I didn't have the heart to lecture her on the statistical probability of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 being drawn from the pot, largely because I wasn't sure it was any less likely than a random pick. Nevertheless I checked the results as soon as I got up this morning and guess what? We didn't win, of course, but I got another shock because at first glance I thought we had. The first five numbers, I kid you not, were 12, 23, 34 and 45.

Ok, it's not quite the Twilight Zone but it's enough to make your head spin, it really is.

News at Tin

Actually, it's jast gone siven-thirdy, but what the hick...

Top story: we're in our new place. It feels very, very good. It feels like we finally landed, albeit more like the way a ball lands than a plane... more a sort of bouncing to a halt. If you're a regular Ryanair flyer the analogy might be lost on you, but anyway.. our cases are unpacked, at last, into the wardrobes of our sixth home in as many months, so we can relax at least, even if we can't get too comfy just yet. As the vast majority of our junk is on a cargo ship somewhere off the coast of Somalia (with any luck) it feels airy and spacious in here, even minimalistic, with vast amounts of empty storage space and clean, open work surfaces. It feels good, more than anything, to have our feet on slightly more solid ground; a 12-month lease seems like ages in the light of recent exploits. The fact is though, it's a finite contract; the owners are only renting it out while they take a sabbatical in Adelaide. This time next year we'll be pulling the last of the strawberries and upping sticks once more, and despite what you might think, we both agree it already feels like the right thing to do. Howick is charming and convenient and all the rest of it but it's way too crowded and suburban for our liking. Their house, though, is wonderful.

I think it was built something like 20 years ago, in the garden of a very sweet, flower-bound cottage, a two-storey Dutch-style place with a kind of granny flat off the other side of two garages, leased to a guy who apparently spends around 3 months of the year in it. As this sits between the street-front cottage and our place it's very quiet and the joint garage driveway provides a big, safe courtyard for the kids to adorn with pavement chalk artworks. A narrow but beautifully manicured garden, fragrant with roses, jasmine, orange and honeysuckle, borders the living room at the front and the kitchen down the side. We have a cat that hates kids & hence we never see, but are contractually bound to feed. The interior is very tastefully modern and quite open-plan, making it devilishly hard for the cat to sneak in and eat. Our room looks out over neighbouring gardens, while the kids' has a sea view. It's no grand vista, just a triangular patch of sparkly water between the pitched roofs of the neighbouring holiday chalets, big enough to see if the the tide's in and watch the Auckland ferry cruise past Mount Wellington in the distance. As I quipped to the wife the other day, we should think of it as a downpayment on the proper view we'll have ourselves one day. Anyway, rather than try to describe the layout and whatnot, I made a slightly hamfisted video of it all & posted it on my iDisk. Apologies in advance for the quality, or lack of; like a lot of things in our current pre-shipment, chattels-free state, we're obliged to make use of some slightly unorthodox tools...

Other news: in a report out today scientists claimed the process of migrating from one side of the world to the other might prove quite unsettling to the under-fives... whereas we always assumed it would be hardest on Elly, as she's so much more aware of what's going on I'm beginning to think the last six months has been more upsetting for little Oscar. Daft things like becoming very home-oriented and placing a lot of value on what's "ours" – our house, our car, etc. – even though they've been changed as often as his teeshirts. Possibly because of it, and despite it, he has this amazing ability to pick out "owa car" in a crowded mall carpark, even differentiate between ours and nearby identical cars, which got me wondering if he was actually reading the license plates.

They're all really subtle "symptoms" and it's quite possible that we're looking for a syndrome that doesn't exist, but you have to wonder. He's sitting next to me now with a pencil in his fist, scribbling and singing away to himself, happy as the proverbial pig, not a care in the world. This morning he was a wreck. There are always a few tears starting kindie, plus I guess it's natural to be a little over-protective of your youngest, but leaving him with the lovely nursery teachers seems much tougher than it was with Elly and he's always quite positive he doesn't want to go, crying before we even get there. He wasn't so bad at Play Centre once he realised I wasn't leaving; stuck to me like glue for the first half-hour and then gradually got into it on his own. Groups of little kids don't faze him so much as perhaps represent the loss of his comfort zone.

I dunno. He's two. They're always a bit doolally at that age. Both he and Elly are amazing kids and all this will likely just make them stronger and more resilient. Elly got an award from the principal of her new school last week. I was there for the assembly; it was lovely. Along with a number of other kids she was called to the front, and then stood up on the stage holding a small certificate that commended a "kind and caring student", which, given the lecture I'd given her that very morning about sharing and not being selfish, goes to show exactly how little I know about my own offspring...

Sport and weather: mostly dull and very sunny, respectively. I really can not wait til my bikes arrive.

This just in: I got an iPhone for me birthday, a marvellous toy that happens to have a half-decent camera built in and makes it much easier to spontaneously snap the kids and their zany antics.. a new album on Picassa will catalogue this low-resolution malarky as it unfolds. It was lovely to receive the cards and birthday greetings by the way, it's always nice to know I'm remembered as I embark on this, my forty-ninth year. A big "thankyou" and virtual hug to you both ;)

it's been one hell of a trip so far...

If you had asked me, about a month before we left, how I felt about leaving our European lives behind, I'd have said, 'easy, no problem', and those that know me well might even have suggested I was being a bit blasé about it all. The reality of saying good bye began to sink in when we popped over to Spain and I had to say adios to some really good friends. Even though we'd left Spain six months previously, it was (is) still home and i had to keep reminding myself that I actually would be seeing everyone again, one day. There's nonetheless a weird permanence about saying good bye that was heart wrenching, and remains so. If I try hard (and I generally try really hard not to, I'm not that masochistic...) i can still feel that same wrench. I went through a phase for the first couple of weeks here of having "saying good bye" dreams every night, really vivid and sad. They seem to have stopped now, thankfully, although it was really nice to see some of you again :-)

Well then, down to the real nitty gritty and the reason i finally got round to writing - school. I know Ive had a couple of years off and despite a couple of months doing supply in the UK will admit to being a touch rusty. However, I'm generally confident that i'm an ok teacher, I do love it and it's all I ever really wanted (and want) to do. I've come in to this school in term 4, at the end of the year, at the end of one hell of a year for the kids I'm with and the school itself. Myself and a fab girl from Wigan called Antonia have been lifted up and dropped into a school in crisis, quite frankly.

An incident occurred in term 3 involving one of the Deputy Principals (who had been sharing my class with the other DP, who is an angel!) resigning for some reason – an argument? misunderstanding? – with the Head who recruited us. The Ministry of Education have instigated an enquiry and staff morale is in the minus numbers. And the kids are something else. Both my class and Antonia's have been messed around a lot; I am my class' 4th teacher, Antonia is the 7th for hers... in one year! My main impression after 2 weeks is that they are incredibly rude, respond more to negative attention than positive and can give it out but are unable to take it. I only have 23 kids but they are such a handful. I'm not teaching, I am trying to control behaviour but so far nothing has worked.

Usually, a couple of weeks into a job, even if you have come in late in the year or as a supply teacher you've "got" the kids and you know how to handle them. In 10 days of being with this class I've had about one hour of it being OK. I usually alternate between waiting for them to settle down, asking them nicely to be quiet and yelling like a blummin' lunatic. It isn't fun. They swear, although not (yet) directly at me, if I ask them to be quiet or to do something I get the blackest looks I have had in my entire life and am generally tutted at at least 20 times a day. Of course, I am a white Pommie female who has dared to enter a patriarchal culture in a position which in most cultures demands at least a modicum of respect, so really, what do I expect?!

Somewhat reassuring, but at the same time entirely depressing, is the fact that I'm not the only teacher there in this position. Staff who have been there for years are sworn at, have scissors thrown at them and are disrespected in other ways. I have been told that not all of the schools in the cluster mine belongs to are the same but find it hard to believe... if anyone has any ideas of strategies I can use I'd be eternally grateful! The remaining DP is wonderful, he has been at the school for about 20 years and is totally respected by everyone. He helps a lot but has a heavy load and also I really don't want (and normally wouldn't need) to be "carried". We don't know the curriculum, have to do all these tests with the kids and, and have to write reports in a couple of weeks?! I've got 9 hours of release time coming up over the next few weeks, can't wait! Aaaaagh!!! Needless to say, the CV is in circulation!

It's a shame, as nothing else I've experienced here is anywhere near as negatively-charged, but it's hard to deny it has seriously coloured my first impressions of the country we're hoping to call home one day. Work is a big part of your life and when it's crap the rest of your life is bound to be tainted by that. I mean, there are some brilliant schools here (Elly's is just one example) and whereas Howick might not be our first choice of town to live in, we've barely scratched the surface of what NZ has to offer. We both know we have a lot to offer, and it's probably just a matter of time before we get the chance to prove it.