I'm coming back

Watch this space.

xx

Hi. And Bye.

I'm writing to say that I'm not going to be posting for a couple of weeks and to let everyone know that I'm okay and there is no need to be concerned. I've just been busy, contemplative, distracted and bored.

The busy bit revolves around my children and trying to plan next summer's vacation. The kids are on holiday this week, known as "half-term." In fact for the American readers out there, my children are either scheduled to the hilt during their school day or on vacation. They get FOUR weeks at Christmas, FOUR weeks at Easter, NINE weeks in the Summer, TWELVE days off in October, ONE week off in February, and another ONE week off (more or less) in May. When you add it all up this amounts to exactly FIVE weeks of actual education time. Or at least it feels like it.

And, I'm trying to plan next summer's vacation which is proving to be a large rabbit hole of time. I've decided that we are going to have a separate vacation from my relatives of two weeks off of Long Island which I'm hoping will tick the boxes of "proper summer" for me and not having the difficulty of staying with family for a long period of time. We are still going to stay with my family but for a shorter period. I've tried it all different ways but I've never done it this way so we'll give it a try. Anyway, I've decided that our destination spot is going to be "Fire Island." To paraphrase the tourist authority, "Fire Island is a summer beach idyll where the living is easy and there is a ban on motorised vehicles and hedge fund wankers." Enough said. However, I've never actually been to Fire Island and I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the logistics and this has taken up a surprising amount of energy.

As for the contemplative part, I've been ruminating on many different things at the moment but one of them is: where is this blogging lark going? I'm not a professional writer but blogging has proved a vent for this stuff in my head but I'm beginning to think, more and more, that I need to figure out how to get a proper job. I need the validation and purpose that a pay check brings. I know that I would have given any thing for a blog in those early years when my children were little and I was new to England but now, not so much.

I've also been unnerved by the turmoil of the current economic climate. What is all this going to mean? If this current slump is apparently no worse off then the early 1980's recession, why are they pumping unprecedented amounts of money into the system? I also am chastened by my own sense of outrage over the bonus culture that has thrived in the last decade. I am someone who comes from a considerably privileged background but I find myself very much on the side of the public outcry against the polarisation that this extreme of wealth via the bonus culture has enabled.

The distracted and bored parts all fit into my general ennui. I've been Internet shopping a lot lately. Actually, to be fair, I've been shopping, getting out my credit card and just at the confirmation page cancelling my order because I feel bored with my purchase already. Some would say this is a result. The one thing that has slipped through my net has been the purchase of some very lovely eye makeup which has brightened my days considerably. And no one is paying me (though I wish they would!) but I particularly liked this in "sunshine."

I'm going to give this blog a couple of weeks off for good behavior unless something burbles up in the mean time. In the meantime, feel free to comment at will!

I'm it!

The very lovely author of Mom or Mum Wars has tagged me in her previous post. The rules of this game are to go to the fourth file on your computer and pick the fourth picture and display and write about it. If you saw the gorgeous picture of Mom/Mum you would know why she didn't fiddle the rules.

This is mine:


This is a picture of my son, aged 4 in his first year of full time school standing in my kitchen. What is such a shock to me looking at this photo is how virtually everything in it looks different now and it was only taken seven years ago.


My son is now 11 and his hair, a darker blond, spends most of it's time standing on end or in a vain attempt at control. It never, ever looks like it does in this picture anymore. He is also significantly taller then the kitchen counters which he is just about above in this photo. He still cackles with glee as he was doing in this picture which is something.


Behind him are my middle child's baby toys. She must have been two and a bit when this picture was taken. It is incredible to see the scattering of toys there because they aren't around anymore. The days when my house was an obstacle course of plastic toys seemed to be, at the time, endless. But like all of these phases of motherhood/childhood, they are sadly temporary.


While my kitchen remains in a constant state of untidiness, we have completely re-done it and the only thing that is the same currently is the floor tiles. I had forgotten how it used to look and cringe at the tiles on the wall in the background. Those tiles are behind the aga, which is in the same place, but were put up by the very Sloaney people that lived in our house before us. You can't see them clearly in this picture but they were "dancing vegetables." Ugh. We lived with them for another two years after this picture was taken and they came down along with the cupboards in a kitchen re-fit.


The carpet under my son's feet was something I picked up in Karachi. I was stuck in Karachi for three long days after a trip along the Silk Road ended. I had a return ticket to New York from Karachi having flown in there a couple of months before and then flew up to Islamabad straight away to start my Silk Road trip. On my way back, I was in Beijing and had to get back to Karachi to catch my return flight. In those days, 1991, there wasn't as much air-traffic or the internet to coordinate travel so I had to fly from China to Pakistan and then wait for my flight back to New York. At least I got a lovely carpet out of it which is now in my entrance hall.


That was a really interesting exercise in nostalgia for me. It is instructive to acknowledge the passage of time. The lesson to be learned for now from this photos is: this too will pass.

In keeping with the rules of the game, I'm tagging four people to share their fourth picture in their fourth photo file and what it means to them.


And they are: Sarah Lawrence, Bee Drunken, Just a Plane Ride Away, and...Brave Sir Robin

When Mary Poppins leaves...

I've had a part-time nanny for the past seven years and today was her last day. Between my husband being on-call (when my first two children were babies my husband worked 2 in every 5 weekends which believe me, is a lot) and my being really unable to cope with the 24 hour demands of small children (I hold up my hands and admit it! I'm a wimp!) and being a foreigner without a built in support group of family I really felt I needed someone to help me out a couple of days a week. My first nanny, who's name was Su (she was Indian-British) was a very emotionally demanding person and after four years with her in my life we both agreed that maybe it was better to move on. So, I put an add in the local paper and like the scene in the film "The Commitments" interviewed all sorts. Women with no experience, women who were on the 20th cycle of IVF, women trained at prestigious nanny college (there is such a thing!) and were looking for work before getting placed in townhouses in New York (oh, the irony!) and then in walked Mary Poppins.

She was sensitive and nice and appropriate and fun and efficient and emotionally secure. I could not believe my luck. She is in early early fifties and how is officially a grandmother but that is the only thing about her that is granny-like (except for being kind and warm). She is a six foot tall, glamazon and we spent hours over the course of our relationship talking about the girl-equivalent of sports: hair and dieting. We spared no end of detail over these subjects and you would think after seven years, the subjects of hair and dieting had run their course, but we always managed to find something new.

It goes without saying that my children loved her. She came into our lives when the middle child was not quite 2 (she's now 9) and weeks before I conceived baby number 3. And there was considerable drama that she never flinched from in those early years: my husband's bad car accident and broken back, major house extension, my first Cesarean, potty training child 2 and then 3, school starts, school changes, school rejections (which she took as hard as we did), fortunes waxing, fortunes waning, friends coming, friends going, baby teeth coming in, baby teeth coming out, big teeth coming in, and so much other of the grind of life both big and small.

Nothing seemed to phase her whether it be an international terrorist incident, or a kid pooping on the floor. She never got upset, just cheerfully shrugged and dealt with the fall out whatever that entailed. There were times when I would have traded my husband in for her if I was forced to choose. Such was the harmonious nature of our relationship.

But as time went on and the youngest child started full time school my need for her slackened. We could all still justify employing once her a week on the basis of my part-time consulting and the fact that youngest was in a different school from the others and it was a day in the week when I didn't have to sweat that run. But, this year my work has dried up and all three kids are in the same school and by Christmas we were bumping into each other in the kitchen and finally, we both knew: the tie had to be cut.

But, it's so hard at the end of an era to not feel a little teary. So we toasted pink champagne to our years together and promised to keep in touch. And then she put her umbrella up and rose into the sky...

Do. Not. Call. Me. Strident.

Recently, the British expat in the US Iota asked whether the election of Margaret Thatcher was as inspirational to women in the UK as the election of Barack Obama has been to African-Americans in the US. This provoked a great deal of thoughtful response in the comments section but one comment ranted that American women were much more strident about their feminism and the British women were much quieter and that quieter was of course, far, far superior. I am slightly exaggerating but that was this gist of it.

Hmm...is that me or does that diss the sisterhood?

The word "feminism" is defined as thus:
–noun
1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3. feminine character.

I have always found women who claimed to not be feminists totally mystifying. Why wouldn't you want equal rights for equal pay? Why wouldn't anyone want to be equal in all ways? At some point, feminism became confused with female superiority by a small subset of feminists who were very vocal. Feminism became analogous with a more aggressive and militant agenda that I don't believe really reflected the average woman.

There are differences between American feminism and British feminism to be sure, just as there are huge cultural differences between the two countries. Is one better then the other? I think they reflect a different cultural experience. In the US the "feminist" agenda, also known as "women's rights" is mainly focused on legality and access to abortion, equal pay, educational and economic opportunities, and political empowerment. The power of the conservative Christian right in the US mandates that a huge amount of energy is spent on maintaining the legality and accessibility of abortion in the US. That doesn't go on here. And I think that since there isn't an obvious voice against equal rights in the UK, like the religious right in America, makes feminism here less...strident.

While it is admirable that Margaret Thatcher became the first female leader of an important Western power, she never championed a "feminist" agenda and she is in no way associated, other then being a women herself, with promoting an agenda of female equality. As Naomi Wolf commented in her book "Fire with Fire" " Many people believe that the secret of Margaret Thatcher’s success as Britain’s first female Prime Minister, and indeed one of the reasons for her rise to power, was that she managed to distance herself from women and women’s issues. For the eleven years of her premiership she kept able women away from the higher echelons of government; she froze child benefit… A working mother herself, she criticized others for condemning a generation of children to the ‘chaos’ of workplace creches - if only there were some, most mothers felt - and, by implication, to an adult life of vice and violence. Ironically, throughout the 1980s every other woman in Britain had to suffer the constant reminder that feminism was redundant and that unparalleled opportunities were open to women: if a woman could occupy 10 Downing Street, she could do anything." Try as I might, I couldn't have said this better myself.

If Sarah Palin were elected as Vice President on the McCain ticket, would this have been perceived as a victory for feminists? I believe that the Republicans cynically thought that they could court a female vote on this association. In the end, women who believed in equal rights did not support Sarah Palin because as a political candidate she was completely incompetent. This was a victory for feminism everywhere.

Does that seem strident to people in Britain?

The Obama Inauguration

I have just finished watching the BBC coverage of the Obama inaugural event. Wow. Having lived in Washington, DC for 5 years, I can appreciate the awesome crowd there today and I am so moved by this event.

I took my kids out of school early because I wanted them to watch the event LIVE and remember this moment. My six year old asked if there would be swearing at the swearing in and I think was probably disappointed that there wasn't. I pretty much started crying when the Obama girls came out of the Capitol Building. I kept tearing up throughout the swearing in, and the speech and the poem.

The speech was very inspirational. Barack Obama is an awesome speaker and he did not let us down this time. I like that he spoke about how we are all going to make some hard choices and sacrifices but we will do it together.

I have always been very wary of the power of individual and it comes as a shock, to me, what a believer I am in Barack Obama. I don't like slogans, and I don't like visceral response and knee jerk popularity contests. But, Barack Obama is change I can believe in.

My interview

As is so often the case, Bee has eloquently described the gap between what we all write about when we write about ourselves, and who we really are. In other words as bloggers, maybe we don't know each other, we just know what that blogger has chosen to tell. And, sometimes, there isn't enough information. Personally, I would love to see a photo of some bloggers (for example: Nappy Valley, Chris, Mom/Mum) I know what other people look like and somehow that helps me relate to them better.

In all our relationships we reveal what we want people to see, but in real (by that I mean in person) relationships we also get to ask questions and to fill in these blanks that we have questions about. So Bee has "interviewed" me and in the spirit of this process I would like to extend her challenge: if you want me to interview you then just say so in these comments. I can ask you six questions but you only have to answer five.

If you were "forced" to leave the English countryside where would you go?

Tough one but one that I strangely think about a lot. There are so many variables that influence answers to this question: is my husband a part of the decision making process? my children? my age? In my head, something terrible happens to my husband and he dies and I have to choose where to live unencumbered by my husband's vote. I have been in the UK long enough to put some places here on my short list. I love the city of Oxford, it is close enough to where I currently live that I could maintain contact with my friends here but urban enough to tick my urban boxes and there are continual rail and bus links to London so you could go to London for theater, go out to eat and still go home to your bed without worrying about driving home on the motorway at midnight.

Also on my list would be Highgate, a charming part of London that has a nice village feel to it and still be in the thick of London life. I am a life long New Yorker and would love to repatriate but this would involve not having my children's needs to cater for. I still yearn for Baltimore where I could buy a large house and relive the summers of my youth. There are a huge amount of day private schools available and I would be close to my friends in Washington, DC. And there's always Paris...

What is your favorite childhood memory?

Again, hard as there are a few to choose from. I think I was happiest as a child when I was about ten years old and it was October and the leaves were turning color and the air was crisp and I was riding my pony. You don't think I got here completely by accident did you?

What is your perfect day?

I can't tell you exactly but I can use pieces of days that have occurred and if they all happened on the same day then I would be convinced that I was actually dead. The day would start by my husband and I waking up in the Charlotte Street hotel surprisingly fresh from having seen Blur play at the Brixton Academy the night before. We will then mosey on over to the Tate Modern to see an exhibition of Russian abstract expressionist artists. When we leave the Tate it is unexpectedly sunny and warm but we had lunch reservations at the French House and we don't have money for a taxi. We scout around for a cash point and find one in a corner store. Before we put our card in we realise that there was a ten pound note that remained uncollected in the machine and we look around the store to see if it belongs to anyone but there was no one there. So, we walk out of the little shop with our tenner in our hand and there was a taxi just letting people off. We make it to lunch in the nick of time and and over a couple of bottles of wine and some excellent French country food we discuss the usual gamut of politics, family, friends, world events, future trips and our children and then back to the hotel for hot sex and a nap. Somehow we get to Topshop in Oxford Street for an hour and then out to good friend's who are having a party. Bliss.

Do you have an unfulfilled childhood ambition or dream?

Yes, I have always wanted a fireman's pole in my house. I still want one. My husband and I have even discussed where we would put it but so far I still don't have one!

What was the best book you read in 2008?

This is tough but I'm going to go with Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." I thought this was a brilliantly gripping story that was both bleak and hopeful. I loved it. I will also give a shout out to Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece "All the Pretty Horses," and to Audrey Nifenegger "The Time Traveler's Wife." All were wonderful books.