Wonderfully weird weekend

Mannequins, leopard print dressing-gowns (and slippers), chocolates in every room, pink radiators, purple carpets, flouncy dresses, stuffed animal heads, genuine Biba fabric, space invaders, shells, old violins and a tiger skin rug....

What more could you want from a weekend away?

I went, two weekends ago, for a few days with friends from university, to Priory House in Long Bennington.

You know, Long Bennington.   Yes, well, it's just off the A1 in Nottinghamshire, between Newark (surprisingly nice) and Grantham (never got there, but Trish can recommend it highly I'm sure) and was chosen on the basis that it was equally inconvenient for everyone (including the one who came, unannounced, from Vancouver.  There were tears), and that it looked, from the pictures on the Oliver's Travels website, brilliantly, extraordinary, surreally, decadently weird.  With added sequins.

We weren't wrong. 

It was all of those things (except the sequins) and more.  The pictures, taken on my phone, don't do it justice at all, but round every corner there was something else unusual, or scary, or interesting, or quirky or, yes, beautiful.

It's a Georgian house so the bones of it are beautiful too and the rooms spacious and very comfy, with ensuite bathrooms (more chocs and oddities) and the aforementioned dressing gowns (we failed to take a team photo, foolishly (though my co-conspirators are probably relieved)).  It is also, quite astonishingly given the sheer amount of stuff, clean.  We also had the run of the medieval brewhouse, with timbered ceiling, small but well-equipped kitchen (I was required to ring up in advance and check there was a cafetiere. There was), and big living room where we could blether into the wee smalls undisturbed.

It's owned by Roger and Carol, equally unusual and welcoming.  She's the blue-haired designer of the dresses (no pictures, because they (the pictures) simply weren't good enough, but think frills and furbelows; taffeta and lace; pink and green and purple and the sort of thing L would design as her wedding dress if I told her money were no object and she could have anything she liked), and wears clothes (even to the supermarket, she told me) to match.  She made one of our number (nameless, to protect the not-so-innocent) scream when she walked out from behind a mannequin unexpectedly.  We ran away in giggles, like a bunch of teenagers, and  had to come back to apologise later.


They were lovely though, kind and friendly: chatty almost to a fault, full of information about the village (two good pubs and a coffee shop which we didn't try) and equally good at leaving us alone to get on with our drinking, eating and catching up.  They even found several spare mattresses so we didn't have to share double beds if we didn't want to (there are four big double bedrooms, some of which they let on a B&B basis too).

I can't say much about what there is to do locally because we didn't do much of it. It's amazing how much talking eight women who haven't all been in the same room since the last one of us got married can do in the space of a weekend.  But we did have a drink and a meal in the pub and a potter round Newark, and those of us that weren't watching the Gherkin run the marathon (he did it in 3:24:36, raised over £12,000 and made the 10 o'clock news!) went for a walk on the Sunday morning.

There are plenty of people who would hate Priory House.  It's cluttered and crazy and has antlers and curios and bits of old toys on every surface, and what look like shrunken heads (I didn't inspect too closely) and a real tiger skin on the piano.  The screamer among us (who is also, as an aside, afraid of peas), refused to go into the main house because she couldn't walk past the mannequins.  We, however, with eight good friends, years to catch up on, the best possible online supermarket delivery, sunshine, no children and something interesting and quirky round every corner, loved it.  C is already planning to take her mum...

Disclosure - Friend L and I found the house online, booked it through Oliver's Travels and paid for it with our own money (and that of the other six people who came with us, we're not that nice).  While there I found a piece of paper saying that Oliver's Travels would pay me for a blog post about our stay there.  So I'm blogging about it, because you would, wouldn't you. But the pictures (taken in advance of realising I'd be using them on the blog - they'd be a bit better if I had) and the words are all mine and are all honestly what I think.  Although really there aren't words to describe it....

Just generous

While I'm on the subject of kindness, I must tell you about Michelle.

Michelle is a Kiwi. She lives in Edinburgh but weekly commutes to London.  She (doesn't look old enough but nonetheless) has a 27 year old son who is still in New Zealand, who she hasn't seen in six years when he came over here for his twenty-first birthday.

She had the misfortune to be on a flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh about four weeks ago.

We were there.  We were tired.  We had been going, at this point, for about twenty two hours.  The end of a wonderful holiday but with the inevitable delays, missed connections and more delays.   No one was crying, but quite a lot of us felt like it.

Michelle started talking to the girls as we waited by the gate.  They told her all about their holiday and their school and their family. She kept an eye on them while I nipped to the loo. (B was wrangling M, who was a little, shall we say, crotchety).

We said goodbye at the door of the plane (actually I ran back to say thank you, as they shoved us and our unruly children on first) and thought never to see her again.

As we waited for our bags at Edinburgh, tired, and by this stage pukey children slumped into the uncomfy chairs by the carousel, I heard someone calling my name.

It was Michelle, and a large carrier bag. 

I bought these for the children, she said.  They're not from New Zealand, but we'll pretend they are.

Four teddy bears.  One each.  For no reason other than that she was kind.

I did cry then.  And hugged her.  And we really will now never see her again.

But two of the bears are called Michelle, and one is Michael.  The last is Thomas, but you can't have everything.

Generous to a fault?

We were on holiday with my in-laws recently. 

I know, lucky us.  No really.  It was Antigua.  Lucky us.

Anyway, my mother in law bought the children all a little token present.  A souvenir sort of thing.  S's was a necklace, made of shell, with a little dolphin pendant on it.  It wasn't expensive, but it was rather lovely: pretty and delicate, and significantly more tasteful than the ones either A or L chose.

Back in Blighty, Primary 1 are still working through their sounds, and this week's is ph.

Dolphin's got a ph in it.  said S, proudly, to me on Tuesday. That's why I took my dolphin necklace to school.
 It has, said I, encouragingly.  But where's your necklace now, S?
I gave it to my friend Molly.  She liked it so I said she could have it.

So I rang Molly's mother.  Who found it and promised to give it back.

We had Molly to play today, and I remembered the dolphin necklace when her mother came to pick her up. 

She'd given it back, apparently.  Or at least she'd given it to Molly to give back at school.

S, what did you do with your necklace?
I gave it to Annie.  Everyone really liked it and so I said Molly could have it first and then Annie.  Zoe's next.

So I texted Annie's mother.  Who rang back;  Annie is very distressed.  She has broken the necklace, and the dolphin has disappeared.

It doesn't matter really, it's not valuable, and I'm much more worried that Annie doesn't get into trouble for it, but what to say to S?

Because my immediate reaction was to tell her off for taking precious things into school and giving them away.  She can't do that, surely? 

But the more I think about it, the more proud I am of her.  She has something she loves but when someone else loves it, what is her reaction? She gives it to them.   That's more generous and less materialistic than I suspect I would be.

Actually, forget "suspect".  Than I know I would be.  Because although I have told S it was very kind of her to give it to both Molly and Annie, I've also told her that she's not to do it with anything else.

But I have a horrid feeling that was the wrong thing to say...

The End

Where did four and a half years go?

Not to mention 53 days (Or 1,272 hours.  Or 76,320 minutes)

Today was the end.

Or the beginning...

On being human

What happens next....?

You are working for a small airline.  You are manning the customer service desk at a very small regional airport.

Late on a Sunday afternoon, one of your check-in colleagues approaches.  She can't find a booking in the system.  It's for a family - parents and four small children.  Children tired and whingy, parents looking equally exhausted.

There's a pretty obvious reason why the booking's not there.  It's Sunday 17 February and they've booked for Sunday 17 March.

It's the mother who spots this and points it out.  She is apologising profusely and is clearly on the verge of tears as she tries desperately to work out what on earth she's going to do with all these children overnight in an unfamiliar airport four hundred miles from home.

It's 2013.  You are a customer service operative.

What happens next?

Can you guess?

I wouldn't have.   Because she smiled reassuringly.  Looked up at me and said:

Don't worry.  I'll just move the booking over.

You didn't expect that, did you?

No charge, no hassle.  Just someone being human and kind.

And if I had managed to hold back the tears up until that point, the kindness was my undoing.

So thank you to Flybe and their staff at Exeter (and, admittedly, the fortunate circumstance of it being a pretty empty flight).  We wouldn't be home without you. 

The accidental photograph

Sometimes you just click the button at exactly the right time.

This is not one of those times.

Last week we were in Lanzarote for half term.  I know, lucky us.   My parents are there for six weeks (the heat is very good for my dad's health) and they asked us to join them.

It was beautiful weather, and we spent lots of time on the beach, frolicking in the water and building castles on the sand.

And you know the picture I wanted to get:  the one of S and A, in their same same but different swimming costumes (two for one in Sainsbury's as it happens), bright pink against the blue sea and the white sand.

Click.

I got this:

Tara wanted Boys in the Gallery this week.  I'm not sure this is the photo she was expecting either, so click through to Sticky Fingers for more pictures of boys.  Probably with more clothes on.  And faces.

Warning: holidays may be bad for your health.

I'm going to give up going on  holiday.

I am going to sit here, stay here, and not go away ever again.

It's not because I don't have a lovely time.  Quite the contrary.

B and I spent this weekend in the Lake District.  We rented a fabulous, fabulous house (where friends of ours spent the first few nights of their honeymoon many moons ago. We even rented a silver Corsa to get there, which  made us feel even more nostalgic for those same halcyon days). We walked up hills.  We sat in pubs (it was raining, ok?).  We ate and drank lovely food.  We pottered around markets. We spent lots of quality time together (ahem). I even managed to have two baths.  That's more than I think I've ever had in this house.

The children (and my parents-in-law) stayed here.  

It was utterly wonderful from start to finish.

We got back yesterday afternoon, after a detour to see our new nephew (hooray!), and since then I have been unbearable.  I know this, because B has gone out.

I have been grumpy, and impatient, and simmeringly, irritatedly cross.  The weight of the world is sitting on my shoulders. Nothing anyone can do for me is good enough and everywhere I look things are accusing me: do me says the laundry, iron me says last week's laundry. Dry me says the teetering pile on the draining rack.  Fix me says the pin board I bought in a junk shop in Cockermouth, full of crafty inspiration, and now empty of time and energy to use it. The fridge cries Fill me and the week's meals say plan us. The emails I've ignored flash read me.  Deal with us say my work files.  Everywhere I look something else cries tidy me. Play with us whine the children and talk to me, the husband.

And I think  Stop the world! Stop my life! I don't want to do any of it any more.

And it's all the holiday's fault.  Because the holiday was a break from my life: which makes my life somewhere I don't want to be.  Even though, I know, I have an incredibly blessed and lucky life all told. 

Yet a holiday, and it was true of this one, and also, astonishingly, of our last family holiday, all six of us driving two thousand miles to France and back, makes no demands on me.  I wake up in the morning with nothing on the to-do list, whether that be lovely things to do (ring an old friend) or dull ones (fill in the tax return), and that emptiness is liberating.  That freedom is soul-lifting.  And so the return to real life feels heavy, as I though am weighted down again, however enjoyable the things I have to do may actually be.

I find myself yearning for another life.  On our return from France I found myself breaking down in tears and screaming for it:  how different it would have been had we not moved/moved somewhere different/if I did another job/ if B did another job/ if we won the lottery/if I were a better parent, and yet, of course, that life would be the same, because even in the Lake District, France or Outer Mongolia, washing has to be done, meals have to be planned and talking to friends remains one of life's great pleasures.

Getting grumpy with my life for being a life, my life, gets me nowhere.  But it doesn't stop me doing it.

I am hoping that writing about it will help.  Failing that I'll just have to stop going on holiday.

How to keep your children entertained for the whole* of the holidays

I had a shock on Tuesday.

It was the end of term.

Yes, readers South of the Border, you did read that right.  The END OF TERM.  On TUESDAY.  It's not even the last week in June and I have all of my children all of the time.

Until, even more weirdly to someone raised on English terms, the 12th of August.

As I said.  Weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but nonetheless, and I say this as someone whose children are still only in school/nursery half days, it has caught me unprepared.

Still, we have survived the first two days, unscathed, thanks mostly to the Toucan Box.

I was sent the Toucan Box about a month ago, and I foolishly started it then, but it is, genuinely, not only one of those "ideas I wish I'd had" but also one of the very few freebie/testy/bloggy things I've been sent that I will, honestly, be spending my hard earned cash on again.

It's a box which arrives at your door with no fewer than four (yes, four... if you eke them out, that's one a week, so 2/3 of the holidays done) crafty activities, a story book (Dazzle Duckling - I thought it was quite annoying, but that might just be because I have read it approximately fifty times in the last three weeks), colouring pictures, instructions, inspiration, and, and here's the impressive bit, all the stuff you need:  all the glue, the glitter, the paper, the funny little matchsticky things, the card, the sequins, even the bird seed. The whole bang lot.  All you provide is scissors.  For the distinctly craftily challenged, this is priceless.

Here's a little gallery of us making our stuff over the past four weeks.  Stupidly, as I've said, we started it pre-holidays, so now we've finished it and are going to have to get another one.  You, if you are five miles South of me, have three weeks to prepare. You have been warned....

How it arrived....

 We started with the peacock collage... (each of them had a different colour)

 

We did the colouring in, too

 Next up, the bird feeder.

Quite a lot of audience participation required here

In situ. Although if the truth be told, it didn't survive the combined onslaught of heavy rain and even heavier pigeons.  RIP bird feeder.

Next up, the toucan family.  This was our favourite.  I liked the very gloopy paint that didn't go everywhere when knocked over

and they liked the toucans (actually I'm quite proud of these too, although they are a little fragile for the amount of loving they've been getting):

And last but not least, we had the bird glider.

It doesn't glide:

But we enjoyed colouring it in:

The Toucan Box isn't cheap (if you sign up for one a month for a year it's £16.95 a month, and it's more expensive than that if you sign up for a shorter period of time), but it is absolutely, totally, from the bottom of my heart, worth it.   If you know me and have small children, these are your presents...

************************************

Full disclosure alert - they sent it to me for free.  But I honestly will be buying them in future.

*ish... but you could definitely call it 2/3...

HELP! - How do you entertain four children for 1,002 miles?

In three weeks' time we will be heading off on holiday.

It will, I hope, be brilliant.

But we are driving.

So that means an hour and a bit to Newcastle. Then 16 hours on a ferry.  Then nearly 12 hours on the road in Holland, Belgium and France.

I am told, by google maps, that where we are going, not far from Lyon, is 1,002 miles away from where I am sitting now.

And L gets car sick, so DVDs are not an option.


So we are going to need help...

We're thinking story tapes and CDs, but we need recommendations. L is just five and is loving having Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his ilk read to her, but S and A are 3 and a half and haven't got the attention span for "chapter books".  Their only request so far is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

M of course gets no say in this yet.  Nor does B, incidentally, although he's likely to be less tolerant of Twinkle Twinkle on a loop.

Any ideas?   Songs, stories, activities?

And if all else fails, I do at least now know the French for Soft Play Centre.

 

Five miles south (2)

Here's another thing I'd understand if I lived on the other side of that Border...

When the holidays are.

No-one tells you this when you move to Scotland.  No-one says to you:

Yeah, well, it's pretty much the same: most of the people are lovely, but some are not. Most of the food is great, but some isn't.  Most of the weather is the same: iffy, but then you'll randomly get the most utterly gorgeous week when you're not expecting it.  They drive on the same side, they speak the same language but their holidays are utterly different.

Here's a thing.  Easter Monday's not a bank holiday here.

That has totally and utterly flummoxed and confused me.  B told me and I didn't believe him. I googled it, but of course everyone knows you can get the internet to prove any point you want, so that wasn't nearly reliable enough. But there it is, in black and white, on the calendar. Bank holiday (UK except Scotland).

Ah, and I was rather relying on him having that day off.  Whoops.

There's no August bank holiday here either.  Or there is, but it's at the other end of the month. 

I'm not complaining about this - we actually get an extra bank holiday compared with England and Wales (nine, compared to your paltry eight, should you care) - but I am finding it very hard to get my head around.

You don't realise how much you take certain things for granted.  The school year, for instance. Starts in September, as any ful kno.

Except when it doesn't.  Mid-August here.  Totally scuppered our holiday plans this year that has.  Won't be making that mistake again.   Turns out that if you want to go on holiday with English friends there's a pretty small window when you're all on holiday together and you need to book those weeks pronto.

What's the logic behind all this?  I rather thought the religious holidays would be universal, especially as Scotland has a reputation (which I'm not sure it deserves) of being more godly than England.  Clearly not though.  As for the others, I understand why we get St Andrews Day, but I don't understand why we get an extra day off on 2 January.  Are they really codifying the fact that Hogmanay's a bigger party?

And why the beginning of August and not the end? Or indeed the end and not the beginning?   My understanding on the school year point was that it started in September because that was after the harvest and when farming families didn't need their children so much any more.  Is that not true? Or is it true but not true in Scotland that isn't so predominantly arable?

And how doubly confusing is it to get my head around the fact that bank holidays are not only different (they are, in fact devolved, interestingly) but that they are also discretionary.  Your employer gets to choose.  So when the rest of the country, both North and South, is enjoying its extra Tuesday off for the Jubilee, spare a thought for the employees of the Scottish Borders Council, who aren't getting it.  Suspect there'll be a lot of empty schools round here that day...

The Gallery - Shapes of Tunisia

It's been a while since I took part in the Gallery, what with one thing and another, and I've come back on a particularly tricky week.

Not only does Tara want  the wonderfully vague and innocent-sounding Shapes, but she also wants us to go out and actually take pictures of them rather than scrolling through our archives of pictures.

Well, sorry Tara, I'll give you shapes, but I didn't take the pictures this week. The most exotic place I've been this week is the bathroom showroom and I forgot my camera anyway, so these are a few months old, but the thoughts are recent, so I hope that counts.

Tunisia

Because we had a holiday in Tunisia last October, and one of the things I loved most about it (because I wasn't that enthusiastic about the resort) was Tunisia itself: how friendly the people were, how happy they all seemed, and how safe a country it felt.   One day B and I put the children into childcare for the morning and went off to Carthage with a guide. Just us and her.  We talked a lot about modern Tunisia, and why it works and what the political system is, and why hasn't Islamic radicalism taken over, and what is the position of women, and how does the electoral system operate and what's the major source of income and and and, and I came away thinking "Tunisia works"....


Only, apparently it doesn't. Or didn't.  And apparently everyone knew that actually former President Ben Ali was horrid, that opposition was suppressed, that elections were rigged.

Well, I didn't.  And I didn't until two weeks ago.  And I didn't know that the same was true about Egypt either, where we'd also considered going on holiday.

And I consider myself, if not as well informed as I was when I had time to read a newspaper every day, and could actually listen to what John Humphries was saying rather than interrupting him with, "Will you just eat your rice krispies and no, you can't have any more apple juice", at least relatively politically aware, and, perhaps more importantly, politically responsible. 

So why didn't I know? Why weren't we, as a nation, being encouraged to boycott a country that imprisoned journalists and other dissidents and falsified purportededly democratic polls?  Why are we being told not to visit, say, Burma, because in so doing we are supporting the junta there, but not given the same advice for Tunisia, or Egypt, or probably, presumably, others?


I get it, of course I do.  It's not in our interests to interfere in a country which, however unattractive the government, is stable and which, perhaps more importantly in Egypt's case, has influence in areas in which we want to have a say.  The British (and US) governments needed Tunisia and Egypt, and so they turned a blind eye, and that meant that the media also turned a blind eye, and people like me, who perhaps didn't do the full research they should have, didn't know.

But nonetheless I feel really stupid.  I feel like I should have known. I feel as though I've been misled, and I feel cross that I allowed myself to be.  That I took what I was told at face value.

Now, I accept that had we gone to Portugal (not a dictatorship, as far as I know) instead, it wouldn't have made the blindest bit of difference either to the ruling groups in Tunisia, or to the (I now discover) oppressed majority, but I wish I had known. I wish I had been able to make my own choices and decisions in full possession of the facts.

None of this really matters now, Tunisia and Egypt will change, for better or worse, and what I did or didn't do is hardly going to influence that, but for myself it has made me suspicious, and much more sceptical about what I am told.  Where Wikileaks failed, Tunisia has succeeded.  And that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

I don't want to go.

Ok.  First off, I'm a spoilt brat.  Clearly I want to go.  Clearly I am a very lucky girl who has a very lovely husband who spoils her rotten.  Clearly I should be jumping for joy with excitement.  But....

...On Tuesday, L and I, courtesy of her best friend moving there, B having a load of air miles that he's uninvited and un-hinted-at offered to us, and a pair of very loving and tolerant grannies, are off to Singapore for six days.  A and S are staying here.   They will be looked after very capably by B and his mother for the first four days, then he'll take them down South and my mother will take over the granny role for the last two days, before we get collected from Heathrow on the following Monday.  They couldn't be in better hands.

It's a minimum of 26 degrees in Singapore.  It is clean. It is tidy. We have free accommodation with utterly lovely people (and I'd be calling them that even if they weren't putting us up).  We can swim, and potter, and shop.  I will have only one child to look after, and someone else will be cooking for her.

But. 

While I am looking after my one child, my babies, my tiny, defenceless, two-year-old, obstinate, stroppy, wonderful babies, are going to be a million* miles away.  What if something happens?  What if something happens to one of them and I can't get back? What if something happens to me, and I never get back? There are planes, and motorways, and icy roads, and illnesses, and accidents of unimaginable kinds to contend with.  What am I thinking leaving them for so long to go so far away?

A, in particular, is not making this easier.  I think she knows.  She's at that stage where she understands a lot more than she can say, and I think she knows.  I think she realises I'm going and I'm certain she doesn't want me to.  For the first time ever, I'm having to sit in their room with them until she falls asleep because she won't let me leave (and now she's capable of climbing out of the cot - and I don't think it's fair to take the sides off and then leave them with other people for a week - I can't leave until I know she's not going to take a nosedive).

I actually tried to explain to her tonight.  I sat and I stroked her hand through the bars, and I told her I was going away but that I would not be gone long and I would do everything I can to be back to her soon.  And I find myself thinking, again, so that I bore myself and can't sleep: "But what if I can't? What if I'm not?"

And I know, I really do, that as soon as we're on that plane, and L, who is beside herself with excitement, has settled down with her own private telly, and I have a book, or a mindless movie, and the anticipation of all the wonderfulness ahead, that it will be ok.  That it will be more than ok.  I suspect that this may end up being L's first memory that she takes with her into adulthood, and I hope it's going to be a wonderful one. I'm determined to make it a wonderful one.  It's our girls' adventure, and we've been planning it for months. We are so very lucky.

But there's still a very big part of me that wishes we weren't going at all.



* Please note, distances may not be geographically accurate, but emotionally they're spot on.

What I read on my holiday

I've just had a week of sunshine, sand and babysitting, so I read:

PopCo by Scarlett Thomas.  Which I enjoyed.  Until it started making me feel guilty for being on a holiday, abusing the workers who cleaned the room and supporting an evil corporation who ran the resort, and generally being a bad person.

It did make me think though.  Not just about globalisation and the "rise of big business", but also about marketing, and toys and the terrifying statistic, which may or may not be true that children are exposed to 20,000 products before they are 15.  Actually, that must be true, mustn't it ? As must the fact that toy manufacturers "are in the business of the new and shiny, the biggest and the best, the glittery and magical, the fast and addictive.  The toy industry has two big advantages over other industries.  Our products are the easiest to sell and our customers are the easiest to sell to." 

My children are still too little to be materialistic, but that sentence is still one of the most frightening things I've read in months.

Then I picked up The Help by Kathryn Stockett. 

I've wanted to read this for some time, having read extracts from it in magazines, and having had it recommended by several people, including Diney, who has had an amazing, enlightening and compelling encounter on the back of it. 


I cannot now recommend it highly enough.  It is set in 1962 in Mississippi.  Martin Luther King is still alive, Rosa Parks has sat in the white seat of a segregated bus.  It is only fifty years ago and it is a different and horrifying world.  One which makes me, born fifteen years later, and fifteen thousand miles away, ashamed to be white.

I laughed, I cried, I determined to find out more about this period in history, and, more important to make sure that my girls read it. To understand that there are good things and there are bad things, but that some things are always wrong.  And should never be forgotten.

I needed light relief after that, but couldn't face Angels and Demons (which a friend had shoved in my suitcase as we were leaving), so I picked up Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.

You'll have worked out by now what a cry-baby I am, so it'll come as no surprise that this one made me weep too.  But it also made me snigger.  It's very silly, but also witty, readable and, yes, thought-provoking.

The Greek gods are real, alive, and living in north London.  Apollo is a television psychic, Artemis a dog walker, Aphrodite runs a phone sex line. Their divine power is waning. They are bored and lonely.  Until they meet Alice and Neil...

I read it in about an hour. I enjoyed every minute of it.  I can't really remember what happens now.

So I went back to intellectual books, and picked up 2008's Booker Winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.

And yet again, I don't get what the Booker Judges saw.   The White Tiger was fine, it really was, but it wasn't even the best book I read on holiday much less all year, (to be honest it was probably third equal in the holiday rankings, and there were only four entrants).

I found the premise (a series of letters to the Chinese Premier) silly and contrived, and I still don't understand what it added to the novel as a whole.  The plot was interesting, and the descriptions of India compelling and often shocking, but there was little in the way of suspense, and, most importantly, I found the character of the White Tiger himself disappointingly predictable.  The killer with the moral compass would have been so much more interesting had he had more ambiguity.   The Times thought it was a masterpiece.  Nadine Gordimer found it too determined to shock.  I just thought it was a bit dull.   I suspect I am missing something...

Club Med - when it's good, it's very very good, but when it's bad...

Well, it's not horrid, but it's a bit rubbish.

First off, this is totally not a sponsored review.  Club Med didn't ask us to go there, and certainly didn't give us anything for free, although one of the many good things about the holiday was that it was pretty reasonable (in the grand scheme of how eye-wateringly expensive it is to take five people on holiday of course).  I can't imagine they know I've got a blog, and if they do, then they unaccountably didn't think that whatever I can say about them would make a difference.

The good thing about that, of course, is it means I feel absolutely no debt of gratitude whatsoever.

So, anyway, we went to Club Med's Hammamet resort, on the East Coast of Tunisia. None of us had ever been to Tunisia before, and none of us had ever been on a Club Med holiday either and I was pretty excited to find out what both were like.  Turns out, of course, that a Club Med holiday is pretty much designed to ensure you never find out what the country you're in is like at all, but then that might be what you're looking for.

The resort, sorry, "village", was pretty heavenly, let's be honest:  wide sandy beach, warm blue sea, three swimming pools, including one shallow enough for even S and A to paddle in.  Delicious food, plentiful wine and beer.  High chairs everywhere. A two bedroom bungalow an easy walk from the main complex, stocked with a changing mat, cots, a potty, and even a non-slip mat for the bath.  Childcare available for six out of the seven days we were there.  Sunshine. Every day.

It's clearly not the apple of the Club Med eye, though. Parts were a little shabby, and there were five or six things wrong with our bungalow when we got there (missing light bulbs, a blocked pipe, that sort of thing) but they were sorted out promptly and with no excuses.

That's all, maybe, pretty much as we expected.  What was odd was how, when they got so much right, they could also get other stuff, well, just not quite.

I think the biggest problem for us was the language barrier.  Not for B and me, who are lucky enough both to speak good French, but for the girls.  I had thought about this and had been assured that there were English speaking staff working in the Kids' Clubs.  Turns out that that was true, but only if your child was under one or over four.  Which, of course, none of ours are.  It wasn't so much of a problem for A and S, who don't really talk anyway, but L I think found it very disorientating.  She's at that stage where she's incredibly verbal - it's as though she gets a bonus based on hitting a target of using a certain number of words in a day - and so spending any length of time with people who didn't understand her and whom she couldn't understand was clearly upsetting.  I also suspect that the staff didn't make an effort.  I was told one morning that they were going to be making plaster casts of the children's hands.  When I went to get L at lunchtime, I asked her about this:

 No, Mummy, they didn't tell me, and then it was too late.

I'm sure they did tell her. But I'm equally sure that she didn't understand and they didn't go that extra distance to get her involved.

We'd never intended to leave them in the childcare for full days, but we actually ended up just using it for a couple of hours here or there, and by day five, L made it very clear she didn't want to go back at all.  It's a shame as all three of them love their nursery here, and I think in the right environment would genuinely have had as much, if not more, fun there than with us.  If we ever do another Club Med holiday, I think we will make sure it is somewhere that the second language of the locals is English, rather than here, where it was French.

And then there were mealtimes.  I discovered something on this holiday. You know how French children all get taken out to restaurants late in the evening and always behave impeccably and have a much better routine, which allows them to stay up late and still behave themselves and really the British are just rubbish at discipline?

Well, that's nonsense.  Oh, the French do take their children out for dinner in the evenings, but, guess what? They're knackered.  Blind, floppy, exhausted. Lolling in their pushchairs and looking listlessly at a plate of pasta they're too tired to eat.    The same as my kids.

Because the evening meal wasn't served until 7.30 p.m. and that's just too late if you're not quite two.  There was a children's supper as well, but even that (and it was pretty unappetising) wasn't served until 6.30, by which time my three are normally well into the evening routine.    If you didn't want to take your children to the main meal, you could, of course, get a babysitter (although actually that was pretty hard, with only four babysitters in the resort - especially when one babysitter was only allowed to babysit two children, so we had to have two.  It rankled slightly paying two people to sit in front of the telly while my children, who were already asleep when they arrived, continued to dream silently) but even then they still end up being in bed later than you'd like.

It ended up being an exercise in juggling and fiddling, and by the end we'd worked it out.   But I'd have given it more thought in advance had I known, and I'd certainly have booked babysitters earlier in the week!

There were little irritations too: the fact that they turned up with a toddler car seat and a baby one, into which we had to squish poor little S on the basis that she's about a pound lighter than her sister (and a good six pounds too heavy for that type of car seat); or the ridiculous bureaucratic way in which some things were done, probably because it's always been done like that, and no-one's ever turned round and pointed out how silly it is; the failure of the staff to volunteer information, in whatever language:  they were terribly helpful if you asked the right question, but if you didn't you'd miss out on stuff because they just didn't ever think to tell you. 

And don't get me started on the Club Med dance...

I'm being cynical and carping now, which is probably unfair.  We did, all of us, have a very good time.  I read four and a half books!  I talked to my husband. I got (for me) a tan (I'm still the colour most white people are most of the time, but as I normally glow in the dark, this is pretty impressive).  We used the childcare as an opportunity to get out of the resort, so I feel too, I've had a bit of a chance to see a bit of a very touristy, but nonetheless lovely corner of Tunisia.  We got to talk to the locals, and get some differing views on what this beautiful country is really like to live in. We did a little bit of shopping. (Beautiful plates and bowls. Got smashed in our luggage).  I got to spend some really quality time with all of my lovely family.

Would I recommend it?  With caveats, definitely.  Would I go back?  Yes, I would, but I'd rather go somewhere different, if only because it would be different.  I think, though, that the irritations would be less next time and the pleasures greater, because you'd know what to expect.  Would I go back to Tunisia?  Definitely.  B wants to see the Star Wars village next time...

We're all going on a....

Yeah, well, you know the rest.

Anyway, we're off.  ETD 2.30 a.m. tomorrow morning. Yes you did read that right.  5.25 a.m. will see us taking off, S probably in paroxysms of rage at having to wear a seatbelt, the other two, crossed fingers, temporarily behaving themselves, on a flight to Tunisia.

We're off for a week of sun, sea, sand and babysitting!  I'm even taking books with me.

The Gallery - Playtime

How bad is my timing?

I published a post yesterday with some (not particularly fantastic) pictures I love of S and A playing together, co-operating and sharing as I hope they will throughout their lives.

And then I thought "Oh, it's the Gallery tomorrow. I wonder what it is?  I'd better get my post ready."

And of course it's Playtime.  So I could just head back to that post, or tweak it and republish it, or something, but that feels like a cop-out (although do go and have a look, the pictures are lovely - or I think so, but then I'm their mother) so I'm not going to do that.

Or I'm sort of not.  Here's another one of the pictures anyway, just for the fun of it:

Isn't that amazing? They're 19 months old, and they're sharing, co-operating, playing together.  I think that's a twin thing, because I'm pretty certain that L wouldn't have played with another child like that at that age.  But, twins or no, that is what I want for all three of them, as they grow up as sisters: to have someone to play with, to share childhood- and, in due course, grown up-experiences with.  And when they fight, as they increasingly are doing (there's another post in there I suspect), I just have to sit back and remind myself that they can be like this too...

So anyway, given that that isn't my Gallery entry for this week, here's one of L too because otherwise she doesn't feature at all, and she does, after all, do her fair share of the playing in this house: 

She doesn't look like she's playing, but she is and I love that.  It forces me to remember that even when they are lolling on our tummies on a Northumberland beach, squishing sand between their fingers, they are still playing, and that although I beat myself up about not playing with them enough; about not cutting up enough bits of sticky back plastic, or making up enough stories, or using enough jumpers for enough goalposts, sitting with my children and watching the sand form little piles between their toes is playing too, and, in its own way, just as valuable.