Today I am in a blogging carnival! Every two weeks a different British mummy blogger “hosts” the carnival. Bloggers submit posts from the past month. It introduces you to new blogs.
The carnival on 1st February is hosted by Maggy at The Good Life Blog. I love her header picture because it looks like a tree-misted waterways scene. Some carnivals have themes and this one is themed on the question ‘what’s good in your life?’ It’s come at a perfect time for me, to take a break from blogging about anti-depressants and bereavement and focus on the good things in life (my girls, The Doctor, sunny narrowboat cruises, a job I enjoy, amazing friends, writing, etc etc...). So head on over to read cheerful things about the good things in life!
Monday, 31 January 2011
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Winter Wonderland
18th December
Coming home I access the towpath from Danbury Street bridge. The concrete ramp is solid with frozen snow. I gingerly edge downwards step by step, one hand on the pushchair, one hand on the railing. Under the Victorian brick arched bridge the sound of water drips through the darkness into the cut. The edge of the arch is protected by black metal, with deep grooves worn into it: the result of years of ropes rubbing the corner, when horse drawn boats were the main traffic here. Like all boaters my key-ring has a spherical cork on it to save it lest it should fall into the Cut. The BW key opens the heavy iron gate, which is all vertical black railings. This magic key fits all waterways locks and opens gates, swing bridges, electric locks and boaters facilities across the whole country. My footsteps crunch on the towpath, which is crisp with pure white snow. Ice is slowly forming like translucent custard skin creeping by moonlight across the surface of the canal water. The steep cutting on the opposite bank is peopled with bare winter trees, their toes tucked snugly under the snowy blanket, their silhouettes back-lit by old fashioned style amber streetlamps. On our mooring boats are double moored from the bridge to the Islington tunnel. In the nineteenth century winters were so much colder that the local Victorians would come ice-skating on the glistening Cut down here and even go skating in the tunnel: A half-mile black bore-hole lurking and dripping secretly below the bustling boutiques of Upper Street. I can hear the distant chugging of engines as a couple of my boating neighbours recharge their domestic batteries. Single Boat Mum’s boat glows with winter merriment as solar-powered blue fairy-lights twinkle on her roof. Johnny Boater, tousled and curly, stops to chat as I lift the two sleepy angels out of their pushchair. Then he winks and grins and heads off down the towpath and disappears into the darkness. A thick icing of snow on the boats’ roofs’ make us all inhabitants of a charity Christmas card’s perfect winter scene. I shut the blue painted back doors against the snowy boughs leaning over the mooring. Soon chestnuts are exploding in the gas oven, there’s neat Jack Daniels in a glass and Frank Sinatra on the stereo, dreaming of a white Christmas, in Angel.
Coming home I access the towpath from Danbury Street bridge. The concrete ramp is solid with frozen snow. I gingerly edge downwards step by step, one hand on the pushchair, one hand on the railing. Under the Victorian brick arched bridge the sound of water drips through the darkness into the cut. The edge of the arch is protected by black metal, with deep grooves worn into it: the result of years of ropes rubbing the corner, when horse drawn boats were the main traffic here. Like all boaters my key-ring has a spherical cork on it to save it lest it should fall into the Cut. The BW key opens the heavy iron gate, which is all vertical black railings. This magic key fits all waterways locks and opens gates, swing bridges, electric locks and boaters facilities across the whole country. My footsteps crunch on the towpath, which is crisp with pure white snow. Ice is slowly forming like translucent custard skin creeping by moonlight across the surface of the canal water. The steep cutting on the opposite bank is peopled with bare winter trees, their toes tucked snugly under the snowy blanket, their silhouettes back-lit by old fashioned style amber streetlamps. On our mooring boats are double moored from the bridge to the Islington tunnel. In the nineteenth century winters were so much colder that the local Victorians would come ice-skating on the glistening Cut down here and even go skating in the tunnel: A half-mile black bore-hole lurking and dripping secretly below the bustling boutiques of Upper Street. I can hear the distant chugging of engines as a couple of my boating neighbours recharge their domestic batteries. Single Boat Mum’s boat glows with winter merriment as solar-powered blue fairy-lights twinkle on her roof. Johnny Boater, tousled and curly, stops to chat as I lift the two sleepy angels out of their pushchair. Then he winks and grins and heads off down the towpath and disappears into the darkness. A thick icing of snow on the boats’ roofs’ make us all inhabitants of a charity Christmas card’s perfect winter scene. I shut the blue painted back doors against the snowy boughs leaning over the mooring. Soon chestnuts are exploding in the gas oven, there’s neat Jack Daniels in a glass and Frank Sinatra on the stereo, dreaming of a white Christmas, in Angel.
Norovirus
11th December
At Liverpool Street station Skanky Claus was selling the Big Issue, long dreadlocks lankly hanging out of a white guys Santa hat; a dismal attempt to be seasonally cheerful, three days of stubble, checking his text messages. I was getting a train to The Princess Alexandra Hospital, to visit the Mellow Mum.
I work in a hospital so I knew the importance of using the hand gel when I arrived at Harlow hospital, and when I left. I must have missed a bit though because less than twenty-four hours later I was vomiting and shivering. I went to bed. A few hours later I had inflicted the same onto my husband and eldest daughter; only the baby was unaffected. All night and the next morning we had temperatures, vomiting and diarrhoea. The whole family lay around on the futon bed in the living room, unable to properly care for our baby. The water tank was out of water and we were running out of bottled water to drink, yet both parents were too weak to move. The tap down the towpath has been vandalised, so it can only be turned on with mole-grips. British Waterways sent someone out “to look at it.” They did not repair it. They turned the water off. We are weak and ill, bed clothes and pyjamas are in the bath covered in vomit. Neither of us can walk to the launderette. We need running water and a washing machine. We need neighbours or friends. It is a definite low point in the whole ‘family on board’ life experience. By the afternoon the evil virus thankfully began to fade away and I made it to the supermarket for soup and bottled water.
At Liverpool Street station Skanky Claus was selling the Big Issue, long dreadlocks lankly hanging out of a white guys Santa hat; a dismal attempt to be seasonally cheerful, three days of stubble, checking his text messages. I was getting a train to The Princess Alexandra Hospital, to visit the Mellow Mum.
I work in a hospital so I knew the importance of using the hand gel when I arrived at Harlow hospital, and when I left. I must have missed a bit though because less than twenty-four hours later I was vomiting and shivering. I went to bed. A few hours later I had inflicted the same onto my husband and eldest daughter; only the baby was unaffected. All night and the next morning we had temperatures, vomiting and diarrhoea. The whole family lay around on the futon bed in the living room, unable to properly care for our baby. The water tank was out of water and we were running out of bottled water to drink, yet both parents were too weak to move. The tap down the towpath has been vandalised, so it can only be turned on with mole-grips. British Waterways sent someone out “to look at it.” They did not repair it. They turned the water off. We are weak and ill, bed clothes and pyjamas are in the bath covered in vomit. Neither of us can walk to the launderette. We need running water and a washing machine. We need neighbours or friends. It is a definite low point in the whole ‘family on board’ life experience. By the afternoon the evil virus thankfully began to fade away and I made it to the supermarket for soup and bottled water.
The Silence of Snow
November
We are experiencing the earliest cold snap for nearly twenty years. The canal has frozen already, and that usually happens in January. When the canal is frozen the boat doesn’t rock when you walk about. Usually there is a very subtle rocking of the boat as it bobs on the water. After the big freeze came the magic of the snow. It drifted silently down among us turning London mysteriously Dickension. Cars became carriages and the silence made the streets timeless. Little Timothy Cratchit noiselessly slipped off into an alley way, supported on a single crutch. Under the arched bricks of the Victorian canal bridge, icicles hang suspended, glistening, dripping into the cut, beautiful and grimy all at once. My daughter asked what they are and I explained.
“Disgusting!” she giggled.
I’m enjoying my children now. I take one day at a time. There is no monologue, no mental ‘To Do’ list, no incessant internal criticism and no Rolling Stones: just a beautiful silence as the snow softly falls.
“God bless us, every one!” hisses the ghost of Tiny Tim.
We are experiencing the earliest cold snap for nearly twenty years. The canal has frozen already, and that usually happens in January. When the canal is frozen the boat doesn’t rock when you walk about. Usually there is a very subtle rocking of the boat as it bobs on the water. After the big freeze came the magic of the snow. It drifted silently down among us turning London mysteriously Dickension. Cars became carriages and the silence made the streets timeless. Little Timothy Cratchit noiselessly slipped off into an alley way, supported on a single crutch. Under the arched bricks of the Victorian canal bridge, icicles hang suspended, glistening, dripping into the cut, beautiful and grimy all at once. My daughter asked what they are and I explained.
“Disgusting!” she giggled.
I’m enjoying my children now. I take one day at a time. There is no monologue, no mental ‘To Do’ list, no incessant internal criticism and no Rolling Stones: just a beautiful silence as the snow softly falls.
“God bless us, every one!” hisses the ghost of Tiny Tim.
Jagger Little Pill
I’ve now been living with Mick for about two weeks. My mouth is dry and I grind my teeth a little bit but I feel more chilled out. His disembodied voice drifts around the boat, “It’s all so different today, I hear every mother say.”
The doctor did some blood tests for diabetes and other things and found everything normal except my sex hormones are really low, which explains the lack of sex drive. She said this is caused by only recently stopping breast feeding, and also by the weight loss. I am such a narrow Boat-Wife. She is concerned that I’ve lost about a stone, which she said is almost fifteen percent of my body weight. I have also seen a mental health worker at the GP practice to help me with stress. Some people don’t agree with the pills and counselling approach to life’s difficulties, but everybody has their own way, and The Doctor’s is wine and TV and mine is this. Since I’ve been on the little white pills I feel normal again for the first time in months and months. My self-critical inner monologue is taking a break from telling me that I’m under achieving as a wife and mother. I’ve been less tetchy with the children and I think I‘ve been nicer to The Doctor too.
The doctor did some blood tests for diabetes and other things and found everything normal except my sex hormones are really low, which explains the lack of sex drive. She said this is caused by only recently stopping breast feeding, and also by the weight loss. I am such a narrow Boat-Wife. She is concerned that I’ve lost about a stone, which she said is almost fifteen percent of my body weight. I have also seen a mental health worker at the GP practice to help me with stress. Some people don’t agree with the pills and counselling approach to life’s difficulties, but everybody has their own way, and The Doctor’s is wine and TV and mine is this. Since I’ve been on the little white pills I feel normal again for the first time in months and months. My self-critical inner monologue is taking a break from telling me that I’m under achieving as a wife and mother. I’ve been less tetchy with the children and I think I‘ve been nicer to The Doctor too.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Dodgy deal in the dark
17th November
We decided we cannot accept the place at the lovely nursery in a quite sought after Islington Primary School. (I heard that Tony Blair’s children went there). It’s completely different hours to my work hours. The nursery that Big Sister is currently enjoying is in a school that historically has a poor reputation. Within weeks of my daughter starting nursery the council have announced that they are going to close the school, knock the building down, and merge it with a local Church of England school. The parents are in uproar, it is a multi-cultural and multi-faith area. There will not be enough places for all children when the new school opens. The current staff believe they now have a strong team and have done much to improve the previous poor reputation.
I haven’t used Mrs Jones’s washing machine for months, so I sold it on eBay, “no reserve, collection only”. Tonight I hauled it up the steep towpath and left it at the top of the ramp by the bridge. An Indian man loitered suspiciously under the amber Victorian cast iron street lamp, collar turned up against the cold. I caught his eye.
“Are you looking for...?” He nodded.
“Do you have the machine?” He speaks with an Indian accent and peers over my shoulder into the darkness of the towpath.
I tipped my head over towards the shadows. The towpath is so dark that the machine cannot be seen.
“It’s there.” He looks doubtful but puts a crumpled five pound note into my hand.
We walk over to the machine.
“It works?”
“Yes. It works.” He eyes me suspiciously.
“Thank you very much,” he nods and leans in to lift the machine. I slip off into the shadows feeling like a bit-part in a 1970’s Bollywood gangster movie.
We decided we cannot accept the place at the lovely nursery in a quite sought after Islington Primary School. (I heard that Tony Blair’s children went there). It’s completely different hours to my work hours. The nursery that Big Sister is currently enjoying is in a school that historically has a poor reputation. Within weeks of my daughter starting nursery the council have announced that they are going to close the school, knock the building down, and merge it with a local Church of England school. The parents are in uproar, it is a multi-cultural and multi-faith area. There will not be enough places for all children when the new school opens. The current staff believe they now have a strong team and have done much to improve the previous poor reputation.
I haven’t used Mrs Jones’s washing machine for months, so I sold it on eBay, “no reserve, collection only”. Tonight I hauled it up the steep towpath and left it at the top of the ramp by the bridge. An Indian man loitered suspiciously under the amber Victorian cast iron street lamp, collar turned up against the cold. I caught his eye.
“Are you looking for...?” He nodded.
“Do you have the machine?” He speaks with an Indian accent and peers over my shoulder into the darkness of the towpath.
I tipped my head over towards the shadows. The towpath is so dark that the machine cannot be seen.
“It’s there.” He looks doubtful but puts a crumpled five pound note into my hand.
We walk over to the machine.
“It works?”
“Yes. It works.” He eyes me suspiciously.
“Thank you very much,” he nods and leans in to lift the machine. I slip off into the shadows feeling like a bit-part in a 1970’s Bollywood gangster movie.
What Mothers Do
12th November
I feel overwhelmed by how busy I am. I’ve decided to write down an average day again, to see exactly what I am doing with my time.
I wash and dress the children, fold the bed away and make breakfast for everyone. (The Doctor usually makes breakfast). Move piles of paperwork and toys from the table to the living room so that the girls can have breakfast. Take the children to the park. Come back and lock the pushchair to a signpost on the towpath. Prevent the baby from climbing up the back of the sofa and onto the kitchen worktop for the tenth time today. Decide to get play pen off the roof. I assemble it as a baby barrier across the room. Phone the Islington nursery where Big Sister has recently been offered a part time place, but completely different hours to my work hours. It seems to have a better reputation than the nursery she has just started at, but is it worth changing if we are moving soon? Yesterday The Doctor made a lovely curry for our anniversary. I warm up the remains of the curry for the children’s lunch. The baby eats well and her sister won’t eat a thing. She insists on being supervised on a trip to the toilet. She says,
“Mummy, I just want to listen to classical music and lie down under the rabbit blanket on the sofa.”
I comply with her request and eat her curry while she falls asleep on the sofa.
Change the baby’s nappy and put her in the bedroom for a nap. Start tidying the kitchen and realise that as both girls are asleep I could do some admin on the computer. I start it up and set up a standing order to the new nursery. Big Sister wakes up. I supervise a wee. Still tired she wees in her pants, trousers and socks. I sort it out. She says her eyes sting and she feels hot. I give her medicine and she sits on the sofa to watch TV. I go on Facebook to wish my brother a happy birthday; he’s now on a beach in Goa. Check my emails, print some documents, and write a bit of my blog. Tidy up some toys and clear a surface to put my computer on. Set up The Little Mermaid for Big Sister to watch on the computer.
The coal boat has arrived. I can see two seventy foot boats buttied up approaching outside the window. They have got their butty boat back from dry dock. I nip out and walk down the gunwale to ask Coal Dad to top up our diesel. It’s cold and raining.
“You get cold, keeping everyone else warm don’t you? Giving all us boats fuel.”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Cold in winter, and we get sunburnt in summer.”
Coal Lad says,
“Been in the paper again lately?”
“No, just the once.”
I go inside and start the dishes. They fill the diesel tank and I pay them.
I get the baby up and give snacks to both children. Chat to my mum on the phone. Finish the dishes. It takes twenty minutes to change the bed sheets because I have to remove the cot barrier and a million cuddly toys from the bed. I clear the table ready for tea.
I’m feeling surprisingly mellow. (Are the pills having an effect already?)
Tidy up toys and make tea. Feed the baby, supervise tea; The Doctor comes home. I begin the bedtime routine, washing girls, pyjamas, stories, drinks of milk, brushing teeth. By eight o’clock they are all in bed asleep. The Doctor has begun making dinner. We eat together and relax.
Somehow, today things seemed more manageable.
I love this book! What Mothers Do
I feel overwhelmed by how busy I am. I’ve decided to write down an average day again, to see exactly what I am doing with my time.
I wash and dress the children, fold the bed away and make breakfast for everyone. (The Doctor usually makes breakfast). Move piles of paperwork and toys from the table to the living room so that the girls can have breakfast. Take the children to the park. Come back and lock the pushchair to a signpost on the towpath. Prevent the baby from climbing up the back of the sofa and onto the kitchen worktop for the tenth time today. Decide to get play pen off the roof. I assemble it as a baby barrier across the room. Phone the Islington nursery where Big Sister has recently been offered a part time place, but completely different hours to my work hours. It seems to have a better reputation than the nursery she has just started at, but is it worth changing if we are moving soon? Yesterday The Doctor made a lovely curry for our anniversary. I warm up the remains of the curry for the children’s lunch. The baby eats well and her sister won’t eat a thing. She insists on being supervised on a trip to the toilet. She says,
“Mummy, I just want to listen to classical music and lie down under the rabbit blanket on the sofa.”
I comply with her request and eat her curry while she falls asleep on the sofa.
Change the baby’s nappy and put her in the bedroom for a nap. Start tidying the kitchen and realise that as both girls are asleep I could do some admin on the computer. I start it up and set up a standing order to the new nursery. Big Sister wakes up. I supervise a wee. Still tired she wees in her pants, trousers and socks. I sort it out. She says her eyes sting and she feels hot. I give her medicine and she sits on the sofa to watch TV. I go on Facebook to wish my brother a happy birthday; he’s now on a beach in Goa. Check my emails, print some documents, and write a bit of my blog. Tidy up some toys and clear a surface to put my computer on. Set up The Little Mermaid for Big Sister to watch on the computer.
The coal boat has arrived. I can see two seventy foot boats buttied up approaching outside the window. They have got their butty boat back from dry dock. I nip out and walk down the gunwale to ask Coal Dad to top up our diesel. It’s cold and raining.
“You get cold, keeping everyone else warm don’t you? Giving all us boats fuel.”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Cold in winter, and we get sunburnt in summer.”
Coal Lad says,
“Been in the paper again lately?”
“No, just the once.”
I go inside and start the dishes. They fill the diesel tank and I pay them.
I get the baby up and give snacks to both children. Chat to my mum on the phone. Finish the dishes. It takes twenty minutes to change the bed sheets because I have to remove the cot barrier and a million cuddly toys from the bed. I clear the table ready for tea.
I’m feeling surprisingly mellow. (Are the pills having an effect already?)
Tidy up toys and make tea. Feed the baby, supervise tea; The Doctor comes home. I begin the bedtime routine, washing girls, pyjamas, stories, drinks of milk, brushing teeth. By eight o’clock they are all in bed asleep. The Doctor has begun making dinner. We eat together and relax.
Somehow, today things seemed more manageable.
I love this book! What Mothers Do
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)