San Francisco - A bit like Whitby

If you enter the phrase "June is the sunniest month in England" into the Google English/Spanish translator, it comes up with the questions "Did you mean 'June is the rainiest month in England'?". Apart from being absolutely hilarious from a coding point-of-view (us IT professionals are known for our waggish sense of humour), it is also patently untrue. San Francisco must be the wettest, coldest, most blustery place on any coast. Including, yes, Whitby, as they do have the smoked kippers to mitigate any moistness.

Although winter jackets would have been best, we were the typical Brits abroad in that we each had several cardies, a cagoule and a rain-mate. at one point, I realised my hood had created handy guttering around my forehead, when, leaning forward to speak to the small person in front of me, I completely deluged her already sodden face.

Apart from the weather ("colder than Stoke!"), it was great fun. Easily the best US city we've been to so far. We stayed in a really nice flat in Castro, which is where all the more handsome chaps with dogs hang out. There was one slightly embarrassing moment when I called T over to a shop-window and said "Awww, look at all the pretty Easter eggs", and she said "Oh yes, Mummy. they must be for St Valentine's Day AND Easter, because they have Love written on them"....bridgjo pulled us both back from the window by our collars muttering "I'll talk to you later".

We went across to Alcatraz. Interesting and damp. I hadn't known that so many children used to live on the island, the kids of the guards, who would take the ferry across to school each day.

A highlight for the small person was the Pirate Shop . It's a front for a community writing group. If a child goes in and offers a drawing or poem, they can barter with the staff for treasure.

My favourite place was the Winchester House. It was unnerving how one room would be colder than the rest, and you could well imagine spirits being abroad, or at least walking around the rooms.

Muir Woods were pretty impressive - especially as we also did a 10 mile hike. T managed to go all the way round with a constant supply of Pringles, crisps and Fruit Pastilles. Luckily, as most people were just doing wobbly-bottomed coach-tours, it meant everyone else stayed on the board-walk, and we had the paths to ourselves.

Eau, deer

The winter has seemed to have passed us by this year. Apart from one or two minus 20C days, it has been quite acceptable. Last year we had snow till way passed April. This year I may even be able to succumb to my faux middle-class roots and go and plant tomatoes (which generally seems to be just a posh way of feeding the local deer population).

I was not impressed by the local animal husbandry. The neighbour came home just before Christmas at about 1am and found a pile of four deer at the bottom of the road. When he called the police to complain, he was told it was actually the police who'd done it, and it was part of the culling program. As we only have 5 deer (well, one, obvs) which wander about, rather than a swathe of rampaging wildebeest across the savannah, I thought that this was a bit odd, until I saw the price of venison in the supermarket.

I was there  in the local Wholefoods last week. Wholefoods is a bit like M&S....overpriced organic produce selling to gullible mums, who otherwise just frisby Vitamin C in the form of jaffa cakes to their kids. At the check-out, I'd unloaded my basket onto the conveyor-belt behind this well-turned out lady in front of me (ie she had a nice perm, and you couldn't see her gun), and put down The Barrier of Death.

I suddenly realised that I needed to pop back to the veg department and grab some frisee (or something else I would probably not recognise by sight). When I came back, she was just paying up....and I saw she'd actually helped herself to the two bottles of Pelligrino and some parmesan from my section. She looked at me. I looked at her. We did the unspoken "I know you know I know etc", and she looked so horrified I just could not bring myself to say anything.

Serves me right when tap-water and cheddar would do just as well, but I just knew she would carry that guilt with her all day.

Friend or Foe?

Right - let me make this quite clear. I am all for any country keeping out nasty foreigners with questionable hygiene who refuse both to integrate and to work. However, when it comes to ME, I tend to reach for the deodorant and get rather righteous and irritable.

Yes - it was time for us to renew our visas.

The whole procedure is a process of documentary obstacles, with only the most tenacious applicants being awarded the Big Prize ("Yes, another 2 years of 6 foot snow can be yours for the low, low price of your sanity!").

The first step is to apply using the visa application system on-line. Except it was written and completed by a really distracted 15 year-old who was taking his GSCE in Computing Science a year early, and forgot about the testing module. The initial screen informs you (rather optimistically) that the process may take 25 minutes to complete. It took me fours hours. For each application. A little like an original BBC text-based adventure game ("Hit troll", "What troll?" etc), it would either intermittently throw you out of the system as you had not touched the key-board for 3 seconds (this was timed, by me, sobbing very very quietly, so that the pixies couldn't hear), or, on using the drop-down list-boxes, would redirect you out to a completely random screen on the Homeland Security web-site. "Oh , yes," said one of the Brits, "It's been like that for about 12 months. When it happened to us we told our company they would have to do it for us". Unfortunately, I did not have that sort of privilege, so had to plough on. Finally, I was in the position to scan in the photos and print out all the forms we needed.

Then came the Book Your Interview challenge.

The interview could be done within the USA (but only 10% of visa renewals are awarded this way), or go out of the country (but not Mexico, as that can take upto (or at least) a month).

However, this is further limited to the fact that an interview could only be booked through the internet, and only within the next 6 weeks. At eleven o'clock at night.

Eventually, we got an interview in Halifax (the "I Love Halifax" blog will be written when I've stopped the valium).

Off we went, in our posh togs, just in case.

As it was being renovated, we had to sit on the floor in the corridor outside of the consulate. Now and then a disembodied voice would direct us to move along the line, go to the back, come to the front, present a form, wait at the coffee shop downstairs. On entering, we were then told that the hand-bag had to be taken to another building two blocks away and checked into a hotel locker; that the bottle of water had to be left at the desk (in spite of us having to wait for 3 hours); and that "Your daughter cannot bring her MP3 player in.You may not believe this - but once we had someone in and it took down all the computers and printers".

No, actually, I don't believe it - because that was the plot of a FILM!!!

And all the time, you have to be hyper-aware of your facial expression as each sneer and upwards glance will be punished by being thoroughly pushed to the back of the queue again.

We presented the papers - our forms, passports and the company 3inch petition, and were then told that the print-outs I had done at home were not a high-enough quality for the machine to read in the bar-code (even though I have seen the girl on the till actually type in the number BY HAND for the milk I buy each week - so if our local Target can do it....).

But, no - we had to go back to the hotel, and hope that its antiquated broad-band connection (powered by weevils) would be fast enough for us to log on to the website (after firstly trying to remember the URL, and then the password (mother's grand-mother's maiden name, apparently. It didn't help that I, of course, had to make one up, and couldn't remember if it was Phyllis or Kevin). So, clutching the reprinted forms, we then ran back to the Consulate - just before the security guard locked up and took in the flag). Yes, everything's now OK, but, um, we can't possibly say when the visas will be printed. Because they are printed from Washington, you see. And we have no control over it. Come back tomorrow. And no, you can't have the phone number, you must just come round.

So we did. Twice, by which time it was Saturday, and we had to wait until the following Monday - 24 hours before we were due to fly out.

With much trepidation, we again approached the Consulate door, and whispered the magic words in tremulous voices. The door opened a crack, and the passports were slid out.  L. Frank Baum obviously based his famous story on something very similar.

It's the pits.

They have started building next-door. It was a lovely copse of silver-birch, but now looks like a battered corpse (ooh, did you see what I did there?). It took one man a day-and-a-half to cut down all the trees and turn them into wood-chip. The heavy plant moved in the next day and has started digging out the basement. I am a little concerned as it looks ENORMOUS. I am going to guess it is 6-bedrooms, based on my extensive architectural knowledge (ie several episodes of Grand Designs. I will take to standing next to the plot and sighing into the middle-distance "I can't help thinking that..."). Almost had a falling out with the owner who decided to check up on progress by popping round at six o'clock on Saturday morning, standing on what will ultimately be our shared drive and telling his wife authoritatively (loudly) "And that is where the toilet will be". Naturally, I didn't say anything, being both English and in Minnesota, so just tutted and closed the window IN A FORCEFUL MANNER. That'll show 'im.

We have had to cave in to social mores and purchase our first net-curtains. It will give us something to twitch.

Interestingly they were not allowed to start earlier, as there is a city rule that heavy plant must be kept off the roads for a certain time after the last snows melt. Damn' - said the S word, and I'd promised myself I wouldn't.

I don't normally watch Reality TV, as it is a bit of a Voyeuristic Indulgence - particularly the program the other day about hoarders. Ten minutes into it, I decided to do out the garage, and then moved onto the guest-room. I even dropped the nine garbage bags, two chairs and a blanket off at the thrift store, it moved me so much.

Bean has made her first kill. We're very proud, but it's the person in charge of kitty litter (ie me) who has to dispose of the mangled remains.

We went to play crazy golf last weekend. It is an amazing place. The guy makes random pieces of sculpture and each year seems to add another hole (he is up to 13). It's wonderfully eccentric.

Just. Too. Hot.

Forty degrees today. I know. I'm never satisfied. T's ice-skating started up again this evening, and most of the town had turned up to watch, it seemed, sitting on the frigid bleachers in shorts and vests. Her classroom was so warm at school, that they had to have lessons in the cafeteria. Alas, like in Australian schools, there seems to be very little air-conditioning for what, when it's not minus forty, is plus.

I overheard this at the ice-rink: Child reading Malory Towers: "Mommy, what's a 'blazer'?". Mommy: "It's a kinda snow-mobile, honey".

I've been doing more running. One of my favourite tracks is to run along the railway-line, which is a common evening walk for a lot of people around here (the rails have a utility vehicle track along side, so are quite wide). The consensus is that it is 'most likely illegal', but the drivers wave to you, and the police just drive on by. For a state which seems to have quite a loose definition of 'gun-control', they probably think "Well, if you're daft enough to be walking along a track when a 120-carriage freight train is rolling-along, is there really anything we can do or say to help you?". And, yes, they are really 120 carriages long - this means (quick mental calculation) with each one 20m long, it can sometimes straddle several railway crossings at once; effectively cutting one side of the town from the other. I tried to run along side of one the other day as it was waiting for its green-light, but gave up and ate chocolate instead.

I have a problem, otherwise, on where to run. Memorial Day was last week (white heels - hurrah!), which means that everyone (else) has opened up their cabins, and cracked open the Glad-Wrap on their boats. As the roads here can be quite narrow, the boat-trailers quite wide and the road-kill plentiful, it means there's sometimes very little space for me (pavements are non-existent....everywhere requires a car, and today I treated myself both to the drive-through chemists, and the drive-through post-box).

And I'm not able to run cross-country at the moment because of the ticks. The ones you can see are OK...it's the ones the size of poppy-seeds which are the ones to scream hysterically at.

I took an executive decision last week (i..e spent a Lancashire man's money without asking him first), and bought some furniture for the 3-season porch. In the last house we were always being nibbled at by the voracious mosquitoes, but here, luckily, there is a balcony enclosed with screens - pretty handy on a swamp. It also has a ceiling fan and speakers for piped music, if only we could be bothered with trying to figure out how it works. Once or twice we have found ourselves sitted in there, Conversing.

Bridgjo had a good day's kayaking on the river, which is very high, due, of course, to the snow. He took T out on the lake, but she sat in the back, with her friend in front, and let her do all the work. Chip off the old block.

This is why I hate computers....

Intermittently I earn my keep by ploughing through all the piles of paper on my desk: pay the lawn chap, sort out turning on the reticulation, downloading claim forms for medical bills, organizing T's hectic social life and changing my address on my UK Bank account.

This last one is held at a Well Known British Banking Institution, and necessitates you typing into the phone key-pad card numbers, date of birth, security codes, best-friend's dog's icense number before you can even speak to an operator - who then REALLY grills you. Now my English bank account is there purely as Running Away Money (or, Dash Cash), which, admittedly isn't going to get me very far at the moment as it only contains $2.52. But it's there should my US cards ever get zapped, or I need an extra couple of bob to tide me over to the next Rapture. So I find it a bit annoying when I have to try and remember the exact last time I bought something ("Umm, Jackie magazine in 1986?"), or the number of direct debits, passwords for on-line banking which I never use, etc.

So, this was going to be an easy one.

I wanted to change my address.

So I call the UK, get through all of the above dialog and the lady says to me, "Ah, I see you do not have the necessary security layer set up," (there's more?), "So I will need to send you a form. To your new address. Could you spell it out for me please?".

And this is why I hate computers.

Drive-Thru Life

We went to Colorado last month for a weekend. I was extremely impressed by the drive-through cigarette shop, although the drive-through post-boxes here take some beating. Bridgjo found an original share certificate for the Isabella Gold-Mine, which was accepted as The Official Souvenir (in Disney, it was a plastic snow-globe of the Little Mermaid, so I am happy that T's tastes are improving). It was bitterly cold, and I was a bit grumpy that I had forgotten to bring my ski-jacket. On the Sunday I went out wearing every single item of clothing in my possession, including several pairs of knickers, one of which doubled-up as ear-warmers.

We'll be staying for another two years, it seems, so maybe I'll be unpacking some of those boxes soon. Unfortunately, not until we manage to ascend the K12 of paper-work which is Renewing Your Visa. It starts by forcing you to take at least 4 hours per application on-line (the system crashes more often than...than...ANYTHING! (apologies, but after that evening I found it quite difficult finding humour in anything for a quite a while), then making sure all the documentation has been completed correctly by the company (which still managed to spell bridgjo's name 3 different ways, and put on our Australian address where we haven't lived for the past 5 years). Then it's the gentle teasing and joshing that is Organising Your Interview. Yes you can go to Montreal...oops, no you can't...how about Quebec?...no, too late, you hovered too long over the mouse...Halifax then?

So Halifax it is...known for its slogan "Halifax...It's a Blast!" (no, not really), and for being next to the Estate Agents in Baxtergate.

T has just completed a week of exams. These are for the French Government - the American's are next year. She had four days of 4 French tests, and 4 maths. I'm not quite sure she completely Got It, but I'm certainly interested in how she is progressing. So the next blog will either be very braggy, or very fibby. ("So,yes, we are thinking she should be doing the Chinese immersion this summer....").

The picture shown at the top was done courtesy of Wordle - an extremely addictive application.

Flu in thru the window

I tried out the raw food restaurant a couple of weeks ago. It was interesting in the way that it is astounding that there are so many ways to present salad. I had a, well, salad on a sesame seed biscuit (of the sort found next to the Tunnocks tea-cakes at Hanley market). It was all very tasty, but, like Chinese food, not the sort of thing I want to rush home and try. It may be healthy, but there's far too much chopping and preparation involved to offer it to the family and for them to look down and say "Oh. Salad".

Rather handily, the restaurant also does colonic irrigations (presumably in a room away from the kitchen). Surprisingly, I found the next day that this is completely unnecessary.

Bean fell in the bath again. She gave out an enormous howl of indignation (we'd left it running, and she got rather over-excited at seeing the bubbles). She then immediately sought solace in the kitty litter. Bearing in mind it is design to be super-absorbent, she came out looking as if she had been bread-crumbed.

She was spayed yesterday. She gave me a FURIOUS look when I left her. She is now wearing The Cone of Shame and pinging off the furniture. We are supposed to leave it on for 2 weeks, and I also have to give her a syringe full of medicine twice a day. What japes!

I never pass up an opportunity to make an American to feel slightly inferior, especially T's English teacher whose note home last week had to be sent back corrected. So I was trying to teach T the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria amori". Unfortunately, she's convinced it's "dolce di latte for Patrick Moore"...so she's not quite ready for the Oxford entrance exams just yet.

She may also not be ready for The Art Academy. I thought it might be nice, instead of sport-y activities, to go to the local art centre and draw, paint, and basically make the sort of mess the mother of a single child can't be doing with in her own home. Except, it's rather more serious than that. Firstly, you have to commit (ie pay) to a year. And then have an interview. And THEN present your portfolio. Yes, even if you are seven. What? Really? Does the portfolio have to have a zip? Does she need to talk about light, perspective and the importance of putting the lids back on the paints afterwards? Or am I being paranoid and it just requires an ability not to poke yourself in the eye with a pencil?

We've also been tackling plurals. In Spanish, for instance, they use the word "Hobby", as in the English, but very sensibly just bung an "s" on the end. Like everything, the rules take some explanation, but I threw in the word "ox" as I was feeling particularly waggish. She looked at me very seriously and said "Mummy, when am I ever go to come across more than one ox?".

We've all had flu. It was nice and mild, but made us feel very tired indeed. As T said "I'm feeling so much better that I think I'll break the speed limit on the road to recovery".

Please send food parcels

We were talking adjectives and adjectival nouns in Spanish on Tuesday. The teacher was having to explain what "pedantic" meant, and seeing my face (confused rabbit in a Large Hadron Collider expression) said that it wasn't a word that Americans seemed to use as he was always having to explain it, although Europeans seemed to have no problems. "Ah," I said, "Maybe they are just more pedantic in England than they are in America, so we need a word for it". "And are there more pedantics do you think in England?" he asked. "No," I said from the lofty heights of my B grade at o-level, "Just pedants". Gosh, how we laughed!

I missed out on a Brit get-together on Monday, because of the snow that now seems to causing havoc elsewhere. Note that I have used the word Brit. I have only ever heard it used between ex-pats, usually in a mocking way comparing our ability to spell with the rest of the world and the fact that "flavorful" is probably not actually a word. Without exception, if you were to ask any one of them, they would admit to being born in England, and never from Britain. I'm certain it is only (English) politicians which use the expression...you can be pretty sure that the Welsh, Scots and Irish always describe themselves as such.

Last night, I made lavender biscuits on the assumption that if they didn't work out, I could always use them to lace my knicker-drawer.

Brrrr!

Right, UK. Listen up there at the back, and try and man up a bit will you?:

Minus 33 degrees C last night - it was the talk of the school coffee morning. There was some confusion about whether we were discussing the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit - I had to explain that, being English, minus temperatures are always discussed in Centigrade, and hot weather in Fahrenheit.

When we woke up there was ice on the inside of the windows, and a thick crust of frost around the edges of the front-door.

Not having TV (we're soooo hippy-dippy), we're never too sure of the weather, and went out last weekend to go tubing at Elm Creek. It was excellent fun, although bitterly cold. Sensible Minnesotan mothers had tucked their kids in front of improving Mandarin Chinese DVDs; we decided to fling ourselves down icy mountains in rubber dinghies. It was excellent fun though - more so as no-one else was there.

The cat fell in the bath last night. She had a bit of a swim about and didn't seem at all put out. She also likes sitting in the sink playing with the drips, so she's trying very hard to be the Turkish Van I wanted, but couldn't afford (although a quarter of the size). She seemed slightly bothered that we laughed at her so long about it, however.

New Year Cheer

Minus 16 degrees fahrenheit wind chill. Yep, we're back in Minnesota. Or still in Stoke, not quite sure yet.

We managed to return to the US without mishap. Quite boring. T wasn't even sick, and all flights were on-time and the luggage was awaiting us patiently on the carousel. Weird.

The only thing that jarred, which surely shows my age, was getting to Schipol airport, trying to get something to eat and finding that out of the 300 tables they have in the food-court, 10 were populated, and the rest were covered in food, beer, pots, pans, plates, etc. I set to work with my Wet Ones and got quite irate. Obviously, I had to send a strongly worded e-mail to Schipol Group, who just snorted and murmured to themselves, "Well, you should have seen it two weeks ago".

We had a great break in Stoke and Whitby. I have got used to the manic in-yer-face rabid friendliness of the Minnesotans, and found, in comparison, the Yorkshire people to be quite dour (this quite definately excludes close friends and relatives of course). We went to play dominoes one night, which involves changing tables each game. The first time I changed I said Hi to the oldish lady sitting here and said "I'm Rachel". To which she replied (not looking up from her spinners), "'Appen". And one evening we went to a pub in which there were 3 people, and the bar-maid served us WITHOUT ASKING US OUR FAMILY HISTORY!!!

But at least we were offered a lift by someone (unfortunately 2 foot from the house) when the weather changed suddenly to a snow-storm and we had to abandon the car at The Stiddy (pub, naturally) and walk two hours back to Sleights. Luckily we were in our Minnesotan clothes ("T! Just put two pairs of snow-pants on will you?") and we managed just fine.

We were very put out that we couldn't get a kipper breakfast at Botham's - each time we went, the last pair had just been sold, and even on the day we ordered in advance, they couldn't get the van through. A sad day, indeed.

We picked Bean up the day after we came back. I was hoping that two weeks at the Cat Nap Inn would act as a finishing school for her, as up until then she had been quite vicious. And, yes, it seems to have worked. Nancy told her she was a delight and that she had fallen in love with the resident cat, Ziggy, so much that they spent the entire 2 weeks together fighting and sleeping together.

Nancy has fallen in love with Bean so much, in fact, that she had a going-away Catnip Party for her. When we arrived, all the other cats were lying around, wearily raising their heads, as if still completely stoned. Since she's been back, she hasn't leapt, biting, at my face once (progress) and seems much better behaved. She needed a massive Main Coon to sit on her head a couple of times and give her what-for. One down-side was that she suddenly decided she didn't want the 38 tins of kitten food we had supplied, and instead quite happily hoe'd into everybody else's Tuna and Shrimp (with Gravy). So today I had to go back and exchange it all. Fussy little madam.

Escape from USA; starring Bridgjo

So it was bridgjo's turn to get across to Blighty at the week-end. It was fortunate, in a way, that we are almost royal in the way we'd decided to travel separately, as it made his journey less difficult than it may well have been.

He arrived at the airport on Friday and was told that his flight was cancelled as snow-bound Amsterdam was closed, but, no worries, he could travel the next day via Atlanta/Schipol/Teesside.

So the next day, he optimistically set off, and had got as far as Atlanta when he was told that Schipol was closed (as they were refusing passengers other than those who were not going on a connecting flight (ie Dutch people only, presumably)), but he could get to Teesside (possibley) on the 23rd.

He'd naturally checked all his bags through and was stuck in an airport which was rapidly becoming a little bit truculent.

He tried (with alternating success) to persuade them that he was quite happy just to go to Amsterdam, thinking maybe he could get a ferry across, or, maybe, by this time, fashion a small dirigible out of discarded drinks bottles. But although one desk said yes, another said no, and yet another said "Have you tried this airport cheese?", he had no luck.

Luckily, due to his Northern grace and charm, he managed to get on a stand-by flight to Manchester.

All around him though, people were in tears, starting to lose their tempers (and in one case, losing their passport).

He then had to rugby-tackle a few old people out of the way when the stand-by list was opened, and finally managed to get himself a seat.

By the time he got to Manchester, he phoned me up at my parents in Stoke and insisted, quite manfully, we met him there. I felt quite giddy.

It was a surprisingly rubbish trip up by train. Although we had first class tickets (this was so I'd be surrounded by a better class of people when I travelled up by myself with T), it was basically second class with a the 2 crossed out in biro and a 1 written in. I am never too impressed when I have to clean the toilets myself before use. Furthermore (FURTHERMORE!) there is only one first class lounge at Manchester Piccadilly...and it belongs to Virgin which refused us "cheap-seat Trans-Penine losers" entrance. Luckily, I had yummy-mummy-made Christmas cake and water which I had knicked from the lounge in Stoke, so the journey just flew by.

By the time bridgjo got to his home, and he was seated, washed, fed and clothed in his dad's pants, he gave a audible sigh of relief.

No sign of his suitcase, though it might even make it before we leave. In case you ever need to know, it is actually quite possible to go on holiday with the clothes you stand up in (as long as those clothes include two pairs of knickers). Even Whitby sells socks.

Hats off to Delta for getting us all here though, and struggling to get our bags to us. They deserve a mince-pie.

It is the coldest I have ever experienced in Whitby without there being an enormous Easterly gale of the variety which causes locals to mutter "Yes, it's 32 degrees centigrade, but it's minus 6 wind-chill". It's been minus 11, which caused my chilblains, which haven't been around since I was a student and going to night-clubs in high-heels, to wake-up and say "Ey-up".

The next-door neighbour came round quite early on asking for hot water to unfreeze the out-door toilet as he has a burst pipe, and needs to find out where it is (suspecting it's somewhere under the concrete floor there). So he's had to turn his water off.

Hilariously, the gas men came round to the street outside to check on a gas-leak, didn't tell anybody, and turned it off and on. Unfortunately, Marnie's boiler is teenager-like and has buggered off to its room to sulk...so we have no heating as it refuses to come out and turn on.

No mince-pie then for British Gas.

Where's the Christmas Pot Noodle?

The traditional day-out on my arrival in Stoke is to go to the local Tesco's and to stand around like a refugee in front of the twenty-seven varieties of crisps.

The journey here was not quite so enjoyable. We had an extraordinarily rabid snow-storm on the Saturday. When English people say "And it was 2 feet deep, and minus 30 degrees", they tend to be exaggerating. This was actually IT. In spite of this, the snow-ploughs still managed to come out about three times even in our 2 house cul-de-sac. So off we trotted to the airport, having checked the Internet just before leaving. I breathed a sigh of relief when we arrived, as it seemed truly hazardous and I didn't fancy the trip back (I helped by pressing the brake-pedal from my side of the car all the way).

It took us however, an hour, rather than 10 minutes, and five minutes after the bags were checked in, the airport was closed. This is very unusual indeed, and means that the snow we were experiencing was a tad more than they get at Manchester. This meant of course, that we had to drive all the way back home.....where we discovered the heating had broken down.

We went to bed early and talked about the necessity of eating each other the next morning if one of us made it.

Delta was lovely and booked us on the same flight the following day and promised our bags would be waiting for us (hah!).

T and I were flying by ourselves, and were very happy indeed to discover we were going to get 4 seats in a row. It's the small things, as shortly afterwards T decided to mark each passing 20 mins for 7 hours by throwing up. At least I didn't have to apologise to anyone about leaky sick-bags and misfires.

And, no, the bags weren't there, but this had the advantage that I didn't have to cart anything about. Unfortunately, T's penicillin was in there, and, of course, all the knickers. So, on the way home we had to nip to the doctor's for a prescription (which they actually did without seeing her!), and then off to Tesco's for an Emergency Knicker Run. Delta, who are, quite frankly, ace, have said they'll reimburse us.

Today we went to Gladstone Pottery just so that I could show T where I used to spend Saturday mornings when I was 10. I think she thinks I helped out the sagger-maker's bottom-knocker (that happened much later on....), but still had great fun making a china rose, throwing a bowl and painting a hedge-hog. Reckoned I should show her her heritage before the last of the factories closed (unless they have done already).

Tomorrow we shall see monkeys.

'Tis the season to pack emergency chocolate

The long-term weather forecast is always a little bit hit-and-miss here. Last week it was to be sunny on Saturday, then windy, then over-cast, and by yesterday an unseasonable flurry of wildebeest falling over the NW Metropolitan area was expected. Now they are saying 100% snowy precipitation just roundabout the time we're planning to take off. As Amsterdam and Manchester are in much of the same boat (although without the wildebeest), I personally forecast an eventful journey full of Bach's Flower Remedy, Christmas cake and Whale music piped through MP3 players. My hand-luggage will contain an abundance of food, a blanket and spare thermals.

This last week has been hectic with last-minute preparations, particularly as we'll be meeting bridgjo later on in the holiday up in Whitby. This means I actually have to be On the Ball (and not running off to hide in the airport coffee shop).

I've been also trying sort out speech therapy for T. She was a paper waiting to be written, when she never babbled as a bairn, and then only started talking when she was about two-and-a-half. Now, naturally, there are a few sounds she has difficulty with, namely "s" and "th". We have to make appointments for a Speech Therapist for her now, as leaving it too late would result in her having to make the phone-call herself, and then irony would ensue. She also has developed just the one sound which is obviously American - '-ar'. As she normally talks with an English accent, it's then rather alarming to be faced with a seven year-old yelling "Come on! Get into the car!"; she sounds like a rather irate, small pirate.

Alas sorting out the threrapy is tricky due to complex insurance issues. I have given up, and will try again once I have located the bottle-opener.

Dashing through the snow

The weather has been most unseasonable. Since the beginning of October it has not been at all unusual for the temperature to reach 65 Fahrenheit (which is about ten past six in new money). Yesterday I had a run dressed only in a t-shirt and shorts (although I came back pretty quickly, admittedly). Today, however, the cloud has gathered, people are talking about winterizing their gardens, and I have been forced by Minnesotan mores to pop out and invest in spruce tops. Yes, tomorrow it will snow. This means several things:

1) Everyone has to relearn how to drive.

2) I have to find where my jump-leads are, as my current way of starting the car is a little like making a phone-call on a Miss Marple episode: switch to on, press right pedal, release, press brake, start engine. (Hello? Hello, operator? ARE YOU THERE???).

3) There will be a segment on the local news whereby they will send the newest memeber of the team out on location, getting him to throw a cup of hot coffee in the air in order to make slush-puppy, and forcing him to do an entire presentation whilst talking through the scarf his mum knitted him.

4) People start putting up their external Christmas decorations as nobody likes to be up a ladder with tinsel in minus 20.

It is apprently against local laws to feed deer in your garden. No-one has mentioned it to them, so they have started to nibble around the bark of the only tree I have (currently adorned in (chewed) solar powered fairy lights).

We went to Redwing on Sunday. It was a little like Stillwater, but the drive there was much easier as very few people seem to go. They are famous for their pottery and, um.

A lot of antique shops too. I feel it is my duty to force T to go around shops for hours in which she has absolutely no interest in. There has been very little in the was of professional research into this topic, but it has to be good for her to at least utter the words "I'm boooorrree-EEEDDDDDDDDDDDD" at least once a week.

Season of Mist

I went for a long run at the weekend. This wasn't entirely intentional as I got slightly lost, but it was, indeed, a poetical morning. The mist hung low over the lakes like Athenian smog hugging the Parthenon. I came across some wild turkeys; it being close to Thanksgiving an'all, they are starting to fill out. They are remarkably docile and I very nearly tripped over one, startling it into giving an indignant "Plok" before it scuttled off. It is no coincidence then that the local aboriginal word for "to hunt turkeys" was, apart from a slight vowel shift, very similar to "to pick daisies".

I have been checking out the local area, trying to find out where the amenities are. We have a plethora of clothes boutiques - testament to all the ladies who lunch, a decent coffee book-shop, and a restaurant which must have the sloooooweeeesssst service EVER. The Post Office is tiny. It would have been closed long ago if it was in the UK. I enjoyed, in a very staring ex-pat sort of way, the policeman coming in and greeting the locals by name. I wanted to introduce myself, but feel that etiquette dictates one should always be introduced by another gentleman to one that is armed.

Happy Birthday....eventually....

We had T's birthday on Saturday. Bravely, we decided to have it At Home, without any clowns nor ponies "which you can dress up". Bridgjo came up trumps by having a treasure hunt which involved me throwing gold coins from the balcony to the garden below. Each kid had to find five coins which could then be exchanged for one go on the Slide of Terror (a slide made of corrugated cardboard down into the swamp). This was incredibly popular.

It was nice to see the kids sharing the coins with each other, as I had half expected them to be rugby-tackling each other to the ground.

I'm not too sure how long we can cobble these parties together, but one of the guests was 9 and was throwing herself into it.

T's birthday cake was an array of highly decorated and differently flavoured cup-cakes. She was most disgusted to learn that this was the compromise as not many kids like fruit cake with brandy. She'll be getting her birthday cake as requested tomorrow. It would have been today. We made a complete fuss of her, helped her open her presents and phoned the grandparents.....who told us her birthday is actually tomorrow - which shows you just how rubbish parents can be. At least I remembered to be present the day she was born.

Why-oh-Why Wayzata?

It was a fair bit alarming to be told 3 months ago that we had to move out. As the credit crunch had hit people quite severely, it meant that people were selling low (in the case of the house in Minnetonka) and renting high (ie everything else). It seemed pretty unlikely we were going to find anything like that which we had at the time. I saw 15 places in one week - overpriced, not nice neighbourhood, odd layouts or, surprisingly, filthy.

Luckily bridgjo came through and we were able to score a jolly nice place outside of Wayzata. The only down-side is that it is pretty close to the rail-way line which isn't too noisy (they move all the freight at night, as the length of the trains (up to 90 wagons) can block off all the crossings in the area for about a mile), but the bed actually does hop slightly around the room. As it is also built next to a swamp I can only guess that the foundations must be pretty rock-solid.

We had an army of little men over three days who packed, moved and unpacked. I like this as otherwise I know that any unpacked boxes would remain just that for the next 12 months.

It's smaller on the ground-floor than our place in Minnetonka, lacking the huge back-room which we never used. But it does have a fully converted basement ("Play-room!), completed with two sets of hooks in the ceiling to hang off swings (as it's too cold for small possums to play outside in the winter, of course). The kitchen is great with two ovens, dish-washer and wine-fridge, although the fridge itself and freezer are a little bit English in size.

The biggest down-size to everything is that because the ceilings are so high (we'll have to get somebody in to change bulbs), and the counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms non-standard (about 10cm higher than usual), I feel about 8. I have to use a stool to cook, and do my prep on the table.

T loves the jacuzzi, although we haven't tried the steam shower yet. The jacuzzi even has a setting to keep the water warm. She's not so keen on the fact that in trying to find our bed-room during the night she keeps ending up in the linen-press.

I am very definitely going to get a sewing machine and run up the curtains, They need to be about 8 feet long, and am not sure Ikea does cheap voile ready-mades in that size.

So we have space if you fancy a visit.

And your little dog too

So when it went completely black outside yesterday afternoon at about 4.30pm, we just looked at each other knowingly like all good English people and murmured "Nights are drawing in, then". But nooooo, nights do not normally draw in quite so completely 4 days after the summer solstice.

The tornado warning went off. The stagiaire had been telling me how much she wanted to see a tornado before she goes back next week. In retrospect I think she also meant to add "from a distance", as, when we all piled down to the cellar, I was holding a blanket, an emergency radio and a small child, she'd run off for her passport. Bridgjo remained on the sofa, too tired after his business trip to move. I checked him for stripey socks before I left him to his fate, just in case I needed to insist.

I cranked up the radio and listened to some very crackly Lord Haw-Haw well-enunciated Emergency Tornado Propaganda on the emergency band ("Into the cellars, we're all going to ...."), for about 2 minutes, then we all looked at each other and thought it would be more fun to watch it instead.

My friend had explained to me how to recognise the siren ("The fire-engines go 'woooo-Oooo-oooo-OOOO', up and down, whereas the siren goes "WooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'"). She unfortunately neglected to tell me what the all-clear sounded like, and as my experience of the Second World War is based entirely around a bloke called Foyle, who has usually sorted everything out by then in any case, it looked as if we were going to be there for the night.

So we came up again. An anti-climax for us, but one of those wonderful holiday memories for the stagiaire...

I am naturally, friends with the Weather channel here, who informed me via Twitter that there was 4 feet (not inches apparently, though it had to have been a typo. Surely you can only get that much water if someone is standing over your head with buckets of the stuff) at Medicine Lake, and that we experienced a total of 6 tornadoes throughout the state yesterday. A usual alert reads like this:

"Large Hail. GR2 Analyst shows some 2-4" diameter (golf ball to baseball size) moving through the metro area, biggest hail appears to be tracking from Plymouth to S. Minneapolis to St. Paul. Flash Flood warning in effect through early tonight for some 3-5"+ amounts. Stay alert and be ready to head to the basement if threatening weather arrives. If you live in the Mankato area you should be in the basement, under the stairs, under a table or work bench." The journalists here are well-meaning, if slightly hysterical in their copy.

T thought it was hilarious as she had immediately made a den in her card-board box castle. She fancied spending the night there with her torch and wants to play again.

According to the news, possibly even tonight.

The Valleyfair Scare

Off to Valleyfair yesterday, the Minnesotan answer to Alton Towers - the major difference being it is not found at the end of a country road, slap-bang in the middle of a tranquil, country village. Lots of similarities; The Corkscrew, Nemesis and rubbish food (although Staffordshire has probably never seen giant turkey legs and Dill-Pickle-On-A-Stick). There's also a very tiny water-park, with a few slides and a jump around in the waves pool. T was extremely disappointed that she was an inch too short for a lot of the rides. Me, I'm concerned that next year I will be dragged around on them.

All the creatures have successfully come out of hibernation and are now creating havoc in the garden. The raccoons like to sit in the tomato plants, for instance, as testamented by their little muddy footprints around the edges. One raccoon, who seems quite young and little compared to some which come around, eats his cheese and Branston like a six year-old. He held up the sandwich (he was there in broad daylight), opened it carefully, putting the top piece on the floor. He then commenced licking the pickle off, then gently peeled off the cheese and nibbled that, followed by the two pieces of bread. His nose goes up and down as he eats, making his whiskers tremble like a particularly agitated RAF Flight Sergeant.

The temperature, thanks to El Nino, zipped up to a toasty 34 degrees yesterday. Today it's a bit colder, but hopefully all the rain will be tonight and we will have a clear day for boating on the lake tomorrow.

School holidays start in 2 weeks' time. This year we will be playing tennis, doing outside swimming lessons, making forts, jam-tarts and a bit of a mess, then making up and a spot of TV. That's the first day sorted, then.