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.