The white knuckle drive

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We went on holiday at half term, of which more anon, and flew via Dubai.  Well, as my brother lives in Abu Dhabi, it seemed a little rude not to stop by to say hello so that is just what we did on our way home.  We arrived on Thursday afternoon and so were able to spend Thursday evening (their Friday night equivalent) and all day Friday (their Sunday equivalent) with little brother and his wife.  There was lots of talk amongst the local ex-pats on Thursday evening of the impending Grand Prix and on Friday we found ourselves on Yas Island, home to the Grand Prix circuit, having brunch at a neighbouring hotel. We spent the afternoon lazing by the pool and saw the lights on the F1 hotel come on as the sun went down.  It was a very pleasant, certainly decadent, way to end our holiday.

But all good things do come to an inevitable end and at 4am on Saturday morning a taxi pulled up outside the flat to drive us the 1 1/2 hours back to Dubai.  Continue reading →

Digging around

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I was recently pointed in the direction of this series of  videos by a friend.  There’s an archaeological dig going on in Orkney and the team are posting a daily update on YouTube.  Just the thing for the  EduBuzz community, if you haven’t spotted it already.  I’ve found it fascinating.

Orkney Island tomb dig

As an aside, Number 2 son did his work experience last year with a local archaeological consultancy.  He’s got no plans to be an archaeologist, as far as I know (and after all what does a mother know about these things?), but he is interested in things environmental and did have a great time with them. They looked after him really well.  He spent time in each of their departments, cleaning tiles, doing drawings, washing tiles, database searches, washing more tiles, and spent a day out on a job with one of the team. Before washing yet more tiles.  He loved it and came back buzzing each day. Just what work experience should be about!

Autumn action

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There was a real glut of fruit in the garden this year.  The plum tree, which seems to live a charmed life and has survived  the trunk splitting  under the weight of fruit, produced more fruit than ever.  Plums found their way into various concoctions but I’ve no idea why I thought it would be a good idea to make a double quantity of chutney.  The industrial volume nearly defeated me.    Even so most of the plums rotted on the ground as it was a good plum season all round.  I knew there was no hope of off-loading much when GPD came home with a bag of plums he’d been given by someone else.

And then it was the turn of the apples.  Continue reading →

Onwards and upwards

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Life has moved on in the Guineapig  Household this summer.  In fact, I was wondering if it was time for a name change but I’m really quite attached to Guineapigmum so I think I’ll stick with it for the time being.  The biggest change is that Number 1 son, GP1, is now in residence at one of those institutions where teenagers practice sleeping, drinking and spending their parents’ money.  Yes he’s now at university. It’s not quite as far afield as originally planned. He got cold feet at some point during the summer (it may well have been the point at which he hitched up with a new young lady) and changed his UCAS options. He’s now in halls somewhere on the outskirts of Edinburgh and learning to cook, drink (did I mention that?), run up phone bills and play. And he’s home almost every weekend.  Well, you get fed at home, don’t you?

He didn’t work quite hard enough during 5th year Continue reading →

The Gallery – Show me the Funny

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Tara, at Sticky Fingers, sets a photograph challenge each week.  I’ve been meaning to take part for months but, well, you may have noticed that I haven’t blogged for months.  So, to celebrate putting metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper, I’ve hunted through Windows Explorer to find something for this week’s theme: Show me the funny.

May I present two or maybe three photos which encapsulate for me Living with Teenagers.

I spotted this sculpture at Tate Modern earlier this year. It sums up for me exactly how I feel when I come home from a week’s fieldwork. Laundry basket overflowing, bedroom floors invisible beneath the mound of wet towels, on duty as Domestic Goddess (if only) the moment I step through the door…

And then there is the challenge of making teenage boys Go Out For A Walk…  You can feel the happiness and excitement in this picture.

And finally, do teenage boys read? Or only when they have to?

Drifting thoughts

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I know that, as a responsible citizen with a fully paid up TV licence, I should have been watching the Prime Ministerial debates during the election campaign. And I did, I really did, listen to part of each of them on the kitchen radio  following the Guineapig family’s various Thursday evening jumping around activities in disparate parts of East Lothian.  But I only listened to part of them because on Thursday evening at 9.30pm Outnumbered came on the box.  The series is now finished, sadly.  Political debate v Outnumbered?  Scripts v improvisation? Adults arguing like children or children arguing like adults? No competition.

Anyhow, one of the best episodes of the election campaign was the one where the family discovers that Ben’s a whizz at chess.  It suits him because spear wielding knights can charge through the opposing army and lay waste in all directions while alien pawns come hurtling in from outer space.  As part of the discovery process there were dicussions about the relative merits of letting your child win as opposed to playing to win yourself.  Of course, when Ben trounced them all they all protested that they’d just let him win.  No, they didn’t fool the viewers.   It set me wondering, though, at what point I stopped playing GP2’s Scrabble hand as well as my own and started playing for my own survival.  I’m just about hanging on to my winning record, but only just.  And when did I start finding the crossword has been done by one of the children before I get there?

There are so many other events that slipped past me unobserved.  Continue reading →

Tempting fate

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It was three years ago, give or take a day or two, that I went down to St Abbs for the day to meet Jane and go diving.  It was a beautiful day but it didn’t quite go to plan as you’ll realise if you read this.  Little did I know that day that it was the start of a rather grim couple of years.   A broken ankle was followed rather too swiftly for my liking by that cancer diagnosis and all that that entailed.  It all seems slightly unreal now and it is with only a small amount of trepidation that I’m off to St Abbs again tomorrow to meet Jane, over for her annual visit.  I’ve dusted down the diving gear and found a tank with some air in it. I suspect that this time there’ll be plenty of helping hands to steady my return to the boat. I’m looking forward to a lovely sunny day with puffins and guillemots and wolf fish and sea anemones.

And let’s hope that this really does mark the end of all that nasty stuff.

It’s all in the name

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“I’ve put you down for the cabbage” said FB.  “Oh that’s OK” said I.  This was a little while ago – December 1987 for the pedants. GPD and I were living in Pembrokeshire in newly married bliss, working at a consultancy in the stable yard of a field studies centre.  We lived in a doll’s house cottage in the countryside, GPD’s bachelor pad that we were gradually  transforming into a house for two.  It was an idyllic spot, unless the army was on exercise; our cluster of cottages was by a tank firing range and during the summer the Europeans would visit and spend a week or two blowing the cliff tops to smithereens.  They would generally do this at night, and the windows would rattle with each deep, echoing boom.  Not the sort of stuff you find in estate agents’ blurb.  It’s a beautiful area nonetheless; I was back there last summer working on a beach below the range and our cottage looks as cute as ever.

Anyhow, the kitchen staff at the field centre had recently catered for some big event and were on strike, refusing to cook a staff Christmas dinner. Undeterred, we all agreed we’d do it ourselves Continue reading →

Into volcanoes

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I’ve dived in one of Iceland’s active volcanoes.  It wasn’t erupting at the time, you understand, and no planes were grounded for our dive, but it was most definitely active. There was snow around the edges but the water was warm and clear, chemical blue.  I’ve never seen water that colour anwhere else.  We swam afterwards in a pool next to the main crater lake and that was steaming yellow and smelt of sulphur, hinting of subterranean goings on.  Somehow sulphur sounds better than rotten eggs, doesn’t it?  The volcano was Askja, not Eyjafjallojoekull which has reawoken after almost 200 years.

Our dive was one of my highlights of an expedition to Iceland in the early 1980’s. Continue reading →

Up in the air

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shadowlandsIt’s one of the best sort of Saturday phone calls to get.  “Are you doing anything this afternoon? Would one of you like a balloon ride? There’s a spare place!”  (I was just typing “Someone’s dropped out” but thought that might not be too appropriate.)  Four of us into one place. Hmm.  GP1 wondered why we might even consider that he’d be interested and so then there were three.  “Why would I want to do that?”  To be fair, he truly hates heights.  Well, I gave in and just pulled rank. Someone had to make the decision, tough though it was.

Pete, partner of our diving friend Sue, runs Alba Ballooning and was planning on flying – or should that be floating? – from the edgballoon-colourse of the Pentlands that afternoon. And what a glorious, clear, sunny afternoon!  We took off from near Easter Howgate, to the east of the Pentlands and flew east and northish across Midlothian. There were spectacular views of Edinburgh and Arthur’s Seat, the Firth of Forth, the Pentland and Lammermuir Hills and across East Lothian to Berwick Law and Bass Rock.  It was quiet and still as we drifted along. Quiet, that is, until Continue reading →

Ticking off

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islay_se-coast

Last week I saw:

  • A solitary raven;
  • Two hen harriers;
  • Three golden eagles;
  • Six or maybe seven distilleries;
  • Lots and lots of Barnacle geese and White fronted geese;
  • A pair of slightly mamillate hills;
  • A narrow channel with water zipping past, into which we had to dangle a camera on a rope;
  • One wave power generator;
  • and some rain.  A rainbow.  A ferry or two.

We stayed in a dilapidated hotel, bits of which were being renovated. “I’ll upgrade your rooms for the same price” said the landlady, “if you’ll sleep in the single beds and don’t use the doubles.”  What?  We were the only guests.  There was a Spanish Chinese chef, new to the job; despite the promises of signs in the bar, we had to negotiate at length for any food other than breakfast at a specified time.  Arriving back in at 0845 after a 6am start, we thought we’d be in time for bacon sandwiches but no. The cookers had been turned off and weren’t going on again.  Still, it had the benefit of being only yards from the harbour and our boat, always a bonus at 6am.

Where was I?

american-memorial

Speaking up for education

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education-changeI was struck, at the school bus meeting, not by an angry parent but by the general negativity in the room. Scattered amongst the “what about your expenses” and “you’re not listening to us” comments were mutterings about the Curriculum for Excellence. Why, people were asking, was money being wasted on this scheme that people clearly didn’t want? Now, I can’t profess to knowing a huge amount about the CfE  but from what I do know, I wish it had been introduced early enough to benefit my two guineapigs, now in the closing stages of their school careers.  I think there’s a huge selling job still to be done.

I’ve always thought that it must be extremely difficult to introduce real change in education, change beyond tinkering around the edges.  The problem is that everyone thinks that their experiences were the best.  They want the system they know for their children.  The popular pundits tend to bolster this view. And children are in education for such a short space of time.  Yes, I know it seems forever on that first day when they walk up the road in their smart new uniform, clutching their superman lunchbox and you’re choking back the tears, but believe me, it zips by.  Continue reading →

On the buses

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schoolbus

Long, long ago, in my student days, I went to a talk by David Owen at Strathclyde University.  It was around the time that the Gang of Four were breaking away from the Labour Party to form the Social Democratic Party.  It was the first time I’d been to a public lecture by someone of his stature and I remember I was quite blown away by it.  He may not have been the orator of Michael Foot’s standing, but it was still very powerful stuff.  At around that time I also went to a rally where Shirley Williams, always one of my favourite politicians, was speaking.  I had friends who were doing Politics, you see, and they made sure I went to all the right events.  Anyhow, Shirley Williams was preceded by a local Councillor who introduced her with a rambling speech.  When her turn came, it was immediately clear that Williams was in another league. She may not have been glamorous but she oozed charisma. I’ve no idea now what she said, but I do remember the enormous gulf between the presentation skills of this leading politician and the local councillor.  There was no mistaking which of the two had made it to the top.

This memory returns to me every time one of our local councillors makes another gaffe and I try to remind myself that they’re surely doing their best and that it must be a truly thankless job being a local politician.  For instance, there was the issue over the swimming pools when my two were small.  Continue reading →

How to spend Christmas Eve. 2nd instalment

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(You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?)

“Midnight? Midnight?  It’s Christmas Eve for goodness sake.”  It was just as well it wasn’t me on the phone to the AA as it was at this point I suffered a sense of humour blackout.   “There are a lot of people having a far worse Christmas than this” I kept muttering to myself.

“Very sorry sir, but there are some people who’ve already been waiting almost 8 hours.”

“We’ve already been waiting 8 hours. You want us to wait another 8?”

I buy more coffee and some peanuts, the only gluten-free food available.  Despite the fact that we’ve been almost the only customers all day, the lady in the cafe still doesn’t acknowledge us.  Meanwhile GPD phones our best hope of rescue, but they’re already in Blackpool for Christmas.  Or Bolton or somewhere starting with a B off the M6.  We knew it was a long shot.

We debate trying to get the car back onto the motorway, to bump ourselves back up the priority list.   Unfortunately, though, we figure that might result in a priority ride to A&E so abandon that plan.

Harthill’s only saving grace is the free WiFi.  Continue reading →

How to spend Christmas Eve. 1st Instalment

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So how do you like to spend Christmas Eve?

Option 1

A leisurely walk, maybe, in all that glittering new snow. Build a snowman and throw a friendly snowball or two at your offspring. Back home to a nice warm fire and listen to the Nine Lessons and Carols while making a few last minute mince pies and icing the Christmas cake.  A pleasant family evening meal then enjoy a glass of port and one of those mince pies while wrapping up the last presents in front of that roaring fire.  Perhaps venture out to Midnight Mass, although all that snow might pose a bit of a problem.  Wait up until the small hours when your teenagers might possibly be asleep and do the Santa Claus routine. (I did wonder about getting up early and doing this bit in the morning, but teens can be very unpredictable.)

Option 2

You’ve spent the 23rd cleaning, emptying the fridge, putting the rubbish out, packing, having a family meal with leftovers.  All that snow has been beckoning but has been firmly ignored.   Come the late evening, there’s just time to collapse in front of the fire with a glass of port and a pile of presents to wrap.  Early start on the 24th, pile into the car and head down the frozen motorway towards the green fields of the deep south of Somerset.  Brave the traffic jams on the M6/M5 parking lots but arrive in time for a warm welcome, a glass of wine and a huge evening meal, courtesy of Mother-in-law.  Head for the midnight service in the tiny village church and then the Santa Claus bit. Maybe next year I’ll set an alarm for the early hours so that we can sneak in unheralded. When do they grow out of stockings?

Option 3

Same scenario on the 23rd.  Tramp through the snow to load the car in the early hours of the 24th and set out a little nervously on the frozen motorways for our Christmas adventure.  The main roads are more or less clear so we decide not to take our normal route via Biggar through the hills of the Borders.  Good decision.  But in this version, the car breaks down near Glasgow.   Stops.  We turn round to head back along the M8 to home and the other car but it stops again. refuses to go any further. So, at 0830, we call the 4th emergency service, the AA.

With the prompt arrival of a 911 breakdown truck, things didn’t seem too bad initially.  After all, we weren’t that far from home.  But, as we drove off, our rescuer was told to drop us at the nearest services rather than take us home, and the AA would take over from there.  So it would be that, rather than icing the Christmas cake or heading down the road to that welcoming dinner in Somerset, we were destined to spend the day at Harthill Services.

Option 3, our choice of course, went something like this:

“There’ll be someone there at 11 to take you home.”

Just time for a cup of coffee and bacon rolls, then.

“It’ll be 1pm before we get to you.”

More coffee, keep the coats on (the snow outside was deep) and make use of the free WiFi.

“There’s someone on the way – 2.30”.

Buy a pack of cards.  Harthill Services is a petrol station with a small cafe, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure.

“The earliest we can get to you is 4pm.”

Groan.  Start wondering who we can call.  Whose numbers we’ve got and who would be brave enough to venture out in the deteriorating weather. And then, at 4.30ish:

“It looks like it’ll be midnight before we can pick you up.”

More to follow…

East Coast FM 87.7

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Tuesday evening found us all glued to the radio listening to Sam, one of GP2’s classmates, in his new guise as DJ.  East Lothian’s new community radio, East Coast FM 87.7 was launched on Monday, run entirely by volunteers and with a four week licence.  Monday might have had Fish and the Red Hot Chilli Pipers to launch proceedings but Tuesday evening had Sam presenting a 2 hour slot for Ross High School and then his mum, Sally, with two hours of folk music.  Of course we asked for autographs the following night at the brass Christmas concert.

Sam, I have to say, has been excited about this for weeks. There has been quite a long preparatory lead in that he and Sally have been involved in during what spare time they have Continue reading →

The refined art of bribery

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This morning, at 9am, I found myself online with my finger hovering over the Buy This Instant button as T in the Park tickets came on sale.  Apparently I agreed to buy GP1 a ticket in return for his fantastic exam results this year.  That must have been during one of my more maternal “Let’s be positive and look on the bright side” moments, as my understanding of fantastic exam results doesn’t entirely coincide with my son’s.  In fact, I don’t think our opinions even approximately match.  Still, not being one to go back on my word, even if I can’t quite remember the conversation, I did the deed and bought the ticket. 

So I’m now the proud owner of a ticket for the 2010 T in the Park.  It’s my ticket.  Mine.  Not his. If he wants it, there will be conditions attached.  And if he doesn’t get respectable marks in his prelims in February, I will be offering the ticket to the  highest bidder. Or any bidder. Perhaps I’ll give it away.  I’m sure there are some very deserving cousins who’d appreciate it.  Who knows, I could even go myself. 

If I were my son, I wouldn’t  be calling my bluff.  You have been warned, GP1.

Please form an orderly queue now.  You can camp overnight if you want to be first in line. And no pushing at the back!

Hair today

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My mad, unruly curls have all been chopped off.  Shame – I’d grown quite fond of them once they’d moved on from the tight, grey, just had a perm stage.  People pay good money for curls like that.  But I knew they weren’t destined for a long life and my hair really did need cutting.   It is now two years and about three weeks since that awful, dreamlike day when I was told I had cancer.  Almost exactly two years since my hair started falling out,  19 months since I noticed the first hint of bum fluff returning to my bald head. 

That’s not so long, really. All over and done with in the blink of an eye.  My cancer is old history now and I’m just a statistic.  I don’t think about it so often these days and I suspect most people around me don’t ever give it a thought any more.  And that’s how it should be.  I fully expect to be one of the 73% of ovarian cancer sufferers who survive to 5 years after diagnosis.  I plan to be one of the 30% or so Continue reading →

Eighteen and a half hours

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Things were easy when the boys were small.  Birthday parties maybe involved booking the swimming pool or local bouncy castle for an hour or so, a few sandwiches and crispie cakes, grapes for the health conscious  and a party bag or two.  We went through taking a few friends to the pictures and then it all went quiet for a while before we got to paintballing. 

So, this year…  “Mu-um?”  “Yes?” (note the nervous upward inflexion).

“Can we have a few friends in? And will you go out for the evening? Maybe you could stay out overnight?”

What? 

“How many friends?  Who? And there’s no way we’re staying out overnight.”

We hummed and haahed.  We prevaricated. Continue reading →