Bad Blogger

So once again I have been a rather shite blogger.  My A-Z blogging challenge only got as far as letter 'H' before stalling and grinding to a screeching halt.  I do have excuses though, the entire Very Bored clan except myself came down with a harrowing dose of Norovirus, so the best part of a fortnight was spent cleaning up shit and puke off places where shit and puke have no reason to be and washing bedding what seemed like every hour, on the hour.

Once the Norovirus had buggered off and infiltrated other people's homes, Amber decided it was time to start the probably very long and drawn out process of cutting her canines, oh and she had a devil of a cold as well which meant 5 very sleepless nights for the both of us.

If all that wasn't bad enough, I went and dropped my beloved i-Pad, smashing the screen (and leaving a rather noticeable dent in the tile it landed on).  To say I was gutted would be a vast understatement, but apparently you can buy replacement screens so hopefully I'll be able to fix it.

It was in the middle of this blogging wilderness that I discovered that I had been nominated for a Britmums BiB award under the 'writer' category.  I was extremely surprised to see my little blog amongst the list of excellent writers so I doubt very much I'll get to the next stage, but if any of you fancy voting for me then click here and I'll buy you a pint when I next see you.

Obviously being nominated for a BiB I shall have to pull my finger out and add some worthy content to my blog before someone contacts Trading Standards, exposing me as a sham and a charlatan.

Till next time.

Adieu

H is for Home, Hope and Helplessness

Today's A-Z blogging challenge is a bit cryptic, sorry but I promised myself that I wouldn't blog about other people's personal stories.  Suffice to say, today I feel that home is such a long, way away and that makes me feel very sad.

Today, I have to put my faith in the skill of surgeons, the NHS and medical science, along with hope, the fickle finger of faith, lady luck and a variety of Gods that other people pray to.

Today, we probably couldn't actually be of much 'help', but over the next few days, weeks and months we certainly could be.  Being so far away make me feel like we're not pulling our weight, shirking our responsibilities.   Relying on the odd flying visit home and Skype phonecalls, it doesn't feel enough.  It's not enough.

G is for Ginger

When Joseph popped his head out of my nether regions some six and half years ago (actually he was dragged out but let's not go into that), to say that we were surprised by his shock of ginger hair was an understatement.   Neither myself or t'husband are red heads, both being very boring mousy brown types, and our parents weren't of the ginger persuasion either.

After some research it transpires that t'husband's great, great, great grandfather was copper top and  I assume that somewhere in my family tree I must also have a red headed relative lurking—there has to be because both parents must have the 'ginger gene' to produce a ginger offspring.

After we found out the sex of Amber when I was pregnant the next important question (after determining everything was all well and good) was naturally the colour of her hair.  Her name had already been picked out for her, but we had alternatives should she have come out as a blonde or brunette.

Both of my little ginger babies were treated as something of a novelty on the maternity ward.  I remember one of the midwives kidnapping Amber to take her off to the women's ward to show her to her grandmother who happened to be occupying a bed in there!   When walking around the village with Joseph, many an old dear would stop and call him 'rojito' (little red), whereas Amber gets called 'blanquita' because of her pale skin.

When out and about they both draw a lot of attention, heads are constantly spun around to get a glimpse of these milk bottle white kids with red barnets—and I love it!   Thankfully, living in Spain a redhead is very much a novelty and is greatly praised, in fact the only remotely negative things we've heard said about our duo of carrot tops have come from fellow Brits.  Helpful comments (insert sarcastic face) such as "well at least it's a nice shade of ginger" and "well it's almost strawberry blonde", like we've somehow drawn the short straw when it comes to kids, but we should be thankful because it could have been worse!

We've taught Joseph from an early age to embrace his gingerness and we call a spade a spade in this family, no auburn, strawberry blonde or any other descriptive word that takes away from what it actually is—ginger!

Ask him about his hair colour and he'll tell you that he loves it, "because it's different", "because orange is my favourite colour" and, my personal favourite, "because it's my hair!"   I also like the fact that practically everyone in the village knows his name, although he may come to regret this later on in life when getting up to mischief with his pals.

However, my two are not the only gingers in the village (much to my disappointment), there is a beautiful little Algerian girl who has the most amazing thick mane of ginger hair, in a shade that I've never seen before.  Sadly, she has just started to cover it up with the hijab.  It makes me want to cry a little that at just aged 9 no-one but her immediate family will ever see that wonderful hair again, but it is not for me to pass judgement.

At least I still have my two beautiful redheads to look at, and I have the added advantage that I'll never lose them in a crowd.

F is for Fashion

Blogging A-Z challenge time again and I am already a day behind.  Today's offering is F for Fashion. 

I’m glad I’m not in my early twenties, OK that’s a bare-faced lie, but I am certainly glad I don’t have to wear the wardrobe of today’s young ladies.

I know that each generation passes scorn on the fashion choices of the next and I am sure that the neon, leg warmers, synthetic material, shoulder pads of the 80s were chastised by our mothers and grandmothers.  Thing is, and maybe I am looking back through some rose-tinted memories, by and large you didn’t wear things that a) didn’t fit you b) didn’t suit you and c) were totally inappropriate for the time of year, rules that really don’t seem to apply to the fashionistas of today. 

Here are some of the things that really piss me off about how young women are dressing now:

Year round tans

I did use to wonder why it was necessary to look tanned in the middle of winter, after seeing pictures in the tabloids of Ladies’ Day at Aintree earlier in the week it became clear—because they are barely wearing any clothes.  Even in Spain where the average temperature for this time of year is probably at least 10 or even 15º higher than in the UK, everyone here has their arms and legs covered.  Seems today’s UK fashion is about flashing as much flesh as possible at all times.   And clearly that flesh cannot be erm… flesh coloured.

Back in my day you’d lash on load of baby oil (or margarine if you were a bit skint) to achieve that summer glow in July and August, nowadays a tin of cuprinol is topically applied on a daily basis and everyone smells of burnt biscuits in the middle of January.   

Skater skirts

Some of them look quite cute, when dressed with opaque tights and flat shoes.  Worn with bare (or orange streaked) legs and 7” heels with underwear flashing, not so good.

Sky High Heels

I love a shoe and I especially like buying heels, a three to four inch heel lengthens the leg and tilts your body forwards enough to improve your posture when wearing something a bit glam.  However, for a couple of years now my shoe buying has come to a grinding halt because it is almost impossible to buy a pair that aren’t so bloody high that you can’t actually walk five yards in them.  Everyone, without exception, looks an absolute fool wearing them, mainly because they have to adopt some bowlegged, short paced teeter to remain upright.  I wonder how much of an NHS bill these ridiculous stilts are racking up?

Side Boob

I call say about this particular trend is: FFS—put it away love!

What gets your goat about today’s fashion?

E is for Expat

Another day, another post for the A-Z blogging challenge.  Today's letter E was slightly kinder to me than yesterday, because E is for Expat!

If you hadn’t noticed already, I am not a native Catalonian – the accent, lack of Catalan language skills and bluish-white skin hue gives it away.   I am very much a middle-Englander, which of course given my location in the middle of a load of rice fields makes me an expat.

It is a strange life being an expat.  No matter how much you try and integrate yourself within your new community, you will always be the queer one.  The expat is a bit of a novelty to the locals if you’re in the minority, as people are interested in your British ways and what the inside of your home looks like.  They probe you with questions and can’t quite get their heads around the weird food you eat, why you eat so early, go to bed so early and get annoyed at people setting off fireworks at 4am. 

I’ve been an expat for nine years now and I still feel like the oddball.  Never quite sure what the local traditions are, always turning up at the wrong time (or day sometimes) for village events.  Never getting the memo about what on earth we’re supposed to be doing.  At the moment my son doesn’t seem to mind, but I’m sure as he gets older I will be a constant source of embarrassment for the lad as I keep stumbling through this strange life.

Of course I am not alone in the expat world.  Hell, there are hundreds of thousands of British expats residing in Spain.  This brings with it some other oddities.  It’s human nature to mix with like-minded people, but often with fellow expats the only thing you actually have in common is the Motherland and the lingo.   

In the beginning you can find yourself clinging onto strange friendships with people very much removed from the type of people you would associate with back home.  Often British expats are of a certain age, and certainly for the first few years I was over here most of my socialising was done with retirees.  Not knocking any of them, most of them of genuinely lovely and warm people whose local knowledge was invaluable to me, but when we finally discovered people of our own age in the vicinity we were overjoyed to have found people who knew of (and more importantly liked) the same music, social pastimes, books etc.

It takes a long time to settle as an expat, if indeed you ever truly settle.  You’re often caught between two worlds: your old life and your new one, the UK and Spain.  Neither properly feels like home, probably because for some reason living in Spain doesn’t feel permanent even though we have no plans to return to England.  Maybe that’s why I will always consider myself an expat rather than an immigrant.

One of the best things about being an expat is having children over here.  I often wonder how our children will fare straddling both the Catalan and English ways of life, but I know that they will be richer for the experience.   Not only will they be tri-lingual, but they will also be able to cherry pick the best of both cultures—something my son has already cottoned onto with the whole Santa and Tres Reyes thing meaning not one set of Christmas presents, but two!

D is for Death

Cheery I know, but it could have been D for Desperate, as I was struggling to come up with up a subject for today's A-Z blogging challenge.

The boy, aged 6, has suddenly become obsessed with death, along with I might add, breathing, although strangely never both in the same conversation.  Regularly he will randomly raise the subject, asking when he will die, when we will die, what happens when you die—or 'died' as he often mispronounces.

I guess there comes in time in every child's life when they realise that nothing can go on forever. Thankfully death isn't something he has had to deal with yet in his life (touch wood that goes on for a few more years yet), other than the occasional demise of one of t'husband's fish every now and again, so quite why this subject has risen is a mystery.

It took quite some explaining that once you've died, that's it.  Forever!  I explained that generally speaking you had to be very, very old to die or very, very sick, something that I later came to regret when he started pointing at random old people or people with walking sticks and enquiring quite loudly if they were ready to fall off their perch—one of the many occasions where I was thankful that not many folk around here speak English.

Death is such a bewildering concept even for adults; to acknowledge that a person will be gone from your life forever is extremely hard to get your head around so I can only imagine how strange and scary that must seem to a child.

Hopefully he'll get past this morbid stage soon, along with the constantly asking if he's breathing and 'how do I breathe?'  Kids eh, never a dull moment.





photo credit

C is for Class

Today's A-Z blogging challenge comes to you from the letter C.

Social class is something that I often ponder about when I've got nothing better to do.  Mostly because it's something I never really feel I fit into properly.   Whilst growing up I considered myself working class, this was probably a lie as for most of my childhood I was in a single parent family dependent on the welfare state so I was probably some kind of underclass, well certainly if you read the British tabloids.  I left school at 16 mostly because I only scrapped through my GCSEs—I was bright enough but not committed to academia, but also because our family finances didn't really allow for a university education.

I had a junior office job when I first left school and then got an apprenticeship as an electronic engineer with a local high profile telecoms company.  Sadly for me the academia side of things let me down, that and not being able to use a soldering iron without causing myself injury led me back to a clerical life.  However, a couple of years later I once again found myself drawn back into engineering and whilst I enjoyed the work I felt I was being taken for a ride by my employers who were asking me to do the work of trained engineers on a filing clerks wage, so I left and joined a brewery.

By the time I was 23 I had moved with the company up to Leeds and had a junior management role and at 25 a company car, yet I lived in a very working class area of Leeds and still considered myself to be working class.

Only when I met my husband and grew older did I start to see a shift in my thinking.  Today, I am reluctant to call myself middle class although my husband definitely is (despite his job as a fishing guide) and my children would probably be middle class if we lived in England, but I no longer see myself as working class.

Top, Middle or Bottom?

I noticed a few tweets on my twitter timeline this morning where people were saying what 'new' class they were.  A click on the link led me to a BBC quiz which echoed by own thoughts on the class system - mainly that they are outdated and most people don't fit into the traditional models.

The questions are about income, how much your house is worth, what jobs the people you know have and what you do in your spare time.  My friends are an eclectic mix, as I imagine most people's friends are and I can count cleaners and solicitors as pals, but I suspect my activities are considered quite working class—no ballet or theatre visits. My choices, along with income has put me fairly and squarely in the 'new affluent workers' category.  Apparently to be in this class I need to be young, come from a working class background and own my own home, well two out of three isn't bad I suppose but I was surprised that having the lowest valued property and zero savings would qualify me as 'affluent'.

Quite how accurate these new social classes are remains to be seen, I redid the quiz stating that I had up to £10k in savings and put my home up a bracket (given that I am not entirely sure if our home doesn't belong in the bottom end of the second bracket), adding the same friends and interests I came out as 'traditionally working class' - older, owning own home and sticking to people like myself.

So, still none the bloody wiser then.

Have you done the quiz, do you think it accurately reflects your social class?