EMP in Scarborough

So, it’s been a while since I last blogged. Needless to say it feels ultra-busy at the moment. Working full-time feels great, but suddenly everything that had seemed important before is left to rot. Now that I’m getting used to it, some of the most important things are managing to creep back in, such as cooking some healthy meals more than 50% of the time. Some things are unavoidable: washing clothes suddenly seems like what I spend most of my time at home doing. Also parts of the flat get cleaned once a week out of necessity, and having a dishwasher is a complete marriage-saver! I can clean a toilet in under two minutes.

Thankfully I have some shorter weeks coming up, allowing me to catch up on extra-ordinary tasks such as getting rid of a lot of stuff we don’t need any more. I need to take the Phil & Ted’s double buggy to the charity shop, along with a massive bag of clothes and a couple of stairgates, which somehow managed to escape previous purges of unwanted things. A couple of large pieces of carpet, and a broken lamp need to find their way to the dump.

Anyway, so having been totally focussed on re-learning my trade, (and enjoying it massively btw, but don’t tell the boss) I am vaguely aware that homelife has been happening along the way. I know this, because I look at my phone and there are pictures of things, so I must have been there.

This first pic, oddly, is of a glass chess set. I think this is to remind me that I took the boys to Harrods, just to give them an idea of what people can do with their money, if they earn lots of it.

My favourite part was walking through the handbag section and telling the boys that these handbags cost more than our car. “Imagine mummy having a handbag that was worth more than our car!” (I said this quite loudly to make sure my fellow shoppers and security guards had no doubt that I was a affluence-tourist pleb).

Ollie’s favourite part was the chocolate room, where his eyes were popping out of his head. David was appalled that I refused to spend just £5.70 on 100g of merchandise, but I did allow them a free frozen yoghurt sample, so I’m not all witch.

Thomas’s favourite part was dragging us all to the science museum afterwards, even though I think Ollie and I were ready to go home. Thomas loves this museum, and I think he would go every week if he had the opportunity.

This next picture is from our random wanderings on the way to the Danish Church Bazaar, where we actually met up with family members: another reminder of how good it is to live near family.

Outside the church:

Last weekend, I finally got around to sorting out our tv unit, I did this safe in the knowledge that by the time I had to do this again, all our devices will be powered by induction transformers built into walls, so there will be no need for wires…

EVERY time we move, it is left to me to go through this chore, documented here in the US: cable-sorting 2009, here in Scarborough: cable-sorting, Scarborough . It cannot possibly continue to be this hard forever.

Next up, is a picture of our kitchen. I haven’t really posted much about our new flat, but here are the boys enjoying some food, in the dining area of our open plan living-room-dining-kitchen-everthing-else room.

When the kitchen looks, er… clean, I will capture it and show you the actual cooking part.

And finally a couple of pics of the boys. They love this swing at the play park near us:

The other day, it was very cold but sunny for the walk to school, so they were wearing winter hats and sunglasses. This is just outside our front door.

You can clearly see, from my lack of posting, that this balance doesn’t allow room for the type of reflection, pause for thought, time to notice humorous declarations from the boys, smelling of roses and all-round smug self-satisfaction this blog is normally prone to.

Things are hopefully going to calm down a bit over the next week or two, and I might just manage a post, even with some photos.

Phew, it’s been a hectic couple of weeks I can tell you, in fact less than 2 weeks ago I was living by the sea in a quiet rural town in North Yorkshire. Now I live with 8 million people in London.

Firstly, let’s just say, we love it. That is all.

OK, so now down to the little details. Our flat is great, and I should really show you some photos of it, but I’m reluctant to do so, until we have fully unpacked, and actually tried out our new broom-with-dustpan.

Needless to say, my hands are totally shredded from assembling IKEA furniture, both new and old. Boys are now in bunk beds, which they are both very happy about.

We had a little trouble with schools, in that you cannot apply for any until you have moved in, and it can take up to 20 days to process the application. Well, I went off to start my new job, which left David to deal with the boys. Needless to say, after just 3 days, he phoned all the schools on our list and begged them tearfully to take his sons. A very kind school managed to squeeze both of them in. So, not only did they both end up at the same school (something that I had been anxious about – having been told that this wasn’t likely) but the school is only 7 minutes walk from our home, and is totally awesome! The boys have been there 2 days, and love it. Even better because we live in a such a deprived area (!) the boys get free school meals as they are taking part in a pilot scheme where they hope to make school dinners free!! This saves us about £180 per half-term (based on £4.20 per day we paid back in Scarborough).

Anyway, I’m getting this post all out of order. Firstly on the day we drove down to London from Scarborough for the last time, we thought we were too late, as it had just been nuked:

Thankfully, that was just a freak of the weather, and London was still happening. There followed a blur of a few days of constant unpacking and furniture-building. This was the first item to be unpacked (before we could actually get to the kitchen, for boxes:

After 3 days of constant unpacking, Ollie announced that he was leaving to go and live with a different family: one that lived by the sea. I realised that being stuck in the flat, being totally ignored by everyone, probably wasn’t the best welcome to London, so we took a few moments to explore. We found the amazing East Street Market: which was totally a set from “Only Fools and Horses” with the obligatory loud reggae music soundtrack. There was a lot to take in, and just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, we found this fantastic playground at the end:

On the first Sunday, I walked the boys up to the river Thames (to get Ollie his “seaside” fix). We hung out in the South Bank Centre for a bit, where there was free Yoga and Indian Dancing, which the boys were too shy to join in with. Then we got a tube across the river to Charing Cross and walked up the Mall to Buckingham Palace.

The boys were suitably impressed, though Ollie’s legs were getting pretty tired by this point. We stopped off at the playpark in St. James’s Park, and saw all sorts of totally bizarre wildlife which convinced Thomas that he had the power to talk to birds.

As an aside, I have seen 2 rats, a mouse and a fox since I moved here.

Anyway, my first week at work was exhausting, but rewarding, and I am so happy to be using my brain again, which had started to feel like a bit of a dead weight on top of my shoulders. (My own fault, I admit – not big on the self-motivation, I’m afraid). I’m getting used to the tube. Oh, and I might start a list of #LondonFirsts. One of them, is when the sound of the tube perfectly compliments the track you are listening to on your headphones. ([Forest Families by The Knife] as I know some of you will want to know).

Another first for me, was trying out a Boris Bike. These are bikes dotted around the City that you can rent and drop off at any of the cycle stations. We fortunately live on a “Cycle Superhighway” which makes it very easy for me to get to work. It happened to be the day of the London Marathon that I did this test run. It took me about 25 minutes to get to work, though of course there was no traffic as a lot of the roads were closed for the marathon. I tried to take a picture of the City from Southwark Bridge (closed to traffic) as I crossed: (you can see my Cycle Superhighway 7 in blue on the road).

And finally, while all this newness was going on, Ollie turned 5. Thankfully all the family rallied round to give him a small party on the weekend (slightly postponed to Sunday as the boys woke up vomiting on Friday).

On his actual birthday, I wanted Ollie to have some fun, and fresh air! We walked to the Imperial War Museum Gardens, but you know there are so many damn playparks around that we actually had to stop at one on the way to the main one. I thought this was quite a sweet one of Ollie, clutching a birthday card in his hands:

We did make it to the playpark at the Imperial War Museum, where I took a couple of pictures-of-Ollie-on-his-birthday:

With cake (no, I didn’t have time to make one, but Marks & Spencers did! …and I was only really in Marks & Spencers in desperation to find some school uniform for them to wear on their first day at their new school the day after!)

New toys:

There are lots more things I have forgotten to include in this post. I’m hoping, as we get used to everything, I’ll still have time to blog, I haven’t really even had time for FB or Twitter, there is SOOO much to do!!!! (smug my-life-is-so-great face).

While with my mum.

They were talking about books. My mum said:
“You like writing stories too, don’t you, you’re a bit of a writer?”
Thomas (aged 6): “Oh no, not any more, I’m retired.”

Easter was very played down at our house, because, as you can see in this photo, we are packing for the move. However, we didn’t deny the boys Easter eggs.

Tonight was our last night as Scarboroughians. We had been packing all day, and I have been really suffering with a cold (how do little virus blobbies know?!) so we treated ourselves to a meal at our favourite Tex-Mex/Cajun/Carribean (you know, “foreign”) restaurant, which benefits from being nearly next door to us.
I thought I’d capture our last moments as northerners:
Ollie:

David: (yes he does go everywhere in his pyjamas these days).

Me: (blurry from a heavy cold).

Thomas: (pájaros enojados!)

This morning was spent fretting about moving and also panic buying an extra 2 pints of milk to prepare for the Easter weekend. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the letting company, about references, and direct bank transfers and whether the builders and cleaners would get in and out in time. Also the movers, needing to avoid certain times in London where they would need to pay extra emissions charges etc etc, but I think, we might just make it. We seem to be pretty laid back about packing, but then most of our UK moves ended with us packing half the house into a million plastic bags.

This afternoon, having been a bit grumpy with the boys over the interruption of important phone calls, I felt it was only fair to get them out and give them some proper walkies. (Did I say walkies? When parents say that having children is not comparable to having pets, well, you could just nod politely, but secretly…). I remembered that Ollie had said the castle was one of his favourite places in Scarborough, so we went there again.

Ollie still gets in free until his 5th birthday later this month, and David is working like a dog at the moment, so the entry only cost around £7. The boys and I had a lot of fun, and it felt good to have the cold wind and the hot sun on our previously cooped-up skin. On the way home, we went to the lighthouse, as the boys hadn’t ever been up close, and they met another pair of boys playing with the gun that had been fished out of the sea (see this previous post ), and the 4 boys played as if they had known each other all their lives.

Then it was time to head home. We grabbed a quick shot of a Tardis on the way past.

The boys were now severely worn down, and not only was I knackered, but all that sunshine left me gasping, so a sly stop for a “snack” on the way home at a convenient pub refreshed us all! Photos from the castle (though the Lumix ran out of battery just as we left):

This is shot and bullets:

Thomas tries Viking tankard. (Probably not his last…)

Scary-face windows… (good tactic to deter the Anglo-Saxons).

This was a play park at the bottom of the hill.

…it has a boat embedded in the middle of it.

One of the kids took this one of me.

Oh, and a quick Thomas gem:
Ollie: Mum, how did humans get made?
Me: “…
Thomas: (interrupting, in case I said anything blasphemous) “Well, if you are religious, you believe that Zeus told Prometheus and his brother to give out things to two things, and one of them was man…” (continues with the story of Prometheus) and then says, “well, at least that’s how man got fire anyway”. We then did a quick recap on the difference between monotheism and polytheism, just in case he gets a chance at a C of E school in London.

So, we have finally taken the plunge, and decided to do what we want to do, rather than settling for just what we have to do. We are moving to London.
We have secretly both been craving this for a while, but it seemed unachievable. However, several things have made it possible, not least having an awesome friend to flick a key magic wand.

We are very excited about all the opportunities this will give us, most importantly being within visiting distance of family, that doesn’t necessitate an overnight stop.

Personally, I am extremely excited about getting back into my career, and getting those knobs and buttons under my fingers again. I am starting a freelance tech-op job with a large news broadcaster which I think will actually be a lot of fun, though hard work too!

In with all the excitement is all the horror of actually having to move. We’ve had lots of practice. Both boys have moved house as many times as they have been around the sun. London is particularly unforgiving when it comes to how much you pay: the damage deposit and first month rent alone is not an amount I can imagine anyone having access to, without selling a kidney or two. Even the removals company asked us to pay an extra £200 to allow their van into the “low emissions” zone, because they would be operating at a loss if we don’t (well of course they would say that).

We will also be completely at the mercy of Southwark Council as to where and when the boys get to start their new school. We are not allowed to apply until move-in date, and they are allowed 20 working days to find them a place, which might not be in the same school. How do you drop off or collect two kids at different schools at the same time?!

So, with the flat upside down with half-packed boxes, and money at draining at light-speed into the black hole of the borough of Southwark’s economy, stress-levels are high. The relief of course, is that we are very happy with the flat that we are moving into, with the usual caveats that you don’t really know a place until you actually live there. However, the flat itself is spacious and newly-decorated, with a quirky spiral staircase up to our bedroom. I just wish we could fast-forward to the point where we are moved in, we have the boys in the same school, which is round the corner, and I’m sipping a pint after (successfully!) completing my first shift, before jumping in the tube to consummate my full immersion into the rat-race proper.

One good idea of David’s was to down-size the car. We now have a normal-sized one, which reduces our car tax by 50% and fuel costs, by nearly as much too! It’s a Ford Fusion – I’ve never owned a Ford before, but we both like it a lot, and I think I would even without the £2,000 much-needed cashback we got for trading in the Zafira. This will be our 3rd car since we moved back from the States, which is still less than a year ago, but I think we’re sticking with this one.

You will of course get updates as to how it is all panning out, although I assume at some point, there will be a slight gap in internet access…

I will leave you with some photos of the gorgeous Borough Market which is around the corner from our letting agency.

It’s right by the Shard, which already looks awesome, even though it’s not finished.

I was even more impressed that it has been thoughtfully future-proofed by including a spaceship entrance.

Apologies for cross-posting, but seeing as I only know about 3 people on Twitter, I thought I’d better put this here for friends and family to catch as well.

We will be moving away from Scarborough, so I asked the boys what their favourite places were, with the possibility that we might visit them one last time before we left. They both said, “The beach,” Ollie said “The castle,” and Thomas said, “The theatre”. Pretty conventional then.

So, although not as warm as the south, today warmed up enough to put the boys in shorts and tick one of those locations off the list.

Ollie put on his eating-sandwiches-on-the-beach face:

Thomas put his eating-sandwiches-on-the-beach face:

I got to relax for over an hour while the boys pottered about in the sand.

I was grateful for the rest because I got a call from my doctor on Friday afternoon, telling me that I had tested positive for Campylobactor and I needed specific antibiotics, and could I pick up a prescription right away? So this was pretty unexpected, because I’d all but forgotten about that sample. Since the visit to the doctor back in February, when she told me I probably had viral gastroenteritis, I have been feeling generally unwell. I did get antibiotics to treat an ear infection that made me a small perforation in my right ear drum, so I assumed that infection had been the problem. I was quite surprised that I could test positive for campylobactor so long after the event. I started feeling poorly at half-term, so it was nearly a month after this that I decided to send the sample in just in case.

Anyway, I am hopefully well on the way to feeling better, finally.

We got a letter from Thomas’s consultant telling us that his tests all came back normal, except for increased IgE which indicated an allergic response to an unknown allergen. They tested for allergies to cereal, nuts, egg, milk and fish, which all came back clear, and he doesn’t have Coeliac disease. We now have to keep a pain and food diary until he gets to see the consultant again.

OK, so this will be a bit obvious, but there is a point to it, sort of.

As I mentioned before, I have got into Twitter in a big way recently, which feels like a good thing, but not all the time. What I mean is, now that I’m following nearly 250 people, I find out all sorts of stuff, all the time. This is like heaven to someone who always wants to know more, but it gets a bit much, maybe for my old, and already-decaying brain.

I find by browser is chocka-block with tabs each loaded with highly interesting and sometimes complex information. Currently open are several tutorials for various sound manipulation software programs, a debate about religion v science (nothing new to report, obviously) a couple of sciencey things, probably from New Scientist, one or two news stories that I thought might be worth a more in-depth study, some mash-up which could be worth a listen, a blog of someone who writes children’s poems (one of which I read to Thomas this morning) and an article about sound and sampling (a topic I have studied several times, but seem to find out more about each time).

This is all on top of the sites I normally look at, and is in addition to all the references I get from work (which are pretty cool, as I get to sit in on lectures for a “Creative Music Technology” degree). I barely glance at Facebook any more, which feels more like somewhere to keep up with distant friends.

Twitter is about gorging on information. I follow the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) and my gluttonous brain tries to learn new words they shout at me each day, such as:

OED Word of the Day: engleimous, adj.:oxford.ly/Aoe3T6

— The OED (@OEDonline) March 9, 2012

And then what? Well, while David is sunning himself in San Francisco, I suddenly have access to a device in my living-room previously out of reach: the television! So last night, I watched a recording of a programme about earth’s journey round the sun. I loved it, but it was yet more information I want to retain.

Then I went to bed and read “At Home” by Bill Bryson, which, if you haven’t read it, is PACKED with facts and historical facts, all interesting and all fighting to be retained.

So why am I mentioning all this? It’s just that, I feel a little remorse that I have been so harshly judging today’s teenagers. I think it’s fascinating that, while our bodies haven’t physically evolved that much in the last ten thousand years, our progeny can cope with all this bombardment, whilst also doing all the other stuff that we did while growing up! Don’t forget, most teens get all this on their mobile device, so it is constantly in their faces. (At least on my jail-broken iphone 3, with stone-age tariff, my brain is spared this assault by crippling data costs).

So what do you think? Will brains evolve, or will all this move on again, before we have a chance. There are people trying to research whether all this information overload can have a direct effect on the numbers of children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders, ADHD and cognitive delay. (I won’t apologise for lack of references: this is a strictly informal, always written-in-a-hurry blog).

I for one, love that feeling you get when you are having so many thoughts you can’t think for a full sentence and you desperately try to catch at threads which float off into the ether, and that constant nagging that you are always on the brink of something great, but can’t focus on it long enough to give it any profundity. I suppose it is reminiscent of being drunk, but without having to clean the bathroom floor the next morning. However, that’s because I’m in a period of my life where most things I do are pretty inconsequential. All this’d be a real pain if I was actually trying to accomplish anything!

Onto a quick note about the NHS lately. There’s nothing like living in the U.S. for making you really appreciate the NHS. I’m sure rich people will say “but the standards are so poor!” I’m not a poor person, but I’ve seen what being poor means to people without an NHS, and mostly, it’s yukky and pitiful to look at. We’ve had a couple of good NHS experiences lately, which I thought worth noting. Our dentist has a tv on the ceiling, and even switched it to Thomas’s favourite channel when it was his turn on the chair, all for FREE.

The next thing is, well, Ollie has been coughing his guts up again all night, and having to be dragged out of bed in the morning with a pasty face and baggy eyes (his, not… ok, probably mine as well as his). I can only assume this is because his inhaler is no longer dispensing his Fluticasone. I feel a bit foolish, but our american paid-through-the-nose-for version had numbers on it so you could see when it was empty. Anyway I rang my doctor’s surgery. Could I order a repeat prescription over the phone? Yes, there is a dedicated line. (YAY!) Dedicated line is an answerphone (boo…) I left a message, pleading for the prescription to be rushed through.

I rang the reception about 4 hours later steeling myself for a battle to get this script signed before the weekend, but the receptionist said, “Yes, Mrs Plans, it’s ready for you, we are open until six this evening.”

Needless to say I thanked her profusely, to the extent that I think she was a little embarrassed by my abject grovelling, and hastily but firmly said goodbye.