The opposite of nesting

I don’t know if it’s being a TCK (wikipedia’s definition) or if it’s something else, but my ‘nesting’ instincts as they like to call it are showing up in really strange ways.

Instead of wanting to set down roots and create a stable environment for our baby boy, I’m trying to think of ways that he won’t ever be settled. I’m already planning trips for his first year of life, imagining times when we aren’t ‘tied’ to living in London. I want to make sure he can see the world as a borderless land where he has every choice he could ever want and be understanding of culture, life and people.

Dear Moves-a-lot-Junior,

Your life is going to be full of surprises, twists and turns, and unexpected people. You will always be loved, you will always be cared for, you will always be free to think for yourself and become the best you there is to be.

I want you to learn for yourself that no person in this world is inferior to others. Every country has its own unique and beautiful culture. Just because you haven’t ever tasted or seen something before does not mean it’s ‘weird’. It’s just different from what you know.

You will grow up seeing beauty in everything, the best in every person. You will have a deep understanding of love and what it actually means, and you will go out into the world with curiosity and open eyes.

I love you so much already, and I can’t wait for you to experience all these things with us. You will love it, little man.

Restlessness.

Every day, around after lunch I’ve started feeling very restless. Some might call it itchy feet, but I just call it my past catching up with me.

I’d very much like to take an early day off of work, get home and start packing. Conrad and I will pack all of our things into a couple of suitcases (including baby stuff, of course), grab Snoopy and his lead (and of course, poop bags), lock up the house (with lights on for winter-time, so people think there’s someone home). And go. We have enough gas in the car to make it to France, I’m sure – once we get over (or under) the channel we can just go whichever way we choose. Perhaps a bit of brie and rich red wine on the way through France, a few stops along the way to eat duck and steak and walk along rivers and buy endless amounts of baguettes and pastries. I’m not sure where we should go next. How do you feel about Spain? I wouldn’t mind seeing some more of that Gaudi architecture, I do like the blues and greens and the tiles and the cave-like buildings. We’ll then perhaps take a turn towards Italy. Yes? Italy, I miss Rome – let’s go see the ruins and soak up the intensity of Italian spirit. I wouldn’t mind some creamy pasta, I could drink a nice cool glass of Pinot Grigio, definitely. Once our feet are too tired, we’ll sit at a café and drink coffee with lots of foam on top. When we’re done, we’ll walk till we can’t walk anymore and we’ll have another one. When we run out of coffee money, we’ll buy lemon fanta and sit in a piazza, not caring that we’re poor. We’ll then drive out to the coast to a small town (shall we choose Chivitavekia?) where no-one will know what we’re saying and we think everyone is angry at us – but really they’re not! Now then, I know where I want to go now – let’s go to Switzerland. Let’s visit my home. I will take you swimming in the Rhine in the height of summer, we will find paths that nobody knows, we will laugh at their choice of footwear and walk giddily through the main street of small town. I will feel at home, I will feel a different kind of normal. We will walk along the river to buy ice cream, I will show you the Munot and the way of life. We’ll need to take a train, because that is an essential! We will leave just on time and arrive when we’re supposed to. The streets will look like postcards, and I’ll know I belong there that day.

There are so many more places to go, but my mind is tired now. Perhaps I’ll just stay here in my office in London and dream about it, but you’ll still be there with me.

A thought

I think I may have control issues. This has just come to me now, after 28 years of living.

I am 5 and a half months pregnant, therefore I do not have control over certain things. I make a plan for my super-productive day and I get to about a third of the tasks and crash out. This angers and upsets me. Sat from my lazy position on the couch, I try and think of ways I can get up and carry on, but in all truth - I can't! All energy is sapped out.

Rather than being thankful for the excuse to rest, or being cautious because it's important to save up energy for the week ahead, I just get mad. And cranky that the wonderful feeling of productivity and purposefulness is so far beyond me right now.

So yes, something I didn't expect about pregnancy: Complete annoyance about lack of the control I have over the situation.

Missing people, missing things, missing ways of life. This is just a normal part of my upbringing and is just another part of normal life. Sometimes it hits harder than others. The fact that I can’t ever casually see my brother and sister, that I can’t pop by my brothers house to congratulate him on one of the most exciting things that’s happened in centuries; his recent engagement. My sister can’t see my growing tummy, and can’t talk to me about exciting things to do with her becoming an aunt and just generally be a sister.

This is before mentioning the fact that all my good friends I’ve had throughout my life don’t live anywhere near me (excluding Conrad, of course). A lot of times I feel friendless – when asked what I’m doing with my time, I don’t have that old friend that I can meet up with over the weekend, I don’t have the fail-safe people that I can call to who know me without me having to explain myself.

Most of the time I don’t think about it, this is the life I have, I obviously can’t complain. But every now and then I miss certain people that were really seriously important to me. People who got me straight away and really cared about me. I will never see these people again, that is just a fact. They are still in constant transient position far away from the UK. I do not have the disposable income to travel to wherever they are living at any given time. If I did have the money, I would visit my family, visit the places that still own part of my soul.

Ah, then there is missing places. Homes I cannot drive past and peek through the window, homes that are entire cities, entire country smells that I miss deeply. I dream of them sometimes, that I’m there. I dream that I’ve finally taken Conrad to my home – that he can see that part of me he never really could understand because it so vastly different from where we exist in now.

It bugs me when people don’t understand all these feelings, but they never can. I can never be in five places at once; I can never be with all the people I love. That is definite. It’s hard when people see things so one-dimensionally. When culturally they can be so unaware, so near-sighted. The world is not England. England is not the centre. The way English people live isn’t the ‘right way’, isn’t the ‘norm’. Going away for 2 weeks - or shock! A month! Does not mean you will understand me, does not mean you understand how it feels to be so very scattered and fractured. England is not my home.

Boredom is the worst thing. Stagnant mind, stagnant soul. Minutes go slower and all you can think about is the crap in life, the minor, unimportant details.

Give me air, give me crisis, give me changes of mind. Give me a day where you end up somewhere different than where you started out. Give me a minute of shock, of readjustment. Let me smell something musty, something out-of-place – snap me back to a moment decades ago.

Show me a glimpse of possibles that I don’t think are possible. Use a word that I’ve never heard that explains how you feel, a feeling I’ve never felt before.

Twist my expectations so I can’t see more than 10 minutes away – start running when I’m ready to sit down, ask me questions when all I want to do is de-focus.

Bring me life that I know exists, in this – this regularity that everyone so enjoys.

12 again, and not in a good way.

I’ve been having a really strange month at work. Work is fine, I still love it – it’s just, well – the atmosphere has all turned a little pre-teen.

It all started one evening when I was leaving work at 5:30pm on the dot, and overheard someone say “so where should we go for a drink beforehand?”. I turned back around and said “oh, are you guys going out?” They were – and they had neglected to mention anything before hand. Now, it’s not just me – there are two other colleagues who aren’t included in this evening out. The thing is, it’s not just happened once. They always have an excuse (“oh, we all got invited and didn’t realise all of us were going…blablabla”) But it’s happened again… and again.

All just happening to go out for lunch at the exact same time, all mentioning something that happened the night before.

It’s not the actual being left out that kills me (well, it is that, too) but the fact that it’s so sudden. For the past year, my team have been getting along like a house on fire, going out together, going for lunch together, generally the key word is together. All of a sudden, it’s pretty commonplace that they go off on their own without even mentioning it and have secret little email conversations.

So here’s me, almost 28 years old, feeling like I’m back to 12 years old. The problem is, I shouldn’t care. I don’t want to care. I’m a married woman of 27 years! These things are in the past, surely? It has just reverted my whole feeling back to being the odd-one out as a child, and it’s totally knocked my confidence.

Thing is, they’re just work friends. But for this past year, they haven’t been just work friends – they’ve been more. We’ve been to weddings together, they’ve been round to my house for a barbeque – you know? Regular friends stuff. I even went to India and spent 24 hours a day with one of them.

I just feel kind of betrayed. And it totally knocked my confidence. It’s made me question if it’s because of something I did? Am I no fun? do they not like me anymore? What are they saying about me? The list goes on. Truthfully they probably dno’t even see it like this – but I just know that one of them does. One of them thrives on being included when others aren’t, thrives on gossip, being exclusive, being the one who has the inside track.

Ugh, see how this makes me talk? It’s all just so pre-adolescent. I wasn’t even like this as an adolescent, and now I’m being made to feel like this now. Made to feel like going to the bathroom and having a bit of a cry, of standing up and saying ‘guys, I can see you’re emailing each other! What are you saying?? Why aren’t I included anymore???” And most importantly, WHY DO I CARE?

Thanks internet, I just needed to vent.

Pictureworthy for The Guardian, methinks.

Conrad makes Guardian news for the first time.

Cycle Ways: The Thames and Beyond

So far, you have seen the wonders that are the trip from my house to the Thames. From now on, you'll see the North London streets that make up "The Square Mile" (The square mile of London that is the original city back in the baby days of the city)

Here's the view over the bridge, from South to North London:

I cycle over Southwark Bridge, which is between Blackfriars Bridge (to the left) and London Bridge (to the right). I actually really love Southwark Bridge, it might just be my favourite. The reason is that nobody ever seems to use it. It's not very well known, and sometimes in the evening you can be the only person walking over the bridge and looking out over London. I love it.

Here's the view looking to the left of the bridge, you can see St Paul's Cathedral peeking out.

Here's the view to my direct left:



And here's where I felt like a bit of a tourist with other morning commuter cyclists having to swerve around me... The view to the right with Tower Bridge in the background and Canary Wharf to the left in the far background.:



Past the bridge and properly into the square mile, this is the Bank / St. Paul's area of London. Banks Galore! When the G20 was here and there were riots, this area was cordenned off in case of trouble.



Stood at the cyclists / pedestrian crossing looking left towards St. Paul's. See it in the background there? I always use the clock to see if I'm running on time :)



Up on over the crossing, and we're cycling right in the middle of suit-man city. It's difficult at times not to accidentally run one over (because, of course, they always assume that YOU will stop for THEM, because they're wearing a suit and they're very very impotant, don't you know!)

Up ahead the white building is Guildhall.



After that, we ride around a couple of small streets and wend our way onto Moorgate: (Looking North on Moorgate)



And looking back towards Bank...



This is usually a pretty busy road and I have to keep my wits about me, so I didn't take any pictures on this one, I'm afraid. I thought you'd appreciate me being alive to write this post (not really mom, hehe!) Just this one:



Almost there, guys! Just a couple small roads to go, this is the easy part. We make sure to avoid Old Street roundabout, because going through there would just be crazy! So we take the back roads that no-one seems to know about.



One more little crossing. I don't know if they have them in the States, but in London some pedestrian crossings are also used by cyclists.



Here's the road that my work is on - a little courtyard that you can't quite see on the left.



This is a I'm-tired-just-arrived-at-work-need-to-take-a-shower-but-do-this-real-quick-first picture of the courtyard that I work in.



Here is the front door of where I work - looks diddy, doesn't it?



And a sneaky picture of my bike parked up out front:



Well thanks for joining me on this journey through London... hope you enjoyed it!

Soundtrack to this post: Kate Nash and Brigitte Aphrodite

Cycle ways

So this post is mainly for Allison, to show her my route to work on my bike.

Here goes...

Here's my front door with my bike in front of it. I am in love with my bike, it's a nice little Sit-Up-And-Beg (that's really what they call it) Dutchie bike. It's imported directly from Holland and my oh my do I love it! I feel like I'm floating above all the traffic and enjoying a leisurely cycle wherever I go. I'm excited about the day that I can afford a lovely basket to go on the front.

This is my road. Pretty, quiet and leafy. So here is where start on our daily journey to central London. You got your helmet on?



Here I am at a traffic light. It doesn't look like it, but this hill is a bit of a killer on the way in to work on a morning. FYI, Sainsbury's is just on the left.

You having fun yet?



...And this is from the top of the hill. See that guy walking up with his bike? That happens a lot.



And here's the hill down again. Fun in the morning, no so much fun coming up again. This hill is the main reason that I have lost a stone in weight since cycling to work.



So I am now realising how long this will take if I show all the pictures, so I'm gonna start being a little more discerning. Let's just say there are lots of cute small roads that look very Londony.

This is a park that I ride through. This is the park looking very very messy, post festival. But hey, that just adds to the London feel, right?



Naughty park! Being so dirty the day that I take a picture of you!



London houses and London streets



Pretty churches...



This is the first leg of my journey through South London - I now cross over the bridge and take you on a journey through the City and onto Old Street.

But you'll just have to wait for the next exciting leg of my journey...

(Read: This took a really long time and I'm missing out on the sun outside so I'll continue later)

An attempt

One thing that went through my mind over and over and over while I was in India was, the less people have, the happier they are.

I was travelling to the poorest of poor in India. These villages were small, poor, and seriously discriminated against. We work with the children of families who are the lowest caste in the Hindu caste system – called ‘Madiga’ or ‘Arundhiatier’. I cannot even start to explain the caste system here, because it would probably takes years or months or 10,000 blogs to talk about them. What you need to know is that this caste system is ancient, and despite us thinking modern life has changed things, it hasn’t. These people are called the ‘untouchables’ and are forced to live very separate lives from their higher caste country-men. Obvious ways that they are discriminated against are the fact that they live in a small community on the outskirts of the village, they are not allowed to drink from the same cups that others are – they drink out of plastic rather than steel. Their children attend the same schools, but are not allowed to eat from the same plates as the other children.

The caste differences has absolutely nothing to do with skin colour, as a foreigner nothing can be seen as different about these people. They are seriously discriminated against, and their lives are a daily struggle that they have no other choice but to accept.

In the eyes of the beautiful children we met, in the handshakes of the dozens of women who came to sit with us – these people knew true beauty. They knew beauty in the soul, in their eyes. I told our Indian colleague that I thought these people seemed so happy. She told me that it is a two-edged sword. These people were happy, yes, but just on the other side of happiness is deep loss, deep sorrow, deep trauma. The only reason they can be this kind of pure happy is because they had been the opposite of that.

We spoke to a woman who had been left by their husband, separated from her sons, and had to work hard labour in the fields for hours on end everyday – in the burning sun, in the pouring rain. She was only able to see her sons once every month, even though they were only 1 kilometre away from where she lived – we had seen them 10 minutes before we came to her house. She cried with joy when we showed her the pictures we had taken of them on our camera. She cried with sorrow when she told us her story. She cried of pain when she explained how her husband had beaten her because she was of a lower caste than him.

Looking in these women’s eyes, there is TRUE beauty. There is sorrow that they feel so deep, but they carry on with life and they have hope. She had hope that she would see her sons again soon, she had hope from the social worker we came with, that she had someone to be friends with. She had her support from the other villagers who had come to watch us speak with her, and earnestly trying to protect her although they couldn’t understand our words. Here, everyday life is a struggle. Being a woman is a struggle. Being poor, being born into this village is a struggle.

All the numbers of people we met who had literally nothing, continued to offer us whatever they had; their just-brewed chai tea, welcoming us into their tiny mud huts, pride and joy and anticipation just to talk to us.

It is difficult not to do some soul-searching here. To remember what is important. Remember that it is not the end of the world if I can’t afford to buy some new clothes. I have a home, I have a husband who really truly does love me, I have a job where I get paid, I am rich. Although I don’t feel like it, I am truly rich.

If I have to chose one thought, one lesson to stay with me after coming back home, it would be this one. To live life content, to live life happy knowing that SERIOUSLY, we have it good. To seek the important things, to remember the faces of people I met and the light in their eyes. We are people, we are all the same. The difference is that I was born here, they were born there. We should look after each other; there is no excuse for treating each other differently.

And most importantly, we are rich.