new experience

by

#22: Do something unique and special with each of my children (part one)

First up, no. 3. A bonus 2 hours of alone-with-mummy time meant either watching the Lion King for the third time this week, or, some sort of project.

The conversation this morning ran thus:
No. 3: what is happening after school today?
Me: It’s just me and you, coming home together.
No. 3: Can I do something? Wiv you?
Me: Of course we can. What would you like to do?
No. 3. Um. (thinks about it). Make a zebra cake?
Crikey. I am not sure what that even is.

6 hours later, I collect her from school, and realise too late I have not given our project a moment’s further thought.

Which is why it is particularly satisfying to now report THE most triumphant zebra cake I have frankly ever seen! (though admittedly I am not sure I have ever seen another one)

Cobbled together from general household ingredients, we fashioned this:
photo
It would be tempting to go into business and sell them, except I fear the food hygiene folk would have something to say about this:
food hygiene
But all in all it was a thoroughly satisfying afternoon’s work. She was absurdly chuffed with it! We have been high fiving and talking of nothing else since. Now in the name of ‘fairness’ I will probably have to spend all weekend fashioning a menagerie of baked goods with one child after another. But for now, this will do.

Coming up soon: the drastic haircut. Eeek!

by

#19: Spend the day dressed as Bananaman

This is a bit of a cop out, as I decided to do it very, very far from home.  So none of the social embarrassment of having to explain myself on the school run, but instead a host of other issues, trying to retain the integrity of Bananaman, without sacrificing warmth or safety on the slopes. 

We told the children last night that for the next day of skiing, Mummy would be Bananaman.  I love how children accept such things as if they were entirely normal. Why not, after all?  They were actually disappointed that I hadn’t brought superhero costumes for them aswell.  (Why didn’t I think of that?  It would have been a whole lot less embarrassing for me, and they would have loved it!)

Image

Still, off we went to the most populous resort of the Giant Mountains, me in full Bananaman garb, for absolutely no reason at all.  (Thank you, Ferg, for suggesting it).  But the odd thing was, it drew almost no reaction from anyone.  Which made it possibly more embarrassing!  In the general way, fancy dress is a conversation starter – people want to know why, or what you are supposed to be, or what the occasion is, or something.  The Czechs did not raise an eyebrow.  A ski school of kids may have tittered.  One man shouted ‘Superman’ as he shot past me.  But in the main, studied nonchalance.  So little comment did I draw that I frequently forgot I was wearing it.

I had a brief bout of euphoria, snaking my way down a red run, cape billowing in the wind, with 3 well behaved and beautifully coordinated children descending the mountain in my wake, some of them almost smiling… But that brief snapshot was notable for being the only 10 minutes of the morning when no one was whining.

Image

For much of the day though, my garb was entirely forgettable. Barring the odd glance from my other half which clearly indicated that I am a massive tool, most people couldn’t care less. It was a day on the slopes like any other, pulling small people out of the snow, bile rising at the endless bickering about who would sit with whom on the chairlift.

I drew a few more looks in the restaurant at lunchtime.   Children couldn’t help but stare, but still, zero banter.  The serving staff were plainly unimpressed by superheros, particularly those who couldn’t order drinks in the right language. 

An amusing moment post lunch.  The plate of goulash and half-litre of apple juice each prompted a family visit to the facilities.   Each child piled into a cubicle, wrestling with their many layers of clothing.  A Czech teenage girl was not far behind us, and she opened the door to the first cubicle (none of them had locks), to find a small child having a dump.  She withdrew hastily and opened the second cubicle – in which another small child was having a dump.  She opened the third, only to be faced with – you guessed it, a THIRD small child having a dump.  Shaking her head in disbelief she opened the fourth door – and there was Bananaman!  She withdrew in considerable confusion.    

Our afternoon was altogether jollier.  Fuelled with goulash and mars bars we attacked the red run several more times in higher spirits, and only abandoned play when all the lifts had shut.   A satisfying day after all.  And happily Bananaman is now done, the only worry being that I have promised 3 more Bananaman outfits in smaller sizes, and another family Superhero outing, sometime soon…

by

#17: Beer Spa (have a random beauty treatment I had never heard of)

Well I’m not sure it is exactly a beauty treatment, but it was a new experience, and since I am making the rules here, it will have to do. The Beer Bath does exactly what it says on the tin – you bathe in some beer!
beer spa

I love trying random things like this in different countries. I have tried Moroccan baths, Chinese massage, Indian eyebrow-threading, and I have particularly fond memories of sharing a sauna with 20 naked Russian ladies flagellating themselves with bunches of birch twigs. But I have never had a beer bath. The literature assures me it is highly restorative. The literature also suggests I will be enjoying a pint while bathing in several more, what’s not to like?

pivni lazne

So. I phoned up the Novosad Mini Brewery and suggested in extremely halting German that I would like to come for a beer bath. Today. At 18.00 hours. As far as I could tell that seemed to be acceptable, so off I went.

On arrival I was recognised, I think, from the phone call. ‘Ah’ said the receptionist. ‘Reservazione’. She may have pegged me on account of the linguistic incompetence, or perhaps it was the lack of any other customers that made me easy to place. Whatever.

In the spa I was greeted next by a sturdy matronly lady, looking a little stern. Over years of travel I have perfected a look that says ‘Please help me and forgive my incompetence; I am really very nice’, so I offered her this, in place of any greeting. She smiled, showed me where to put my shoes, and pointed me to another room, with instructions to disrobe, conveyed in a mix of German and sign language. ‘Complet’ she added sternly, handing me a yellow sheet to protect my modesty.

Kit off, showered and sheeted, I re-emerged, and she showed me into the bath tub room. Sure enough, a bathful of water awaited, to which she added some yeasty pellets, and switched on the beer tap. 10 litres of finest ale turned the water an unpalatably rusty colour. Half a pint of even finer ale was placed on the table beside. She demonstrated the Jacuzzi effect and indicated she would return in half an hour.

I lay back and enjoyed the soothing sound of some 80s power ballads, while wallowing in beer, drinking beer, and inhaling the fumes of beer. The yeasty pellets dissolved around me, leaving an unseemly film of muck all around. The lighting was subdued, the walls were wooden panels like a sauna. There was another bath in the room, mercifully empty.

After 30 minutes, sure enough, she returned, and pointed me to my relaxation bed, one of 11 in the room. Another pint was placed next to me. A blanket over my wet sheet. More music courtesy of Foreigner et al. The relaxing ambience only marred by the sound of the matronly lady scrubbing my filth from her bath tub.

Another 30 minutes and it was time for my massage. There appeared to be no other staff or guests at the Novibad, for the same lady performed the massage, and it did not occur to her to close the door as I sat on the bed as instructed with my norks out.

That done, I was permitted further relaxation, should I wish, before I left. And on no account was I to shower afterwards. ‘Vitaminy’ she explained, sternly.

All in all, a very pleasant evening, though whether a beer bath is more beneficial than any other kind of bath I am not entirely sure!

(NB: any readers who don’t know me should be aware that the buxom lady depicted in the bathtub is not actually me. Alas I am far too British to take a selfie in the bath and post it on the internet!)

by

#16: Learn to speak a random language

For the last fortnight I have been listening to Pimsleur’s Czech in the car whenever I go anywhere. With the result that I can now confidently say excuse me, hello, yes, no, thank you, goodbye, and ‘I understand Czech very well’. That last is unlikely to get me into a helpful situation.

What I really need is ‘Can I hire 5 sets of skis for 8 days’; ‘Where is the nearest beer spa?’ and ‘Get me 3 hot chocolates for these feral infants and fast, please’. But maybe that will be covered in lesson 7.

For now though, here we are, and I have the chance to test my linguistic prowess on some real people. It has produced very mixed results! Some are delighted that I trouble to greet and thank them in their own language. Great. Others are openly irritated at the impossibility of communicating with me at all – my few words sadly don’t get us very far, and when they default to German, (in Czech minds the universal language), they find I am pretty poor at that too. The third response, and my favourite, is undisguised derision. Several people have burst into peels of laughter and summoned their friends to come and hear the freak show.

Arriving at our hostel and home for the week, I attempted to ask someone ‘Mluveti Anglitsky?’ (do you speak English?). Both he and the 4 women within earshot laughed so hard they may well have soiled themselves. Possibly my accent turned the question into ‘Do you blow goats?’ or similar. That is always a risk.

But today I was delighted to ask directions in Czech and have my question understood. A breakthrough. Never mind that the response was incomprehensible, it was the nearest I have come to a conversation.

And it will have to be good enough to tick that one off the list, because I am not sure I have the energy to take my Czech endeavours much further!

by

#15: Drive across Europe at night

I put this on the list myself, as it addresses quite a number of my limitations. For me, driving at all is far from comfortable; and driving in the dark is mildly alarming. Driving on the wrong side of the road is very alarming, while driving an unknown route somewhere I have never been before brings us into the realm of naked terror. So, time to put it all together, and get on with it!

And so we did. We entered the Eurotunnel about 7pm, with the poorly formed ‘plan’ to drive all night by turns. Since it should take 10.5 hours to reach our destination, we ought to be in the mountains of the Czech Republic for an early breakfast. That was without reckoning on the vagaries of the sat nav, (which took us a circuitous route adding 2 hours to the journey). And then there was the unscheduled stop at a Belgian A and E department, in desperate search of any medication that could stop our youngest from screaming that her ear hurt. It is hard to convey the level of desperation that had overtaken our vehicle after 2 hours of this. The first packing oversight was revealed. I can see the Calpol sitting in the medicine cupboard at home. Why didn’t I put it in the bag? Why? Why?

We had to wait an hour and a half, but eventually left the Clinique Notre Dame in triumphant possession of some children’s Nurofen. It was by then 11.30 pm. We’d been going 5+ hours and were still in Belguim. Not good. I drove for another hour, handed over, Dave lasted til 2.30am. Then I bolted a coffee, resumed my shift, and managed to drive another 3 hours, crossing much of Germany, with the rest of the family slumbering all around, and ‘Pimsleur’s Guide to speaking Czech’ on the cd player. Congratulating myself on my quite brilliant efficiency. (A shame not to be knitting the socks as well, but probably wiser not to).

I did feel quite a weighty responsibility, alone at the wheel, everyone else sleeping peacefully, with no idea where I was taking them or quite how many fast-moving lorries I was negotiating. The whole experience was strangely very calm, in stark contrast to the family life of our waking hours.

By 6am I handed back, very happy to be able to tick that one off. Though I suppose we still have to get home somehow next week.

by

#14: Pack to go on holiday entirely by myself

Well, the job is done, although the whole project has been riddled with errors from beginning to end.  If we reach our destination at all it will be a minor miracle, never mind with any of the correct equipment.

We are readying ourselves for the most low budget ski holiday on record.  The plan is to drive to the Czech Republic, with a boot full of food and borrowed equipment, stay in an insalubrious bunkhouse, and hope to find somewhere with enough snow to throw ourselves down a few hills.   So the packing is critical: success or failure can be sealed by seemingly small details like forgetting the children’s warm gloves. 

A significant complication is the uncertainty of what we might find when we get there.  Most of the information about the area that I have found is in Czech, and despite my best efforts at learning a random language (#16), I have not deciphered much of value.  And although we are billing it as a ski holiday, the presence of snow is far from guaranteed, so we also need to be equipped for a week’s worth of other activities just in case.   And it all needs to be loaded in such a fashion that we can reach the essentials during a 15 hour drive as needed.

So.  Ski kit for 5; normal clobber; plus kit for all the activities that might come into play if the snow doesn’t materialise.  Plus all the additional kit for the various challenges that I hope to achieve while away – knitting needles and wool, Bananaman outfit…   Then 2 crates of Lidl’s finest tinned produce, to ensure that 3 fussy eaters will be sufficiently nourished to ski for a week, if the snow does indeed present (Czech goulash and dumplings are unlikely to play out well for us). Then there are all the child related sundries that transform the whole thing from an ordeal into a slightly more manageable ordeal –games, books, a sackful of pens and paper, soft toys…  Though all the planning is somewhat misplaced in this regard.   The greatest sources of entertainment for our children are highly portable, and always available, namely: getting naked, and farting loudly.  Armed with those two options, they can never be bored.   (Over the last 6 years, we have taken them swimming, biking, climbing, and skating; shown them cinemas, theatres, pantomime; travelled on trains, planes, buses, and escalators; shared stories, films, puzzles, games, and toys of every description.  We have still found nothing that diverts them quite so royally as their own flatulence.) 

But I digress.  I had most of the bags packed a day early, so come the morning of departure all felt reasonably under control.  Until 8am, when Eva presented with a urine infection, at about the same time as the esteemed Turisticka Ubytovna SJ Slavoj emailed to alert me to an ‘administrative error’, meaning our hostel was expecting us 2 days later than we intended.

AAARGH!

2 hours of panic, phone calls, doctor’s appointment and internet research ensued…. But we ultimately left as planned, with substitute hotel booked, and antibiotics secured. 

It hasn’t been the toughest of packing challenges – without tent or camping equipment there is no problem fitting everything in.  The alarming bit is shouldering the sole responsibility for whatever we may have forgotten.  But at least I have put in the coffee pot; that improves the chance of forgiveness for whatever errors will shortly be uncovered.

by

#12: Watch a horror film

Today I was running a bit low on energy, so took on the relatively low input challenge of ‘watch a horror film’. Oof. The most unpleasant task yet. I absolutely hate these; I sit there unable to watch, hiding behind a pillow, then find I’m traumatised for nights afterwards, so although passive, it deserved its place on the list.

I had ordered some nonsense called ‘The Orphanage’ from Amazon; it arrived today. I persuaded my other half to watch with me, and we both had a thoroughly miserable evening, sitting in front of ghosts, ghouls, death, deformity, and generally unpalatable goings on. Basically a woman goes to live at the orphanage where she grew up, taking her young son with her… the boy disappears, and it transpires that the ghosts of all the children she grew up with are still in the house and have something to do with it all… Don’t let me spoil it by saying more.

If anyone likes that sort of thing, I guess it was quite well crafted and even kind of convincing – and actually not nearly as alarming as the films I remember watching at sleepovers in my teens …. But Good Lord, I can think of about 350 things I would rather do with an evening.

The verdict: scary, horrible, psychologically disturbing, massively unpleasant. The only upside is no hangover after a Saturday night!

The orphanage

by

#11: Introduce myself to the neighbours

I am extremely pleased with myself today. On my mind for the last 2 weeks has been the terrifying prospect of ‘Introduce Myself to the Neighbours’. I know, I know, it isn’t exactly facing the Taliban unarmed, but I had been intending to do this as my very first one, and every day I have found an excuse not to. The flurry of random exercise classes betrays my avoidance of anything that puts me in an unpredictable social situation.

So. I told 3 people today was the day, as that made the prospect a bit more real, and meant I’d have to explain myself if I bottled out, again. Even after that, I jumped in my car and was about to head to town, promising myself I’d do it later, when I thought, ‘oh for God’s sake. Just go and do it’.

So I parked the car 10 yards from my house, and got out. I went to a house at random and knocked, (hoping no one would be in), but oh help, a man answered and looked me up and down curiously. I explained my neighbourly intentions, and all was well. In fact I was invited inside, met the dogs, and was there for a good 20 minutes, comparing tales of how we come to be living where we do; and chuckling companionably at how unpleasant my house is. Which was nice.

Flushed with success I went to another door, to find a retired couple whose children had left home; and then a third house, within which lurked a teenage girl off sick from school. I had to apologise profusely for dragging her out of bed. Lucky I didn’t go there first.

The best thing about it all, was that later in the day the wife and daughter of neighbour no. 1, came to pay me a visit in return. I was woefully underprepared for guests (we were half way through a play date and literally no corner of the accommodation was unsoiled. The children had already snacked, spread toys through every room, painted pictures, and were now happily ‘cleaning up’ in the bathroom, which they had flooded). Nonetheless I invited the company in for a cup of tea. The carnage was impossible to ignore, and I think her exact comment was ‘Well it‘s nice to see a house where children can play’. That is about the most generous interpretation that anyone could put on the level of abject squalor. I warmed to her immensely.

So now we are all the best of friends; it turns out they are not yet hugely established here themselves, and were therefore glad of the acquaintance. And as a happy by-product the daughter is of prime babysitting age, AND in need of money to fund an upcoming foreign expedition. So I think we will all get on famously!

But most importantly, the deed is done. I can move on from that one, knowing I have conquered one more mini-demon. Though I suspect I will still be delaying on the stand-up comedy attempt for as long as possible!

by

#10: Write letters to 10 people telling them what I love about them

I have had a delicious few days doing this.  I am positively brimming over with affection and good will for humankind!  I slightly wish I hadn’t limited it to 10 (but must press on, 90 challenges still remain…)

I thought it would be hard; but actually when I pause to focus on someone it is easy to express what I feel for them, and a real pleasure to do it…. I have spent the last couple of days in a haze of blissful euphoria to have so many lovely people in my life and the chance to reflect on their brilliance!

So I have sent 7 missives out into the world (the other 3 are for my children and will go into their treasure boxes for when they are old enough not to scribble on them /lose them/ wipe their nose or arse on them), and I am now in a state of mild anxiety about how they will be received.   It is a rather odd thing to do, these days , to write an actual pen and paper letter.   And I don’t usually express such sentiments at all, apart from rather clumsily after several pints of lager.   So they may be rather surprising to receive.  

(Please note, the selection of the 10 was fairly arbitrary, so no one should be offended if they don’t get a random letter in the next few days!!)

by

#9: Go to a posh restaurant and eat on my own

This was the first one that I had real misgivings about; especially when I phoned up and booked a table, with the inevitable question ‘How many is that for?’ Er, just one. I feared there was a bit of stigma about it, and felt quite self-conscious about presenting myself on my tod, in a public place. I expected it to be highly uncomfortable and probably expensive.

But imagine my delight; it turned out to be an enormous pleasure! Excellent food, time to myself, and not in the least bit awkward. I went far enough from home to not fear bumping into a crowd of school mums, and found a lovely pub/restaurant http://www.thevillagepub.co.uk. The staff were friendly and betrayed no hint of an attitude that I was a slightly tragic figure for dining alone.

I found a corner-ish table where it didn’t feel as if the whole room were staring at me, I made myself comfortable, ordered a drink, accepted the menus, and only then realised – quel horreur – there were two men at the next table having an intensely personal conversation, loud enough for me to hear, and what could I possibly pretend to be doing that could hide the fact I was there???! Argh! I busied with the menu. I checked my phone. I went to the toilet. They were almost finished. But then! They ordered dessert! Help! The catalogue of personal tragedies ran on and on. Thankfully I had brought pen and paper, as I’d had the inspired idea to knock off another of the 100 challenges while there. So I could ignore the distressing chat, and instead absorbed myself in writing several of my 10 letters to tell people what I love about them, which was a delightful experience in itself.

I ate delicious cod filet with an olive oil mash, drank sauvignon blanc, and enjoyed the ambient lighting and rustic feel of the place. Since I didn’t feel at all awkward or out of place, I agreed to the dessert menu, and followed up with a splendidly delicious banoffee pie sundae. I was enjoying the time and space and letter writing so heartily that I ordered a coffee afterwards… In fact I was the last to leave; the waiters were hanging round the bar at the end of their night, and one clearly thought the place was empty, as he let rip with a ma-hoosive belch. His colleague hissed at him in reproach: ‘we have a customer’; which I thoroughly enjoyed.

So that is excellent; I am very pleased to report I have sufficient poise and self -assurance to go out and dine alone. I am officially ready to be 40!