blog 3

Blog 3 November 21st 2006

Isobel complained about the cold as we walked back from school after art club today. In the half light of an autumn afternoon you could just make out the grimace of pain on her face despite the fleece, padded waterproof coat, hat and gloves.
“I want to go back to Al Ain,” she moaned, kicking at the heaps of wet yellow leaves in a pitiful sulk. “I hate this cold.” She got slower and slower in protest and although the sun was shining feebly and it was not raining, as soon as you stopped walking you could see her point. It’s probably about 4 degrees. The weather is very good for November, but we’re feeling the cold. The promise of spaghetti was about all that got her home – thank God for Italian food.

British winter always held a particular dread in the UAE, like the folk memory of wolves or plague, and was a major reason for staying so long in the Gulf. Now we’re here though, I’m actually enjoying the change of seasons more than I thought I ever would. There’s a big difference watching the dramatic change of the seasons in rural Wiltshire, and staring out at grey skies and rain on the parked cars in suburban Staines. Tom has made friends quickly and although we’ve been too busy to make anything other than acquaintances and renew old friendships in London and Manchester we have settled in quickly.

Still, the house is frigging cold when the heating is off or down too low, and winter hasn’t even started properly yet. Last month we installed a huge East German style ceiling-high radiator in our ‘sunroom’ which had no heating at all before, just so we can get clothes dry and keep that room from going Arctic. I’m wearing a t shirt, a long sleeved top and a fleece today, and fluctuate from being freezing when the heating is down to boiling hot after it’s turned it up. We decided to keep the heating on low in all the rooms all the time, but I’m always aware that this is like having the a.c. on in every room, which is fine until you get the bill, and so scuttle around in a scarf adjusting the radiators all day.

Money is really short now – we have enough to pay the mortgage, eat and pay the bills, but not to go out to the cinema or pub or shop in town. That is frustrating after years of only being able to choose between the Hilton, the Intercontinental or Pizza Hut for a drink or a meal. Now there are tempting bars, cafes, restaurants and entertainments at every turn, and we can just about stretch to fish and chips. Last time we went to one in Trowbridge Tom put on his most Little Lord Fauntleroy accent and wondered why there were, you know, so many ‘poor people’ there.

Meanwhile I am reduced to hovering excitedly like a Russian pensioner over every reduced price item at Asda and drinking Tesco 2% lager (4 cans for 88p) and the odd bottle of £2.10 gut-rot red wine at the weekend.

‘Life’ in the evenings revolves more and more around television: ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (great US comedy on More 4), Have I Got News for You (yes it’s still going on BBC2), the Carry On antics of Russell Brand (on E4), Bremner (C4), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More 4), Jonathon Ross (everywhere) and anything on UKTV History including the What the Stuarts/Tudors/Romans Did for Us and the terminally depressing reruns of World at War. The price of this on Freeview is having to endure the crap adverts. People like Jane Fonda (not the magnificent, gorgeous Hanoi Jane of the ‘Fuck the Army’ coalition in her twenties) but the sixty-something freak selling skin moisturiser on every break on the History Channel.

On Sunday after days of incessant James Bond hype for Casino Royale we succumbed to the Bond franchise by watching the classic Lazenby Bond ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ on ITV4 and gorged ourselves on cheap German chocolate biscuits from Aldi and pretending Christmas had come early. God we felt ill.

Halloween and Guy Fawkes night UK style were an interesting first for the kids. Although the supermarkets are full of Halloween merchandise the English still stubbornly ‘do not do’ Halloween. OK, so a few stray Celts and hippie pagans may put a pumpkin in their window but generally there is resistance to the tradition. So when Tom and Isobel went trick or treating, unlike Ireland, Scotland or Al Ain for that matter the streets were fairly quiet apart from a couple of groups of kids timidly knocking at doors . One in ten houses with the pumpkins in the windows are safe to knock on, but the others are likely to get dark ‘bugger off’ looks and comments. We chaperones Isobel and Tom to a few of the school friend’s houses and only got one ‘we don’t do Halloween’ complaint from the one mother who didn’t have a pumpkin in her window.

Guy Fawkes, a week later, by contrast is like the 4th of July for the UK. Everyone is out at bonfires letting off fireworks and gathering at the park for more or less organised displays. Our local pub down by the river had a huge crowd, excellent fireworks and a terrifying large bonfire made up of hundreds of pallets and branches trimmed from the woods and hedges. People were drinking mulled wine and hot toddies staring at the enormous fire. The atmosphere was very traditionally English – a sort of sober, determined Protestant solidarity, without the religious bit.

Right, apart from watching TV and autumn walks, that’s about it. Student life is good and I’m enjoying my once a week commute to Bournemouth. Sarah is getting on fine at Bath – still just six hours and the resources are: 1 old photocopier by the sound of it, but the students are nice. Do keep the emails coming – we like to hear how our friends are getting on, even when the news is not good.

p.s.

By the way – we STILL haven’t got broadband and we started out application in June with BT and then early September with Talk Talk. If you are thinking of coming back in the next few years I’d put in your application for broadband now.

blog 2

..Cannot be put off a moment longer! Hope you are all keeping well and I’m guilty as sin for not emailing individually. I always swore I’d never send round robins after Sarah’s aunt used to send Christmas ‘newsletters’ detailing all her family’s achievements in retch inducing detail and here I am doing the same. But time is our enemy and I am forced to compromise with the Devil in this tawdry excuse of a ‘blog’.

Almost half-way through October and it’s still good to be back. Okay so we are down to our last hundreds of pounds, rather than the thousands we had in June, but it’s all money well spent: er……

Where the money has gone

1) newish Citroen Berlingo (which Top gear has described: ‘as elegant as a bread van’, but economical and big),
2) leaking roof repair on the extension and new radiator,
3) new carpet on stairs and upstairs replacing hideous swirling 70s monstrosity,
4) repair to garage roof,
5) paint, ,
6) clothes drier,
7) bills,
8) food,
9) council tax
10) school dinners, school uniform.
11) Veuve Cliquot Champagne


So that’s it really. We really will be scrabbling around in the dirt by blog 3.

But it is still good to be here.

Why It Is Still Good to Be Here

Tely is great, no really I mean it – Freeview is excellent there’s always something watchable on, autumn is much more beautiful than I remembered it to be, the kids are happy at school, I can listen to the radio all day (STILL haven’t got broadband, grrr) while pratting around at home. Sarah has got six hours of work at Bath Uni – miserably paid evening work, but her foot is in the door, I’ve got a few hours work at Bournemouth on top of the student money so we may not have to eat the grass in our garden just yet.

Started Commuting to Bournemouth once a week by train this month – a two hour journey. Very chuffed to have a bona-fide young person’s railcard – almost worth coming home just for that. I can get a train back to Avoncliff which is a dinky unmanned ‘request stop’ 5 minutes walk through the woods, but yesterday had to walk back from Bradford at 10pm and walk home for 25 minutes along the unlit canal past the odd canal boat lit only by lanterns, candles and solar lights. Fabulous smell of woodsmoke and great atmosphere made up for trudging through dark with briefcase like some demented rural commuter.

Studying is interesting so far, mixing on the introductory course with people investigating a weird variety of subjects across many disciplines: volcanoes, medieval salt farming along coastal Britain, computer graphics skin rendering, data mining, intellectual property rights of programme formats, topics I don’t understand the title of and so on. Huge amount of work ahead which I should be doing about 6 hours a day, but managing only one or two so far because the distractions are many and various. A typical day could go like this:

7.30 Wake up. Peek through the bedroom curtains and look out over the road down the valley at the mist covering the chestnut trees and shiver. Beautiful but getting cold. I climb stiffly down the stairs careful to clutch onto the banisters with both hands so as not to hurl myself to the bottom. Feel as rheumatic as a 70 year old man – that may be being back in the cold, it may be various injuries catching up on me, it may be that Sarah is putting strychnine in my cereal I just don’t know. 20 minutes in the bath with Sight and Sound or the Guardian Weekly (can’t stand the sheer bulk of a daily paper, nor can we afford it) to try and wake up and soften geriatric muscles.

8.00
Make breakfast – fry ups for the first few weeks, but just cereal now that the novelty of pork has worn off. Wake Tom with a starting gun (Isobel has been watching CBeebies since 7.30). Tut loudly while listening to news and chewing AllBran.

8.30
Shout and carry on like the neighbours from hell as we try to get kids shoed, dressed and out the door. ‘Tom, for the seventh time, put your SOCKS on!’ ‘Isobel, ISOBEL stop hiding now and come and brush your HAIR!’

8.55
Clutching dinner money or sandwiches (can take either), school bags, PE kit, swimming kit, trip money, etc. wheel bikes through house getting water or dirt over wooden hall floor. Cycle helmets on and away to school – three minutes away on the other side of the park but it might as well be at the other end of the county with the number of exhortations required to get Isobel there. I am sharing Sarah’s small ladies bike so look like local clown on circus bike.

9.00 (school starts at 8.55)
Get to school. Tom locks his bike, but his is one of only two locked – this really is rural England. Isobel’s is not worth taking so that’s unlocked. See Isobel into classroom and feel vaguely uncomfortable in un-ironed tshirt, shorts, or more recently, fleece, crumpled jeans and muddy trainers. Not many power dressers amongst mums and dads but low key green welly and their clothes are always clean, and ironed.

Kiss goodbye to children, get back on bike and breathe sigh of relief.

9.10
Get home, make a coffee. One more bagel.

9.30
Take dogs from their carpeted, solar lit garage for walk. This is the best bit of the day if its not pouring with rain. So far it has rained maybe one out of every five or six days enough that a walk is off. Hottest autumn on record (yawn) due to global warming etc. Walk down through woods to river or across cow fields to open land by Westwood Manor where the dogs can run and poo. Hate poo, hate poo, hate poo. They are quite good at saving it till then and I’m sure the farmer will thank us in twenty years, but carry poo bags if it isn’t on the huge farmer’s field. On the way back pick a few blackberries from the hedges or pick up a shiny conker for the children. There are loads and loads of fantastic walks around us which makes up for not having the money for any form of entertainment other than watching telly.

10.15
Get back. Feed dogs. Wash up breakfast.

10.30
Put washing in washing machine. Unbelievable, depressing volume of washing. Everything always damp, school uniforms always seemed to be stained with feltpen or blackberries or something that stain remover can’t touch.

10.45
Now must start work. Pick up book. Decide to check email. Still on dial-up so must be quick, shit write it quickly!

11.00
Pick up book again. Remember I haven’t put up shelf in bathroom yet. Get drill, look for extension lead. Faf around for half an hour. Put up shelf using wrong sized screws. Half an hour cleaning dust from carpet. Decide to hoover living room which is also coated with dirt. Make a coffee.

12.00
Pick up book. Read two pages, can’t find a pencil to make notes. Go downstairs to find one. Washing machine has stopped. Put washing on line or radiator (only on two hours a day). House full of damp washing. Drier in emergency which is in garage, but 10p a minute or something so only in emergency. Dogs bark at something, lean out and tell them to ‘be quiet!’ Make a cup of tea.

12.20
Pick up book. Read another page, look for and finally find pencil, make a single note.

12.30
Feeling peckish. Look through cupboard and with sinking heart heat tin of sardines and put on toast. Cup of tea.

1.00
Tut while listening to news and washing up. Second round of clothes washing has finished. Try to find space on radiator or whirly line in the garden.

1.30
Make another coffee (instant by the way).

1.40
Pick up book. Read three pages. Fall asleep.

1.50
Woken by my own drool, go downstairs and make a coffee. Mail arrives. Write checks for bills. Chase late delivery of radiator/drier/broadband/roof repair etc.

2.00
Remember we are out of bread, milk food in general. Drive to Trowbridge and buy everything in Asda with discount sticker. Spend ten minutes looking for cheapest wine – not buying English wine a second time. Plump for 1.79 Spanish ‘table wine’.

2.45
Drive home. Unpack shopping.

3.15
Cycle to school. One has art/science/football club and stays on till 4 o’clock. Cycle back with one tired child.

3.55
Go back to pick up second, even more tired child.

4.15
Pick up book. Read four more pages and write two notes.

4.30
Feed dogs. Check Tom is doing homework. Isobel is fixated by Basil Brush or something on cBBC so can safely be ignored for two hours.

5.15
Make dinner listening to radio.

6.00
Eat dinner. Couple of bottles of small cheap French lager (6 for 2.80)

6.45
Wash up. Cup of coffee.

7.00
Check email, write email, or in this case ‘blog’, or take a short walk with the dogs in the fabulous blue light of an autumn evening. Kids watch Dr. Who – ideal viewing for getting ready for bed.

8.00
Get kids to bed. Read books with them. Tom irritates me by buzzing his sonic screwdriver birthday present near my ear, repeatedly.

8.30
Fall asleep.

8.45
Woken by own drool.

9.00
Watch telly all night. Catch up on comedy repeats of 11 years on BBC3, or new comedy - Extras, Rory Bremner, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or an arty movie Film 4 (now free), BBC4, UKTV History – no more Amazon!

11.00
Glass of Budgen whisky and ice. Reduced to the status of a bum.

12.30
Night night.

Hmm, it looks pretty sad but it beats working for a living.

Right, not had any questions from anyone about leaving UAE so I’m assuming you are all staying for the next few months at least. Miss you all and want to hear any news about how you all are or how things are in Al Ain/Dubai.

Lots of Love,

Dave

Blog 1

1st September 2006

You’ll be back at work now in the frying heat. Many of you have endured what my sources describe as new levels of absurdity and ‘grotesquery’ at the HCT Conference which cheered me up no end. It’s still technically summer here…. So this is probably our last chance to feel very pleased with ourselves. We made it to September without having leaped onto a plane to Dubai in panic. The thought of reapplication still seems ridiculous and appalling so I thought I’d better start this ‘blog’ thing before being back in Britain seems totally normal - and not as one friend has described her vacation experience as like ‘wandering around the set of Little Britain’.

Actually its not a blog at all but an email to a group of friends. This is because the blog sites were doing my head in – it seems difficult to post pictures easily, there were stupid adverts and I realised I don’t want anyone else reading this drivel except you lucky peeps. (OK so I just changed my mind on that one - this site looks idiot proof enough even for me).

Also sitting down at a computer for nine hours a day and sending jokes and surfing the net and chatting about the price of oil and property investment opportunities in Tajikistan seem like a distant and slightly weird alternative reality. Time here instead has been taken up by the mundane realities of unpacking and, ..ahem, cleaning, cooking and keeping an eagle eye on the skies to rush out at the first sight of rain to take washing in (1). Washing is almost always damp so our next expenditure is a clothes drier, except, er, we have nearly spent all our gratuity..

The other reason for the delay is that we’ve been poncing around the filthiest abandoned sawmill in the whole of France throughout August with a mop bucket and duster so far from civilisation that wind up gramophones were still a novelty. The nearest ‘Internet Café’ was a village bar in Eglisol 2km from our ruin – a village with an unusually high proportion of drunks with snot running down their moustaches. The bar which had magnificent 1950s patterned wallpaper was run by a very nice man called Jean Francois or ‘Jeff’ who had to endure these troglodytes every day. So trying to parry the conversational gambits of a burping French alcoholic wasn’t the perfect environment to gather your thoughts at the ancient PC with infuriating French keyboard (which was located next to a worryingly large woodburning stove).

So that’s my other excuse for not starting this ‘blog’ thing earlier. That and the 4,000 bottles of cheap wine (1 Euro 60 cents!) that kept us warm and inebriated every night and made the thought of writing anything vaguely coherent an impossible task.

France was great and despite 8 hours hard labour a day – including cement mixing, masonry and other dark arts of housebuilding – we managed to put on weight due to the fabulous quality of the local goats cheeses, bread and high cholesterol French food. In the restaurants they give you five courses without stopping to ask if you can manage five. Ahhhhhh hh (loosens belt another notch). So we now look more ‘burly’ than ever, although that is likely to end just as soon as we can no longer withdraw cash from the cash machine to buy food (maybe November). This is all part of our cunning crash diet plan. One big surprise in France was – after a couple of weeks of hot sun, a substance called rain fell from the sky. That and at the end of the month the air was cold in the morning. It was then that we discovered our house which is 950 metres above sea level is under 13 foot of snow for seven months of the year so I hope you’ll bring your skis and crampons when you come to visit us at Christmas in years to come.

But we’re back in Blighty again. To continue the weather talk (essential British survival skill) tonight’s sky has that slightly wintery/autumnal half light look about it that taps into primeval memories of something big approaching – like our forefathers who stared up at the sky in fear and wonder at comets with that nasty feeling in their stomachs which was, ‘Erm, doesn’t that mean the approach of mass extinction or something?’ ..But just now it has a lovely cosy fresh look about it.

The other good news is that I got the research post I was praying for – so I will shortly be applying myself to the task of becoming Dr of Daytime Television and Drinking Coffee Studies at Bournemouth University. This involves lots of (1) and a bit of time watching old Panorama episodes and picking up the kids from school and listening to radio 4 while looking out at the uncut grass in the backgarden. Excellent!

This is a tad unreal in fact. Westwood is kind of picture postcard 1950s rural, white, middle-class leafy England. You walk along the road and you can only hear birdsong. It’s all a bit Twilight Zone and I’m scared I’ll wake up and find myself in my Pod asleep amongst the rubbish on my desk with Jaweed giving bad stock market investment advice to anyone in earshot.

Right, I must get back to (1). Apologies for the mass mailing. In my next posting I’ll try and give some basic advice about the bureaucracy and cost of moving and any questions or topics you’d like me to cover about life on Mars I’ll answer in the order asked. Missing you all and hope to see you here for a pint, or in France for goats cheese, wild forest mushrooms and fine wines.

By the way, I’m still on dial-up, (there’s a war on don’t you know), and this laptop doesn’t seem to have a picture editor to reduce the size of pics so I’ll try and send some photos next time. Toodlepip!

Cheers,

Dave