I’ve been given a break – Mark’s mum has Oliver for the afternoon and I am giddy. Not because I am putting my feet up. No, I am running around like a mad woman cleaning with a grin on my face. Pouring boiled water and cleaner into things that haven’t been touched in months. Washing baby seats and baby gym mats. After this little real break, a blog catch up, I am going to pack as much as I can to take to Canada and do more laundry. And start early on dinner! Wahoo! There is seriously something wrong with me when this stuff makes me so deliriously happy.

Friday night we had a break as well – Mark’s sister offered to babysit on her own accord so we made plans to go out for dinner. Mark found this place in his mum’s village, very near us, that is a completely randomly wonderful restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Bellows Mill also acts as a B&B. It’s a small restaurant with a small menu but we have had some fantastic food there. On Friday night I had grilled sea bream with baby leeks, parmesan mash and a creamy tomato sauce and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I love this place, and of course it’s super convenient to drop off Oliver at a family member to babysit. We are going again for my birthday when I get back from Canada.

Gotta go, there’s a stovetop that’s crying out for a scrub!

I’ve got Canada on the brain (yes I do try to retain and celebrate my national identity in this country, but it’s not always on my brain).

1. Mark’s permanent resident visa is done and dusted. Approved without needing an interview so no Green Card scenario happening here. He’s actually gone to the High Commission today with his passport to get it inserted. Now we just wait for Oliver’s citizenship and it looks like our plans to move in the autumn are on track.
2. Instead of our normal London celebrations for Canada Day (the cake and free booze at Canada House + the street party on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden), this year there is a big festival in Trafalgar Square! Only catch is it’s on 30th June and not the proper day (there’s a Pride Festival there that day). Canada Day in London will be broadcast during the 1st July coverage from Ottawa so you canucks look out for us. There’s street hockey, live music and stalls, sponsored by big companies (thanks Dad for the RBC contribution, I am sure you are behind it). We even get to see Ron Sexsmith for free! I just gotta find my maple leaf face decal thingys now. I was asked (like other Network Canada members) to be an ambassador on the day but I’d prefer to enjoy it with Oliver and Mark instead.
3. I’d probably be a better ambassador for Canada than Richard from Big Brother however. I don’t think he’s doing much for the UK viewing publics’ views on us! I didn’t like him when he first went in, in fact I was embarrassed. Then I started liking him as he took the father figure role and sorted things out between people. And now he’s just boring and annoying the rest of them. And he talks funny. Probably like I sound sometimes to you folks at home. Not sure how long he’s been in the UK though. Oh wait, I found this. Actually, after reading that, I might like him a little better. But that’s the way with Big Brother – I change my mind on who’s most annoying the whole time.
4. And to sum up the Canadiana, of course in like 10 days I am going home for the first time in 2 years. Despite the fact I am dreading the 7 or 8 hour flight on my own with Oliver, I’m looking forward to going. No, not just for the Taco Bell and grandma food. There’s lots of new babies of friends to meet, lots of catching up to do that doesn’t happen so well on email, and a weekend visit to Ottawa which always makes me happy.

We had a big adventure yesterday, as at the last minute I found out about a leaving lunch for a work mate going on maternity leave.

We drove in with Mark in the morning, who was going to be spending the day at Ealing train depot. So Oliver and I took the tube from Ealing Common to Piccadilly Circus (his first time on the underground), and then I found us a Starbucks to have breakfast in.

This was fine, except when I needed to change him. I will do it on the floor if the bathroom looks reasonably clean (he’s on a changing mat anyway, it’s not a big deal) but the one there was completely disgusting and there was no way either of us were going to use it.

So we trekked up Regent Street trying to find somewhere I could do the job. Eventually I came across an incredibly posh Mamas and Papas store, but I had to wait outside for 10 minutes like some eager shopper for it to open. As he had also thrown his teething toy on the floor of the train and had nothing else to chew on to keep him happy, I also used the opportunity to buy him new toys that could attach to the straps on the pushchair. It’s another learning point – tie everything down that you can or it will get chucked out of the pram.

Then we continued our walk up past Oxford Circus to visit some colleagues on Newman Street – but I hadn’t told anyone we would be around, so we only visited with one person briefly. I had a shirt to return to a shop that I had bought in Milton Keynes, so we returned in the direction of Oxford Circus and did a bit more window shopping. I would have gone shopping crazy but I didn’t really have any capacity to carry anything as I was carrying him in a pushchair and a giant nappy bag up and down flights of stairs all day at underground stations (with some help, but not a lot). Around this point, 11am or so, he actually fell asleep on his own for a few minutes (almost unheard of) but he had been awake since about 6:30am.

We then took the bus down to Victoria, and walked to the building where my old office is. On the way we passed a guy who was about to beat the crap out of a Westminster traffic officer, so that was fun to see. We then sat in the canteen so I could feed Oliver lunch, and ran into lots of colleagues who were asking after the both of us. Tried to visit my desk but no one was in my actual office.

There was a staff meeting going on about the restructure, so we waited until that was over and then Rubina came down to meet us, looking glorious at 8 months’ pregnant. A few others joined us and we headed down to a pub for lunch. As usual, Oliver charmed them all. And I got to dispense some very helpful assvice (thanks Jamie for that wonderful word) like ‘go out and do whatever YOU want for the next few weeks ’cause that ain’t going to happen for a while’.

Actually, I have to say how excellent he was yesterday as we ended up pounding the pavement for a good 4 or 5 hours yesterday and he didn’t have anywhere near his normal amount of sleep – but he still had smiles and laughs for everyone.

After lunch, we walked to Sloane Square tube to get back to Ealing Common for our ride home together. One of the things that does make me sad about moving away from here is when I see little Chelsea school children walking home with their mums (hmm – nannies, perhaps, not mums) in little immaculate and cute school uniforms, including straw hats with ribbon, and posh little accents. And then I think of Oliver in a rough and tumble Canadian public school ground. Oh well.

On Tuesday, we went to the clinic and I finally managed to ask my health visitor about his skin. He’s had red patches on his body, mostly on his back but other assorted places too, for a while now which I was treating as boring old dry skin, but they seem to have gotten worse. I’ve been thinking that it could be an allergy but there isn’t any food except milk that he has consisently (e.g. if it was a particular vegetable, wouldn’t it have gone if he didn’t have it after a few weeks?) and no other symptoms seem to be associated with the rash. We also wondered about allergy to washing powder though I only use non-bio. Anyway, she says it’s baby excema and he’ll grow out of it, and we’ve now got some prescribed cream and bath stuff.

If anyone ever captures me, ties me up, holds me for ransom, or whatever, and they want to torture me until I spill something or give them all my wordly possessions, all they will have to do is play a tape of the screaming that I have been putting up with for the past 2 days and they will have what they want and more.

I swear, I am about to chuck him or me out the window. So Mark has taken him out and I have a quiet house for a brief few moments. I can’t do anything to stop it and it’s gotten so much worse since the last screaming bout. Teething gel, teething rings, food, milk, water – nothing can stop it. Except occasionally a game of ‘Where’s Oliver’ (e.g. smothered under a blanket) or Piper wagging her tail in his face.

I would record it and include it as a sound clip on here, but then I would be responsible for bursting the ear drums of those who visit, and that wouldn’t be very nice.

I’m beginning to understand how people can shake babies. Please note I am not about to shake my baby, except of course for the giggle-inducing shaking that occurs on knees and on changing table which does not cause brain damage even though he likes it pretty rough.

In better news, we are moving on to mushy chunks of food from completely blenderised mush. He’s nibbled some of my toast, some omelette from a pub the other day (probably full of salt but whatever) and here he even fed himself some overripened peach:

Better go. Not sure how much longer the quiet will last. Should be cleaning up and bringing in laundry but I can do that when he goes to bed so I should enjoy the break for once.

We don’t have World Cup Fever in this house, unlike most of the rest of the country. We didn’t watch the first match; instead we went swimming and went out for lunch and enjoyed having the roads and amenities to ourselves. It’s a good thing I didn’t marry somebody who watches any sport.

I feel slightly more into it today, however, as they did a special on Caribbean snacks on ‘This Morning’ (as England are playing Trinidad and Tobago) and all it takes to increase my interest is some rum punch. One sour, two sweet, three strong, four weak – okay, so my recipe is from Barbados and not Trini, but I am inspired and I might have to make some. Even though alcohol seriously gets to me now after not having very much in the past year and a half. So tonight I think we are going to have some bbq’d sausages, salads and yummy rum punch. And I will root for Trinidad and Oliver will root for…
At least there’s no divided loyalties this time (unlike the Olympics), and no allegiance to Canada where apparently only children are any good at football/soccer.

It’s still very hot and every night is an adventure in trying to bring the temperature of Oliver’s room down. We want for air conditioning.

It’s extremely hard to type a proper entry when he’s sitting on my knee and insists on flinging his toy on the floor every 2 minutes despite the fact he wants it in his mouth. But throwing things on the floor is fun!

So pictures of the family BBQ (with relatives from New Zealand and Derbyshire) and no more words:

Oliver with his Great Uncle Derek:

With Great Grandma Bowman:

With Mummys’ cousins Paul and Claire:

And just to prove how white trash/chav we really are, the requisite ‘let’s pretend the baby is drinking beer’ photo:

It’s gone very very hot here and it’s going to get worse. And it makes Oliver not himself – he’s not eating very much, I think just because milk probably doesn’t taste that great when you really want a cold beer. Ha ha. I have tried to get some water in him but he’s never really liked it that much. I’m keeping him just in his nappy or in a short-sleeve body suit most of the time. Last night he slept just in his nappy with his summer-weight sleeping bag (like a cotton sheet except constructed so he can’t kick it off). We also got a little fan for his room that probably isn’t doing too much but it makes me feel better. I need to get Mark to set up our paddling pool so we can cool down. Am I allowed that in a hose-pipe ban/drought order area?

Yesterday we finally visited my work and met lots of colleagues who cooed over him. We had breakfast in the canteen, then Oliver hung out with the Family Learning staff while I had a meeting (and you can find out the results of this meeting here!), and then we went to lunch at an interesting little Italian place in Maida Vale. It was decorated with Madonna and Marilyn Monroe and naked ladies which of course I shielded his eyes from. And good god it was hot and sticky in the city.

Mark came and got us and we all went to Hammersmith. After a brief bit of shopping, Mark went back to the train depot there and Oliver and I met Anne after her art class who treated us to (iced) coffee and cake. It was nice to be back in the city after a 6 month break and I think we’ll try to go back more often. There were lots of other work colleagues we didn’t get to see, including Rubina going on mat leave next month, so I hope we’ll be back down there soon.

I’m thinking that I must be due to get hit by a bus. Although now we live in the middle of nowhere, there’s like one bus a week so my odds must be considerably reduced being outside of an urban area.

Anyway, the point is I am feeling lucky!

Yesterday I had a meeting with the HR Director at work. A few weeks ago I sent them a letter stating that:

• I changed my mind and was coming back to work after 6 months instead of a year
• I needed to put Oliver in the creche at work for 8 August – 8 September
• I needed my desk to be moved to the building the creche is in for that time
• I needed a place in the car park for that time

The reason for the early return was that Mark was being made redundant this autumn, so any additional financial intake would be a good thing, and I only discovered in February or March that if I didn’t go back to work for at least 3 months, a large part of my already tiny maternity pay would have to be paid back. The part that wasn’t mentioned was that I was only planning to go back for the 3 months; with a likely move to Canada at the end of the year, and not really wanting to be there anyway, I was going to hand in my notice as soon as I got back.

The bad bit was going to be the month with Oliver in creche. The commute – trying to keep him happy. Disrupting his ‘routine’. Having him not see his parents except at lunch and briefly in the evenings before bed, after having had us around (or least me) all the time for the past 7 months. I am really happy to eventually have him in childcare at least part time, but it seemed a big sudden change for a little boy and we were expecting a month of hell.

However, when I let work know about my return, I was called in to discuss my position in light of a restructure, not really boding well for my position. There are major cuts to adult education budgets in the 2006/7 academic year; we all knew it was coming, and that there would be an effect on salaried positions. And yesterday they let me know that my post was being deleted. At this point, I’d be looking at redeployment, just complicating everything.

So somehow, without being a very good negotiator or poker player, I have victoriously emerged with the following:

• I will return to work for 2 months but not actually be present (a combination of ‘garden leave’ and annual leave
• My last day of service will be the end of August (meaning I will have worked there over 3.5 years)
• I will then receive a tax-free redundancy payment (based on length of service) and 2 months’ salary in lieu of notice

It is bittersweet; I was really looking forward to coming back for myself. I was going to start using different parts of my brain again, to once again be immersed in the hustle and bustle of London, to work in a fantastic part of the city that despite living here for 4 years still smacks me in the face with awe when I see the sights on a bus journey to a meeting. I get to work in Soho, in the West End, in Pimlico, in Paddington. My neighbourhood includes the Prime Minister and the Queen (okay, so they don’t normally partake in adult education classes). I would like to think that I have contributed a lot to my organisation in the past few years, and helped some people access education and training that they might not have been able to get to. I would also hope that by leaving I am sparing one of my staff from going. ‘Cause I was going to leave anyway, and this is going to be so much easier on Oliver. Despite the bad moments, I am going to miss it.

And my auctions have done so well on Ebay that I am just feeling seriously lucky, and I think I need to spoil myself with a few new wardrobe pieces and stop just buying clothes for the kid.

Randomness:

• The best thing about having nice warm weather is that I can deplete the giant pile of never-ending laundry that has haunted us for months simply by drying it all outside on the line. I can see the floor in our bedroom!
• We are having excellent weather this week, going up to the high 20′s this weekend. Which likely means this is my summer! And then it will be over. Welcome to Britain. Oh well, I have a pretty good farmer’s tan going already from my Paris burn.
• Can someone explain to me why moving to a farm in the country side, full of fresh cut grass and all sorts of plants and trees, seems to have eradicated my terrible allergies? Can one only have allergies when living in an urban area?
• Ebay is a funny thing. When they recently had a reduced selling fee day, I listed a bunch of baby stuff I wanted to get rid of that I thought might sell. As an afterthought, I added the table number/menu holders from the wedding (which are actually wire photo holders from Ikea). The baby stuff is apparently not very interesting. I am, however, going to make a massive profit on the photo holders!! The problem, of course, with selling, is that I am spending a lot of time and there and I end up shopping. Only for Oliver, at least.
• We bought a cheap little BBQ from Sainsburys last night as I am missing our old BBQ. At the old house, before I was around, Mark constructed a monstrosity of a brick BBQ that had enough room to cook about 50 steaks at once. Okay it was too big, but it was great, and he usually cooked with bits of wood for that campfire touch. This time, we’ve got about enough room for 5 steaks and we are going to be cooking with charcoal, but this good weather has got me in the mood for some charring of meat and veg.
• This weekend, we are going to stay in Belper in Derbyshire to see my family from New Zealand (my dad’s brother’s family) including one cousin, Melanie, that I haven’t seen for over 20 years. They are having a party at the cottages they are staying at, and I am really looking forward to it – sort of a mini family reunion except missing out my immediate family in Canada and more family in Newcastle.

I’m up late trying to win something on ebay, so this gives me an opportunity to finally post about our trip, even though I should be in bed.

We got to France last Friday night. We actually missed our ferry due to terrible traffic on the M25, called P&O to re-book a later one, didn’t because it was going to cost an arm and a leg, go to the ferry port and got put on the next ferry without having to pay more. There’s a lesson – anyone who is ever late for a ferry, don’t re-book!

Anyway, Friday night we stayed in grotty Calais in a cheap hotel.

Saturday, we headed south east to the Vimy Canadian War Memorial. I knew in advance that I was going to be disappointed as they are doing a major refurbishment project on it and it’s entirely covered in scaffolding. However, my grandfather told me I needed to visit it while we lived here, so we did. It was still interesting and good to go. It’s a First World War site and the ground is still pock-marked, and fenced off due to possible unexploded munitions. The German and Canadian front lines are preserved, and are incredibly close. The land was given by the French to Canada to thank them for their efforts, and it’s a place to be Canadian with pride (even if I am totally not into wars and getting involved in them!). We also visited Canadian Cememtary No. 2 and also saw many other signs for Canadian cemetaries and memorials along the roads we took soon after.

Then, even more disappointingly, we headed further south east to the little town of Fresnoy-le-Grand. Why would anyone go there? ‘Cause it’s the home of Le Creuset. However, don’t go, because the factory shop has very little at any kind of reduced price unless you collect really odd colours of the cookware. We ended up getting a piece of silicon bakeware that was pretty cheap, and a utensil holder thingy just because we had made the trip specially. Shame about that place.

We then took the quick route (read: stopped being cheap and paid the tolls to go on the motorway) to the suburbs of Paris. We had booked a hotel for 2 nights in Maisons Lafitte, which is on the west side of the city. I was immediately impressed with the place, and we ate dinner that night at a sidewalk table admiring the attractive buildings and trees.

Sunday was our big day in Paris. We took the RER train into the city, and go out at Les Invalides. We sat out in the sunshine while Oliver had lunch and all the things I had seen and done there a few years ago with Jean and Michelle came flooding back!

This time, I wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower as last time we saw it at night and didn’t go up. So we did. And we waited in a queue for over an hour to do so. Bought some good frites for lunch up there, too. It was a really nice day so the views were spectacular.

We came down, and decided on bateaux mouches – a sightseeing cruise on the Seine to save our feet and to save having to carry Oliver up and down flights of stairs at Metro stations (the city is highly inaccessible). It was pretty good – you were able to see the bridges obviously in better detail than you can on the banks, and some of them are very attractive. And we went up from the Eiffel Tower around past Notre Dame, and back again.

We then took the Metro over near Notre Dame to get some dinner in the Latin Quarter. We wandered around looking at all the cheap 3 course menu deals and settled on a place where the waiter immediately made a fuss of Oliver and it turned out to be pretty good. Mark had moules marinieres and a fondue. I had warm goat’s cheese salad and boeuf bourgignon (spelling?!). We both had a crepe with chocolate sauce and ice cream for dessert. Really decent food and all for 15 Euros. You can’t do that in London.

We ate pretty good all weekend, actually. Two lunches merely consisted of a baguette and ham and camembert bought in supermarkets and just that was excellent. Food in France is damn good.

After dinner, we returned to the suburbs and said goodbye to a most attractive city.

On Monday, we drove a slow way back to Calais- taking a country route north west of Paris to the Atlantic coast. We did some shopping at a hypermarket in Boulogne, where we had shopped about a year and a half ago for all the alcohol for the wedding (no, we didn’t return any this time, as much as we need to). Had dinner outside of Calais, and in another stroke of luck, drove through the centre of Calais to catch the return ferry instead of taking the ring road, which brought us straight to the front of a queue of cars and trucks a few miles long.

All in all, a pretty good weekend. Becomes much more complicated and tiring with a 5 month old in tow, but still a good time was had by all. I wanted to put photos with this story, but I am having Blogger problems again, so if you are interested you will have to see them on Flickr (left hand side of this page links to my photos on there).