My child is not like me

‘I am a dumb reader!’ This is the Raging Bull’s damning verdict about herself. She hasn’t made a huge amount of progress with her reading at school. For her, progress is defined by the color of her reading book (color denotes level). She may not be able to read words very well, but she is very good with colors.

I say what every parent would say in the circumstance: ‘But you can be a good reader. You just need a bit more practice and to try a bit harder. You will eventually get better at it.’

This is not cutting it with my feisty five-year-old. ‘Reading is boring,’ she announces sulkily, shooting me a look that dares me to contradict her.

For someone who has loved reading all her life, this is basically like sticking a needle in my eye and twisting it.

The truth is, she may not actually like reading, and I’m going to have to come to terms with it. At the moment, I’m hoping this might have something to do with the fact that her ‘reading’ books consist of people called Pip and Kip and a dog named Fluffy. They are about as interesting as a week of rain in the middle of summer.

So I gamely say to her: ‘But the books get more interesting when they have chapters.’

I don’t think she buys this. She’s listened to me read chapter books to her big sister and she’d rather pick her toes.

It makes me wonder why it would bother me if my child turned out to dislike the things I love, because I think it would. I could pretend to be a cool-as-anything parent, who would not give a shit as long as the children are happy. And I do want them to be very happy, but is it so bad to want them to share my love of Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie?

(A disclaimer: if she didn’t like shopping and clothes, fine. She will actually save herself a lot of money and angst. But books, for crying out loud, she has to like books.)

Already, the Raging Bull has rejected another of my lifelong loves. She took a handful of ballet classes and concluded that they were ‘boring’.

Once she got over the novelty of the tutu and the pink leotard, she couldn’t be bothered with all the discipline. All she wanted was to leap through the air and pretend to be a fairy, so she didn’t see the point of doing repetitive exercises.

In fact, her attention span seems to be about five minutes unless she’s watching the television. If it’s related to watching a screen, she could be there for hours.

I think it’s easy to assume that our children will turn out a bit like us. We look for the similarities in our kids and not so much the differences; but the odds are that they will turn out more different than the same.

After all, they are individuals and not miniature versions of their parents. Believe me, I don’t want them to turn out like me, but I’d like my two girls to share some of my interests. I guess that’s what it comes down to.

In the eight years I’ve been a mother, I’ve concluded – very unscientifically – that the Chatterbox more closely resembles me, with the Raging Bull closer in personality to her ‘wild’ father.

At least her wild father likes books, though.

I am not yet teetering on the edge of total despair as far as the Raging Bull is concerned. I figure that once Kip and Pip are out of the way, she might come round to the idea of sitting down with a good book. She might even let me read a chapter book aloud without getting distracted before Chapter 2.

But I’m not entirely betting on it.

Have your kids started showing signs of not liking something you love and how do you feel about it?

What price gentrification?

The new Starbucks at Finsbury Park

When I arrived in London almost 18 years ago this October I really didn’t know what I had coming in that first year. Had I known, I probably wouldn’t have boarded the plane. Some of what I discovered shocked me. I do have this memory of walking around either in open-mouthed wonder or bafflement.

By accident more than design, I eventually crash landed in a place called Finsbury Park. How do I explain this place about 10 minutes to central London by train? To an American, it might have a lovely ring. Expansive green spaces, surrounded by independent shops, perhaps? Or an Agatha Christie English village relocated to north London? Hardly.

The only thing Finsbury Park had going for it when I moved in was the fact that you could very quickly leave and get somewhere else, thanks to its excellent transport links. Rent was pretty cheap, too, by London standards at least.

My early memories are dominated by snarling, traffic-clogged streets, pollution and dirt. To get to my flat I used to have to walk by a rotisserie chicken place, where the meat turned on a stick in the window, giving off an unusual sickly smell.

There was also the man who lived in the phone box – remember those? – with some leg condition that made walking nearly impossible. He also smelled, worse than the chicken I’m afraid to say.

Then there were the prostitutes on the corner near our flat. They used to hang out at the bus stop. One of them even showed up wearing a bandage on her head one morning. That didn’t stop her from trying to drum up a bit of business.

The only shops were depressing-looking places, badly lit, selling a variety of basic food staples: bread, tinned food, milk and of course alcohol. Almost every shop sold cheap beer.

The new local theatre

You could get coffee, but only if you were willing to walk into a place guarded by chain-smoking North African men who lingered in doorways. Women weren’t exactly welcomed into these establishments.

Once, someone tried to steal my wallet at the bus stop, only to scream obscenities at me when I caught him going through my bag. Yes, the thieves were brazen, but I always felt pretty safe because the streets were rarely empty.

The bright spots were the bagel place, with its smell of fresh bread wafting out the door, and a cavernous stationery store. It wasn’t exactly like Staples in the US, but I could find many things in there and it was run by a very cheerful Indian family.

‘It will improve one day,’ the English Husband used to say about our down-at-heel neighborhood. And we would both nod and talk about how it’s so close to zone 1 and so convenient for trains. As predicted, Finsbury Park has undergone quite a transformation.

The latest and most absolute sign that it’s totally gentrified is the opening of a brand-new Starbucks right across the street from the tube station. It has replaced a tatty old pub frequented by hardened Irish drinkers and the colourful locals.

They are gone, swept away by the new cream walls, tasteful furniture and the smell of fresh paint. Also gone are most of the coffee shops filled by idle men who called to you sometimes as you walked down the street.

You can now find a thriving local theatre, occupying what was once the mouth of a back alley; new restaurants, including a busy Korean; and an arts building with a café on the ground floor selling food and artisan bread. It’s probably organic bread too.

There are plenty of delis, some of them even offering wine-tasting evenings. There are still Afro Caribbean shops selling row upon row of wigs, but I suspect these will soon be gone, taking their smell of chemicals with them.

The old pubs have been tarted up and the shops that previously sold cheap beer have mostly been replaced by supermarket chains, all of them well lit and welcoming.

The ground floor of this building has a cafe and bakery

We own a small flat in Finsbury Park and undoubtedly we have benefited from this gentrification. The irony is that we can no longer afford to bring up our family here because the gulf between the price of our flat and a house might as well be as big as an ocean.

Where once I would have happily packed up and left, now I can’t afford 1,200 square feet.

According to the latest Land Registry figures, the value of property in London has increased by 21.6% since last year; prices have risen five-fold since 1995, the year before I got here. Needless to say, my salary has hardly kept pace.

So we continue to rent a slightly bigger flat than the one we own, and I can console myself with the knowledge that now at least I can find a coffee on almost every street corner – and Starbucks coffee at that.

Progress? It’s hard to say.

On writing and aging

Not really a greying writer’s best friend

Writing is a bit like exercise. There might a phase in your life when you’re at the gym three days a week, maybe running up and down hills or swimming lengths in the pool. But then you hit a slump and suddenly you fall out of the habit of doing it. It then becomes a struggle to get going again.

Writing can be like that. If it’s not a habit – a regular fixture in your week – something else will swallow up the time you set aside for it. It’s worse than writer’s block because you don’t even get the metaphorical blank page out to stare at it. You don’t even bother trying.

So that’s partly to explain why my blog has been frozen in July. I fell out of the habit of writing and couldn’t seem to get myself motivated.

In these two months I’ve been silent, not much of great consequence has happened. My life is a bit like Seinfeld. It’s a series of episodes about not very much. The only difference is that I’m not as funny as Jerry.

But I’ll relate this short, cautionary tale from a recent life episode.

It was an ordinary evening after work. The kids were sitting down to dinner. That is to say, one of the kids had practically inhaled her food while the other one was picking at it and claiming she wasn’t hungry.

I’m doing my best to ignore them because I’m smearing on some makeup before a night out with a group of friends. Looking in the mirror surprises me these days; I’m always mildly surprised not to look about 30. On this occasion my gaze zooms in on all the silvery strands of hair. If that gives you the impression they are silky, think again. These hairs are wiry. You could probably use them to scour a pan if you collected enough of them.

Yep, my grey hairs have ramped up some sort of military campaign – and they’ve reached the point of launching an assault on all fronts. It’s another joyous part of aging, a process that has picked up some pace in the last three or four years.

I haven’t quite decided what to do about all these white hairs. So far I’ve been yanking them out, which makes them come out even more wiry. They are now sticking out of my head at weird angles and looking more obvious than if I’d left them alone.

But I stumble upon what I think might be a solution, albeit a very temporary one. What if I used a black marker – my hair is black – to blend them in with the other hair? Yes, this is desperate.

I borrow a marker from the Chatterbox but it’s not really doing anything at all, so I trade up to the permanent marker. The results are marginally better, I note, but I don’t suddenly feel like a new woman with glossy hair.

The other thing I notice is that my head smells like permanent marker. I should have really foreseen this problem. Not that you’d ever be tempted to replicate this at home, but I’m just saying, don’t.

A slide fit for a royal

Jupiduu’s artwork shows what the slide looks like at the royal residence

I don’t have much curiosity about the royal family in England. I don’t spend my days wondering how Kate Middleton keeps her hair looking good in high humidity. But I couldn’t resist this little piece of royal tittle-tattle.

Prince George, the heir to the throne, will turn one on July 22. According to a press release that landed in my email, the lucky birthday boy will be getting a new blue whale slide from a German start-up company called Jupiduu.

The company is clearly happy to trumpet this announcement and have backed up their claims by saying that the order was placed by Prince George’s nanny. They supposedly name-checked her by going to various British tabloids.

I guess what tipped them off was the delivery address of ‘Kensington Gardens’.

So I thought I’d let you see what a baby slide fit for a king looks like. And you can treat your prince or princess to the handmade slide, too, since it’s available to buy from Amazon. I am in no way endorsing it, though, since I’m far too big to test it out.

 

 

 

Happy July 4th

The Chatterbox’s impression of the Stars and Stripes

Happy 4^th of July! Here are some little facts to ponder on the day America declared its independence from the British.

According to the Pew Research Center, over half of Americans are proud of their nationality (56%) but only 44% still think the country’s best years are to come, with the younger generations being the most optimistic.

The percentage of Americans who think the U.S. is the #1 country in the world has dropped by 10% since 2011. Only 28% now believe it holds top status, perhaps a reflection of China’s rising influence.

But 58% of Americans still believe the USA is one of the greatest countries in the world.

In my hometown of London, obviously no one makes much of Independence Day apart from a passing curiosity.

People might occasionally ask what’s traditional, which leaves me kind of stumped. I usually end up muttering something about barbecues, beer and fireworks. Not exactly the most inspiring answer, but it’s what I remember doing.

I’m out of touch with what it means to be American these days. I feel like it’s an integral part of my identity and yet I now find it harder and harder to pinpoint precisely what makes me American apart from my accent.

The weirdest thing is watching your kids grow up to have a national identity totally distinct from yours. I know it’s what my Mexican parents went through, but I never appreciated how strange it is to let go of traditions you grew up with.

If I mention July 4th to my kids, they wouldn’t have a clue what it means. Theirs is a world inhabited by kings and queens, not presidents and pioneers.

But after nearly half my life spent somewhere other than where I was born, I’ve started to question whether I’m now nothing more than a mix of clashing cultures.

Here’s why I might not be as American as apple pie:

• I hate driving. At some point in the last 18 years, I Iost my love for cars. Driving a car, in fact, fills me with fear not a feeling of freedom.
• I like walking places. Despite my southern California upbringing, one in which I never even walked to the local shop, I now find myself relying on my two legs to get me around.
• I’m not a great fan of the great outdoors. I don’t know if it’s the inhospitable weather in the UK, but you won’t catch me climbing mountains, camping or making smores by a fire.
• I don’t like baseball. To be fair, I hate cricket too and don’t have a clue how it’s played.
• I don’t know the words to the Star Spangled Banner. Yes, it pains me to admit this, but I get lost somewhere after ‘twilight’s last gleaming’ and have to fake it. Mind you, I wouldn’t be the first to mime along to it. Beyoncé, anyone?
• My knowledge of American history is hazy to say the least. Yes, I know the dates of the Civil War but don’t ask me to explain anything about the Boston Tea Party or American politics. Some of the scenes in House of Cards, for instance, are as incomprehensible to me as a foreign language.
• I have a peculiar English habit of apologizing for stuff that isn’t my fault.

Despite my persistent doubts about my nationality, I still consider myself more or less an American. What is America, anyway, but a confusing mix of different identities thrown together?

A little related news from the other side of the pond: one of the 12 surviving copies of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence will be on display at the British Library from next year as part of an exhibition about the Magna Carta.

Since I have never in my life seen these important documents in America’s history, I will be visiting. I suspect this still won’t help me decipher the plot of House of Cards.

Love is in the air

The Raging Bull knows more about flirting than I do

It’s summer and love is in the air. The Raging Bull, four and three quarters, has (at last count) 100 billion boyfriends. She tells me this nonchalantly one afternoon, flashing me her innocent puppy-dog eyes. It’s a figure she enjoys repeating to anyone who will listen.

I’ve only met a couple of the boyfriends so far. One is an older ‘man’, about 7, who was mortified when the Raging Bull grabbed his hand as we were walking down the street. She then ramped up her affections slightly by leaning over to kiss him. I’m afraid this didn’t go over too well, but she was nonplussed.

The other little boy has been chosen as the Raging Bull’s next playdate friend. They’ve spent a good while jumping off sofas and laughing with each other at the local coffee shop. They seem to have bonded over their babyccinos.

Meawhile, I have it on good authority (her older sister’s) that she is actually engaged to be married to someone else.

It’s all very cute, and I laugh along with her games of chasing boys in the playground, which currently has the innocence of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.

Part of me wonders, though, if there comes a time when a playdate between a boy and a girl is considered awkward. I can’t imagine inviting a boy over for a playdate when he’s approaching double digits. It just seems a violation of some sort of unwritten rule.

Playdates seem to be governed by a secret code that goes something like this:

1. Don’t assume you can go to someone’s house over and over again. Eventually you will need to reciprocate or face a shrivelling up of invitations.
2. Children with working parents might not be popular playdate friends for the reason stated above.
3. Some playdates will involve dinner or lunch; others never will. But if your child has eaten at someone else’s house, you should probably think about doing the same for their little angel.
4. At some point the parents don’t expect you to tag along on the playdate; they’d prefer it if you just made yourself scarce (unless you happen to be friends).
5. Boys and girls don’t tend to mix very much unless the parents know each other.
6. Some playdates will involve numerous emails, text messages and planning. Others will happen spontaneously.

I can only assume (hope?) that one day the Raging Bull will snap out of her boyfriend phase and find the male sex repulsive. Isn’t this what happens to all little girls? It certainly happened to me for more years than some would say is healthy. The British Husband will argue that I still hold the male sex in suspicion. They are to be tolerated, of course, but not always trusted. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Father’s Day

I don’t know whether this is a Freudian slip or if it’s just a straightforward spelling mistake, but the message came out as: ‘Happy farter’s day’.

Whether she intended to or not, the Chatterbox has managed to capture an essence of her father’s personality.

To all dads out there, happy father’s day.

The white t-shirt for the 40ish woman

My latest purchase. Transparent or what?

Ah, summer. If you live in the UK like I do, summer is not something for which you hold your breath. Compared to a very large part of the world, summer is a blink-and-you-might-miss-it moment. Despite the fickle nature of the weather in these climes, I persist with dressing for summer, shivers and all. Call me a masochist.

Hence, my quest for the perfect white t-shirt. This shouldn’t be difficult, you might say. T-shirts abound. You can probably buy a pack of them from American brand Fruit of the Loom for less than $10.

But the thing about a fashionable white t-shirt is that it has to be exactly the right cut to be flattering. It has to sit just so – a length that would look good left loose or tucked in. It has to serve multiple purposes, you see, and numerous occasions. The perfect white t-shirt could be dressed up or down, worn for cocktails or for lounging by the pool.

Perhaps you are now starting to see my predicament. Now let me add a little something else to the equation: my age. Somewhere north of 35, women have to start regarding the appropriateness of clothes. It’s a minefield.

Not only do you have to buy things that fit your changing shape, you also have to start thinking about whether this item of clothing makes you look like a desperate middle-aged person trying to reclaim lost youth. ‘Hey, look at me,’ some outfits scream, ‘I am down with the kids.’ It’s the old mutton-dressed-as-lamb syndrome.

So what I have realized in my quest for this t-shirt is that the whole entire fashion world is conspiring against women of a certain age. Do they think we are past the age of caring?

For the life of me, I cannot seem to find a white t-shirt that isn’t as transparent as a politician trying to wriggle out of difficult questions. They are so universally thin and wispy, a breath of wind would plaster them to your skin. And on certain days, just walking down the street in London is like being in a wind tunnel with lashing rain.

The result is that these t-shirts are not flattering at all, especially for women who no longer have stomachs like Rihanna. I am not particularly squishy around the middle, but I don’t think I can pull off this see-through look any more, not even on the hottest day of the year.

So what is a woman to do? I honestly despair. I finally broke down and bought one of these willowy shirts hoping for the best. But when I put it on in front of the mirror at home, I thought it made me look weird. It was as unforgiving as the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages.

Another joy of being 40. I’ll add it to the growing list of things. Can’t buy white t-shirts. Check!

I wonder what else awaits me around the corner, because what I have slowly realized – and forgive me if you know this already – is that the world is constructed around the needs and wants of the young. The younger, in fact, the better.

PS if you know where I can get a basic white t-shirt that isn’t frumpy or see-through, do tell.

We’re all short of time, survey finds

 

A great way to spend your precious spare time

Time. When you are a working parent or even just a parent to small children, time is taken up with so much stuff that it’s hard to understand just where it all goes. Much of it seems to be spent doing things of no consequence.

When I find myself with 20 minutes to spare in the evenings – perhaps while the overtired kids are slapping themselves in the bath – I feel fidgety. I don’t know whether I should be sitting down and staring out the window or doing some minor chore that is undoubtedly lurking somewhere.

There are always clothes to be put away, clothes to be sorted, dishes to be washed, dishes to be put away and half a dozen other things to boring to mention.

So it comes as very little surprise that a survey of British families has found that, on average, they only spend three hours of quality time together in a working week. Nearly a quarter of the families surveyed said they get less than one hour of ‘us time’ together between Monday to Friday.

Before we start moaning about how our modern lives are destroying the fabric of family life, let’s just say that I regard this survey as less than scientific or impartial.

The research – based on an online survey of 2,005 British parents in May 2014 – was commissioned by HouseTrip, a company that is conveniently using the findings to urge people to take a holiday together.

But there is probably some truth in it. I have no idea what ‘us time’ is during the week, frankly. I’m usually so exhausted by the time I get home, that the only thing I really want to do is crawl onto the sofa, eat dinner and stare at the television. Sometimes I’m not even sure what the people on the TV are saying, but watching the flashing images is of some comfort.

Which, it seems, is how the majority of people feel too. According to the same survey, 65% of couples (who are parents) spend their precious ‘spare time’ watching television over talking (33%) or having sex (31%).

That clears that up, then. I always knew I was average.

This lack of time also explains why the blog has been neglected for so long. It has been sitting in a corner of my mind, occupying my thoughts nearly every day. But I have not felt inspired to sit down and get anything written in the evenings because I am too damn tired after a day spent running around.

If one of the few things you can rouse yourself to do in the evenings is watch TV like a zombie, I can highly recommend season three of Curb Your Enthusiasm over any conversations you might be tempted to have with your partner or children.

American supermarket food comes to London

At least we’ll always have peanut butter

It’s not always easy being an expat in city like London but it has got easier. I went through a phase when I felt totally out of place. It was like looking at a work of art hung crookedly on a wall. Everything felt slightly tilted on its axis. I got dizzy.

I’ve lived here for so long now that I don’t even think of myself as an expat anymore. I seem to have a vague cultural identity these days. I’m neither this nor that. I try to come to terms with it.

According to the last census, in 2011, there are about 180,000 Americans living in London; these are people who were born in the United States. It’s not, for instance, people born in the UK to an American parent.

Perhaps because I believed my stay here was temporary and bound to end some day, I’ve never sought out places where I’m likely to encounter Americans en masse. Where would that be anyway? I don’t have a clue because everything here labelled ‘American’ seems to be massively stereotypical. It’ll be a sports bar or a place serving ribs, burgers and hot dogs.

If you want to find places with an American identity in London, your best bet is to hit the high street. There are Gap stores and Starbucks aplenty, more than I have in my hometown of San Diego, for instance. If you want a grande caramel mocha frappaccino with whip cream, you won’t go without.

Then there are things that remind me of home – like the sudden proliferation of Mexican food chains selling everything from burritos to enchiladas. There are no Taco Bells here, but you are likely to stumble across a margarita at some point. None of it is truly authentic, but that’s beside the point. What these places are selling is the Mexican experience for Brits. In other words, the food is barely one step above Tex-Mex most of the time.

The trend for Americana has invaded supermarkets too, even in my little enclave of north London, which is not particularly touristy. I recently visited my local Tesco and discovered a small section dedicated to American (junk) food. In fact, it’s the worst representation of American food you could assemble – and there is quite a lot of bad food to choose from.

If you want American junk food, you’ll have to pay

Should I despair that some buyer in Tesco seems to think that pink marshmallow spread qualifies as a product worth exporting to the UK? It makes pretzels look sophisticated. You can get Lucky Charms cereal, new varieties of M&Ms and Twinkies for a price. A box of the yellow sponge cakes will set you back $13 here. If you’re lucky you can find Aunt Jemima pancake mix and the syrup, also at inflated prices.

I wonder if other nationalities here feel the same. Do the Spanish cringe every time a new tapas restaurant opens on the corner with patatas bravas on the menu? Are the Italians sick to death of pizza and pasta restaurants claiming to offer an authentic experience? Do Indians get sick to death of serving creamy kormas to spice-averse Brits?

At least their food choices are vaguely palatable. It’s not easy to make a meal out of the ingredients you’d find in the American section of supermarkets here unless you’re happy to overdose on sugar.

I did give a large Tootsie Roll to my two hybrid kids after coming across it at Tesco. They weren’t complaining. And that’s pretty much in a nutshell. American food here seems to cater only to children.