This week at Chaos HQ

We've been living under a Charlie Brown cloud, jumping puddles and stopping to smell the roses.

Raindrops on rosebuds.

How is your week?

Let an umbrella be your smile

An asset, not a monkey for your back. 

Chaos HQ marched around with umbrellas last Sunday* to kick off Refugee Week, a collaborative effort to highlight the positive contributions of asylum-seekers to Britain.

We brolly-paraded for two reasons. Firstly out of a moral conviction best captured by Pete Postlethwaite in Brassed Off: 'If this lot were seals or whales you'd be up in arms but they're not are they? They're just ordinary, honest human beings and not one of them with an ounce of bloody hope left.'

Secondly, we suspected it might rain. It did.

I recently met a nice lady at the park who reminded me of Britain's historical commitment to sanctuary. We small-talked about children, crap weather and other bog standard things. Then she quietly told me that she was born in Prague and came to Britain at the age of seven via the Kindertransport rescue mission. This humanitarian movement saved thousands of continental Jewish children by resettling them in Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Bridge over troubled water. 

No matter how much I read about such things, to actually meet someone who was part of it was a very moving experience. She wishes, she said, that she could have seen her parents through adult eyes.

The man who kicked off our umbrella march along the Thames captured the mood perfectly when he said: 'We are proud to be British. We are proud to protect refugees. We are proud to be refugees.'

I was reminded of the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Gogol Bordello: 'Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants.'

One nation, united under a rain-cloud. 

Right now you can find posters up in the underground that helpfully point out that many British cultural staples - fish and chips, M&S, the Mini, the Milibands (delete as appropriate depending on your political and lifestyle leanings) - come from immigrant stock.

A very useful reminder to counter the constant printed downpour of negativity on the subject of immigration.

The kingdom belongs to such as these. 

So be proud this week and every week to support refugees - as British a thing as understated tea and royal bunting.**

Show your support even if you're little - like my pair of short migrants, who slept through the event in spite of a very boisterous drum core. And be welcoming even if your fellow humans are a little different from you.

Consider it theoretical karma in case you ever have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

We are all foreigners, somewhere.

*You can find great photo coverage of the event here.
**Actually, what on earth is bunting?

Sprung

The snowdrops are getting drenched outside, and they look very sad about it. Ana is convinced that we are under attack by a vicious gang of rain fairies. As a wiser scribbler than I might say in this situation: the sun is not shining, it is too wet to play, so we sit in the house on this cold, cold, wet day.

Thing One and Thing Two.

Last weekend, Ana and Papa busied themselves by finding computer ghosts in the closet, 'fixing' them, then sailing them off to the electronic tip in the sky. When they ran out of computer components to hammer on, they started building shapes out of marshmallows and chopsticks. Then they ate the marshmallows. Then they made more shapes for the purposes of eating more marshmallows. Not a bad way to learn about geometry, or about marshmallows.

I was consumed by cabin fever, so we popped out to the woods to check for super-duper-early bluebells. Naturally this silly idea led to more rain and zero bluebells.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? 

Of course, some wonderful things come out in the rain. Wiggly worms, puddles, the aforementioned malicious rain fairies. But rain does lead to soaking, which - as the snowdrops would tell you if they could - is sort of a drag. We braved garden playtime yesterday for a spell anyway. Ana spotted a frog, which upon closer inspection turned out to be two frogs. 'Looooook!' she bellowed in delight. 'The mama frog is hugging the papa frog!'

If my neighbourhood frogs are already so bursting with springtime enthusiasm, then I suppose sunshine, bluebells and an army of tadpoles must be just around the corner. I can only hope that Ana never outgrows her tendency to confront the general silliness of reality (and surely frog dating falls under silly) with relaxed cheerfulness - in part so that our future bird and bee conversations will be fairly straightforward.

But that's years away. For now it's still raining, and the speakers in my head are playing this song (of which Papa does an excellent rendition by the way):

Flying in thunderstorms

February in England, and in the overworked insult to injury department, it's raining. No thunder, no lightning, no terrifyingly beautiful thunderheads, just drizzle. Blerg above, blerg below, a generous helping of blerg on the side. 

 But on the bright side, the lovely Polish Mama on the Prairie has given Mañana Mama the Versatile Blogger Award - high praise indeed for an old stuck-in-a-rut type like me - thank you Polish Mama. As per the terms of the honour, here follow three mostly true trivialities about me (more versatile bloggers than I go for seven, but I'll stick to three to save on reader eye-strain).  

Firstly, I am a bookish* Lutheran from a Catholic town, which means that I am contractually obliged to regard Garrison Keillor as the patron saint of English majors everywhere.

Secondly, Cassiopeia is my favourite constellation in all of the big, black night sky. Sometimes I step outside, close my eyes, and picture Cassiopeia etched on the backs of my eyelids. Before you call me a wierdo, remember I live in Britain, where 'looking at the stars' is an old Scots phrase that means 'use your flipping imagination'. 

And lastly, a rambling childhood ghost** resurrected in my mind by the pitter-patter of little raindrops outside.
I grew up down a bumpy dirt road that crossed an arroyo by way of a dirt bridge*** with a tin culvert in the middle. One summer thunderclouds rolled over the llano in June and didn't leave until September. And one afternoon in that monsoon summer it rained - as per my favourite agricultural phrase -  like a cow pissing on a flat rock. A torrent of angry muddy water filled the arroyo and then - with a terrifying boom - blew the culvert clear out of the bridge like a cannon shot. When the flood subsided we found the culvert farther down the arroyo, washed up like a sad, beached corrugated whale in a sand bank. And there is stayed for years. 

There were huge, lush, neon-green weeds everywhere that summer, covered in velvety black caterpillars - a bit of a fluke in the high desert. In June a flotilla of construction vehicles descended on the neighbourhood to widen the narrow highway that connected our culvert-less dirt road to town. The builders paved the new stretch of road parallel to the old one, working hard all morning to drop tools by late afternoon. In the quiet evenings, my dad and I would sneak into the site armed with a pink bike and a set of training wheels, and he taught me how to ride.

The tarmac was so smooth, smoother than the proverbial baby's backside, and while I peddled like mad down the newborn road, wind in my face, the smell of the warmed summer earth and car exhaust in my nose, I used to shut my eyes and pretend I was flying.

On a good day, that's what it feels like to sit down to plonk out some nonsense on a keyboard. 

Learning to fly, ain't got wings. 

Anyway, in the spirit of versatility, and for any reader left awake, here's a handful of the wonderful stuff I like to read, when not otherwise occupied with imaginary stargazing and a Prairie Home Companion.

• Imperfect Pages Notes on motherhood and the gazillion things in orbit around it. 
• Life in the Country The antidote for the stuck-in-the-city blues.  
• Bod for Tea Delightful musings on being a mama and eating glorious food.
• Cranky Monkeys in London Witty dispatches on monkey-rearing in the big smoke. 
• This Mid 30s Life Hilarity penned with the help of an extremely important celebrity sidekick.  
• OneArmGirl Traveller, philosopher, eye-witness to the culvert incident.  
• Cinnamon and Truffle A transatlantic sisterhood of positive energy and edibles. 
• Kate Takes 5 Frank and funny postings from a listography superhero. 
• Jenny Matlock A tangential queen.
• A Muddled Mother Resonant insights into the front line of the 'get me out of here' school of parenting.  

To all the above: it is always such a pleasure to read your work - thank you for sharing it. Please feel free to pass on the versatility bug (or not) as, if and when you see fit.

In the meantime, rain, rain go away.

*A devastating condition for which there is no known cure.
**Really quite rambling, so permission granted to commence TLDR now.
***You may have noticed a general 'dirt' theme at work in my life by now. 

Deceptively spacious rain gods

Dear rain gods,

Stop it already. I know you invest heavily in Wellington boot production and clinical depression, but give us a break. Why don't you go on holiday to my eternally drought-stricken homeland?

How I wish you weren't here,

~Mama

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To the estate agents in my life,

Can we drop 'deceptively spacious' please? If I see that nonsensical phrase one more time I am going to spontaneously combust. And can we please let me be the judge of  'well appointed' and 'sought after location? I am not a turnip—I can diagnose overpriced 70's carpet and crap house near an off-licence all by my little self.

Thank you for your linguistic consideration,

~Mama

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Dear Nana,

I've slept more in the past three days since you arrived than I did in the entire year before that. The giant crows foot atop my neck appears to be melting back into a human face. You can stay. Or rather, you're not allowed to go.

Hugs,

~Mama

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Dear Kat of 3 Bedroom Bungalow,

Thank you for delivering my letters through the So & So post. This is especially helpful at the moment, as Royal Mail still appears to be dealing with a huge Christmas backlog (it's the wrong kind of post).

I look forward to partaking in this fun weekly event again,

~Mama

This week at Chaos HQ

It was too wet to play.

My favourite post from recent days.