Jubilympics

Winning at chaos. 

The Jubilee hoopla has morphed into sporting hoopla. Here at Chaos HQ, we didn't think much about it until we encountered some alien cyclopes while out at the park.

These mascots have completely captured the imaginations of my girls, who now like to argue over which one is Wenlock, and which one is Mandevelle, and furthermore whether they come from Mars or Venus.

Too surreal, even for kids.

Though I've always been crap at sports that don't involve sitting, I have been madly practicing one event in the lead-up to the sporting hoopla: underground buggy juggling. As you might imagine, the event takes place entirely on public transport, and involves Herculean effort to make it to the finish line. In terms of status it ranks lower than solo synchronized swimming, and the winner gets a mere  frown from hardened commuters.

As with the Jubilee, I suspect local curmudgeonliness will magically melt into mild patriotism and extreme good will during the actual event. I was in Sydney in 2000, and I remember the air palpably buzzing with festive cheerfulness, aided by buckets of beer. I found the vibe especially positive at the Paralympics, a wonderful idea first born in Stoke Mandeville, just like my second daughter.

Gold medalists. 

Maybe the frightening alien cyclopes, now on duty all over London's scenic walkways, are there to remind everyone to cheer the heck up, grab a bucket of beer, and cheer their heads off for the underground buggy jugglers and swimmers alike.

All this nonsense aside, here's the really crucial bit: after a two month delay due to the wrong kind of weather on the line, the sun has finally arrived. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat ice cream for Team Chaos.

Unrequited cake

Ana wants to meet the Queen.

Faker. 

Not some street fair amateur in a creepy cardboard mask, or a lost tourist toting an inflatable corgi. Certainly not that guy who sashays across Westminster Bridge.

The Queen, dammit. The REAL Queen.

So far no luck.

It was Ana's first, upsetting glimpse of a fake queen a week ago that triggered this fixation. Since then the cacophony of Jubilee hoopla has exacerbated her delicate condition.

Ana is not unreasonable - she merely wants to play with the Queen's toys, and maybe have tea. She has even made a Victoria sponge for the occasion.

Bait. 

Ana knows where the Queen's house is. She promises to share her toys and be sweet. What else could be required?

Grown-ups talk about the Queen till the are red and blue in the face. They throw parties for her, but she never shows up.

Befuddlement is becoming suspicion - Ana reckons people say the Queen is coming just to shut her up. She wonders if the real Queen is stuck in traffic. Perhaps there are the wrong kind of leaves on the line?

Last night Ana left a wedge of lovingly-crafted Victoria sponge on the windowsill, on the assumption that the Queen would be peckish after her boat ride.

Stuck. 

The cake was gone by morning, and the Queen was thoughtful enough to leave personalised stickers in it's place. But it wasn't enough.

On the train this afternoon a nice man noticed her far-off expression and drooping toy flag.

"Have you been to see the Queen?" he asked with the sort of bubbling excitement that only granddads on the train get.

Ana turned her gaze to him, her eyes teeming with the lost empire and unfulfilled Victoria sponge. She sensed that saying the right thing would shut him up.

"Yes" she said "I have."

Carnival season

My kingdom for a leaf. 

The first yellow leaf on the sidewalk cannot be denied.

This week summer surrendered to autumn: handed over the keys, signed the paperwork, and washed its hands of climatic control for another year. Now the world is autumn's baby to corrupt.

Of course the process is transitional - a soft launch to underemphasize any major design hiccups.

Leaves turn yellow like hairs turn grey. Dust returns to dust. The eternal feeling of summer is an illusion.

But that's me: I'm over-caffeinated and suffer from a crippling case of sentimentality, for which the prognosis is poor. What does seasonal change mean to you?

Here follows a carnival of the season's best posts. You will notice that these writers exercise greater restraint with their sentimentality than I do.

Ella of Notes From Home warily observes five, er four boys marking that classic harvest right of passage: driving a massive combine.

Penny of the Alexander Residence fondly remembers the summer bilberry grounds of her childhood.

Truffle offers a durian toast to the harvest moon.

Christine, an Expat Mum in Portugal, talks about the promise of September for kids and mamas alike: school, new projects, the return of parental nap-time.

Maggie of Red Ted Art suggests that we gather the season's ephemera and construct a house for the woodland elves, so as they don't freeze their pointed little ears off this winter.

Ellen at In a Bun Dance acknowledges that summer is well and truly over, and bravely sends her oldest baby off to high school.

Kerry at Multiple Mummy focuses on the highlight of the warmer months: escape (with kids in tow).

Emma at Mummy...Mummy...Mum counts the passing time in a birthday wish and suggests a celebratory bottle rocket to mark the occasion with a bang.

Diane at Kids Party Heaven has some perennial ideas for how to avoid revenge party bag syndrome (almost as dangerous as inoperable sentimentality).

This autumn carnival was conceived by Brit Mums. Thank you to all contributors. Next week the carousel stops at Really Kid Friendly.

In the meantime, I'm off to kick yellow leaves, pull out grey hairs, and medicate my sentimentality with another truckload of coffee.

Rambling

There is a footpath from Salisbury to Winchester called the Clarendon Way. It is about thirty miles from train station to train station, which means it can be walked in one day if you set out early around the Solstice and walk briskly.

Walking blues. 

Papa and I discovered the Clarendon Way several years ago BC* when we were time-rich and cash-poor, which is very fertile soil to plant the seeds of a lifelong rambling habit in.

The Clarendon Way begins where Salisbury dissipates into a farmer's field. The field is splayed across a clutch of smooth chalky hills that fold into woodland at the creases. Hills like these appear strangely symmetrical to a girl from the Rocky Mountains: like those drawn by a child, or the curves of an egg batter folding in on itself.**

The farmer's field leads upward to the ruins of Clarendon Palace on a hill, where cows graze on tall weeds around the few remaining stone walls of the structure. From here the path meanders off off into deep gruffalo wood, where you can easily get lost if you are not paying enough attention.

Eventually the path disappears in a tiny confusing village, where the local pub is a little like the Slaughtered Lamb. The village has a beautiful name: Winterslow. I suspect it means 'place of many lost ramblers' in old English.

Foraging for mischief. 

All fairly bog standard stuff, if you come from England. In fact, you have probably dozed off by now if you are English, or tottered off for a pint at the Slaughtered Lamb. But the first time a Nuevo Mexicana sees such a landscape, she can be forgiven for being filled with wonder and thinking that perhaps she's stumbled upon heaven.

Papa and I both grew up in the high desert, so we were entirely unprepared for what we saw along the Clarendon Way: a gazillion blackberries. The hedges were buckling under the weight of them, and no one else seemed to be stopping or taking notice except for us two. We ate hundreds - possibly thousands - giggling like little kids. Our tongues and our hands were fuschia. Our entire insides must have turned purple. We ate until we could eat no more.

Youthful memories tend to get sealed in saccharine laminate as time goes by - glossed over and folded into the egg batter narrative of life.*** But there are these little moments of intense sensory discovery that stay fresh and really stick to the mind like cockleburs.

Hedgehog. 

We look for blackberries every year now. When Ana came along, she joined the summer pilgrimage, and Ali has been inducted too.

This year we scavenged on the Heath, and turned what remained of our loot (after taste testing) into pear and blackberry crumble.

I have learned that it is dangerous to return to the actual location of your happiest memories. For this reason, I fear the blackberry way has become more a place in time than in actual geography.

So we will forage wherever the wind takes us. Who knows? Maybe the wind will take us back to Salisbury again someday.

Blackberries grow on thorny indestructible vines - essentially barbed wire - with the sort of scary lust for plant life that is only matched by kudzu. And they did so long before riots went digital.

I suspect the organic not electronic form of my favourite berry will long outlive us mere humans, kept company by twinkies and cockroaches.

*Before chaos.
**As a lapsed Lutheran, I can only visualise things in terms of casserole.
***As above, I blame my casserole genes.

Carnival: the end of summer blues

Gather ye sunflowers while ye may. 

I signed up to host a Brit Mums carnival back in the mists of time and then promptly forgot about it...till this morning when I received my first submission. I will blame my forgetfulness on moving home and the general disorder that is my life.

So please send me your posts! The carnival goes live on Tuesday August 30th. The working theme is: summer passing and the seasons changing. 

Interpret as you see fit and send posts on anything under the sun to: tomorrowmama(at)gmail (dot)com. Old posts, new posts, red posts, blue posts: anything goes.

In the meantime, I'm off on a wander to the park to check out the local carnival vibe. There is a fun fayre just setting up there now in all it's weird kitschy glory. Next weekend it will be in full swing, thronged by kids with cotton candy in their cheeks and in their hair. Teenagers will be snogging behind the tilt-o-whirl as August goes out with a whimper.

This week at Chaos HQ

We are picking blackberries.

Crumble dreaming. 

The third law of parental dynamics

The third law of parental dynamics makes child psychologists and entropists tremble in fear. It goes like this: each milestone, while initially exciting, will return to bite you in the arse.

Ali demonstrated the third law of parental dynamics with textbook precision last week, which was an unusual week at Chaos HQ for several reasons.

Most weeks, Britain is a small island perched under a large spigot in the sky. But last week it became a sunny paradise. Our local splash pool teemed with smiling children. Ice cream and Pimms flowed in excess. Grown-ups and children who had over-consumed either lay like wilted dandelions on park benches, still smiling.

Grandma, Uncle Rice, and Auntie A all had the forsite to visit England during the most perfect week of the summer. And for a brief time Chaos HQ - a lonely, wandering, turtle shell sort of home - was snuggled up in the warmth of the family net. A rare pleasure.

Considering the sunshine, we lived at the park for a week. My kin, being nice people, tried not to shout 'FAT LIAR!' when I explained that England wasn't always like this.

Amidst this blissful, pastoral backdrop, Ali uttered her first sentence. Her gullible family clapped. Angels sang the hallelujah chorus. Time stood still and the heavens bent low to get a closer listen. Then what began low, started to grow.

'WHERE DO YOU KEEP THE LOLLIES???'

She repeated her first sentence: 'I need a lolly.'  Pause. 'I need a lolly.' Impatience crept into her voice. 'I NEED a lolly.'

Angels cowered. Time slunk away in fear, suddenly realizing the danger of the situation. Sadly Papa and I were legally obliged to hold our ground. But we knew what was coming, and we shook like dry leaves before the hurricane.

'I NEED A LOLLY! A LOLLY! A LOLLY! I NEED A LOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLY!'

Ali needed a lolly as I wrestled her off the playground and into the buggy. She needed a lolly all the way home - a thirty minute walk and an absolute lolly desert.

Kids - like defective electronics - go off. It is just a fact of life: short kids, tall kids, kids who climb on rocks. They go off with persistence and awkward timing, like car alarms through loudspeakers from the pit of Hades.

The funniest thing about these situations is that passers-by look at you like: 'Holy cow lady, did you know your kid is going off?' A perceptive lot, those passers-by.

Ali has needed many things in the days that have followed. Two-ish being more an age of bulldozers than subtleties, we have been unable to explain the needs versus wants dichotomy to her. We will, I suspect still be attempting to explain this to her when she is 25.

Actually I'm still struggling to understand it myself. So this seems as good a juncture as any to say: I need Grandma, Uncle Rice and Auntie A to return again soon.

Guys: as an incentive, I have a lolly waiting for each of you. You'll be pleased to know that I didn't obtain it by looting my local shop. And I promise it won't turn around and bite you in the arse, as per the third law of parental dynamics.

In the meantime my dear family: may the road rise up to meet you and may the sun shine warm upon your face.

This week at Chaos HQ

We have been seeking out sources of splash.

Flying fish. 

This being England, splash has consisted of two parts paddling pool to five parts mud puddle. 

This being two under-fives we're talking about, all parts have been taken in leaping stride with purest joy.  

Summer is a comin' in

Summer is a golden-haired girl dragging a favourite muddy stick across the Heath. 

The entire Heath.

Summer is a pixie in a polka dot dress with fete glitter on her cheeks. 

Her sister dreams peacefully under the protective embrace of last season's tree,

as she stirs mud puddles with purpose.

Summer is a lot like that opening scene in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, except without any boring history books.

Squashed tomato stew

Chaos HQ is currently lobbing tomatoes at unfortunate pedestrians from the window of Truffle's previously immaculate grown-up flat. Which is to say, please check out my gazpacho guest post over at Cinnamon & Truffle!

Cure for the summertime blues. 

But as a warning: don't try to read C&T on an empty stomach. I tried this recently, and now my keyboard looks like a surfboard that's been through shark-infested waters. Although in fairness this may have more to do with mt sharp-toothed pair of short people.

Bon appetit!

Nothing but blue sky

The government ministry for rain has gone on tea break. I suspect they took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, as it has been three days since they were last seen. They may have stopped in at the pub, become distracted, and now find themselves in no fit state to return to their desks. Fingers crossed, they will need to sleep it off for several days, in which case the revised rain budget will be delayed by at least a week. This is my hope. An ambitious hope, given their weather track record.

Pulling a sunshine sickie. 

All this sunshine makes me think of two wonderful things from last summer: throwing stones into the sea for hours on end, and consuming unhealthy quantities of clotted cream-slathered scones with strawberry jam.

The lovely Auntie Rara bore witness to both occurrences, and I hear a rumour that she is headed this way with the wonderful Auntie S in a few weeks. If the rumour is correct, I suspect we will be soon re-engaging in these two activities. I will attempt to wait patiently, while they pack.

World championship thrower. 

This is a Flashback Friday post, hosted by the wonderful Cafe Bebe.

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. 

Farewell summertime nest

The world outside turned golden this week. The temperature dropped and wind-rustled leaves took on a tell-tale brittle note. Summer is collapsing into autumn. It caught me by surprise again. Every summer seems eternal, even though I'm old enough to know better by now.

Which reminds me of Ray Bradbury, a hero of mine, who turned 90 at the end of August. 'Dandelion Wine' is a book about how kids experience summertime as the great magical forever. There are a thousand perfect summer moments in it, including one about fire balloons in the 1974 introduction he added to original 1957 book.

Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-and-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and  fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself....My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark. The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer. 

Seasonally, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' follows 'Dandelion Wine'. Although principally concerned with autumnal menace, it also happens to contain one of my favourite passages on motherhood: 'They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action?' 

Warmth passing.

Sunlight is starting to wane. Fun fairs are setting up across England, in all their weird kitschy glory. Just over the horizon, bonfires burn. Soon firecrackers will wake my children at night. 


I've spent the past few golden afternoons knitting together unrelated passages from the books of summer, and searching out pint-sized jumpers that were lightly cast aside by my autumn babies in the innocence and optimism of last spring. These items nest not in time, but usually behind the sofa.

The barometric caterpillar

Greater London was silly with sunshine for weeks. Grass withered. Pimms flowed. Weathermen giggled. The natives--shirtless, red, squinting furiously--stumbled dazedly from pub to park to pub again. Houses thrust wide their double-glazed windows, like butterflies spreading wings. Neighbors glared at neighbors brash enough to laugh in their gardens after 9pm, making light of such unrelenting light.

This morning I awoke, or rather Chaos woke me, to a weather change; cool air and grey light through my white curtains. I thought of a day in the deepest doldrums of winter that found me snowed under with two babies and snowbound in the house. Ever in character, the local council couldn't locate it's grit, and the white Christmas that began a week before the actual holiday, lingered on in icy road conditions for weeks after it. My rear-wheel drive car sat quietly collecting snow.

Futile as it was to try and go anywhere, I went to the garage to search for a snow shovel, or rather a gardening shovel to misuse. I tipped over one box in a mountain of cardboard boxes, and suddenly--whoosh!--I had an Eric Carl moment: out flew a beautiful butterfly.

She was firelight orange with purple sequens on her wings. Though the box must have kept her warm enough, she could hardly move once she hit the cold ground. I took her inside and put her under a bright light in the kitchen. Ana watched in joyful awe. Butterfly! she whispered incredulously, again and again. Butterfly! I whispered it too. What was such a beautiful summertime creature doing in my garage in January?

Cold victory.

Wings flexed as if through molasses. Then quicker. Off she flew.

My sleep-deprived brain told me to leave plates of fruit around the house. She disappeared for days at a time. I thought she had passed on to greener flower gardens in the sky. But out she would flit again from a drawn curtain or a corner. Our snow butterfly lived for a month.

A butterfly is such a cliched vehicle for hope. Maybe I thought of her this morning because my obsessive-random-nostolgia-generator functions best when I first open my eyes and commence the need-coffee-now sequence. Or maybe I'll always think of her when the weather, inevitably, reverts to blah.