Snow babies

The snow came.

There were those who said it never would.

December flew by in a rainy blur. January was a brown landscape of wilted Christmas trees on curbsides.

Down the primrose path. 

Then last weekend the sky finally went to pieces.

Now by 'snow' I am referring to an an old Saxon word that means: a modest dusting. Any more would be showing off, and a dusting is all it takes to shut down Heathrow.

We did the only sensible thing given the situation. We took a sled to Primrose Hill.

Four runs down the hill with no broken bones seemed like enough in the luck-pushing department.

So Ali and I scoured the neighbourhood for mama and papa snowmen. I was instructed to assemble approximately ten baby snowmen for each parental unit.

New fallen snow.

Like giraffes, snow parents can be a bit blasé and sometimes need reminding that the moment of reunion with their snow spawn is cause for celebration.

Now comes the part where snow turns to sludge. The sleepy Heathrow dragon grumbles back to life, and naysayers seasonally progress to maligning the Easter Bunny.

Sledges return to closets, where they dream quietly of gleaming white landscapes, never losing faith.

Seasonal disaffection

I hate this time of year. You probably do too. You probably hate me for mentioning it. I am likewise annoyed.

Of course we should both remember ducklings and green shoots. There will be Morris dancers and other goofy expressions of folksy joy.

I normally combat January by eating a continuous stream of chocolate biscuits, however I just ran out of biscuits.

So now I'm going to try 'looking on the bright side', a seasonal disaffection technique I read about in an eye-blisteringly bad in-flight magazine.

Brightness item one: Airplane barf bags! Did you know they double as colouring books? They do! Kids love 'em, which means corresponding grown-ups are spared from airborne mental breakdown.

Give the kids some barf bags and pens and presto: they magically cease their campaign of abuse against business travelers worldwide.

Baby kangaroo sold separately.

Plus you get some nice artwork to send off to Grandma, who is contractually obligated to accept such masterpieces with grace and gloat over them without barfing (cheers, Mom).

Of course if Grandma loses composure and barfs mid-gloat, she will now be prepared.

On the topic of barfing and air travel, there is a man at the passport control queue of Heathrow airport who should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't know his real name, so I'll call him Super Heathrow Man. He is seven feet tall and probably a mutant.

Faced with a passport queue the length of Brazil last week, Ali reacted like a screaming cat held over a bathtub of lava. I shared her feeling, but managed to reign in my screaming.

Fellow travellers watched us with growing trepidation. The chickens were restless. A ticker-tape of 'I blame the parents' and 'kids these days' flickered across their eyeballs. Suddenly we found them closing in on us like a net.

In dashed Super Heathrow Man, parting the queue like Moses. He quashed a wimpy chorus of 'queue juuuuuumping!' with one swipe of his mighty hand. He scooped up our tired cat-lava family and spirited us away to the 'priority queue'.

Did you know such a thing exists at Heathrow? A passport 'priority queue' for banshee travelers? It does! Hallelujah!

How did Super Heathrow Man explain his kindness and bravery? With classic English modesty: "I hate the sound of screaming kids."

So next time you are in Heathrow, I suggest you morph into a hysterical lava-threatened cat and request to be carried off in the arms of Super Heathrow Man. If you are not sectioned, you will save yourself loads of time and bother.

And good luck with January. Remember green shoots and Morris dancers. Something to look forward to...if that's your thing.

Playing with fire

The trouble with 'Mama School' (as Ana calls it) is exams.

January exam preparation leaves little time for faffing and whimsy, or blogging.

I'll light the fire. 

However, here I am eating a biscuit anyway.

So there! So happy New Year!

Was yours magical? Mine certainly was.

I spent it in a candlelit apartment in the clouds, in the company of wonderful tall and short people and one yet to be born (not mine - don't get excited).

The kids burned themselves on sparklers and the adults burned themselves on oil fondue. We engaged in a dodgy traditional game that involves pouring molten metal into cold water and demanding answers from the suggestive shapes that emerge.

Apparently residents of Berlin can only buy missiles on the last week of the year. The local term for 'missiles' is 'fireworks', which rather gives England a run for its money in the understatement department.

Due to a shortage of missiles the rest of the year, the place goes nuts on New Year's Eve.

Bonkers, hopping, flapping mad.

See here:


People fire missiles from balconies into the street. From the street, they take aim at windows. Momentarily forgetting their lack of fire-retardant titanium exoskeletons, they even take aim at each other.

This practice is known locally as 'fun' and 'games' and 'chill out English lady'.

I saw people juggling flaming torches on slanted rooftops without safety railings.

Others set sail their dreams on fire lanterns from riverbanks, which drifted into the sky like sluggish nocturnal butterflies, miraculously impervious to the missiles.

Everyone involved in the firestorm consumed vast galaxies of beer within a gathering blanket of missile smoke.

It was pure scary magic.

I always say that Berlin is magical. But it isn't actually the place. Rather, some of my favourite people live there. People I share a past, a future, and some of my very best fire lantern dreams with.

As I'm told they say in Iceland: thank you for all years past.

9: Four in the afternoon

All day twilight. 

Day nine is gazing wistfully at warmly lit afternoon/evening windows, and dreaming of soup.

6: Still at the frost fayre

Butterfly kisses. 

Day six in Advent. Last weekend we met the world's most talented face painter, who I suspect may actually be on the payroll of North Pole Inc. I came home with a winter butterfly.

5: Frost fayre season

Pixie dusting. 

Day five is slouching towards the solstice, waiting to be born.

1: Advent part deux

To build a fire. 

Regular readers of this blog (hello Mom!) will recall that last year I devoted an inordinate amount of time to a virtual Advent calendar.

I would like to do the same thing this year, albeit on a smaller budget and for more austere times. So I will post one Advent photo every day in December.

Friends: here's an open invitation from my HQ to yours to create and share your own Advent photo calendar. Fill it with a daily picture, a daily thought, total nonsense, whatever.

Here's the first of my Christmas lights - a luminaria from last Christmas Eve.

By the way, you might be interested to find out that 'austere' is actually an old Saxon word that means fewer frills and a lot more crap.

8: White

This is the 8th day of Advent photos and my first submission to The Gallery (a lovely idea, thank you Sticky Fingers).

Two years BC (before children), Papa and I took a road trip in Germany with Onkle and Tanta. We drove from an unusually snowy Berlin (my favourite city) to an icy Dresden, then onwards into Saxony-Switzerland and the whitest Christmas I can remember.

Pre-snowflakes. 

At one point we happened upon the most perfect, untouched field of snow this side of heaven. We couldn't leave it that way, so we jumped from the car and tore through it like a pack of rabble-rousing kids. I made so many snow angels that the back of my head grew numb. We played until we were cold and tired to the bone, then piled back in the car and reverted to adulthood.

Footprints in the snow.  

The snow that day was the lightest, freshest powder imaginable: the consistency of icing sugar and twice as delicious. When my kids make me feel old, just thinking about that snow makes me feel like a kid again.

7: Light

Day 7 of December in pictures.

Star of wonder. 

Wonderful things are born in the darkness of power outages—new children are dreamed up and the children already with us discover candlelight.

Beauty bright. 

6: Warm inside

Day 6 in the Advent photo calendar.

Winter warmer. 

Binge chocoholic.

5: Evergreen

Day 5 in the Advent photo calendar.

Tiny Tannenbaum. 

Sapling.

4: NHS bear hug

Day 4 in Advent.

Can't bear paracetamol. 

I can unreservedly recommend my local hospital for minor kid emergencies. For instance, if your child slips into stealth-mode and commandeers a full bottle of Calpol, then triumphantly returns it to you emptied, the nice A&E people will let you in out of the cold with a smile. They won't even criticise your shoddy baby surveillance skills and rubbish cap-securing ability. Your snowflake might then flail about wrathfully, shouting Babish obscenities like something out of 'The Exorcist' while the nurse tries to draw blood to ascertain paracetamol levels. Said nurse will remain calm, simultaneously offering a cute teddy to your teeth-gnashing minion, and comforting words to a blubbering you. The blood test might confirm that, while your devil in disguise created a Calpol Jackson Pollock on the carpet, she actually ingested nil. The nurse will convey this news tactfully, and will probably not even point and laugh at you for all the flapping about.

Angel in disguise

People don't always have nice things to say about the NHS. And I know some hospitals are better than others. But all I have to say to my local is: thank you; you are awesome.

Christmas patchwork

When I was a girl my family began December with an Advent calendar, as many do. But ours was special: a beautiful Christmas tree wall hanging made by my mum. Each year my sister, brother and I pulled treasures from the red felt pocket and snapped them into place on the tree: teddy bears, stockings, stars, snowflakes, angels—the flora and fauna of Christmas.

The given tree.  

Last week the postman brought us a special package from Grandma: a handmade Advent calendar, crafted in the style of the beloved one from my childhood. The girls tore through the wrapping, then spent the afternoon inspecting all the advent treasures in hushed, studious awe. Grandma has always been a talented quilter with an eye for detail. When I rang to thank her, she told me that it took her years to collect all the right buttons.

Adele of Mila's Daydreams has inspired me with her Advent photo calendar idea. So, although I am a little late starting this, I will post one of Grandma's charms each day for the rest of Advent, plus an accompanying wintertime picture.

The snowman is first up on the tree, followed by my favourite snow dude from last winter.

Buttons made of coal. 

Frosty the grillman. 

White pre-Christmas

Ana likes to sing 'Frosty the snowman was a jolly holiday'. In her mind Frosty and Mary Poppins, both heroes around these parts, are fused. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the hat.

Every morning for weeks now Ana has gone running to the window to watch expectantly and whisper 'it's snowiiiiiiiiing!' But it hasn't been. Until now. 

When frosty holds your hand, you feel so grand. 

Ana is in heaven. On our pre-school walks she takes huge bites from snowy hedges, shrieking 'just like chickeeeeen!' and 'tastes like puuuuuding!' Which makes me wonder if my cooking is really that gobsmackingly bland. But it also makes me warmly remember the spine-shiveringly delicious snow ice cream of my girlhood winters gone. Just a simple bowl of snow, splash of whole or condensed milk, dash of powdered sugar, cap of vanilla or sprinkle of nutmeg and voila: frosty magic. 

Snowgirl

I admit that when nobody's looking, I'm out there eating snow off the hedges too. Foolishly, both Ana and her childish mama are desperately hoping for a desperately snowy winter, just like the last one. 

Photographing snow: a fool's wonderland. 

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.