Author: Hazel Frost

misnomer (ˌmɪsˈnəʊmə)

n

1. an incorrect or unsuitable name or term for a person or thing

2. the act of referring to a person by the wrong name

[C15: via Anglo-Norman from Old French mesnommer to misname, from Latin nōmināre to call by name]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

For example, to use the phrase “unstructured time” for anything involving small children is a misnomer.  It is commonly used to describe a period of time without an externally imposed schedule.  In practise, the absence of an explicit timetable means that the adult in charge, typically a parent or care-giver, will be continually required to structure, restructure and restructure some more in response to the ever changing needs and desires of the juveniles, and in particular according to the unpredictable likelihood of imminent war-fare. 

Here are a couple of gems from yesterday’s (ahem) unstructured periods….

Joni, helping me to restore order in the bedrooms; “there… now that looks all spick and spack”

“Danny if you don’t stop right now, you are going to find yourself in your old cot in the other room.  Is that what you want?”    He:- “I not sure…” 

In the interest of science (or possibly just grossing out any readers still following) this specimen

was carefully boxed and placed in the freezer while still alive in order to ensure a clear photo of a genuine scorpion from our very own house.  This one was ambushed while trying to escape out of the office window.  Its cousin/flat-mate was observed emerging from underneath the nappy-changing mat on our bed and swiftly  rendered less than photogenic on the end of Martin’s boot.  We’re hoping that the message has got back to any other friends or relatives that might still be lurking in the shadows. 

Where did that baby go?

  

Danny had his third birthday on Saturday.  On one hand it feels like he was only born yesterday, and at the same time we can barely remember life without him.  He had a cake at home with the family, another one at Scouts in the afternoon, and I sent a tractor (“Chrachror”) and trailer cake into nursery with him today.  It might not be Michelangelo, but that was one of my better sculptures, I was very happy with how it turned out and more to the point so was he (Danny that is; Michelangelo didn’t offer an opinion). 

  

Danny to date has been sleeping in the same folding travel cot since he was born, and Joni has been sleeping in the same junior bed since he was born, both becoming increasingly rickety with over-bouncing.  So we decided to mark the coming of age with big-boy beds;

  

I posted Joni into the top bunk, and Danny into the bottom and said goodnight.  Imagine my consternation a couple of hours later when, on my own way to bed, I looked in on the duo to discover Danny’s bed empty.  A quick check revealed two blonde heads soundly sleeping side by side squashed into the top bed. 

  

Joni’s school had their acto today to mark the fechas patrias so Joni went off this morning looking disturbing like a child soldier from a paramilitary organisation.  It made a bit more sense in context when he and his cohort performed a primary school-esque version of an Argentinean dance;

Like a sit-in but with wool. 

The Scouts held a knitathon this weekend to knit squares for blankets to be distributed to worthy causes for the approaching Winter.  Winters in central Argentina aren’t cold like UK cold, but since houses aren’t heated or double glazed I think Winter is far less fun here than it would be in Europe despite being mostly five to ten degrees warmer. 

We invited the Scouts to bring their grannies (plus one grandad) along with their needles and spare wool and we all sat round and knitted to a background of live folk music plus regular instalments of coffee and cake.  All in all not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  

  

Most people probably think of the marching season as a phenomenon exclusive to Northern Ireland.  The marching in Argentina may be less controversial and better humoured than the flag waving in Norn Irn, but the level of commitment is at least as great.  The “fechas patrias” (national dates) start around now with a gentle lead in for the Dia de Escarapela (Rosette Day) on the 18th of May, followed by the biggie, the anniversary of the Revolucion de Mayo (May Revolution) on the 25th of May, followed by the homage to General Belgrano for the Dia de la Bandera on the 20th of June, and finishing with Independence Day on the 9th of July.  All of which are accompanied by parades, flag waving, ceremonies, speech making, and a celebration of Argentinean customs and traditions, and in particular, locro. 

Locro is a winter brew, so we are fortunate that the fechas patrias fall at this time of the year (and having lived through several Argentinean summers I too would have waited till the temperature dropped before donning my battle gear against the Spanish).  Locro is traditional fare across the Andes and the Southern Cone.  It is essentially a thick broth whose ingredients vary according to the local produce of each region.  I loved this quote from this article “As with many popular dishes with traditions that spill over international borders and date back centuries, endless varieties exist. Every region, indeed every home seems to hail their own version as the unrivalled victor of some imaginary global locro cooking competition, with winning family recipes often accredited to a grandma who received instruction that had been passed down for generations.” 

In Argentina its chief ingredients of a good locro are white maize, beans and a pumpkin-like vegetable which isn’t squash but you could probably use squash at a push, boiled together for hours and hours, with a sundry assortment of bits of pig and cow innards.  All the recipes that I could find on-line were rather too sanitized, but this one looks like it would result in something more or less recognisable albeit leaving out most of the squidgy bits and using ingredients that you can easily source in Europe.  It would be fair to say that locro doesn’t look too appetising in the preparation stages, and even more so since it is normally cooked in large quantities in a battered but more-or-less-cleanish metal dustbin over a wood fire.  It is also hard work in the initial stages when the animal innards need to be turned inside out and chopped and everything else needs to be chopped into small chips.  But because it requires a team in order to be fun, it is also a great fund-raising activity.  And we love it.  At this time of year we tend to sniff out a locro for lunch on a Sunday, so last week we had one from a church across the city, and this week we have tickets for Joni’s school, and next week we have tickets from another school, and in a couple of Sundays’ time our Scouts will be flogging their annual cauldron’s worth, having first spent most of the Saturday dissecting pumpkin and pigs trotters. 

… happened to the last three weeks?

Easter was a challenge to my view of God.  I think that was probably needed.  The rest of life was kind of busy. 

Some friends came for lunch on Easter Sunday and we made bagna cauda.  That is one Italian tradition which probably hasn’t made the mainstream of British dining.  It involves lots of cream, garlic and anchovies.  In San Francisco, as a strongly Italian enclave, bagna cauda is almost compulsory Good Friday fare when the entire city stinks of garlic and fish for the day.  So we broke the rules by postponing it till Sunday but it tasted the same and we had fun making it with our friend Joaquin;

  

There was supposed to be a Scout training weekend on, but it got cancelled at the last minute.  One of our church-plants however did hold a conference which didn’t get cancelled and I did plenty of floor-sweeping and child-entertaining.  Someone once said “never discuss theology till you’ve worked with someone”.  I cried all the way through the final episode of Rev and not just because it was the final episode.  English teaching goes up and down, sometimes I don’t have enough hours in the day, and other times everyone cancels at once (or just fails to turn up, grrr).  The kids are doing fine, Danny is becoming potty trained and enjoying nursery and swimming lessons.  Joni is enjoying school, and cooking classes (he also loved being Joaquin’s apprentice for the morning when we made the bagna cauda, Joaquin being a cool 18 year old who loves to cook), and he is chuffed to have been moved up a swimming class yesterday.  Our 14 year old periodically makes an appearance, and generally requires very little maintenance as long as she has access to a computer.  She’s with us this weekend.  And there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I was probably supposed to do and didn’t get round to yet.  But at least I’ve written a blog. 

Having dutifully filled in my twenty pedantic screens (skirting around various broken links including the final submit button grrr), I finally completed and sent off my application to beg the DVLA to replace my stolen driving licence.  They, bless their little alien hearts, sent me by return another form which says, I quote:-

Thank you for using our online driving licence service.  Before we can issue your driving licence you must sign and date this form to declare your driving licence is lost, stolen or destroyed. 

Return this form and your cut up licence using the envelope provided. 

Question is what are they going to do to me if I don’t cut up and return the licence that I don’t have because if I did have it I wouldn’t be trying to apply for a new licence?  (We are the Borg.  You will be assimilated…) 

And then the next day they sent me yet another blank form to apply for a replacement driving licence, which as far as I can ascertain is exactly the same form as the form I already filled in which started all the trouble in the first place.  If I fill in the second one will that just generate even more confusion, or if I pretend I never received it, will that stall my application forever? 

Meanwhile on a different planet, and skipping over the slight irony that our local cinema was closed owing to the town centre being flooded, I am struggling to understand the polemics surrounding the Noah film.  Apart from being truly dull and boring as a piece of cinema, it is also such a long way from the Biblical account that I just can’t see what there would be to get excited about on either side.  It is a fantasy film about a bunch of characters, some of whom have the same names as some other guys in the Bible.  So what?  If the makers of Star Trek had happened to call a pair of aliens Troilus and Cressida I’d like to imagine that most Shakespearean critics would have better things to do with their time than to bother hunting for a biro.  

I managed to clock up my fourth appearance on local TV on Friday evening.  To an English person who has never worked in media, that sounds relatively impressive.  In reality, city TV is more like the equivalent of what would be the local rag in the UK.  I remember on the first day we arrived in San Francisco, the midday news bulletin was leading with a story about a dog that got run over and didn’t die, which even in small-town Baldock would be unlikely to make it into print unless it was a very special dog (“Her Majesty’s Corgi slips lead in Avenue Park…”).  All of which probably explains the Canal 4 presenter’s fascination with my foreignness.  No matter who I’ve been representing; Scouts, disability summer scheme, church-planting projects… every interview features my Englishness and my blonde kids, leaving it to me to gesticulate at my colleagues and steer the conversation round to the theme of the day.  This time we were supposed to be publicising a church kids’ club, so she talked about my foreignness, and recalled the other times when she had interviewed me, and my foreignness, and the autism workshop which was the previous appearance back in December, and my foreignness, and how the 2nd of April was…. (2nd of April being Malvinas/Falklands memorial day) and I held my breath and prayed no no no please don’t do this to me on air, but no, the 2nd of April (apart from being my late father’s birthday but she didn’t mention that either) is apparently also international autism day.  Phew. 

If there was any danger of such fame going to my head, the DVLA can always be relied on to bring one back down to earth, if only to wonder which other planet they employ their staff from.  If I hadn’t had my driving licence stolen along with my rucksack last July, I would presumably still be entitled to hold my UK licence until 2041 when it runs out, or at least I can’t find anything to say that we should have surrendered them prior to travelling to Argentina.  However, since I did have my driving licence stolen along with my rucksack last July, I figured I should probably apply for a new one in order to drive legally when we come across.  So I tried to apply for one online, and on filling in twenty pedantic screens I thus discovered that unless I can give them a UK address where I am currently living then I cannot replace my stolen licence.  We have been in Argentina long enough now to know that many pieces of bureaucracy just do include the unwritten requirement that you should first find a friend who likes you enough to lie for you, and that nobody will understand why you might have a problem about doing that.  But until now this had always been something that I had fondly believed to be a clear example of the differences between our two cultures. 

“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”  (The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame).

It rained 132mm here last night, with the possibility of some more over the weekend.  Lucky our house is higher than the road so water only comes in through the leaky roof, but I found the shop-keepers busy baling out when I splooshed my way across to the town centre this morning. 

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. 

(Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)

It may not be spring in the southern hemisphere, but the start of the academic year brings a spring-like feeling of new things, and with it, yes, lots of cleaning.  We have been cleaning, tidying, sorting, throwing rubbish, grass cutting and painting the Scout headquarters (aka railway shed) for the last couple of weeks, prior to starting activities in earnest with the kids this coming Saturday.  Our Christian-bookshop-owning, church-planting friends have also taken a big step and rented a building, so there too we have been cleaning, tidying, sorting, throwing rubbish, there’s no grass so we were at least let off that bit, but there was plenty of furniture moving instead.  We had the first church meeting there last Sunday, and they are aiming to move the bookshop across this weekend.  There are also plans to open a cafe, run a kids’ club, use the offices upstairs for professionals to donate their time, and to host community events in the hall at the back.  We like these guys; they have vision, which isn’t unusual in Argentina, but they also have the tenacity to see the vision through to concrete (breeze block, wood and sawdust) reality, which in our experience here is almost unique.  So it has been sleeves rolled up, all hands to the deck, and lots of other mixed metaphors, in order to turn an abandoned factory into the blank canvass upon which to bring life to a dream. 

It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat…