Author: Hazel Frost

And then we were packing once more.  The last few days particularly have disappeared in a whirl of meeting up with friends, family, supporters and all manner of people old and new.  I have a year’s supply of clothes courtesy of Baldock’s charity shops.  My kid has a year’s supply of clothes courtesy of his cousin.  My parents have a year’s supply of jam courtesy of the many blackberries ripening a minute’s walk from their house; Joni and I and the dog spent a happy couple of hours collecting and jamming them this afternoon.  I expect I could have gathered more without my two trusty helpers, but we have more than sufficient and it was fun.  There are also two bucket loads of greengages waiting for something to be done with them (more jam?) following my expedition up the greengage tree yesterday morning.  We’ve watched model trains whizzing by at Bekonscot model village:

and giant butterflies whizzing by in a glass house in Bedfordshire (while the rain hammered on the roof outside):

It’s been good, and now it’s gone, but we’re quietly bullish about some of the plans that we hope are coming to fruition in San Francisco even as we speak, so we’re optimistic about the next steps.  Unfortunately there are two nights of travelling between here and there, and even before that, the stuff which hasn’t packed itself yet appears to be liberally scattered about the house. I feel some gathering up coming on. 

Family time

Having been nine in the house since we’ve arrived, and up to sixteen at various points during the weekend, it feels rather quiet with a mere five of us at the moment.  We should probably make the most of it though; the ever versatile Baldock Hilton will be back to eleven when the next wave of family descend on Sunday. 

Building relationships

This week we’ve been meeting with a great new supporting church (new to us that is).  So far we’ve just seen a sample of folk over lunch yesterday, but if the advance party is anything like representative of the rest of the congregation, then we’re really looking forward to getting to know them. 

Redefining relationships

When I became a parent I had a whole lot of lofty child-care-professional ideals which it is almost possible to uphold for six hours a day, but twenty four…? Today’s climb-down went:-

– No trainers no trainers no trainers no trainers no trainers no trainers no trainers no trai…

– How about these Thomas the tank engine ones?

– No trainers no trai… oh yes please mummy.

And thus the “no brand named stuff” went off to join “no lying” and “no bribery” long since consigned to the nursing home of good intentions. 

New Toy

This year’s birthday present:

Second hand sigma 70-300 macro, seventy quid from the second-hand-camera-stuff guy on Hitchin market.  Cost new, quite a bit more.  Cost in Argentina, multiply by goodness knows what. Martin enjoyed testing it out for me the other day when we took the kids to play on the big slides at Knebworth park:

 

We’ve been back in the UK for exactly a week, and we’ve spent most of it goofing around with my sister and her three kids, Joni’s cousins, who normally live in the USA, and with whom we cunningly planned to coincide on this side of the pond this year.  Today we were goofing around over a picnic in Aldenham country park, which if you ever get the chance is a great place to take kids, and since the only cost is a fiver per vehicle for the car-park, it’s a bargain day out. 

A week in and we have pretty much figured out how to drive on the left again without washing the windscreen every time we go for the indicator, and we’re getting used to the cultural idiosyncrasies that make up normal life in the UK.

Things that have struck us this time… you have to put your own petrol in your car at the service station, and then queue up to pay for it… quaintly efficient.  There are real motorbikes in the UK, and their riders wear helmets and proper biking gear and don’t generally ride like they’re on a suicide mission.  Manufacturing standards in the UK are an order of magnitude higher than for the Argentinean market… actually we notice that several times a week in Argentina… every time we find ourselves saying “you know, I wouldn’t have minded paying a few cents more for… a slightly longer bolt, a rivet that didn’t break, a tougher piece of plastic, a product that actually worked the way we wanted it to…” but this time we’re noticing it the other way round; “feel the quality”.  It’s everywhere, even the packaging for Martin’s insulin is noticeably superior, which makes one wonder about the differences between the medication inside the packaging, but maybe we shouldn’t think too hard about that one.   But the thing that has really hit me this time is that stuff in the UK is sooooooo cheap.  I don’t mean “better value because it’s a higher quality”, but actually “costs less”… yep, not only do we suffer trash-level manufacturing specs, but we actually pay more for them… no wonder the multi-nationals are all falling over themselves to conquer the Latin American market.  Luckily these days our kid gets his own seat and his own luggage allowance; I’m compiling a shopping list.

What could be more English than the gentle thwack of leather on willow?

the gentle patter of applause?

the gentle laughter of children at play in a freezing paddling pool?

or the gentle patter of drizzle on the washing?  Welcome to England’s green and pleasant land.  We turned out in force to cheer on Uncle Rob who was captaining the first eleven on Saturday afternoon (luckily it had stopped raining by lunchtime which is plenty good enough for weekend cricket). Meanwhile Joni and his cousins put the park through its paces between overs.  

The bit across the Atlantic can get a bit turbulent… every time it started bumping around, the toddler tugged my elbow and asked “plane fall down now?” He didn’t seem scared, just interested. Thus my body arrived at Terminal 5 on Tuesday, courtesy of British Airways. My brain arrived on Wednesday, courtesy of coffee, a comfortable double bed, and throwing a chosen selection of kids outside to sleep in the tent, hoorah. Unfortunately we killed the computer on Thursday, so we’ve been anonymous ever since. So, here we are in the UK. At this stage the computer isn’t yet sufficiently rebuilt to be able to put up photographs, or do anything much more sophisticated than say hello, but hopefully normal service will be resumed in the next couple of days. In the meantime, we’re hanging out with friends and family, doing a few meetings, stocking up on a years supply of clothes from the charity shop, and in about ten minutes time, heading out for a pint.

Pancakes for dessert today. Martin trying to impress Joni with his tossing skills;
“No Daddy no. No jump the cakes”

We do get asked sometimes what a typical day looks like for us. This is quite a hard question to answer as a “typical” day can usually be defined as one that is completely different to those on either side of it.
Tuesday has been the busiest day so far this week…. collect a pile of photocopying at 8 am, come home, slurp a coffee, feed and dress child, strap him to the back bike, drop him off at nursery, go on to the special school, drop off same photocopies, stop for a conversation with one of the support staff who I needed to catch, on to the fruit and veg shop, home for another shot of caffeine, change mode of transport, drive to Quebracho Herrado, meet with social worker – for various reasons including collecting petrol money for the month hoorah – drive home again, take dogs for a quick walk via the butchers, cook lunch (midday is the main meal here and I try and have it nearly ready for when Joni comes in tired and hungry from nursery), feed the zoo, clear up, put washing out, kiddo has a siesta, we watch whatever we’ve currently got downloaded onto the computer, back on the bike go to mums and toddlers swimming, via the nursery to pay for the month (having got cash from social worker this morning), meet Martin in town, go to the English institute, meet with the directora who is hopefully going to be employing us for conversation classes after we get back from the UK, Martin’s also writing her a website so we take some photos for that while we’re there, home via the bus station to collect tickets to Buenos Aires for Sunday night, throw child in bath, stories, songs etc child bedtime routine, answer emails, feed ourselves, throw dogs out, gather them in again, adult bedtime routine.

Compared with today for example which has been much gentler on the soul…. morning routines for child, dogs and husband (well, he usually manages to put his own clothes on, but sometimes I make the coffee), drop child off at nursery, come back, make more coffee, start putting together a powerpoint for a couple of forthcoming presentations, decide we need some more photographs, go out and take a few, faff around with the powerpoint, give up and take dogs for a walk, come back and set the stew off to cook itself, continue to faff around with powerpoint, interspersed by throwing things into stew and stirring periodically, receive Joni home, have lunch, drive to Luis Sauces to collect disabled kid and mum, deliver them to special school, home, prise my own child away from Bob the Builder and slop him into his bed for a siesta, watch Rev (BB2, you can find it online, we love it!) boy wakes up, decides he doesn’t want to go swimming today, so we take the dogs for their second walk out to the canal (irrigation ditch) and have a look at the horses, cows and chickens, throw some stones into the canal, return for “cooking with mummy” – popcorn, pizza bases and bread, that’s all the major food groups covered isn’t it – throw child in bath, stories, songs, child bedtime routine, Martin’s disappeared off to see the directora of the institute again, so I clear up, put a pizza together for when he gets in, light the fire, and here I am.

See what I mean?

An interesting exercise would be to sort the above into a Venn diagram according to what’s building the kingdom of God, what’s the stuff that we have to do to stay alive, and what’s needless chasing of one’s tail. On second thoughts, I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s OK with everyone.

Saw this today – enjoy! BBC News Article

As I watched the kid making splodges by holding a paint-brush between her toes, I thought “fantastic… they’ve managed to identify a body-part which she has some voluntary control over”. And then I thought “I wonder why they don’t seem to have figured out that this might be a useful starting point for teaching her a communication system”. As I was lying in bed later I thought “I wonder what it would take to invent some sort of low tech switching activities to try out” and that thought led to “I wonder if we could get hold of an old computer and set it up with some software and different switches… I wonder if that mad guy still works at the place where I used to teach… I wonder if I could persuade him to help me…” and by the morning, I had most of a project designed in my head.
That was a couple of weeks ago. Today I was summoned into the Director’s office, I’m not sure why she was so formal about it, seemed like a bit of a chat to me, so I took my chance and dropped in a few switch-based ideas to see what she thought. My jaw nearly hit the floor with her response; “Oh, we’ve got a whole lot of things like that. They’re in a cupboard because no-one knows how to make them work”. Twelve hours later and I’m still not sure whether I’m more horrified that this whole amazing resource is languishing in a cupboard, or delighted that my middle of the night project proposal is halfway to being realised without even having to get out of bed yet.

Being married to techno-geek has its advantages… high on the priority list for post-UK-visit will be the techno-geek-goes-to-school-to-set-their-stuff-up event. Then we’ll need to think properly about matching kids with technology… might still need to get in touch with the mad guy… anyone know if he’s still there? And how to get hold of relevant software given that the big-name products seem mostly to be sold in pounds (Dollars/Euros) by companies who assume that their customers are northern-hemisphere based institutions and thus able to afford same. And finally how to involve and enthuse at least one or two of the staff at the school, which I suspect may be the most important part of the plan, otherwise presumably they might have tried a bit harder to find someone to set the hardware up in the first place.

The thermometer in our car hovered between minus one and minus three as we made our way back to San Francisco last night.  Luckily the car has central heating.  Unfortunately the house does not.  What our house does have is the most ridiculous system of roller blinds ever imagined; the mechanism is installed by taking a great chunk out of the wall, and then vaguely covering it with a wooden box, qua;

As is instantly observable, daylight, accompanied by corresponding fresh air enters through the gap between same box and the wall.  The above is the office, repeat same in Joni’s room;

plus dining room and spare room. The one in our bedroom is the worst;

The change of light in the middle third is outside as viewed from inside, as it were.  Minus three without, equals something pretty similar within.  We’re looking forward to a couple of weeks of gently damp European summer. 

As all the above demonstrates, we made it back from Carlos Paz.  Although we may not have fully answered the question posed on the previous blog entry, it was definitely good to catch up with folk.  Maybe we should just stop being so western and decide that we don’t need a programme in order to justify having fellowship.  The fellowship was good, and having birthdays to celebrate on two out of four days meant that cake was a high feature, always a good unifying factor;

For me the most exciting thing was the bird I spotted in the scrub on the way here.  That’s not entirely to denigrate the rest of the event, just that I find birds exciting and this one in particular.  Called a Chuña, it’s a greyish wader with long red legs, dishevelled ruff and a purple eye patch.  They’re not normally found in our province and I hadn’t seen one before.  So I drew it, in lieu of one of the other probably-more spiritual exercises that I couldn’t manage to get my head round;

And now it’s ten o’clock at night again, and the temperature’s dropping like a rock again, so I’m about to partake of a drop of red, as an alternative form of heating you understand.