Martin & Hazel Frost

The scene in our house at the moment resembles something out of a Victorian re-enactment; nappies drying over the backs of chairs arranged around the kitchen fire.  It has been raining without ceasing for a week, and that which looks romantically historical on the page of a primary school history book, in real life is enough of a pain in the butt to challenge my resolve to use cloth nappies, particularly in our big unheated old barn of a house with its holes in the walls.  As long as we can dry six a day we can just about keep the show on the road, but Joni has completely run out of dry footwear… luckily he prefers bare feet in the house, and his penchant for splashing in puddles means that he might just as well start off wet outside anyway.  Still, unlike our grandparents, we do have a washing machine, and unlike some neighbourhoods of this city, our road is tarmacked so at least we can leave the house without sinking into a foot of muddy slurry.  Our friends in the hamlet have to negotiate three kilometres of mud between them and the nearest asphalt so even if it stopped raining now they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere anytime soon. 

Meanwhile life chugs along; between the endless round of feeding, changing, and finding space for yet more damp washing, I’m also back working with the guys from the hamlet and the village for a couple of hours in the afternoons when it’s dry enough to get there. 

Quotes from the experiential learning of a budding scientist… “I was just eating the ants; they’re very tasty”  (I never managed to find out whether he meant it)

“If you eat soil you get black teeth, a black tongue, a black tummy and black poo”  (Impressed by his understanding of the digestive process… but how does he know?)

“Joni when we see Sergio next we need to ask him to cut your hair” “No we don’t, I’m going to do it all by myself…” 

We held the first Scout overnight event of this academic year, which ended up being a sleepover in our own premises owing to a mix up with campsite bookings.  No-one seemed to mind, and we have a few kids who were sleeping away from home for the first time so that was probably adventure enough.  The Venture section have been working hard over the last few months building us some playground toys in the grounds, so our younger ones made the most of having a whole weekend to fight over enjoy those. 

Both my boys went along as mascots;- 

Joni is very clear that he is one of the “big boys”, and I was in severe trouble that I didn’t prepare him a costume to dress up in for the campfire (as is tradition at Scout campfires here).  In my defence he’s never shown any interest in wanting one before and now I know for next time.  Danny spent his first Scout event being passed between juvenile “babysitters” and occasionally finding himself the source of a tug-of-war between same.  The night was flippin’ freezing, especially in our big old barn, but I zipped two sleeping bags together and all three of us got in together.  Joni thought this was a great opportunity to use Mummy as a mattress.  Danny thought he had found a fantastic open-all-hours milk bar.  Mummy was less convinced about either plan, but we all survived sufficiently well to declare the experiment a success… and it’s not as if the Scouts were about to let anyone get any sleep anyway. 

There is a saying here that goes “God may be everywhere, but he only works in Buenos Aires”.  Argentina is very much divided between “The Capital” and “The Interior”; most organisations and services are based in Buenos Aires, and most of those assume that everyone else is also based in Buenos Aires, hence the many bureaucratic transactions which require applicants to attend “in person”.  But I live six hundred kilometres away.  Never mind, we’ll wait for you.  The net result is that in order to progress with any aspect of life, sooner or later you will have to go to Buenos Aires. 

We needed to go to BA apart from anything else, to register Danny for his consular birth certificate at the British Embassy, in order to start his British passport application.  We decided that Monday would be a good day, although until Sunday afternoon we hadn’t quite figured out who was actually going to make the trip, and by what means of transport.  So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. and Hazel won(?) so Danny and I went off to Buenos Aires on the Sunday night bus. 

Buenos Aires was muggy and drizzling when we arrived at six thirty in the morning.  We jumped onto a train and went for breakfast with folk, who also signed our passport photos.  Then we jumped onto another train and walked a fair bit (it looked closer than that on the map) to the embassy.  Birth certificate duly applied for, my old passport duly cancelled, we turn to the question of Danny’s passport where I express some concern since mine had taken three months to turn up from Washington.  Cue roll of eyes to the heavens.  “To be honest, your best bet is to apply for an Argentinean passport and travel on that, and do his UK one in the UK”.  Given Argentina’s fame for incompetent bureaucratic processes, it was quite impressive to hear the representative of the British system in Argentina pronounce an official verdict of “No, really, we’re worse”. 

Done there, we took another brisk hike through town to the British Council to unearth my degree certificates which they’ve been legalising for the last month.  The British Council reminded me of something from an age of Enid Blyton and tea at five; “quaintly genteel”.  Having then finished the jobs, we found ourselves with quite a few hours to kill before our bus, but not quite long enough to travel anywhere to see anyone.  Danny in his little baby-carrier on my front seemed to be happiest with me walking.  So we walked.  And walked. 

Calle Florida, the main pedestrian street in the centre of town, has gained an army of touts flogging tours and changing dollars, although none of them approached me; I’m still trying to figure out whether that’s because they decided I look local, or just scary.  A lady came and walked with me for a bit, ostensibly to share her umbrella with me, but mostly to fill the airspace with unsolicited words. “i know London it’s like buenos aires really except that i think buenos aires is better because there’s more movement and things going on here don’t you think”  It’s probably a good thing that she didn’t pause for breath long enough for me to let her know that it is that very excess of movement, noise, sensory overload, and mad women filling my airspace which mean that I neither live in London nor Buenos Aires.  Back on our own again we went to a cafe, did some window shopping, browsed the magazines in some of the many street stalls… including a guide to growing your own cannabis (a landmark case here recently determined that it is legal to grow cannabis for personal use).  Eventually we found ourselves in the Plaza San Martin.  As plazas go it isn’t the most attractive; largely concrete with a few bald patches which used to be grass, it has a view onto a main road with three train stations and the bus terminal behind it.  None-the-less it is one of the few places in the city where it is possible to stop and stare without ending up with footprints across your butt.  So we sat on a bench and stopped and stared long enough for the light to fade, and the other occupants of the plaza to sort themselves according to those who were going home and the folk who sling a blanket over a bench.   By then, we’d been drizzled upon on and off for the best part of twelve hours, so we called it a day and headed back to the relative warmth and stewed coffee of the bus station.  And that was Buenos Aires ticked off till next time. 

“I’ve got my watch, my phone and my helicopter”

Suburban man surveys his status symbols lined up on the breakfast table:

     Doing stuff around here at the moment feels quite a lot like a game of snakes and ladders… sometimes you go up; sometimes you go down; and if you keep throwing the dice enough times you’ll get to the end in the end.              

Between one kid in nappies full time, other kid in nappies at night, whichever one of the dogs it was that decided to poo on the office floor, and the fact that the left shoulder of everything I wear ends up smelling of stale milk, I suddenly seem to be spending my life wading in bodily fluids.  On the plus side, the author of the stale milk managed to spend five and a half hours in his own bed last night.  That might not sound a lot, but believe me it’s welcome progress. 

They give the BCG injection in the first month here so I dutifully took Daniel along for his on Tuesday morning.  Handily the little community centre in our neighbourhood (Barrio Jardin) doubles as a health post in the mornings.  Less handily I found a big sign taped to the door saying “Barrio Jardin Health Service suspended for three weeks; nearest alternative Barrio Bouchard”.   Goodoh.  So we leapt onto the bike and peddled along to Barrio Bouchard.  Here I found another big sign on the door saying Go to Barrio Jardin not quite… announcing that the health service for Barrio Bouchard will be functioning in the afternoons.  Super.  But the door was open, so I went in anyway and asked the guy inside if he could confirm that I would be able to get a BCG done if I came back this afternoon.  Technically yes, except that we’ve run out of vaccinations.  Better and better.  But if you go along to the Centro de Asistencia then they should have some.  The what?  The health post in the centre of town.  So off we peddled to find it.  The Centro de Asistencia turns out to be a big government-run walk-in clinic housing twenty surgeries distributed around a maze of corridors.  The scene reminded me of those post-earthquake disaster shots on the TV; thousands of people milling randomly around looking glazed and confused.  We stood in line at reception long enough to be given a plastic card, and posted off to surgery 19, the vacunatorio, where standing in line some more won us an appointment to come back on Thursday.  That counts as progress. 

This week we received a threatening “Pay up or we’ll impound your car and castrate your horses” letter for an unpaid traffic fine which I already paid two months ago.  Praise the Lord for my husband’s anal obsessive comprehensive filing system… I honestly never thought I’d hear myself saying that… so he took letters and bank receipt to see one of his students; well-known local business man who also happens to be a qualified lawyer.  Oh no you definitely can’t ignore this, otherwise they really will impound your car (and castrate your horses) and then fine you through the teeth.  Is this likely to be a genuine mistake, or are they deliberately trying to charge me twice?  Who can tell? (shrug) The most important thing is that even though you’re in the right, in order to have any chance of winning, any contact you make has to ingratiate yourself with them… go for friendly, careful, polite… I know, why don’t you just leave this with my secretary and I’ll see what we can do.  Hooray… we hope. 

Today we took Daniel to the civil registry for the final stage of applying for his birth certificate, after which we would hopefully start the process of two passport applications.  The British passport used to be really easy; they were all produced in-house in Buenos Aires, and took a week.  Now, all passports for the Americas are processed in Washington, and the website says allow four to six weeks… except that mine took nearly three months, and they also have a premium rate phone line, payable by credit card (yes really) so they get to make a profit on their inefficiency.  I guess sometimes it does us good to be reminded that Argentina doesn’t have a monopoly on ridiculous government services.  Meanwhile, where the British system has been centralised, Argentina has just devolved their passport system out to be produced in-house in the local civil registries.  Unfortunately, in San Francisco, the machines arrived late, didn’t work, no-one was trained to use them… etc.  and so they now have a three month backlog and won’t be giving out any more appointments until August.  However, we arrived at the civil registry this morning, and were shortly greeted by our insider friend from church “come and knock on this door when you’re done with his birth certificate”  OK.  So we did.  “I’ve reserved him an appointment to do his passport application on the 13th of June.  I’m really sorry but it’s got to be at midday, because there aren’t any appointments so I had to create him one at a time when we don’t usually see people…”  That probably means that she and whoever else she’s roped in are sacrificing part of their lunch break.  Big big ladder.  Seriously please don’t apologise for fitting us in at midday… and may your mansion in heaven have roses over the door. 

Actually this one’s just a ladder…  We formally presented Daniel at church on Sunday, so he was held-up, blessed, prayed over, and generally made a fuss of.  He seemed a bit non-plussed by the whole thing but he behaved impeccably.  I really want my boys to grow up knowing their creator and redeemer, it’s my continual prayer that God will keep them close, and give us wisdom as we nurture them, be that in this church or wherever else we may end up along the way.

Passport photos must be…..

Hmmmmmmmmmmm….

Double hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……………..

Hopefully this one…….?  After all the notes don’t actually say that you can’t look drunk.

Never work with children or animals. 

Other significant milestones of parental achievement…

Not only did I make it onto the bike without splitting my stitches, but I managed to transport all three of us (that’s me and the smaller two of my men) into town on it.  Joni has his own little seat on the back, and Danny straps nicely to my front in the baby harness.  He’ll get his own seat on the cross-bar when he’s about six months or so, in the meantime wearing him works out fine. 

We caught up with the washing… three days of damp and drizzle would play havoc with anyone’s domestic organisation, and ours isn’t very at the best of times.  Fortunately the sun put in a half-hearted appearance and we were able to push five loads through just in time for the smallest not to run out of nappies and the next smallest not to run out of trousers.

This evening we finally lit the fire after holding off for a couple of weeks trying to kid ourselves that it isn’t really cold, except that actually it is… there’s been frost on the ground several mornings when we’ve been walking the dogs.  Our next job will be a little tour of the lanes to gather ourselves a store of firewood; we’re currently using up last year’s remnants which have sat in the garage for the summer.

Chip off the old block?  Charlie’s angels; or Hazel’s Charlies?  (“Can’t you manage to look pleasant for 1/500th of a second?” Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes)

Today some complete stranger stopped me in the street and asked “Is that a real baby?”  I’d like to hope that she meant “That baby is so little / bald / white / cute he could almost be a doll”, and not “you look like someone who might take their dollies for walkies”.

Today we started the process of applying for a birth certificate at the civil registry.  This is a four stage operation:

Stage One.  Go to civil registry, take numbered ticket and sit in line for an hour or two in order to collect a list of the pieces of paper that you need to bring with you next time.  (If you’ve already registered a child then you might risk missing out this stage, except that the rules change quite regularly, and every province operates their own system).

Stage Two.  Gather your pieces of paper, currently required;

• Paediatrician’s certificate “A child was born”
• Gynaecologist’s certificate “A child was born to this woman”
• Mother’s DNI (national ID document) “This woman is officially recognised as existing”
• Father’s DNI document “So is this man”
• Mother and Father’s marriage certificate (if unmarried, both parents have to attend and sign another piece of paper to acknowledge joint culpability in producing this child)

Stage Three.  Return with your pieces of paper, take numbered ticket and sit in line for an hour or two in order to have your documentation officially acknowledged as being in order.  Receive a written chit with a dated and timed appointment for around a week’s time. 

Fortunately by having a little friend in the civil registry we were able to miss out stage one by visiting her at home, and, better and better, we also avoided the queuing part of stage three since friend caught my eye when as we arrived this morning so we found ourselves whisked past the queue, hurried round to the staff side of the counter and our paperwork checked in a jiffy while Daniel distracted the colleagues by looking cute.  So now we have made it to:

Stage Four.  We’re hoping this is the one where we actually receive a birth certificate. Our appointment is next Tuesday; we’ll let you know! 

Newly hatched and underwhelmed

New brothers “swop” presents

Road testing his first set of wheels

Quote of the day…

"Joni you’re such a slave driver”  “No I not.  You’re the train driver”. 

It is possible that some little-published mathematical law states that two children equal ten more than one.  Nevertheless, so far we are all wearing our own clothes in conventional configurations, and meals are happening in their traditional order even if the timings need some work, so we may be making progress towards establishing some sort of routine at some stage.  We’re hoping that sleep may turn out to be one of those unlockable features available by downloading service pack 2. 

He’s a lot more fun out than in; and as for the bit in the middle, all I can say is Genesis 3:16. Joni stayed with friends on Monday night and Martin brought him in to see us on Tuesday morning.  The first thing he decided was that the baby needed a present, so off they disappeared again on a present-choosing mission, followed by a little handing-over ceremony… soft-toy crab in lurid colours for Daniel, and a big green truck for Joni.  The rest of Tuesday passed in a blur of feeding, phone calls, more feeding, receiving visitors, more feeding, medical professionals coming and going, and more feeding… He came out demanding steak and chips, and has since progressed to onion rings on the side with death-by-chocolate to follow.  The hospital wanted us to stay in till Wednesday, but when I asked, no-one could think of any reason why we shouldn’t go home on Tuesday evening, so we went. 

And now here we are, learning to be four.  So far we’ve gathered up the sundry baby-related items from various storage holes around the house (OK, normal people might have done that before the baby actually arrived).  We’ve been round town a couple of times doing odd jobs and buying other bits of stuff (how can we possibly not have any bibs; or are they still squirrelled away in a household storage hole?).  We bought a new pram/pushchair type thing in a “can’t lose you in the supermarket” shade of red (thanks for the gift Granny and Grandad!).  I even took the dogs for a (short) walk this morning (on foot rather than bike; stitches in a location incompatible with cycling).  We went visiting this afternoon; friends from church, one of whom conveniently works in the civil registry, so she gave us all the information we need that we can hopefully register him in the next few days, and we called in at the plaza for a bit on the way home.  And we’ve managed to deliver Joni on time to nursery two days running (which is almost more efficient than we manage in an ordinary week!).  Apparently he went in to nursery yesterday and told them that the baby had come out, that his name was Daniel, and that he is this small… (hold up right hand and with thumb and fore-finger indicate a distance of about 4 cms) so the staff were surprised to meet him at going home time and discover that he’s pretty much standard length for a new-born. 

And tomorrow’s another day, whatever it might hold.  It feels like quite a long way away yet; on the far side of whatever might happen between now and then… To sleep perchance, to dream??

My child’s latest impressive scientific discovery (pre-Copernican astronomy):

“Look mummy, that’s the sun coming up.  Later the sun goes down and it gets really dark, and in the morning the sun comes up and it gets all light again.”  It was a jolly fine sunrise as we walked the dogs together; all red behind the silhouetted trees on the skyline. 

The (male) Scout leaders:

“When did you say your baby was due… flippin’ heck, what are you doing here… don’t tell me you came on your bike… you can tell she’s imported… if that was an Argentinean woman she’d be lying around in bed demanding we wait on her… she’s more like one of those aboriginals, they’re tough birds…”  I suspect it’s a compliment, personally I’m hoping that if I keep moving he might be encouraged out more quickly than if I give him too many opportunities to get comfortable. 

The predictable response of the local police department when we reported our village mother missing:

“She’s an adult, she’s free to go where she wants”  Of course… as long as she is free to go where she wants, and so far we have no proof that she has freely gone anywhere.  And where the experiences of her life so far are sufficient to convince you that she’s not worth giving a damn about, I would argue that they render her vulnerable enough to look for.  So you might consider doing something to demonstrate that the bird-poo on your shoulder has some useful value.  (actually I didn’t say most of that, but I did say enough that they grudgingly extracted some details.  Whether they do anything with them…). 

The parallel stories of two kids needing surgery:

Stories of the injustice of life, albeit for different reasons.  Go check out Tia’s blog for one of them.  The other is my mate here, who should have had his hip surgery a month ago, but may not get it at all unless we can locate his mother, or demonstrate conclusively that she is no longer his primary care-giver (i.e. by her voluntarily signing him over, having him forcibly removed from her care, or being proven deceased).  Bureaucracy takes priority over medical need; after five years here maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

Martyn’s Joseph’s Dolphins: 

That’s truly a blast from the past, I hadn’t heard it for years, but I did a YouTube hunt since he came into my mind as I was ruminating on the sheer offence of the injustices that some people have to go through.  I can’t remember what album I had Dolphins on (aged cassette… possibly still languishing in a loft) but it was live, and I remember the spoken introduction used to kill me every time “…because this world could never be the way it was supposed to be…” 

Martyn Joseph… a blast from my past

Dolphins make me cry….

Don’t know what the world is going to do
Or if we can get off the road that we’re on
There’s hate in my brother’s eye but as the time goes by,
I get harder.

They say we learn by our mistakes and then we carry on
Sometimes I’m not sure, sometimes I’m not sure
There’s no brakes on this car as it rolls down the hill
My muscles are straining now, my foot’s through the floor.

Perhaps that’s why, perhaps that’s why…
I see the dolphins and it makes me cry
As I look in your eyes, I look in your eyes
As the time goes by, makes me cry.

Don’t want to go to school anymore today
Because history, she keeps on repeating herself
She can’t forgive; she just licks all of her wounds
Sore is the day, and sore is the night.

Perhaps that’s why, perhaps that’s why…
I see the dolphins and it makes me cry
As I look in your eyes, I look in your eyes
As the time goes by, makes me cry.

When I was a boy, when I was growing up
I remember life was so simple; life was so sweet
Now that I’m older, I’m wise as a fool
I keep on breaking those golden, golden rules…

And perhaps that’s why, perhaps that’s why
I see the dolphin and it makes me cry.
As I look in your eye, as I look in your eye
As the time goes by, makes me cry.

Perhaps that’s why… …
I see the dolphin and it makes me cry.
As I look in your eye, ask I look in your eye
As the time goes by, makes me cry.

Did you ever touch the loneliness of a broken man?
Did you see a starving child die?
Do we really do these things to one another?
Do you see why…
Dolphins make… me cry.

This is one of Joni’s favourite books at the moment, which means we read it at least once most days.  It’s an interactive story involving maps, and planning an outing, and then “helping” dinosaurs Dexter and Daisy through the various stages of carrying out their plan. 

By the time we reach the centre pages:

assuming we have been paying attention so far, then we will know that the “right” answer at this point will be to continue along the main road and follow the traffic past the duck pond. 

However, Nick Sharratt probably hadn’t reckoned on a little boy who takes it as a given that normal lives would naturally involve straddling two continents;

“No…. they have to go to the airport and catch a plane to see Granny and Grandad”.  

He is un-persuadable, so our Dexter and Daisy’s day out to the forest involves a detour by plane to England en route.  Which is probably more exciting anyway.  Should we publish?