Dairy Diary

Yesterday we came back from a few days staying on a dairy farm north of the city.  We rented a bungalow that looked out over the run down farmhouse and out-buildings.  Everything looked like it needed some love, the paint was peeling on the barns, overhead wiring between the buildings looked perilous.  There was slurry on the roads and mud you could lose a boot in.  We arrived there in howling wind and torrential rain, but after such a relaxed Christmas, our spirits would not be dampened.  In fact the space and the farmland and the view of the sea was just what we wanted. The wind hardly let up - so much so, that it was sometimes hard to catch your breath - but the sun did come out and the light of the early sunrise and sunset was amazing. And our friendly farmer wanted to talk corn prices and agricultural politics and show us the farm where he'd grown up.  It was the perfect place for my puddle jumping, mud-loving children!
In the place where I grew up, my next door neighbour was a dairy farmer. The herd of fresians rubbed their necks on our garden fence, their black and white backs were dotted about the fields around our home, we smelt their muck and trod in their cowpats. In the spring we heard their braying when their calves were taken from them.  In the autumn, we picked the mushrooms that grew out of their manure. When we camped in the field once I was convinced they were gnawing on our guy ropes but the tent did not fall down so it must have been their noisy chewing of the cud.  So I have slept just yards from a cow but in spite of this proximity, I had never seen one milked.  And since I'm nursing at the moment myself, I had a new level of respect for these animals as we observed them from the 'pit' in the milking parlour. The invitation came from our accommodating host and was seized upon happily by all of us.  But when you are eye level with a swollen udder, heavy and veined, a few things happen. First, you realise how big a cow actually is, then you become extremely thankful you are not also a cow with their heavy gait and weighty milk-producing burden, and you promptly have a new appreciation for a simple glass of milk and vow never again to let it go off by leaving it out overnight or let it spill across the table from a clumsy hand.
Through a circular piece of glass you could see the milk pulsing out of the udders.  The farmer talked about the iodine used to prevent infections like mastitis. I winced with the memory of it.  He told us the herd were more productive if they listened to music they recognised.  A tinny sounding Latin jazz from the local Hispanic radio channel could be heard from a speaker strung over a beam on the ceiling.  Don't all the parenting books tell us, you nurse better when relaxed?  I looked on in awe, safe behind the iron rails that held the cows in place. Then I got a splash of cow pee and decided to retreat a little closer to the door of our observation 'pit' - poor Jack was strapped to me in a carrier after all.  Not deterred by any of this, Max and Oli wanted to see the calves.  Aged between two weeks and three months, they were being weaned in little tents nearby. Their coats were clean and fluffy as they jumped around their muddy pens. They stuck their noses through the fencing and sucked the farmers hands in the absence of their mothers.  Max wanted to kiss them. Oli wanted to put them on the BBQ. 'Me eat that cow' he said, pointing at one whose pink nose was spotted with black, as if she'd stuck it in an ink well.  'Me dream 'bout cows' he told us this morning and I didn't really think to ask what kind of dream it was.  We offered both boys a beefburger for lunch today and in contrast to Oli's gastronomic take on his farm experience, our future vegetarian declined for both of them, 'That's a waste of a cow' Max said.

Ukiah

Last week we made a trip up north to a remote ranch near Ukiah.  It was beautiful; rolling grassy hills with clovers of red and purple and pink and white. There were bright California poppies and pale checkerblooms, blue and yellow irises and tall lush grasses.  In the lake nearby, tiny silvery fish gathered in the shallows and their graceful sludge-coloured neighbours glided around in the deeper water.  Max and Oli showed little enthusiasm for exercise. Is so much effort really needed for such a little walk? I admit it was hot. Even by ten in the morning the cicadas were chirping loudly from the trees, like so many flicked elastic bands.  Luckily the lake provided a stone-throwing entertainment that could pass for physical exertion and of course sticks were in plentiful supply for poking, proding and as pretend fishing rods. The other day Max told me with excitement that he knew the kind of job he'd have when he was bigger. His job would be collecting sticks.  It makes sense, he gets a lot of practice. By the sounds of it, it will be a global search and supply company, he told me he would have meetings in Penzance and Denver. 

Back from the Southern Hemisphere

Hello there. Hello.  I know, it's been an age.  But we have not had the most promising start to 2010. Max spewing up the spicy sausages he'd especially stayed up for on New Year's Eve - that was the start of a week-long worry about whether he was hydrated enough, what was he ailing from, would he keep down the egg we'd just given him, was yogurt really a good idea, why had we come so far from home this Christmas, where had I put the disinfectant, was the lethargy a sign of some other illness, why was it so hot, when could I give him some more paracetamol, how could we get rid of the flies, how could we make sure Oli didn't get the same thing. With flights postponed for a week, we were holed up in a flat in Havelock North and began wondering if we would ever get back to the US...
I have never been happier to set foot on American soil than the moment we landed last night, particularly as we'd had an extra night in a hotel airport in Auckland, courtesy of Air New Zealand, because our original aircraft had some sort of mechanical failure. They love to bandy about that term but never tell you what the problems is - if they are going to talk about mechanical failure, they might at least get technical - was it the wing, the engine, the landing gear?  Perhaps it was lucky we never found out.
Bad things come in threes they say. And this afternoon I managed to lock Max in the car in a parking lot by the sea.  Two park policemen failed to get him out.  We'd just left a friend's fourth birthday so once I'd reassured Max that it was me that was locked out rather than him that was locked in, he settled in to the lollipops in his goody bag.  Thankfully Pop-A-Lock, in the form of Denis, tattooed up his neck and ring in his lip, came to our aid. Max was released and then promptly strapped back into his seat for the journey home.  I'm wondering whether, in fact, we should ever leave the house again...

Where next?

Yet again Dom and I are questioning where we should live.  Where we should live! I can't believe we haven't worked it out yet.  Max, however, has worked it out. He wants to live in San Francisco.
Until recently Max thought San Francisco was actually our house. There was much confusion when I told him his preschool was also in San Francisco.
'No.' I was roundly told, 'Not in our house!'
'All this is San Francisco' I said, gesturing with my hand to the homes and shops around us.
'San Francisco Cidy?' asks our little American in disbelief.
'Yes, San Francisco and the cidy are the same thing - and everything around you is in the cidy.'
I've found, sometimes these days, I copy Max's pronunciation. It's partly because he can do authentic American, but mainly so he doesn't self-correct all his adorable inaccuracies. How mean I am! But how sweet it is, when he talks about walking on the paperment, or gets the haircups, or wants a story about amnals before he has his breakpast.
I digress.  Where to live.  The whole problem started when we left the UK and set our flip-flopped feet on a sunny San Franciscan sidewalk one balmy, February evening, four years ago.  We fell in love with the place because it seemed to be everything the UK was not; warm and welcoming; safe and friendly, even verging on nostalgic, and it was so easy to get around.  It takes just minutes to get from city to beautiful seaside, where else is that even possible?  It inspired us. And it felt like we were on holiday.  But by definition a holiday must end.  What we miss most, besides Earl Grey tea that's actually drinkable, is good friends.
So the unanswered question is 'Where next?'  It's not very helpful when I'm trying hard to live in the moment.  There's no other way of living, is there, with a one year old trying to walk and a three year old rattling off questions from the crack of dawn until long after the sun has gone down?  Some of my favourites recently have been: Why does your nose have holes in it? Why do your eyes not have bones in them? Why do you need the black in your eyes?  We are so deep into biology, there's hardly time for questions of geography.

New York: The Subway

It's confounded him for two weeks: He can hear the trains, he just can't see them.

Summer's last hurrah

Another great weekend at 'The Ranch'; Oli spent part of the time back in ye olde tin bath, as we attempted to cool down in temperatures in the nineties.  The summer's parting shot, before autumn takes over, perhaps? The soaring mercury made it hard to do anything with much enthusiasm, except have water fights with the hose.  We did venture out on Sunday to pick apples, which proved popular.  We were even given proper harvesting equipment.  Max was very good at sampling the crop: Honey Crisp and Molly's Delicious, the favourites.

Other than that, I read a copy of Lynn Truss', Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and vowed to re-edit this blog for punctuation.  I'm sure you are all going to pitch in and tell me how bad my grammar is.  I'll just say, at least I'm not dropping prepositions yet.  And on the matter of morphing into an American, I can tell you, Max is now officially calling tomatoes; 'tu-may-does'.  Three years of his parents' pronunciation is evidently not enough when it comes to 6 weeks back at preschool, with a 'tu-may-doe' plant bearing fruit in the playground.  Various visitors have told me that my sentences are going up in pitch as I near the full stop, turning them into question-sentences? So perhaps my Americanization is not far behind Max's.  I do romanticize Europe; and refer to the 'bathroom', and say 'gift' instead of 'present'.  And most telling of all, I do, sometimes, misinterpret Dom's sarcasm.

Summer Camp Part II

Well, except for the belt of mosquito bites across my hips, we are still in one piece after the camping trip. Not even a sniff of a mountain lion. In fact, I have since been informed that we weren't camping at all, but glamping (the top end variety). Imagine you arrive at the camp ground, the car sweeps in, it's high sun and you look out from a remote ridge onto the vineyards of the Napa valley. In front of you is a 12 ft teak table with benches. There are two large hurricane lamps. Two hammocks swing from the trees. There's a gas barbecue for our supper. Hidden from view, a little cabin with, oh joy, a loo.
When the darkness enveloped us we packed ourselves off to bed. In the moonlight Max took in the sight of Dom in his orange cocoon of a sleeping bag.
'You look a bit like Tutankhamun!' he exclaimed. And he wasn't too far off.
And even without much sleep and the aforementioned mosquito bites I was able to see again the magic of sleeping under the stars. When we woke at dawn, balloon rides were making their slow descent into the mist below us. And the shower! Like a freezing bolt of electricity. I'd go camping next weekend for that shower...

Summer Camp Part I

Three weeks living out of a suitcase and two long haul flights is clearly not enough for Dom. No, we must go camping. I can't blame it all on Dom, I do have a sneaking suspicion it might be fun. It's our third attempt. The first we canceled because a child had a snotty nose and we anticipated a sleepless night (oh, and I have an unspoken fear of mountain lions). The second faltered because for some reason we got no sleep on Friday night, the night we were in our comfortable bed at home and we realised that rest rather than anything even remotely recognisable to our RV experience was the priority for the weekend. (And then we watched some terrifying documentary on California's mountain lions). This time there seems to be nothing standing in our way (except the fear of mountain lions)...But I'm sure we'll survive, we even know what s'mores are, which means we must be ready for the great American outdoors.

Cornwall in Pictures

Just because...

Cornish Summer

The difference between summer in Cornwall and summer in California is this; when the sun shines in Cornwall you rush at it like you are trying to catch the tail of a flying kite. You run and race and try as hard as you can to cram in every ounce of summertime. Luckily Max has enthusiastically embraced a childhoods-worth of summer activities. In a few short weeks there have been boat trips and barbeques, lobster pots and mackerel lines, rock-pooling and razor shells, pasties, rope swings, grasshoppers and dragon flies. There's been ice-cream on eyelashes and leaking cones, 'grabble' and grass, sand in shoes and swim things and snacks, eel catching, crab catching, and scrambling down steep ravines to inaccessible beaches, no 'lifegardens' in sight. Oli has obligingly participated in all this strapped to a back or held in willing arms. We've dug out matchbox cars from the 1980s, and found they give the same amount of pleasure despite the decades. We've looked for trout in the stream and jumped in the waves of incoming tides. I've learnt again the smell of the fish cellars, a blend of rust and rotting mackerel. With a little less enthusiasm but still some wonder we've stared up at clouds of flat and ominous grey and walked out in rainfall in perfect vertical lines. We've looked up at soggy bunting and stared down at stings from nettles and searched in the hedges for doc leaf cures. And all the time there's been a backdrop of hydrangas; purple, pink and blue, tall agapanthas bending in the wind and the sweet smell of budlia, flickering with cabbage whites. The east wind has brought sunshine but choppy seas. Bright seagulls have cawed above us in the changing skies and at our feet, cats on the slip, have licked their limbs in the sunshine, seemingly the only ones who know the secret of how to slow the pace.

The R word

There's been a lot of talk about RVs this weekend. First Dom came back from a trip to LA full of a story about how some friends there, with children aged 3 and 1, had flown to Vegas, hired an RV and visited the Grand Canyon and Bryce National Park among other American landmarks. They said it was spectacular - a hugely successful holiday. Then a friend from New York came to stay on Friday night and told us he and his family (with kids slightly older) were planning an RV trip next summer, starting in Montana, route not finalised. I'm not sure he felt so confident about his plans by the time he checked out of Hotel Myers, after we had regaled him with the story of our diastrous RV experience. But then, today, a family of five tipped up for brunch - they'd started in a 31 foot Winnebago in Utah and were ten days into their trip. They reached San Francisco late on Friday evening and spent a wet day at Alcatraz yesterday. But even though the idea of a hot bath at our house was too much to resist for one member of the party, they all looked like they were having fun. Sure, they had their stories of god forsaken holes in the Nevada desert and freezing mornings when everyone was up at 5am, and a 2 hour journey that ended up taking 12 because roads were still snowed in near Yosemite. There was the odd mention of a whining child and the small fact that the water heater had broken, but otherwise they were still talking to each other.
And do you know what, for all the horror of our trip three months ago, I couldn't stop myself from having a look inside their vehicle. 3 months it's been and Max still points them out with a loud and excited 'RRRRVVVVVVV!' when he spots one. It's if we were unkindly wrenched from that vehicle by heavies, when in fact we couldn't be shot of the thing fast enough. 31 feet. It certainly looked a beast to drive, and worse to park. And even though they admitted frequent trips to Wendy's for double stacks and value french fries they also said they'd managed to cook occasionally - no mean feat in my book. And they looked healthy enough. Checking out the RVs interior, I was reminded how you have to be fastidiously tidy, never my strong point, and especially so in the rain when muddy footprints are threatening to tramp through the living space. But one thing I have learnt is that there seems to be a pain barrier with RV trips. The family in LA had a terrible first night when they thought they could stay in a Walmart parking lot outside Vegas but then found they couldn't and had to hole up somewhere even more hellish til morning. And like us they had problems with alarms going off and calls to Customer Assistance. The family we entertained with hot baths and scrambled eggs today had had some adjustment issues, the inflatable bed nearly bursting at altitude for one. And like us they had lost a wing mirror. And frankly it can't be fun relying on the kettle for hot water. So I suppose what I'm hinting at is, perhaps we should have stuck it out for another night or 2 back in February. Perhaps we would have seen the light after 48 hours. I guess we'll never know.

Postcard from Hawaii

That's where we've been, 'H'why'hee' as Max called it. It wasn't the most propitious arrival. Once Max realised that the airport/aeroplane experience was over he went into a wailing fit about wanting to go home. 'I just want to go HOME.' It appeared so simple. That there were now two and a half thousand miles of Pacific Ocean and sixteen degrees of latitude between him and his trains, he had not entirely taken onboard. But I'm not sure if he really wanted to be at home, or was just using home as a vehicle to get back on another aeroplane. Luckily the sun was shining and with some macaroni cheese in his tummy, he was soon persuaded Hawaii wasn't so bad. Top of the list of favourites were the rock pools in front of the house. The black rocks, once molten larva, slowly revealed to us the techincolour beauty living in their eroded ponds. There were hermit crabs in small black shells that had zebra-striped legs and turquoise eyes. They hid in holes in the dead coral. There was pale pink living coral and seaweed like little ivory trumpets. Max made a very happy rockpooling companion, obligingly rushing over to peer in the clear salty water when one of us cried 'I can see a crab' or a sea urchin or a fish. We saw a sea snake coiled under a rock and dark brown nudibranchs strewn around like sewage decorated in sand. There seemed to be tiny jumping fish and there were certainly crabs that skitter scattered across the rocks when you disturbed their afternoon shade.
At night the palm trees bent with the wind and the movement of the fronds sounded like rainfall. Lying in bed and listening to the surf, there was always one wave that suddenly sounded particularly crashing, louder than all the rest, and reminded me that we were in both a hurricane and a tsunami zone. Although we were informed that our evacuation routes were illustrated in the phone book, I searched both directories but could find nothing. I scanned the ocean horizon often and even found myself thankful that we had rented a ridiculously large vehicle called a Commander that would be able to make it cross-country to higher ground if the need arose.
When we wrote our postcards I asked Max what he would like to say to Granny. 'Dear Granny, I hope you love me. Love me.' I wasn't sure I had the punctuation right but wrote it down word for beautiful word.
Max loved splashing in the water at the beach and Oli began sitting up and developed a love for a good book - it was usually mine he was chewing on although Dom's completely disappeared so perhaps Dark Star Safari is in his tummy.
In the gardens there were red and yellow hibiscus and white orchids. And there was a tree in which you might have seen a spider web. The wasp-coloured spider was crouching in the centre. Then you might have seen another, and another and yet another, until you realised with horror and then awe that the entire tree was covered in a killing canopy, a cobweb matrix with spiders suspended all around.
At the farmer's market there were avocados the size of ostrich eggs and I bought cream apples, little plum-coloured globes that dripped milk when I quartered them.
We ate Ono and Opah and Swordfish and Mahi Mahi and thanks to Kristi, Max learnt to say the Hawiian name for a Triggerfish, 'Humahumanukanukaapua'a'.
And now we are back in San Francisco, after all my tsunami fears we are safely restored to our home in the Californian earthquake zone.

Road Trip Catharsis

I'm still being haunted by the RV trip at the weekend and felt the need for one more bout of cathartic exorcism via this blog. I am, in fact, having to go back to the RV depot tomorrow, like a moth to the flame you might say. The reason being, we left something inside which I'd like to retrieve. Max, unfortunately, will be in preschool when Oliver and I make the trip over the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Max actually shed tears when we told him the RV had to go back to the shop on Monday. For him, to eat, sleep and play, in a vehicle, just inches from the engine and within metres of the ignition switch and all those controls around the steering wheel - that was pure heaven. I on the other hand, can't think why we thought a trip in a motor-home would hold any appeal in the first place.
Here's my hasty conclusion; Firstly I think it was a cultural thing - I'd never even heard the term RV (Recreational Vehicle, if you're still wondering) until we came to the US. And somehow an RV holiday seems so quintessentially American. Here, they embrace the roads like no other nation, cities are designed for vehicles - this is a country where a high speed rail link between San Francisco and LA is still, amazingly, only a proposal not a certainty. Also, and I may be corrected here, but there seems no stigma attached to an RV holiday like there is to say, a caravan trip in the UK - which carries with it all the nuance of class. So, and here I was caught up in Dom's energetic enthusiasm for it all, it seemed to be a way of embracing America's dream as well as a realistic way of seeing the remarkable geography that makes up this country. I'd add too, that the thought of reducing my life to the contents of a 25ft motor-home held it's appeal. No, really, I'd begun selling books on Amazon to relieve the groaning bookshelves (John Grisham anyone?) And de-cluttering can be very therapeutic. The illusion here is that I thought less space might simplify things, after all, less space is less cleaning, less clutter. But while fewer 'things' might be therapeutic, less space is NOT. That's all I can offer at the moment, but you never know, the sight of the Cruise America depot tomorrow just might get me started again....

Off the Road: For Good

OK, technically the RV doesn't have a clutch. It's an automatic. But believe me, we had vehicle problems, mainly us getting into the vehicle. For some reason, we found it quite hard to actually pack up the RV and set off on Friday evening. By the time Dom had gone to the Cruise America depot in Oakland to pick up the 25 foot beast and actually parked it up outside the house, it was raining hard and it was supper time for Max and Oli - not ideal conditions for setting off. So we delayed, and delayed...and delayed, and frankly a take-out and the Frost/Nixon DVD were beckoning on Friday evening...what more can I say? We all slept beautifully.
By Saturday morning, Max was asking us continually, 'Are we ray-a-go?' Which perhaps indicates how many times Dom and I had asked each other the same question and still found an excuse to delay departure for another five minutes. Suitcases in, cot in, bedding in, saucepans in, food in, oh the joy of putting child car-seats in. Finally we were 'ray-a-go' and actually it was all quite good fun. Dom was wearing a stetson and cracking me up by imitating an airport shuttle-bus driver: 'United Airlines - Domestic' he announced, as he mimicked the 'kcccrrrrk' of the intercom system into his hand. I got my camera out and took some departing shots of the Golden Gate Bridge through the dirty streaked back window of our new home.
About an hour into our journey Max announced he wanted to do a pee. Pulling up quickly off Highway 101 isn't easy but our first opportunity was an access road to a landfill site. Forgetting we had a loo on board I bundled Max out of the RV to pee on the grass. Turkey vultures soared overhead, their wings whistling like fireworks. Max was delighted by the trucks that passed us to and from the landfill. Dom and I found the whole thing rather depressing and both began wondering what on earth we were up to.
Setting off again at an average 50 mph we finally arrived in Bodega Bay, the coast resort which Hitchcock chose as the location for 'The Birds', his film where murderous ravens attack the local villagers. Nice. We weren't exactly sure where we were heading but as we approached the fishing harbour we spotted what was clearly the RV park down by the water. We turned towards the sea. The rain was coming down steadily. Another turn to the left and instead of finding a welcoming RV park we found a sprawling trailer park. We stopped in a layby. Two boy racers with bass booming out of their saloon cars swerved in next to us, revved loudly and sped off. Dom and I exchanged looks.
We did eventually find the Bodega Bay RV Park. The friendly owners Jill and Joe took our money and directed us to lot 12, our parking spot for the night. Joe helped us hook up our electricity. Our motorhome was dwarfed by the others there - huge great buses with extensions and porches and patios. Our next door neighbour was sitting in the doorway of his RV in cozy slippers drinking a beer. A woman walked past with her labradoodle called Turbo. I kept announcing that this was our first ever night in an RV. 'Are you looking for sympathy?' Dom asked. I was really looking for some advice. I wanted someone to say, 'Ah, I remember our first night in an RV, we didn't know what we were doing, but we've had the best fun ever - when you get into it, it's just brilliant.' All I was getting was a friendly nod, no great insight into the appeal of this gig. Max however, was loving every minute. He kept looping the vehicle, climbing into the driver's seat, pressing buttons, clambering out of the driver's seat, running round to the door on the vehicle's side, trying to get his hands on the hook up. I was in a panic every time I lost sight of him.
We decided to go for a walk and Joe directed us through the eucalyptus trees to the sea. It was meant to be a half hour hike but within ten minutes Max was hoiking his trousers up to his armpits and looking distinctly like he needed the loo. Time to head back to the RV. And frankly, lacking the energy or the inclination to manouver the RV out of it's parking spot and drive to the water, we realised that that was it for the day. We'd driven all the way to Bodega Bay to see an RV park in the rain. Dusk was approaching. The wind was getting up. The forecast was a storm coming in off the Pacific. It was time for an early supper and time to put Max and Oli to bed. That's when the real fun started.
7pm, Max and Oli are in their pyjamas. We've skipped the washing stage because it's too stressful to achieve anything in the 2ft square shower/loo. We suddenly hear a loud beep from an alarm above Max's bed. It reads Carbon Monoxide Detector. I press the reset button. The light starts flashing green and red. Just in case we haven't taken enough attention of it, the alarm starts chirping. I press reset again. More chirping. It's now pouring outside but we decide to open a window. Max announces he's scared of the alarm. Dom gets on the phone to Cruise America Traveler's Assistance. Nicole, at the other end of the line, tells us the 'coach' battery is dying, it's not a carbon monoxide leak. Relief. To confirm her diagnosis we notice that the lights inside the RV are gradually dimming and the heating's stopped. She advises we run the engine for 20 minutes. Problem solved, but there's still just a hint of anxiety over the carbon monoxide detector. We briefly consider driving home then and there but decide we should try and stick it out.
Fast forward to 9.30pm, the storm is raging outside, Max is asleep in his bed at the back of the 'coach'. Oli's sleeping in his cot, taking up all the rest of the available space. Dom and I are reading in our 'over-the-cab-bed' (above the driver's seat). That's when the Carbon Monoxide Detector starts up again. Miraculously the kids don't wake up and Nicole tells us we've probably got a dodgy 'hook-up'. But there's no-one to talk to at the RV park. Nicole and I dispatch Dom, in his boxers, into the darkness and rain and gales to disconnect the electricity so we can start the generator. I search for the torch but find there's no battery in it. Again we consider driving straight back to San Francisco, but we figure we are actually safer here than on the roads in the dark in this weather. It takes 3 attempts, including 20 mins running the car again, to get the generator going. Nicole starts talking about getting a new coach battery dispatched to us in Bodega Bay in the morning and I tell her, as politely as I can, that as long as the RV will start in the morning, we are driving it straight back to the depot. There's a nervous cough at the other end of the 'phone before she informs me that all Cruise America rental offices are closed on Sundays. We have this ball and chain til Monday whether we like it or not.
At some point in the evening Dom and I had started writing a list of pros and cons of RV travel. The cons list is growing by the minute. I'm reminded that it is in fact Valentine's Day...so much for romance!
With the generator running, any chance of sleep seems to be rapidly disappearing - it sounds like those boy racers revving up right next to us. And I'm still anxious about carbon monoxide. Every half hour I can't stop myself from jumping down from our bed to check the children are still breathing. After two hours trying to get to sleep we decide to switch the generator off. Amazingly the heating stays on but I'm so nervous about it going off again and my children freezing to death that I can't sleep with the anxiety of it and I keep up my half hourly vigil checking them. On one of these excursions I move a seat cushion that's leaning up against the fridge (we had to dismantle the seat in order to fit Max's car seat in). That's when I see ANOTHER flashing light. It's right on the floor and I crouch down to see it says LCP Gas Detector - not another one. It's flashing green and it's not beeping so I persuade myself we are safe. But sleep? You must be joking. By 2am the rain on the roof sounds like hail stones and I can see the dark outline of the trees swaying aggressively against the night sky. Finally at 5am our faithful carbon monoxide detector, like the budgie in the coal mine, starts singing to us yet again. This time Max does wake up - and wakes up with all the excitement of Christmas morning. Which of course wakes Oli. We run the engine again, and can't pack our bags fast enough. By 6.40am we are on the road and rattling our brute of an RV back to the city. But that's not end of it...oh no, just as we make a final turn towards home Dom swipes another vehicle's wing mirror. There's the sound of splintering glass. Our wing mirror is shattered. We park up in the rain and when we finally get home, dispatch ourselves to bed feeling much the same as you might after a long-haul flight, jet lagged and exhausted. Dom and I agree that we will never go near an RV again. Ever.

On the Road: Phase 1

I can't believe this was MY idea - a weekend away in an RV as preparation for the Big One in the summer. What was I thinking? And now it's upon us, and rain is forecast. We've been trying to decide where we will spend the night tonight. We first thought we'd try a carpark by the beach but then decided it might be a bit spooky. The RV park that we considered doesn't take reservations. We might just park up outside the house - that was Dom's suggestion, and we can pretend the RV broke down. So if you hear us complain about the dodgy clutch.....

Home from home...

So we are back in San Fran, back from the UK, back to warm days and blue skies, beyond the reach of England's bitter cold. But for all Britain's bad points; that chilling east wind, Heathrow's Terminal 5, the way we Brits moan and grumble...it is nevertheless 'home'. And though I was keen to get back to California it was mainly for Max and Oli's sake - for that reassuring return to routine. Had I known what awaited us I might have stayed on a little longer. As we pushed through the junk mail and bills that had piled up behind our door I saw a puddle around the fridge. Floorboards swollen, the smell of rot. Icicles had formed on the shelving inside but the fridge's motor was running on overdrive and heating it up from the base. In my jet-lagged derangement I knew I couldn't deal with it immediately but due to that same derangement I thought I'd try opening the freezer section at the top - bad idea. In my anger at the damn thing being frozen over (and knowing I'd surely lost all the food in there) I managed to get the door open an inch - but then I couldn't open it any further and couldn't close it either... The drips began to quicken. I left rags and old towels out to sop up the mess and went to bed. We were all in bed by 7.30pm, bliss, then awake again at 2, blaagh. Max was electrically awake and especially keen on playing with his trains. 'I want to go down the stairs.' 'I want daddy down the stairs.' 'Daddy, do you want to play with me?' 'I don't want to play quietly in my room.' By 6am it was actually a relief to be able to get up. Dom, amazingly and perhaps quite sensibly went off to work, or should I say, to his place of work. Quite miraculously at 8am my babysitter called me to ask if we'd made a plan for her to come over. No, we hadn't but YES PLEASE could we? A wave of relief. A few phone calls later and within the hour a man was on his way to mend the fridge - ahh, the joy of convenience America. He recommended a new one so the old appliance was dragged out, still bleeding, to the garden. Max was delighted to see the 'Man-Fridge' and his box of tools. (Why is it that 'Man-Fridge' sounds like someone half man, half fridge and yet Fridge Man is quite obviously someone who comes to mend it?) Four days living out of a cool box with the jet lag improving by roughly an hour a day and some sense of that reassuring routine must surely come soon.

Ranch Life

We have just come back from a weekend at 'The Ranch' near Point Reyes. We spent a week there in the summer and on our first night the cattle made such a noise we wondered if we had completely misjudged how peaceful the great wide open American countryside could actually be. I know it's ridiculous to go to a ranch and then complain about the cows but that night they made the phrase 'a cow says moo' look distinctly inadequate. 'The cow moans meruuurrrghhhhhhh' would more accurately have summed up their braying that night. There was some nervous laughter at breakfast as we made reference to this racket and silently wondered if it would go on all week. It certainly wasn't a noise I remembered from the Cornish countryside of my childhood or that of my grandmother's farm at Blackwell. But it turns out the cows were being weaned and that evening had been separated from their calves, hence the agonizing moans. Being pregnant at the time and dare I admit it, perhaps a little hormonal, I could sympathise with their pain. Anyway, the upshot of all this was that the owners promised us a free weekend at their spectacular idyll later in the year. Of course, when they suggested it, we, in best British form, said it was totally unnecessary...but they only had to insist once before we took them up on the offer. It sounds corny but it really is heaven there. And the timing was perfect because I was getting a dose of the baby blues last week. It might have been partly due to the fact that Max gave us a sleepless night the week before when he came home from preschool with a tummy bug. I haven't had a full night's sleep in 11 weeks, since Oli's arrival, so having an entire night stolen from me and with it the anxt of a sick child, it fairly did me in. But my blues were not entirely down to sleep deprivation. It's also that feeling of being overwhelmed (in a good way) about how precious these little lives are. Oli is just adorable and suddenly no longer a newborn. Looking at him now, with cheeks like delicious pale peaches, I feel those first few months have almost passed me by, they went in such a flash. I know that all sounds such a cliche but it's nevertheless true....Gone are those precious times when Oli, like a crumpled kitten, nuzzled his head into my shoulder, gone are the blistered little lips as he nursed, the tiny hands, the tiny everything and small dark eyes like a seal pup's. Of course, I love seeing Oli grow but I already feel nostalgic for that moment when he was first born and the nurses flung him on me and this little face, so familiar because he looked just like Max had at birth, gazed up at me and seemed to ask 'Where am I? And how did I get here?' The ranch in Point Reyes feeds into my feelings of nostalgia. When we arrived and I jumped out of the car, it smelled like summer holidays - fresh cut grass and dessicated manure! It was a balmy moonlit evening with hares and deer jumping out of the path of the car. Max ate a boiled egg with soldiers on a high bar stool in the kitchen while I washed Oli in an old tin tub I found under the sink. I grew up on stories of how my grandmother had once sterilized our baby bottles in a horse feed bucket and I thought she'd be smiling at the tin tub bath. Max spent the weekend befriending a John Deere tractor and climbing fences and he was also introduced to the concept of splinters. Dom and I weren't allowed near the tractor or the splinters so enjoyed the sunshine and the silence, because the cows had got over their trauma, and this time they were quiet.