I am sitting at the dining table trying to organise Christmas Amazon orders to various family factions.
I am facing the open french windows and looking down to the bottom of the garden where, under a startling pink bower of Bourgainvillia, Sprog has set up a small table and chair. She has very carefully carried her bowl of porridge and her cup of milk down to her table. She is sitting in state, putting me in mind of a Victorian jungle explorer taking tea.
Wilf has gone down to bug her and she is distracting him by singing her very own version of jingle bells. Rattling a jingly baby toy she is lustily singing "Jingle bells! Jingle bells Jingle all the WAY!! (Hey!) Ohmah fahhh eddesterahhh! Amana OPEN SLEIGH (hey!)"
Wilf is clutching his nadgers and dancing from one foot to the other, laughing like a drain.
They are both starkers.
Life is good.
What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)
Lunch class? Pah.
How about smoking behind the newsagents across the road class?
Or bunking off and going to Drummonds class?
Or maybe those free periods either side of lunch when my friend would drive us to the Dome on the Kings Road and I'd drink gin and tonics before returning to my A Level English Literature class?
Lunch class, schmunch class.
Hello internets. Just thought I'd pop by to let you know that:
(a) the PGCE is going great guns (though I haven't actually been allowed near a child yet, so this may well be the calm before the storm)
and
(b) well, I think this one deserves a picture:
There should be alcoholic tea.
Sometimes you really need a cup of tea, but you could also do with a drink.
Some people put whiskey in tea. But then your delicious tea would taste of whiskey. Yuck.
Cognac, I suppose, but again, it would be ruining both a perfectly nice cup of tea and a glass of cognac.
Coffee lends itself so much more to the addition of alcohol, but coffee doesn't scratch the itch that tea does.
An evening drink that combines the oooooh of a good cup of tea and the ahhhhh of a gin and tonic. Then my life would be complete.
MUUUUUUM! Wilfie did a POOOOOOO!
Comming!
On the FLOOOOOOR!
Comming faster!
Of your BEDROOOOOOOOM!
Ahhhh!
Just next to your beautiful new sparkly CARRRRRRPET!
I'm here! Where is the poo?
There.
Where is the rest of it?
Nowhere.
There is no other poo?
No. Just a little tiny cute baby poo.
Really?
Yes.
Hmm. Okay. Just this tiny poo then.
And the wee.
There's wee?
Yes.
Where?
Umm...
Where is the wee darling?
... ... ...
Sprog darling, have a think and tell Mummy where on the floor Wilfie did his wee.
The wee you're standing in, or a different wee Mummy?
- Does Father Christmas know what I want for Christmas Mummy?
- Oh yes, he's clever like that.
- Does he know I want a yo-yo?
- I am sure he does.
- Will you tell him?
- We can write him a letter if you like?
- Yes. And you can write words on it to let him know.
- I'll do that.
- And I'll draw a picture of a yo-yo, just in case.
- Good idea.
- Or, I could just draw a picture of a yo-yo on some paper and I could pretend it's a real yo-yo and play with that?
At the party I met a lovely lady whose children went to school with the hosts' children. She was shocked that I had brought my children to sleep in the spare room and asked why I didn't let my nanny babysit. I told her I didn't have a nanny. This is very unusual in Dubai and not a concept that some people find easy to understand. It is even more shocking to some women to learn that the reason it really is not hard for me to look after my two children without the help of permanent live-in staff is that my husband is every bit as capable as me in every aspect of looking after our children (although he has yet to get lactating down pat). One woman actually shrieked and grabbed her husband to witness when Mr S , not me, went to settle Sprog to sleep shortly after we arrived.
So, I am often fiercely grilled as to why I don't have a nanny. Last night I said that we simply didn't have the room in our house to put up a nanny.
- Couldn't she sleep in with the children, in their room?
- Um, no. Not really. A third bed would make the room awfully crowded.
- Ha ha! No! She wouldn't need a bed. Just a bed roll which she can store away during the day.
- Yeh... anyway... she'd still need a room wherever she slept and we don't have a spare room.
- Why would she need a room?
- To keep her clothes? Her things?
- Oh mine has a cupboard in the children's bathroom for that.
- Your nanny sleeps on the floor of your children's room?
- Yes of course.
- But don't you live in Emirates Hills?
- Yes. In a five-bedroom villa!
- And you only have two children?
- Yes.
- So you must have spare rooms?
- Well, yes, but I need them.
- Hang on, the Emirates Hills places all have maid's rooms.
- Yes, but I wanted the maid's room for my study.
- But there's...
- My husband has the main study.
- But still...
- Yes, the children actually share a room, and I have a sewing room, and we've not decided what to do with the last bedroom yet.
- You have a room standing empty and a woman sleeping on the floor of your children's room? Why not let the nanny have the extra room?
- Oh, I don't think I like the idea of her having her own space. I wouldn't know what she was up to.
- This is a woman you trust enough to take on the entire care of your children, but not to read a book in private?
I didn't say the last bit. I smiled politely and walked away.
I checked this out with friends and have learned that apparently my good friend F also has her nanny sleeping on the floor of her son's room, despite having a large en-suite spare room standing empty.
And when V went to stay with her Mother-in-Law and took her nanny with her, MiL would not let the nanny sleep in the empty, spare, twin bed in the children's room. She did not want staff sleping in the family beds and so the nanny slept on the floor on a bed roll next to an empty spare bed.
Waiting for the taxi to take us to a party.
Have had a pretty wine red boned corset kicking about in my wardrobe for years now. Never worn. Wondered if tonight I might be slim enough for it to look good... it's too big for me. Am swimming about in it anyway. I've hurredly taken up the straps so I don't flop out of it entirely.
My shoes don't go with my outfit.
Going to take the children and put them to sleep in the spare room. A right of passage for a child I think. Sprog will be given strict instructions to snug down and go to sleep, and will without a doubt end up the kitchen with the cook and his helper, watching cartoons and drinking hot sweet milk like last time.
Wilfie is already asleep (taxi is taking ages) and Sprog is watching Spongesquare Bobpants (she insists) on the portable dvd player.
The party is at one of the Emirates Hills mansions. The water feature in the entrance hall is the size of my sitting room.
Where is my taxi?
Ugh. Every day I think this, right now, THIS is the worst this dang falootin cold can possibly make me feel. I cannot possibly feel any iller or snottier or congested or gross than THIS right now. And yet still the snot comes. My face aches. My bones ache. My teeth ache. My hair aches. My clothes ache.
I am writing this from the swing seat in the garden while Sprog tends to her tomato seedlings and Wilf boings around on the trampoline. I am mouth breathing, noisily.
I was wondering earlier at what point my children will turn in to people to me. If they ever do. Wilfie was sitting on my knee eating grapes. Smacking and chewing and slurping and globbing and dribbling and chomping and snorting and above all else, sharing. If I catch the sound of anyone else so much as politely crunching a Rich Tea I am revolted. Other people's eating noises. Shudder. But the sound of my children masticating is not just lacking in offensiveness to me. I actually think it's cute. I like it.
Beinjg a white woman in Dubai is strange. Being expats we are catagorically second class citizens. But, being female and white and, importantly, having children, seems to put me at the top of the also-ran tree. I never have to queue, but am ushered to the front. This holds particularly true of interminable red-tape government queues.
I was driving through an unfamiliar part of town today and pulled into the 1004 Mart ('All For Asian Needs'). The manager leapt from behind his counter before I was three steps into the shop. How could he help? What did Madam need? I asked him if he had pink milk. Turning he snarled and shouted at a hapless chap in the shop, who immediately dropped his basket and ran out of the shop. Madam must wait please, apparently. A few minutes later, sweating and panting, hapless chap returned with a carton of pink milk he had presumably bought from a shop down the block. I'd have been just as happy with apple juice.
I was walking through Al Barsha with my friend Jamilla. She asked why all the taxis were tooting. Surely they weren't tooting us? Well, yes they were, because a white woman walking through Al Barsha must surely be some mistake. The only possible explanation is that I hadn't found a cab yet. Jamilla Chaudry is from Switzerland and certainly would not have been tramping through the sand pits of Al Barsha had her idiot friend from Yorkshire not suggested it. In fact when we reached our destination, the tailor's, she phoned her driver to bring us coffee to recover from the arduous (10 minute) walk.
Jamilla is having trouble recruiting a nanny. All of the ads in Positions Required on Dubizzle are from nannies who specifically have a yearning to work for an English family, or an American one, or French, or German, or Italian, or Scandanavian, or Australian, or Kiwi, or Canadian... any colour at all as long as it is white.
