12 Months On

As I set out for an afternoon walk today wearing more layers in the middle of an English summer than I wore during an entire Californian winter, I realised it is nearly a year since we returned to the UK.

Do I feel acclimitized? It took at least two to become acclimated to that alien American culture, but now I find those old US habits die hard.

 An ambulance came blasting down the opposite side of the road earlier this week and what did I do? I pulled in and stopped. The cars behind me all drove on bewildered. In the US, everything stops for a fire engine, police car or ambulance. Quite simply whatever direction you are going in; as soon as you hear that siren you get out of the way, dual carriage way or not.

The teenager is also struggling with UK driving customs – namely the gear stick and those darned roundabouts.  She remains terrified of our tight tiny roads, mastering oncoming traffic around parked cars, and the wonder of a three, five or seven point turn. In our part of LA even the most suburban of roads were wide enough for an uninterrupted U turn.

I am finally learning to respond with a simple I’m fine or I’m well, rather than an enthusiastic ‘good’ when asked how I am, but I wouldn’t dream of making a salad without fruit. 

I admit, uncovering a grapefruit segment under the lettuce leaves did take a bit of getting used to when we arrived in the US but now any salad I make will always include at least an avocado, an apple, and dried fruit, and well as liberal dashings of raspberry vinaigrette, which I was so hopeful of finding here, but alas, has to be imported via the other half’s business trips to the US.

Whenever he got the chance to travel back to the UK from Pasadena I used to think, lucky him. Now he’s visiting Pasadena and I’m stuck here in June with a jacket and my socks on, and I think, once again, oh lucky him.

Still, it’s not all bad, UK TV beats US TV hands down. We arrived home last year in the middle of the Great British Bake-off and it was the highlight of our return. We’d missed the previous two series, I had no idea who Paul Hollywood was and as far as I was concerned Mary Berry was someone who wrote history books about making cakes. I had no idea she was still alive.

It’s interesting to see that now Mr Hollywood has been seduced by that Californian sunshine himself and has been lured across the Atlantic to make a US version of the show. That’ll never work. I’ve seen those cut-throat culinary contests over there and trust me, US contestants won’t be stopping to console each other as a baking tray of biscuits slides to the floor. 

And as for the scandal that surrounds the lovely Paul himself, he’ll have found it very hard to resist the gushing flattery from those US TV executives. He’ll have had his ego boosted no end because Americans are very good at telling you exactly what they think you want to hear, and he’ll have been told over and over again that he is quite literally the best thing since sliced bread. They’ll love his accent, he’ll constantly be told he’s cute, and totally awesome, and of course, he’ll be a novelty act. A middle aged man on US TV who doesn’t dye his hair. 

It will be interesting to see when the new series of GBBO starts over here in a few weeks’ time whether he has succumbed to LA vanity and his hair is actually now a slightly darker shade of a grey.....

Chelsea

One of our grand plans when we returned to the UK was to get out more.  This idea has been somewhat thwarted by the other half’s job re-location to Saudi, and while as an independent modern woman I am more than happy to do a lot of things on my own, sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of company.

Last year for my birthday daughter no 1 promised me tickets to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.  The dates for Chelsea coincided with her graduation show so every effort was made to ensure the husband was home – and after an extended eight week stay in Saudi, he was.

We set off in great excitement.  The worse thing about living abroad for a few years is you forget just how bad a British summer can be.  You look back through rose tinted spectacles to barbeques that never really happened and days sat in deck chairs that in reality were nothing more than a five minute break with the cardigan off

I don’t think we could have picked a worse day to go to Chelsea. Friday afternoon, 9 degrees. I didn’t just need boots and a coat, I needed a hat, gloves and a scarf.

As we walked towards the Royal Hospital grounds we passed a wasteland of abandoned umbrellas. The show itself was awash with plastic ponchos, the grand pavilion full of bedraggled gardening enthusiasts, by nature a hardy lot, desperately trying to get out of the rain.

We saw all the show gardens – our tickets were for evening entry after the coach and day trippers had left for home and the crowd had thinned out.  We also saw Alan Titchmarsh – several times, in fact I think he was probably stalking us.  At least I now know where my licence fee goes – exactly how many lighting/camera/sound technicians does it take to make a TV programme? Far too many!

The carefully crafted and created displays were stunning and highly inventive.  I was pleased to see many of the gardens carried a cottage garden theme, in the planting if not in the rather structured design.  I felt rather chuffed that I too had planted aquilegia’s (columbines) in my own garden, as these really did seem to the flower of the show.

Stands and stalls were full of arty ideas for your garden, sculptures, ornaments, wonderful wicker furniture that to be honest, in this climate, no one is ever going to sit on unless it is permanently placed in doors.

After the show we decided not to head back to our B&B (or as we later discovered B & make your own B) to get changed, but headed straight for Sloane Square and the first restaurant we saw that looked like it had tables free.  Half an hour wait? Didn’t mind at all, as long as we could wait in the dry and in warm.

Bonding

The reason I haven’t written any new posts for a few weeks is not because I haven’t done anything to write about, but because of the gym thing –  something had to give. I was hoping it was going to be the housework but alas it appears to have been my creativity.

I've been busy, I've done loads I could have written about but no witty words have sprung to mind. I have swam lengths hoping for inspiration, I have pounded the treadmill and even my usual strolls along the river have failed to produce any literary greats. So I gave it a break.

Time is moving on and it is nearly a whole year since our return from the US. Do I miss that Californian sun?Just a tad.

The teenager has commenced her study leave for AS levels and I realise she is coming to the end of her first year of UK education.   She is learning to drive – yet again – and apparently managing well with the complications of a clutch and a stick shift, and tiny, winding narrow roads.  Teaching the teenager to drive in the US was a great mother and daughter bonding moment - but I'm not sure it would work that well over here. I've decided to let a professional driving instructor have that pleasure instead. 

Taking the teenager to the stage show of the Full Monty was a fun evening out and also good for bonding.  The bar tills malfunctioned in the interval and we had to gulp our glasses of wine down very quickly before returning to our seats but I think that only added to the overall experience. We also went shopping and to my great delight, now that the teenager is a working girl with money of her own, she actually  turned her back on the Jack Wills sweatpants with a comment of ‘I can buy those for half the price in H&M’. Exactly what I had been telling her for years.

We've decided we could also bond over the new Great Gatsby movie - it is one of my all time favourite books along with Tender is the Night. The teenager loves them both too, but will we be disappointed? Robert Redford will always be my Gatsby and I'm not so sure about Leonardo Dicaprico (who incidentally comes ahead of Leonardo di Vinci when I googled his name to correct the spelling - a sad sign of these shallow Hollywood times we live in.)

The arrival of the university prospectuses has also provided more bonding.  I hadn't realised that booking appointments for Open Days was such a competitive process - we have apparently left it 'quite late' and lots of  advertised talks and tours are already full. How can people be so organised?  I am starting to feel like an inadequate parent and need to get my super-school-mom uniform back on.  I need to FOCUS.  At the end of June we now have two early morning 6.00 am car journey starts to be on schedule for the only available slots  at 9.00 am.  Not something to look forward to. Perhaps I do need to fast track her driving lessons in the hope that if she passes her test before then she could always just go by herself......

Gym Phobic

I’ve always resisted the urge to join a gym.  When we were in the US I got in the habit of going a couple of times a week simply because it was there in the apartment building. I’ve never  felt the need to go out of my way to drive to a gym. Why not just go for a walk?

Anyway, the weather had been bad, my power walks along the river bank had been curtailed due to rising tides and copious amounts of mud, I hadn’t been working out in the garden because of rain, and someone mentioned a special offer.  Before I knew it I’d gone for an inquisitive nose around a local leisure club and the next minute I’d signed on the dotted line.

I have tried to be good. I set myself a realistic target – twice a week.  Mark it on your calendar, the gym assistant said.

Quite naturally the weather has now improved. It’s positively balmy.  I’ve been to the garden centre. I’ve lugged bags of compost from the car to the house; I’ve spent whole afternoons out of doors filling pots and digging holes. I've cut the grass. Yesterday a friend suggested we go for a four mile hike – I even got sunburnt.

This morning there it was on the calendar. Gym.  Every muscle in my body ached. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym.

I noticed as I sat having my breakfast that the cat had left paw marks on the living room window.  I cleaned the window. Then I realised all the other windows in the house needed cleaning too. I ran upstairs to collect the dirty laundry to put in the washing machine. Then I ran back up two flights of stairs  to the teenager’s room to collect her dirty laundry, and empty her bins. Then I swept the kitchen floor.  

By eight thirty in the morning I felt like I’d already had a pretty good work out and the grocery shopping was still on my list of things to do. 

So what's the answer? I've paid for the gym so I'm going to have to use it. I'll just have to quit doing the chores.

A Weekend in Bath

I’ve just spend a great weekend catching up with some old friends and enjoying an afternoon at the thermae spa in Bath.

Bath is a great city to visit with or without the relatively new addition of the modern Thermae Spa,  and of course people have been coming to Bath to ‘take the waters’ since Roman times.

It’s a relatively compact, slightly hilly city, easy to walk round, and of course a complete tourist trap.  Even my friends in the US had heard of Bath. The city centre is full of  bustling speciality shops and boutiques as well as the usual high street department stores, a multitude of cafes, tea rooms, bars and restaurants.  It is one of those quintessentially British places, eclectic, bohemian and rather posh.  

I was meeting up with old friends from the Tech college I had attended over 30 years ago, two of whom I hadn’t seen for 20 odd years. We had a lot of catching up to do.

The Thermae Spa was a real treat.  Two hours sat in bubbling hot water in a roof top pool overlooking Bath’s glorious Georgian  rooftops and the surrounding countryside. So what if it was raining, we were wet anyway.

There are two large spa pools and four differently aromatic steam rooms available on a two hour ‘open’ ticket at the  Spa.  As all we wanted to do was sit and talk, it was great.  It was only the fact that we were turning (more) wrinkly that made us want to get out.

When I first met these friends, I was a teenager, just like the one I have at home now. Partying, drinking, and desperately trying to squeeze college work into a busy social life.  We all got married within a few years of each other and all have children approximately the same age. Obviously there have been some major life changes and everyone has had their ups and downs, but it was a great reunion, reminiscing about college days and discovering what we’d all been up to in the last thirty  years.  

In my head I’m nowhere near as old as my birth certificate insists, and by the end of the weekend  it really did feel like we had only walked out of that college refectory twenty minutes or so ago.  The wonders of modern technology make it so much easier to keep in touch - the odd like or comment on facebook really does a go a long way to preserve or re-new a friendship.

Naturally after a night of heavy drinking, and a weekend climbing up and down three flights of stairs to our attic room in a B&B, the soothing effects of the Thermae Spa had totally worn off. My body was definitely telling me I was nearer that birth certificate age than I would ever care to admit, but if I have to grow old, at least I'm going to do it disgracefully in a very posh place.

.  

Week What-ever

It’s all back to normal here after the excitement of Saudi. The calendar is looking pretty blank and to be honest I’ve no idea whether this is week, 14 15 or 27.  I need to get out more.

My one night a week at the local pub quiz has now been curtailed due to the teenager’s new job. Her evening shift finishes during the second round.  As I elected to become a full-time housewife, or “stay at home mom” as it is referred to in the US, I can hardly reneged on my motherly duties.  I chose to be a stay at home mom so now I have to stay at home so I can pick her up. I have no-one but myself to blame.

Perhaps the time has finally come to return to work myself - meet some new people and spice up my social life. I didn't want to look for work when we first returned to the UK  because (a)  I wanted to have time to dedicate myself to writing a book, and (b) I wanted to be at home when my husband was - darling if I was at work all day you'd never see me on your two weeks leave.

As for my book,  that potential bestseller chronicalling amusing anecdotes from our time in America – progress is slow. Part of the preparation for this book involved enrolling on my creative writing course –  from which I have subsequently learned that writing something creative, amusing and marketable is not such an easy combination as it sounds. I am now having serious doubts about my ability to write anything, let alone the lightweight chick-lit I have fantasies about or the standard formula short story my creative writing teacher insists is the easiest way to commercial success. 

It's a crisis of self-doubt and now I'm  older and a lot wiser about all things literary I realise I should have made the most of my LA Bubble blog when I had the chance – promoted it simultaneously on several websites instead of just the one, sold advertising space, commented on other people’s blogs simply to get my own noticed and snapped up by some major publishing house with the minimum effort. I’ve missed the boat. Writing 500 words at a time on the idiosyncracies of American life came easy – a saleable book I’m told has to have 80,000 words. There’s a huge difference.

However, I owe it to myself to fulfil my potential  and write that bloody book even if it kills me, because if I don’t do it now, I never will.  I do have lots of time – when the teenager cries out ‘don’t you dare tidy my room!’ I should see it not as a hindrance to, but as a reprieve from, my housewifely duties. Back to the study and soldier on!

The Saudi Experience Part 2

So what exactly does an ex-pat wife get up to in Saudi? The bus goes daily to the nearest supermarket and Mall, and if venturing anywhere else, a car and a driver are supplied.  An abaya – any shade of black will do – has to be worn outside the compound at all times, although western women can get away without covering their heads.

Saudi Arabia has little or no agriculture of its own and most food supplies are imported.  The quality of fruit and veg available in the supermarket was poor, but I’d been shopping in Ralphs in California for the last three years, I was used to a cucumber well past its best. 

My ex-pat friends explained the continuity of food supplies was erratic, hence the need to grab several packets of Maltesers  in one go. It also explained why I’d found several the boxes of Rice Krispies stashed in the kitchen cupboard. Buy it whilst you can, appears to be the western shopper’s motto, when it’s gone it’s well and truly gone and you have no idea when, if ever, it will be back.

After we had stocked up on food, we headed for the Mall, where I was surprised to discover a New Look – staffed entirely, of course, by men. A lingerie shop  clearly signed ‘Families Only’ had its wares on public display, and was one of the very few places with female staff (the Body Shop was another) yet images of scantily clad women on the packaging for pop-up swimming pools had been blacked out in another store (although in many cases the stickers had been subsequently scratched off ).

There were designated places in the Mall where women could sit and take a coffee, but I was told dining out was fraught with difficulty.  Not only did you have to time your arrival not to coincide with prayer time – if it did you simply wouldn’t get served – but women were confined to ‘family areas’, separate booths behind curtains. That’s really not my idea of a fun night out.

So despite the presence of MacDonalds, Pizza Hut and the American ice cream chain Baskin’ Robbins, I decided I would prefer to dine in.

I was told I had chosen the busiest week of the year to visit the compound; social life was rife.  There was the project team dinner, a birthday BBQ and the annual ‘fun run’ – as many times around the perimeter fence as you can in 45 minutes  (the winner managed 7, I managed 3).  

I did catch sight of the souks and markets, but forget those colourful holiday images of bustling spice stalls in  Morroco or Tunisia, Yanbu market was a shabby selection of vans and tents, elderly Arabs sheltering from the heat selling goods from the backs of their cars.  Down town Yanbu is grubby, dusty and dirty. Men gather on  corners, the buildings  are old, uncared for and decrepit.  Apart from in the Mall, Saudi women were noticeably absent on the street. Did I feel safe? No. Did I want to get out of the car? Only to  scurry into one shop and then back into the Range Rover to be driven to another.

It was great catching up with my old friends from California and I have every admiration for those wives who had committed to accompanying their husband to Saudi, but I knew it wasn't the lifestyle for me.  Days filled with gym sessions, coffee mornings, lunches, lengthy games of cards and presumably extreme jigsaw puzzling do not appeal.  I like my freedom. A nursery is provided on the compound, but children of school age have to be bussed to the International School half an hour away in town. The constant sunshine sounds idyllic, but even in March, an hour in the intense heat was about the most I could take.  In high summer the water in the pools is apparently as hot as a bath.

Although I was sad to say goodbye at the end of the week, I wasn’t sad to be leaving Yanbu.

On the long drive back to Jeddah we passed hundreds of camels, Bedouins herding goats and families sat by the side of the road, stopping for what at first I thought was a rather inappropriate picnic, until I realised it was prayer time.

We westerners believe Saudi women must be totally repressed, desperate to escape the strict  regime, yet at the airport, sitting in my abaya with my head uncovered, a heavily veiled  young Saudi girl gave me a look of pure venom. I had feared the hostility of the native men, I had been prepared for the disapproval of the the mutawa, the religious police, but I had never expected to receive a look like that from the sisterhood!  So sad that we have so little understanding of each other’s culture, and no opportunity to integrate. As long as she hides behind her veil and we are confined to our compound, never the twain shall meet.