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Not only was this a busy, crazy, manic week, but we had a 4-seasons week – from thick fog to pouring rain, brilliant sunshine, a touch of frost, heavy winds… we had it all. 

This was also the weekend of the summertime clock change and what a difference it makes. This evening I went for a walk in the farmlands and I did not realise that I was heading home after 7pm. The sun set around 19:30 this evening.

This was certainly Jenna’s week in the life of this blog. On Wednesday and Thursday night Jenna’s Year-3 &4 class put on a play called “The Jouney to Easter”. In pupil numbers, the school she attends now is only 1 quarter the size of Hudson Park Primary. You cannot believe how beautifully those 2 grades of children can sing. Their voices resounded through that tiny school hall. It was a fun concert with the children dancing and singing in the aisles between our chairs. On Wednesday night, after the concert she asked us if we could go out to dinner afterwards as this was her “big night”. On Thursday she attempted to bribe us with the same question again. I guess she is entitled to more than one “big night” in a week (either that or my cooking at home is getting really bad).

On Friday Jenna’s school also had their “big walk” which they did in a circular route around the school grounds and playing fields. Well, it must have turned into some kind of mud-fest. When I fetched her from school she was dressed in make-shift clothes, scraped together from PE bags and who knows where. Her school uniform was in a plastic bag, but when I peered inside, there was hardly a sign of the navy, red, and white uniform. It was just a bag of mud! My philosophy, which I have often articulated, is that, if kids go out to play and come back clean, then they didn’t have any fun. So I had to smile, and carry on.

On Friday evening Jenna went to gym practice for the final run-through before the competition, which was held today. It was the Weald of Kent floor and vault competition which was held at a beautiful private school in Pembury. The drive up to the school took us through a forest and past an ancient church. The competition was one of the nicest sporting events I have ever been to. I have never attended a live gymnastics competition before, and it was truly amazing. Jenna got through her first vault quite nicely, but she did not manage it on her second run-up. I thought her floor routine was fantastic, but then again I am the ever-proud mom.

On Saturday morning, Mitchell played his first-ever rugby match. He has never even been to a rugby practice, except for what they do during PE class. (He is a hockey and cricket boy). It was the year-7 inter-house round-robin competition, with the winners going on to the semi-finals and the finals. Mitchell scored 2 tries in 2 of his games, part of which I put down to his swift foot-work which I think he gets from hockey. Once again, you cannot even begin to imagine the amount of mud. It’s at about this point as a mom, where you start to feel some kind of appreciation for the inventor of the washing machine.

It is time for my car to go for its first MOT test. (Ministry of Transport Test). If your car is over 3 years old you must, by law, obtain a current MOT certificate. The certificate expires every year and the test retaken. Without a current valid certificate you cannot renew your car tax. Just for a moment, I try to imagine some of those cars I used to pass every week, on the road between East London and Fort Beaufort, on my trips to lecture at Fort Hare University in Alice, where only 1 light on the car worked (if any at all), where the mirrors were taped to the side of the car, or the back shock absorbers were so “gone” that the underside of the boot almost scraped along the tar. So, even after 8 months here, there are still new things going on each month.

The week ahead sees the schools closing for the Easter break and I am looking forward to taking Mitchell and Jenna to a few exciting places, so remember to tune in here for the next few Monday mornings to see what we get up to…

Other than that, keep an eye out for April fool’s day pranks and don’t eat too many Easter eggs.

So it is the Equinox. I can’t believe how much I set my life, like a clock on these dates. I don’t know why it matters so much and it’s not a new thing since I have been over here in the UK. It is something I have always done. Perhaps it cuts the year into manageable chunks for me, or perhaps it indicates the simple balance in everything, but either way, the sun is half way back to us now and it is indeed a pleasant thought.

It has indeed been a week of ups and downs, most of which I will spare you the details of, but some I will share with you.

This week I received a job offer, following an interview that I had attended the week before, but I turned down the post. The hours of commuting into London on 3 days of the week, meant that I would only be getting home at around 19:00 in the evenings on at least 3 days of the week. Both Mitchell and Jenna have activities in the afternoons after school and for a mom with two children, those hours were just not what I had imagined for myself. I am not saying that I won’t look at posts in London, or jobs with long hours, but if I do, then I will have to really have the right feeling about it, which I think was lacking with this last one.  

One afternoon this week when I took a walk through the fields around our house, I spotted 3 little bunnies in the middle of a field. One was slightly larger than the other two and imagined it must have been “the mom”. As I walked towards the field the larger one ran straight over to me and initially I thought it a bit strange, as surely it would want to run away. However it was simply distracting me while the two little ones make a dash for the undergrowth. There light brown coats hid them so easily in the still brown winter scrub. As soon as the mother rabbit knew her babies were safe she dashed off after them and I was left standing there feeling as if I had been outsmarted. As I said in the blog last week, the wildlife in England is ever-entertaining. It is still to me, the stuff of story books. I have yet to see a badger, though… perhaps one of these days. Who knows?

Mitchell brought home his mid-year school report this week (remember the school year runs from September to August over here) bearing a 90% average for this subjects.

This year Jenna takes her first holy communion. Personally, I think that over here they do it too early. I don’t think the children are old enough to really comprehend what it is that they are doing, so they are not doing it out of their own free will. In South Africa, Mitchell took his first holy communion at the age of 11 and I think that he was able to ask the relevant questions, he was able to understand the meaning behind it all and he was able to fully accept (or reject if he had so wished) what he was taking part in. None the less, Jenna will partake in hers this year. So, on Friday, the entire Catechism class had a dinner in the school hall, followed by a Mass in the church on Saturday morning where Jenna had to read a passage. I was so proud of her and the way she read. She has really come on streaks in her reading and maths at school and some of the credit for the maths must surely go to the Kumon maths system.   

 Today we travelled through to London for the Sports Relief Mile. This is a charity run, held in many centres throughout the country. There was a 1 mile, 3 mile, and 6 mile route to choose from. We ran (and walked) the 3 mile circular route along the Victoria Embankment, just opposite the London Eye. There were bands and celebrities, there were people dressed up as anything you can possibly imagine, there were small children, older folk, disabled people, there were the fit and the unfit (she said smiling), but in the end of the day it was about charity and a fun Sunday morning. We did the run with Steven, Melanie and Duncan Heggie and afterwards we headed off for a walk through the streets of London to find our restaurant for lunch, we ambled on the Green Park to feed the squirrels and finally ended our day at Hyde Park Corner. The parks are filled with spring flowers now. People are out and about, enjoying the warm sunlight, playing with their dogs, enjoying games of football, or just lazing in the sun.

Today is the first day that I have used the London Underground on a Sunday and as most maintenance on the lines occurs on a Sunday, many of the lines were closed. So those that remained open were so full, it was like peak-time on a weekday morning, but it all still works and with a little adjustment you are still whizzing around under that incredible city.

I start writing for a new website this week. I am looking forward to it, but I will tell you more as it develops….  

And finally… by the time you read this blog next week our clocks will have moved forward an hour.

Here I am, back after a one week break from my writings on wrightaboutnow. I can’t believe that Jon was here for Christmas and New Year and now we are in the middle of March! It feels like only a few days have passed since we watched the fireworks of New Year. Can it even be possible that our lives can pass us by so quickly? We only have one life to live, so how can it be galloping away at such a rate? I just realised that in 4 months time we will have lived here for a year already.

In the two weeks since I wrote the last blog, Mitchell has become the proud owner of a new electric guitar. He loves it! He practices his chords every day, he looks so forward to Wednesdays and Fridays when he has lessons at school. He and a few of his friends from school are keen on starting a band. I asked him if I would have to pay for my ticket to attend their first gig and was met with a resounding YES. The amp that goes with the guitar is perhaps something I could do without in the house, but on the flipside of that – it does have sound variation settings, so it makes practice time a little less monotonous.

On Thursday last week, Jenna’s school celebrated World Book day and the children could dress up for school as a character from their favourite story book. Jenna went as Alice in Wonderland. I had originally told her to just wear her witches outfit from halloween, but in the end I am glad she didn’t. I am glad I went to the extra effort of getting her something different, because as we arrived at the school we were met by a sea of black-clad witches and Jenna with her bright blonde hair and her pretty blue Alice dress stood out from the crowd. On Wednesday this past week we met Jenna’s teacher for a parent-teacher feedback meeting. I am really glad at the progress she is making, and just how popular she is amongst the other children at the school. She has started swimming every Thursday now as part of the PE class at school, and I think she loves being back in the water again. I think she really misses the freedom to just put on her costume and run and jump into the pool we used to have in SA. Her gymnastics competition is creeping up on us quickly now and she has finally memorised her entire floor routine. It is now just down to perfecting every move.

Mitchell’s hockey season drew to a close this morning, so the early Sunday mornings are finally over for him, although I hear that the first cricket matches for the season are almost upon us…

A few weeks ago in one of the blogs, I wrote about a fox that sat outside our house for a few nights and had me puzzled by his (or her) behaviour. I have since discovered that the fox lives in the field across the road from our house. There are places in the scrub that are clearly used as his lairs. This week I stood upstairs in the study and I watched him chasing birds in the field. The wild creatures in England continue to remind me of the storybooks I read as a child. It is amazing how the authors get the descriptions of all those creatures so accurately defined and how the illustrators perfect the images of them. This fox was agile and could leap into the air, but when he realised that he had lost the battle against the birds for a while, he snuck of in that sly fashion and disappeared out of sight.

I had my first job interview in England last week Friday with a company that develops Accounting Software. The job means 2 days a week at the offices in Hadlow, which is about 5 min drive from the house we currently live in, and 3 days a week commuting to London. This does open up a whole host of issues around child-care for Mitchell and Jenna, though. I got a call last week to say that out of all the applicants they had interviewed they were going to make me an offer of employment. I am waiting for the offer to arrive in the post and although I am eager for it to arrive, I also welcome the delay, as other appointments for interviews are coming up and I don’t want to simply accept the first offer that comes along, when there might be something a little better waiting just around the corner.

In a few weeks time Mitchell heads off to France for a week. He will be visiting Euro Disney and all the other French tourist attractions. He will be spending a week in a hotel and this week at school they were paired off with the boys they will be sharing rooms with. He is excited and I am being a typical worrying mom. Mitchell and Jenna have grown up so much in the past 6 months. They continue to make me proud, beyond belief.

The springtime continues to advance on us. In the weeks of December our daily temperature was seldom more than -2 deg C. In January the temperatures hovered between 2 and 6 degrees. In the past 2 weeks we have seen beautiful sunny days of around 7 to 9 degrees. Looking at the forecast for the week ahead, we will have 5 days of “double digits” ahead of us. The flowers are exploding all over the garden, this weel the house was overrun by ladybugs, green shoots are appearing from the brown plants which looked as if they had all but died. The sun is setting well after 18:00 in the evenings now as we head towards with equinox in the coming week.

On Venus, a day is longer than a year. I think that means that not everything in this world can be defined by the way we see it here on Earth. Anything is possible. 

This is the 34th Sunday night that I have sat down to write a new entry for this blog. 34 weeks, or 65% of a year. Can you believe that time can fly by so fast?

I have been startled this week to see how many more of my friends, family, and ex-colleagues have either left, or are packing up to leave the shores of South Africa. Some have just touched down in Australia, some have paperwork in the process and others are just at that “maybe we should consider this” stage. Either way, I hope that those of you, who fall into any of those categories will read the entries in this blog, find a way to deal with your own situation and ultimately find that place in the sun where you feel that you belong. It’s not always easy and the bad days sometimes sneak along for a ride too, but if you can look back and think that what you are doing, or what you have done will ultimately be for the better, then the good days just seem to overshadow the tougher ones.

It was another crazy, busy week in the Wright household. No matter where you live, the activities that your kids do will ultimately steal up all your spare time, but that is part of the joy of it all. Every day there is something that they need to do, sport to attend, groups to go to, but in the end it is what has made the transition over here so easy for them. Jenna’s gym routine for the competition has been finalised and she is getting so excited about it. We watch her on an almost nightly basis rolling and jumping around the lounge, knocking into the furniture, trying to get those legs straight and shoulders back. Mitchell has started guitar lessons and I am ashamed to say that when he wanted to try it out in SA, I was the one who kind of steered him away from it. He had so much on his plate at the time with all other sports and I didn’t particularly think that Mitchell would take to music all that well. Over here, he just joined the guitar club at school and came home to tell me he was now part of it. The difference is that over here the lessons are during his lunch-break during school hours, so it wasn’t a big deal and wasn’t going to take up any more of his class-time or sports time in the afternoons. He is so excited about these guitar classes though and he is proud of the fact that this is something he went off and did on his own. He honestly feels that this is going to give him even more motivation to do better in it than he even hoped for.

Wednesday night was “parents evening” at Mitchells school and we had allocated slots to meet with each of his subject teachers. We left the school feeling as if we were walking on air. Not 1 teacher could fault Mitchell. They praised his high level of work, his communication standards, and most of all, his impeccable behaviour in class. His English teacher commented that she can quite clearly see that he has come from a very different discipline structure to many of the other boys in the class. You have to wonder why it is like that. Why a country that is so strong and so powerful and so sought after in the world, is failing its children by disempowering them with the very rules that they hope to protect them with.

On Saturday we took a drive to the Lakeside Retail Park in Essex which is only about a 40min drive from our house. Essex is the county next door to Kent, just north and across the Thames River. To get to Essex from Kent you take the Dartford Crossing. The Dartford Crossing is made up of the Dartford Tunnel (which runs under the river) and carries the traffic from Kent into Essex, and the Dartford Bridge (which is a 137m high cable stayed bridge) which carries about 150,000 vehicles per day in the opposite direction, from Essex into Kent. On days when the weather is bad, the bridge gets closed and the tunnel converts into a dual carriageway.

The Lakeside shopping centre is a huge shopping centre and while we were driving through the car park, I laughed as I heard the SatNav say … “continue 0.2 miles (0.3km)and enter the round-about (traffic circle), enter the round-about and take second exit”… This was IN the parking lot! Can you imagine how big the parking lot is, for the SatNav to give instructions like that? Well, to the absolute delight of Mitchell and Jenna we found a Spur Steakhouse overlooking the lake. We stood outside for a few seconds and I was almost too afraid to go inside just in case it was different to the ones back home and we would all be disappointed, but as we pushed back the door, that indisputable smell of the Spur came wafting towards us. Everything was authentic Spur. 100% the genuine deal! It seems like such a small thing to be going on about in this blog, but it is just one of those moments when we could experience a little part of SA using all our senses. We could smell, taste, hear, see, and feel a little part of something from so far away; just the way we remember it.

This week I saw my first real spring bulbs sprouting out from the grass in a park. Beautiful little patches of crocuses in orange and purple, daffodils which still need to open and show all that makes them so beautiful, and a little wave of white snowdrops on the undulating ground, beneath a tree.

It was the most beautiful walk – as they always are – those walks through English parks, with ducks and birds and dogs doing funny tricks, with squirrels that peer at you through a fence, where the trees are starting to change, where you feel like you can experience “the whole world” in such a short space and time. I look forward to my next spring flower walk when I hope that a swathe of colour will be waiting for me.

By the time you are reading this blog it will be the 1st of March and forgetting all sorts of things like when the official equinox occurs or when daylight saving stops and ends, it’s just a nice day to wish everyone in the Northern Hemisphere…. Happy Spring Day.

Well this was certainly a far less comical week than the one I reported on last week, and I think I may just be thankful for that. The truth of just how idiotic I can be at times is funny when it happens, but not something you want to repeat too many times.

Mitchell and Jenna have been on mid-term break this week, which means that many of their activities were cancelled for the week, but Jenna’s gymnastics continued. She is competing in the Weald – 2010 – Floor and Vault Competition at the end of March. This week the coaches finalised her routine and now she is busy practising it every evening.

Mitchell spent some time with his school friends this week and had one wonderful day with Thomas, playing tennis at the Tunbridge Wells indoor sports centre. Jenna and I had a fun week of arts and crafts.

The cold outdoor temperatures which prevail at the moment made for the best time to paint and glue and cut things. I took Mitch and Jen to the Hobby-Craft warehouse in Tunbridge Wells this week and we bought all sorts of things for a week of crinkle-paper, paint, and glitter.

Mike got back from South Africa on Tuesday after a week of meetings and paperwork in South Africa  and returned full-force to work over here. He got the chance to see his brother and some of his ex-colleagues and friends back home.

This week I have I tried to imagine what moving to another country would have been like without the new technology that we have at our disposal these days. With social networking sites like Facebook, and other communication tools like Twitter, Gmail, Skype, and a whole host of others, staying in touch with family and friends around the world is made so simple. I realised this week how much more in-touch we are with what is going on in the lives of people, some who are closest to us and others who are not, through the use of these tools. I am not someone who chooses to accept just anyone on Facebook, I have been told that I may even be a little too harsh in choosing which requests I accept and which ones I don’t, but I discovered this week that staying in touch with the people who really matter, is what counts. I have read on Facebook this week about two school friends back in SA who are fighting difficult battles against Cancer, one friend who had a car accident, one who is spending part of his holiday in a hospital in Mexico, some who are experiencing the joys of getting married, two who are  pregnant, some who have had babies and others who have just simply fallen in love, I have read about those whose children excelled in school and those who lost loved ones close to them. We use these tools to wish people a happy birthday, a happy anniversary, and good luck for an exam, we look at their interesting holiday photos and are reminded of what matters to them and makes them who they are, by the groups they join, and the kind of things that they post for everyone to see. A few chats with family and friends back home this week finally made me appreciate that I am maintaining relationships from very far away, that I would otherwise have lost in the move over here. It has been an eye-opener of a week on Facebook for me and for the first time I really sat down and thought about all the information I would not have known if these sites did not exist. Being so far away from all the family and friends you have ever known, makes you appreciate the fact that technology and the modern world can play a part in bringing you closer to the people that you don’t want to lose contact with. Would it really have mattered to my life if I didn’t know all the news that I read on Facebook this week? Well, I don’t really know for sure, but for someone like me, to whom human relationships have always been so important, it is just great to know that even from 6000 miles away, I just have to logon to a website and there is the news from my other home. New friendships form on this side of the world, but for me technology has undeniably made it a whole lot easier to be here. So here’s to the new friends that we can meet and greet eye-to-eye every day over here, but also to those that we get to stay in touch with right across the miles.

We have now won back more than an hours worth of daylight in the evenings alone. In the middle of December the sun was completely set and it was pitch dark outside by 16:30 when Mitchell stepped off the bus on his way home from school. This evening I looked outside at 17:20 and it was still quite light…

Normally these posts for the blog are filled with stories from our family, things that we have experienced in learning to live in a new country, and they also usually contain some insight into my feelings about life and how I see it reflected in the things I see around me every day. However, if you will allow me to digress from my usual writing style – I would like to tell you about my comical week. Sometimes you think you have it all held together, you are above the foolishness of the world, but then a week like mine comes along and you have to question just how “with-it” you really are.

Mike spent the past week in SA. He flew back for a few important business meetings and to sort out some of the issues from our move and the sale of our house that just won’t seem to go away. So Mitchell, Jen, and I were left to our own devices.  The weather forecast for the week predicted 15cm of snowfall for Kent on Wednesday and Thursday and if you have read this blog from a few weeks ago you will know that driving on the ice is not really my forté. So I was dreading the middle to end of the week.

Bracing for the snow, I decided to stock up on some groceries. This would mean that if the worst came to the worst, driving in those conditions would at least be minimal. So, on Tuesday I headed into town. I had to stop at the bank, so I decided to park at the castle, which is the nearest parking lot to the bank… but of course parking is paid for in 1 hour increments over here and my trip to the bank only took about 10 minutes. When I stepped out of the bank I decided that I might as well use up my parking fare and walk to the nearest supermarket which is quite a few blocks away on the other side of town, but I never again gave any thought to the simple logistics of this decision. Off I went to the supermarket to stock up on emergency provisions. Up and down the aisles I wondered, picking everything from the shelves that was humanly possible. Feeling very chuffed with my achievements, I proceeded to the checkout. Half-way through the ringing-up process it dawned on me that I had just bought enough groceries to possibly feed an entire village back home for a month, and now I was going to have to carry it all back to the car, which was parked on the other side of town, up a steep hill and around the castle! The lady at the check-out offered to watch my stuff while I ran to fetch my car, but stupidity (which I was told by someone today, has no cure) overtook me, and I said I thought I would be fine. Laden with shopping bags and looking somewhat like a pack-mule, I set off across town. My arms were being stretched like a plasticine man to breaking point, but I was not going to be thrown off my mission. Suddenly, right on the pavement of High Street, the load became pleasantly lighter… but then I heard the indisputable musical sound of tins rolling across the pavement… The one packet had torn and my groceries appeared to be trying to flee back to the supermarket, rolling in every direction, almost causing other pedestrians to fall… Well, I finally made it back to the car and sat down behind the boot on the ground, with all my shopping bags around me and did what any logical-thinking person would do, I laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks!

But that would not prove to be my finest hour of the week… little did I know that another round of the incurable was yet to come.

On Wednesday morning I took Jenna to school in my little silver Rover, but by the time I got home the snow was coming down thick and fast. I parked it in the driveway and went inside, but I decided that it would be better to move the car into the garage so that if the snowfall persisted I wouldn’t have to clear it all off before going to fetch Jenna in the afternoon. I immediately went back outside and tried to start the car, but there was no response to the turn of the key. Not even the sound of the engine trying to turn over. I tried a few times and finally decided to call for help. I first phoned Mike in SA to get the details for the AA and I gave them a call. The gentleman on the phone told me that they would not be able to despatch anyone to help me as Mike is the policy holder and he was required to be present. Well, that was just not going to work for me and I let the poor guy know it, in no uncertain terms. He finally agreed that since Mike was in SA, those were deemed to be “different circumstances” and they would send someone – just this once, I might add. The nearest AA offices are in Sevenoaks, so it was a journey of at least 10 miles for the mechanic.  He finally arrived and we stood outside in the falling snow while I explained to him what the problem was. He took the keys from me, pressed the immobilizer, climbed into the car, turned the key… and the car started immediately! We eventually ascertained that I had forgotten to press the immobilizer button before attempting to start the car! This, all after I had made such a noise on the phone about them not wanting to send someone to help! Fortunately the mechanic had an awesome sense of humour and he was more interested in having a chat about South Africa and his next run in the London marathon, so my embarrassment soon faded into the background.

On Friday I took Mitchell and his friend Thomas, to the Bowlplex in Tunbridge Wells. We enjoyed a game of 10-pin, a bite to eat and then we went to watch the movie, Invictus. It was a poignant moment of incredible mixed emotions. There were times when I heard Mitchell lean over and explain some the things about South Africa to Thomas and I felt proud of how he handled it. He is a proudly South African boy, and rightfully so.  All the way home in the car (after dropping Thomas at home) we sang Shoshaloza. It is amazing how that song can just go on and on… If you are a South African who has not yet seen the movie, do yourself a favour and go along. 15 years down the line we may all have forgotten a rather important time in our history and this movie serves as a reminder.

The rest of the week held together quite nicely, and was a manic mix of ferrying Mitchell and Jenna to indoor cricket practice, Kumon maths, hockey practice, and gymnastics. Jenna has only been attending gym for 2 months and this week she was given her routine for the novice’s competition coming up in March. I am now trying to learn the names of the various moves like “straddle” and “arabesque” so that I can help her to learn her routine.

In last week’s blog I mentioned a book that I am reading at the moment. It is by an emerging author – Louise Douglas. The book is called: “Missing you”. It is an easy read, but I am enjoying it. Louise Douglas has one previous book called: “The love of my life”.

School holidays have begun again with mid-term break. Mike returns from SA on Tuesday morning, and I entered the family into a charity run in London in the month of March. Jenna is so excited about it. 

The wild fox that sat outside my house on the pavement for 3 consecutive nights this week when I went to bed, has now finally gone… and left me wondering…

It was just a light-hearted week, full of learning, full of laughter and full of  funny moments. I hope that I reflected it in this blog this week. It was fun writing about it. Thanks for reading.

(Please not that the photos contained in this blog are not mine. They are images that I have taken from Google images).

So this weekend set the 7 month marker for the time we have been in the UK. In some ways it still feels like a long time, like we have been here forever, and there are still other times when everything still seems so new and you learn about things every day, but the time has come now when it is comfortable to make jokes about the place, about the move, and about things back home without it seeming to be weird or out of place. I guess when you can laugh at something then you may just have reached that point where you are looking back over your shoulder and reflecting in comfort.

7 months seems like such a short time in which to move country, find a house, get furniture, work, find schools (and uniforms), electricity, local council taxes, water, gas, buying cars, finding friends, bank accounts, travelling, experiencing the joys of winter snow, seeing the seasons change one to the other, watching the kids settle in school, seeing them delight in sledding, helping them to find activities and sports, each of us has now also had at least 1 birthday in the UK, a white Christmas, and a sparkling new year. In these 7 months I have also travelled back to SA twice and Mitchell has been to France, old friends have come to visit and new friends have become, well, just that! New friends.

This week promises to be interesting, in the least. Mike heads off to SA on business and I get to do the whole home drill alone. Fortunately we have learned that Mitch and Jen muck in when one of us is away. Mike better remember to bring my box of Beacon Marshmallow Easter Eggs back. There are some things that you can do without – but you just don’t want to.

This week Mike celebrated his birthday in the UK. Jenna is such a fuss-pot over birthdays. She makes so many elaborate cards, she wraps everything in ribbons and bows, and she draws on things and decorates things. It is quite incredible to watch and makes you think about the days when birthdays were that exciting for you. How those moments should matter to everyone.

Mitchell had the most awesome sporting week. He played in the Kent school indoor soccer tournament which his school won the trophy for. Mitchell scored 6 goals in the 8 matches that they played and he came home feeling like a world champion, and indeed he should have.

Jenna finally got her gymnastics leotard this week and who would have thought that it would be such a huge thing. I guess she finally felt accepted in the group of girls, no longer being the odd one out. She was now finally wearing the colours of the Weald of Kent gymnastics school.

Jenna has also caught up with the other children in her grade at a rate that I find quite astonishing. It was the biggest fear for me, and something that brought me to tears many times in the first few weeks here, but as I am learning each day – children will continue to dazzle you if you give them the space to. Her teacher’s heap loads of praise on her and I just cannot believe how someone so little can be so full of determination.

 On Friday night we all travelled into London, to meet up with Steve, Melanie and Duncan at the Royal Albert Hall for an evening of wonder at Cirque du Soleil (The Circus of the Sun). Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian entertainment company with a definite French flavour. The show we watched was called “Varekai”. (“Varekai” means “wherever,” and is based on mythology, like many of the previous productions. The story is about the Greek myth of Icarus. The story begins where the myth leaves off, telling the story of what happened to Icarus after he fell from the sky. He lands in the middle of a jungle at the base of a volcano where he must learn to fly again). The music and singing was hauntingly beautiful, the costumes were just out of this world and from the smallest little children in the production, right up to the seasoned acrobats, you cannot do anything but sit on the edge of your seat  in awe and wonder at the skill that those artists possess. The trust that they put in one another alone, is something to take away from the show. Just knowing that someone is going to be there for you, at the right time, in the right place, to catch you if you fall, is something wonderful on its own.

As I write this blog now the rain is falling steadily outside and landing on the “glass” roof of the conservatory. We have not seen much rain in the past few weeks and the sound is quite comforting in a way.  

The neighbours removed the covering from their pool today and started cleaning it up and getting it looking all good – I thought I was optimistic about the change of seasons over here, but I like to think that my neighbours might just know something that the rest of us are missing.

I am reading a beautiful book at the moment… come back next week and I will tell you about it.

This is the first time in the 7 months that we have been here that I will be blogging for a two week period in one sitting. I travelled back to South Africa last week to attend my nephew’s wedding. I had doubts before I went as to whether or not I should go, but as the time grew nearer I realised that there simply was really no question in it, and looking back now I know that I could have made no better decision. The shock of the hot weather in South Africa, after weeks of sub-zero temperatures over here, was startling. I could simply not believe the impact it had on my body. I hired a car and spent a truly incredible week at the beautiful Blue Lagoon Hotel on the Nahoon River. I enjoyed the most memorable beach walks, beautiful African sunsets, soft, warm, sea sand beneath my feet, real SA’n braai’s, quiet lazy dinners on the patio of my hotel room, and not to forget at least one awesome evening at the Ocean Basket. Being with my brothers family as fantastic. Morné (my nephew and the groom) is usually in Ireland, so being back in SA with him was a real treat. Morné married Joanne and will soon be returning to Ireland with her. The wedding was undoubtedly the best wedding I have ever attended. For a wedding that was planned and executed within 1 month, it was elegant and sophisticated, it was tasteful and emotional, and it was filled with the most amazing people and moments. I was the MC for the evening (I think I would prefer “madam of ceremonies”), but whatever you want to call it, it was one of the most memorable things I have ever done for someone else. Morné’s groom speech was also the most heartfelt, most sincere speech I have ever heard at a wedding. I could never have been more proud of him. [Michael, you can stop thanking me now for travelling back to be with you guys. It was my absolute pleasure and I would do it again in a heart-beat.] Most of my week was taken up with wedding things, but the rest of my time in South Africa was filled to the brim with some “me time” and many many moments that I will remember forever. Thank you!

South Africa is in the grip of World Cup fever. The theme is everywhere. Prices have escalated beyond belief (R50.00 for a toasted sandwich??), there are exciting new construction projects everywhere, new malls, new hotels, new berths set aside in harbours for cruise ships, there is a sense of excitement amongst the people that is almost palpable, but the stories in the news will still turn your stomach and you cannot deny that behind all this beauty, behind all this sense of excitement there lies another truth about a country which has a long difficult road ahead. 

On Wednesday evening when I arrived back in the UK, Mitchell asked me where I felt “HOME” was. I had to swallow hard and try to compose myself as I looked him in the eye to say that when I am in SA it feels like home, but when I am in the UK, it too feels like home. I think I am carrying “HOME” around in my heart, just like someone recently said. It makes it easier to deal with the feeling of being homesick, if you know that “HOME” really can be where you are at the time.

On the same day that I was at Morné’s wedding in SA, Mike, Jenna and Mitchell attended Ian and Margo’s wedding in Hampton Court. Ian is Mike’s cousin and one of the most genuine, awesome guys I have ever met. Best wishes to you guys too and see you soon. It’s a promise.

Mitchell also played a hockey match while I was away and after months of asking him to score a goal “with my name on it” he successfully did it – while I was on the other side of the world. Maybe that’s the way it was meant to be, my boy. Either way, I am very proud of you.

Mitchell also started cricket practice for the first time in England this week. He is playing at the Judd indoor sports centre for the Bidborough Colts team. He fitted in with the rest of the team and with the coaches like a glove. If there is one area where I think England could learn from SA, it would certainly be in the way children are introduced to sport in schools. In some cases in SA I do think that some schools place too much emphasis on sport, but when you can get the balance right between academics and sport then children can certainly thrive and it is one thing that I miss over here – real school sport.

Arriving back in England this week was a surprise for me. It’s amazing what a difference 1 week can make. I came back to a feast of indicators that perhaps spring is just around the corner. There are new little shoots on plants, longer days, and warmer temperatures. The seasons here are so very different and distinct and when you spot the onset of a new season you can be sure that it won’t take long until you are met with a feast of change. We arrived in the summer and loved the transition through the autumn, we are currently passing through the winter, and already finding the first signs of spring, I am personally looking so forward to the bright new colour palette, but before it arrives I have to ask…. What happened to it? Where is it? This terrible, dark, miserable, gloomy, “you’ll-only-survive-one”, English winter, that everyone warned us about? Although I know its not quite over yet, the question still remains…. Was that it? Really

Last week I wrote about “The Big Freeze” and this week I write of “The Big Thaw” – but I am not really sure if it is about the weather, or more about simply how quickly things can change. How the world can look one moment and then how different it can be the next, not only the physical world, but the many worlds in which we find ourselves including the people we are around and the places where we find each other.

I am finding the speed with which the weather is changing here to be like a reflection of my life at the moment. From when we arrived here I waited eagerly for the autumn and it was the most magical spectacle of colour, but it passed by so quickly and was replaced by wonder of the winter. It only took 1 weekend of gale-force winds to strip the leaves from the trees and the world looked very different, now after weeks and weeks in a snow-covered world it simply took less than 2 days and all the snow was gone. The world looks so different from one moment to the next and in true-life time-scales it happens in the blink of an eye.

There was of course one rough day for me this week. On Tuesday morning I took Jenna to school while there was still a lot of snow and ice on the roads. On the way to the school I lost control of the car, slid off the road, and mounted the pavement. Jenna of course, squealed with delight: “Oh cool, Mom! Do that again!” like it was something I intended to do, or would voluntarily do again. However this was not to be the worst. On the way back from the school I went around a right-hand corner and the car continued to slide towards the left and straight into the side of a van, parked on the side of the road. Fortunately when the owner and I checked his vehicle there was no significant damage. My car has some nasty scratches around the front light on the passenger side, but in comparison to how hard I hit the van, I guess I can be thankful. Driving in conditions that you are not familiar with is not pleasant. I have however picked up some good tips from the moms at Jens school (Yes, advice from fellow “woman drivers”? No snide comments, boys!). There is always something new to learn. Some lessons are just a bit tougher than others and I am sure that by the time spring arrives, I will have acquired a whole new set of driving skills.

This week Jon flew back to South Africa, schools returned to normal after some disrupted snow days, and the neighbour’s cat survived a whole week in my care, while the owners went skiing in France. Jenna loved the time she had to go across the road and play with the cat and feed it, she even fought me to clean out the litter-box. She definitely needs a pet in a hurry. She really needs to care for something.

I am so glad that Mitchell and Jenna have returned to sporting activities this week. It has been such an eye-opener in the past few weeks to see just how easily children over here can fall out of doing routine exercise. The snow, the cold, the rain, and the shorter days can quite easily put an end to healthy activities if you are not vigilant and it becomes a new challenge to ensure that they (and I for that matter) do some form of exercise. Mitchell played a hockey match this morning in the neighbouring town of Sevenoaks and Jenna returned to gymnastics on Friday night. It is wonderful to watch her moving around on all that professional gymnastics equipment and it is amazing to see how quickly balance improves.

This week, I fly back to South Africa for my nephews wedding. 10 weeks after we arrived here I flew to SA for my school reunion, and now another 10 weeks later I am going back again. I just cannot put a price on human relationships, to me family matters will always come first, and if it is within my means to attend something like a family wedding, then I will. I would hate to have woken up in England on the day of the wedding in South Africa and regretted not going. I am way too sentimental about things like that and unfortunately for me, I am the kind of person who would carry the regret with me forever. So, I get to fly back once more, but this trip also serves as a pleasant reminder to me that South Africa is just a flight away and that the world can seem very small if you want it to. If you allow yourself to, you can feel closer to the people who matter –even if they are a half a world away. When Linda moved to the UK just after we had finished studying and we stood crying at the airport in East London, she said to me that she would just be a flight away, and that’s all it really is. We can all make distance seem as long, or as short as we like. This move to the UK would not have been worth it for me, if it meant that the people in my life who I love and miss, had to just take a back-seat. I am however preparing myself for a feeling of homesickness when I return. I felt it for a few days when I returned from my reunion and I just need to watch out for it and try to use it as something positive.

There are still so many moments that leave me wanting so much more over here, like those moments in beautiful museums, surrounded by art and design, surrounded by colourful things, painted ceilings and sculptured walls, those moments when you can sit on a train with your forehead pressed against the glass and reflect on things you have seen, things you have heard, places you have been and you can smile to yourself as you wonder how many more of those moments you can find in the future.

I don’t want to say that I believe spring is “just around the corner” quite yet, because I think (and certainly hope) that the winter will stay for a bit longer, but the days are now clearly longer than they were a few weeks ago. It is so undeniably noticeable. I love the foggy days we are having at the moment where you can bearly see just a few feet in front you, where the tops of the trees disappear into a haze. I really am looking forward to the flowers that I have heard about, that appear in the parks and the fields, the snowdrops and daffodils, bulbs that push up from beneath the cold earth and announce the arrival of a whole new colour palette. Change is in the air.

Snow, snow, everywhere! There is no place on this island that is the United Kingdom, where you can hide away from the snow at the moment. Either you embrace it and love it and make the most of it or you have to go and hide inside, sit tight and wait for the big thaw to begin. A NASA satellite image of the United Kingdom this week showed the entire island from the northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip England is just white. When we came over here 6 months ago we hoped we would wake to at least a few mornings of snow in the garden in the winter months. Many people had told us that in Tonbridge they usually see about 3 or 4 days of light snow in a year and then it usually melts away by the next morning, but sometimes you have to “be careful what you wish for, ‘cos you just might get it all”. Well, we wished for snow and it came in the form of the harshest winter the UK has seen in 30 years. The snow just fell and fell endlessly. It packed deeper and deeper on the curbs and in the gardens. Eventually you lose sight of your flower-pots and then taller structures like your car disappear too. Not removed by thieves though, just buried under a blanket of white. One of the things that have struck me the most this week has been the lack of colour. The world to us at the moment looks as if it has been captured on a black and white image. If you take photos they just appear as if they are black and white. It is the most strikingly beautiful background and just another breathtaking contrast to the colour-palette that was autumn.

Mitchell and Jenna love the snow. They go sledding whenever they can. There are some lovely steep hills around here where children from all the houses come out and join in. Some children bring plastic sheets, others arrive with plastic washing buckets and one little girl just had a plastic packet. If you can sit on it and it can slide down a hill, it’s in!

On Monday morning Jon and I took a walk around part of Bewl Water, a beautiful reservoir which is now the largest inland body of water in south east England. To walk around the perimeter of the lake is about 12.7miles. It was a cold, frosty morning and the fallen brown leaves crunched under our boots, but the sky was perfectly clear and the warm filtered, winter sun was just enough to make it a most picturesque walk. The beauty of Bewl Water in the winter is that the trees have thinned out by losing all their leaves, so you can access the water’s edge from many more spots, that you tend to walk past in the summer months because you cannot see through the thick leaves of the forest. Ducks and geese were all over and it was amazing to watch them carrying on with life as if nothing had changed, on the frozen lake-side shores.  There was a moment when a line of ducks swam out from the reeds and behind the group swam one single white swan.  I laughed and commented to Jon that it reminded me of the story of the Ugly Duckling. You can walk for miles around Bewl Water in the most beautiful forests, past farmlands and over little wooden bridges without seeing another person for ages, but you never ever feel unsafe. A few people might pass you on mountain bikes and a few other walkers will wave and pass by, but you can walk and take in the beauty and breathe in the fresh crisp air and know that you are most likely to be perfectly safe.

On Tuesday Jon and I took a trip into London. It was a week of playing “watch the weather forecast” and when we had moments of snow-free time we made the most of it. Jon had not really done the touristy things in London so we planned our day and had a whistle-stop tour of the London eye, Parliament buildings, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Green Park, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, the frozen serpentine lake, the Albert Memorial and the Science Museum. It was the perfect day to do the London eye. It was a clear bright, sunny morning, in which we could see “until forever” , even the arch of Wembley stadium was visible in the distance.

By Tuesday night the snow had returned in force. We woke to a thick blanket of snow and news that some of the schools had closed. Mitchell had the rest of the week off, but Jenna’s school was open. The schools here are well prepared for the snow days and Mitchell’s school has a login area on the internet for the children where they can access assignments for all their subjects. I have already looked on the schools website for information about school-closures tomorrow and the school is closed again. I haven’t told Mitchell yet, so he is still getting an early-to-bed school nights sleep. The snow gave us the perfect playground on Wednesday. We took a baseball bat and a football out into the field across the road from our house and what fun it was. Smacking a snowball with a baseball bat mostly just leaves you with a mouthful of snow, and kicking a football is great because it doesn’t go too far so you don’t have to run as much. J

Today we went to lunch at one of our favourite pubs in Tunbridge Wells. It is called “The Robin Hood” and then headed off for another round of ten-pen bowling. I retain the family bowling title (and my crown), despite Mikes best efforts in those last few frames.

Jon leaves tomorrow to head back to SA. We can remember counting the days down until he got here and now the time is already over and he is preparing to head home. He certainly saw “the worst” (or what I think is “the best”) of Britain with all the snow and winter weather.

Some strange things came out of the news this week. Stories of people who walk right past warning signs, over frozen lakes and fall in to their deaths, how you cannot clear the ice from the pavement in front of your house and grit it as this might cause someone to fall and they can sue you, and how panic-buying saw the shops stripped of goods, but it also highlighted the community spirit that people have, to help one another. Young people clear the driveways of elderly neighbours; people offer to go shopping for those who cannot get around in the adverse weather conditions. We have seen people pushing cars for strangers who became stuck in the snow and it’s all done in good spirit. I spun our car twice in one journey when I went to fetch Mike from the station this week, but at the end of the day it’s all about learning new things.

This weather makes you think about the world, about human beings and how we cope in strange situations, it makes you think about our planet and just how much we are not really in control of the forces of nature.  It makes you realise just how small we really are in the greater scheme of things.

The evenings grow noticeably longer now. You can take note of how dark it is at a given time of day, perhaps when you leave the office, or the time when your train leaves the station, then do it again a week later and notice the difference.