Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - Wordless Wednesday: The garden is waking up
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Thursday, January 8, 2009 - It's a different world
Last Saturday, we woke up to a cold house. A trip out into the garden led to the discovery that there was no gas left in the tank; we thought that we were on an automatic top-up plan, but apparently not. After I had made numerous calls to the gas company, a sweet bloke delivered two canisters at 7pm on Tuesday night, and emptied them into the tank. This tided us over until Wednesday morning, when the tanker came to do a proper refill. In the mean time, we were very thankful for our small copse - which provides fuel and kindling for the wood stove - and the electric shower. Otherwise, we would have become very cold and smelly.
At about the same time that the gas went out, we started catching whiffs from the vicinity of the septic tank. It suddenly occurred to me that I had been doing a lot of washing since we moved in, because all our clothes and bedding had become musty in storage. Had I overwhelmed the septic tank? We decided to have it emptied, just in case, so a local farmer/septic tank emptier came over with a tank pulled by a tractor. He stopped on the road and walked up to our door to announce that the turn was too tight for him to come up the drive. On previous visits he had gone across the neighbour's pasture, but the field had now been ploughed and planted, so he couldn't cross it at present. He left suggesting that I call him in September, after the harvest. Today, the whiff has gone, so I have my fingers crossed that the septic tank has recovered its equanimity.
As husband said, 'These are not problems that one has on the 67th floor of a Hong Kong tower block.'
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Wordless Wednesday: Fettes College (private senior school), Edinburgh
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Part of a conversation after reading The Journey of the Magi, by TS Eliot
Hobbes: I didn't really understand all of it. He talked about birth and death mixed up together. Oh! I know! We usually talk about birth as the time when you come out of the womb, but I think that birth is when you first learn something, first have an experience. Maybe at death there is a flash of peace that is like that moment of inspiration at birth.
Calvin: I think the narrator is talking about the death of his old ideas, of his old religion. He travelled to see Jesus, and knew that he had found the truth. Now all his old life, his old religion seemed a waste to him, just a waste of all his past efforts. Now he wants to die, because he is no longer interested in the life around him.
Hobbes: He saw that Jesus was good. I think that Jesus could have been good without going against the Romans and being so famous. If he had gone on being good and teaching quietly, and curing people who were ill, he would have lived to do more good, rather than being killed.
Laura: That's an interesting point. Do you think that Jesus was deliberately causing his own death?
Calvin: Yes - he had to die in that way, it was how he could redeem people from sin.
Hobbes: But he could have done so much more good if he hadn't died then.
Laura: You two are talking about two different aims. Was his aim to do good to the people he met, or did he have to die in order to do more good? (pause) There are some interesting images in the poem - let's look at them. It says, "Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver."
Hobbes: That's chance, gambling away your life - dicing is a kind of gambling, isn't it? Before he saw Jesus, [the narrator's] life was wasted, was gambled away.
Calvin: The pieces of silver: Judas. That predicts the betrayal of Jesus, it's there at his birth.....
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: Late Autumn walk, Fife
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Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - A puzzle: what is this 'S' for? If you already know, please don't tell
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Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - Another Greek conversation
Hobbes (looking at the Wordless Wednesday pictures): Blondie is so sweet!
Me: I have to clean up her run today though - that will be much less sweet.
Hobbes: Why don't you just divert a river, like Hercules did to clean up the stables?
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Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: Blondie, latest addition to the China/Scotland crew
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - Not quite Wordless Wednesday: Ladies at the park, with bubbles, China
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Sunday, November 30, 2008 - I ran over the laundry
Our shipment arrived on Thursday, so we are trying to fit the contents of two homes (our family home in China and husband's bachelor pad in Hong Kong) into one house in Scotland. Since taking possession of the house, we have discovered mice in the loft (causing damp marks on the sitting room ceiling, due to customary pee locations), mice in the kitchen (above the cabinets, feasting on ornamental grain sprays) and mice in the utility room (nice and cosy behind the dryer).
The boys don't have beds yet - they are being delivered tomorrow - but today we searched every box in the house for our bedding, so that I could get it washed. Days are very short at present, so it was pitch dark and three degrees C below freezing when I went out to my car with a bag of sheets. I was taking them to wash at our temporary accommodation, because the washing machine at the new house is unusable. I suddenly realised that I had left my car keys in the house, so dumped the bag of wash by the boot of the car. A minute later, keys in hand, I climbed into the front seat and sat watching the ice dissolve on the windscreen. I backed out of the driveway, feeling a slight bump and assuming that I'd hit the grass edge.
It wasn't until I reached the end of the drive that I remembered the washing. The stars were brilliant above, but the moon wasn't up, so I was forced to stumble back down the drive and scrabble in the frost for the - only slightly tyre-marked - family bedlinen.
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: How Sunday began .... and ended
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Saturday, November 22, 2008 - I love seeing laundry on the iine
The boys are off with their father to Chinese school today; the choir that has welcomed me here is performing next weekend, so I stayed home to work on the music for a few hours. The weather is close to freezing, so I washed the boys' and my lighter jackets and sent the lads off in their cuddly coats.
Our movers arrive on Thursday, so this is our last weekend to think through what needs doing. So far, at the new house, we have dealt with damp, woodworm, mice, mice again and a wrecked bathroom. The walls are being painted slowly, and we are shutting our eyes for the moment to various inherited design disasters.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: Puzzle - where did our nature walk take us?
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - My nominee button at last - I'm so useless at the technical stuff
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Monday, November 17, 2008 - A left-over China post: law and order
Under the communist system in China, each street had a neighbourhood representative, whose responsibility it was to make sure that everyone in the area was obeying the rules. They knew everything about everyone, and could make life very difficult for non-conformists. Today's China is much less restrictive. People come and go within their registered city with very little supervision. Foreigners still officially have to inform the local police of their place of abode, but the system has seemed largely a rubber stamp.
Until one day in June. The previous week, I had gone to register where we were living. I had forgotten to do that when we last entered the country, but now needed the registration slip in order to extend our visas. The process was as relaxed as usual, but they had a new computer system, into which all our information - including the expiration date of our visas - was typed with two slow fingers. The following week, I was stopped by one of the (private) security guards at the gate of our (private) apartment complex. He cheerfully reminded me to renew my visa, as it was due to expire. That computer system was doing its job - now they could really keep track of me.
I took this photo in late 2007. At that time, the shop on the left was happily selling pirated DVDs of overseas films, right next to the police station on the right. You may be able to see a contented foreigner buying some entertainment in the shop. After being a favourite haunt of the foreign community for several years, the shop was brought into line in early 2008 - no more pirating, and just a thin offering on the shelves.
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Monday, November 17, 2008 - Homeschool Blog Awards - we've been nominated in the geographical blogs category!
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Thursday, November 6, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: Autumn colour, Pitlochry, Perthshire
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: Abandoned farmhouse, Perthshire
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - A day in the life
7:45 - alarm goes off and I ignore it. Husband has already left for work.
8:00 - get up, check the weather, make breakfast for the boys (sausages, brown bread fried in olive oil, melon, orange juice, vitamins). They are both awake (abnormal at this hour for Calvin these days) and reading.
8:15 to 9:00 - the boys eat breakfast, clear the table, unpack the dishwasher, brush teeth (I help Hobbes), wash faces, can't find any jeans, get dressed, turn turtlenecks round the right way, make beds and sit down for school. I get dressed.
9 to 9:30 - I make sure that they boys don't need any help to start working on maths, then have breakfast while standing up in the kitchen reading an article from the Financial Times. I then put on a wash - the 'pee-catchers' that our landlord uses in the bathrooms to protect the carpet. The wash room in our temporary accommodation is outside in the yard. It's a beautiful autumn day - the chestnut horses are brilliant against the grass in the field opposite.
9:30 to 10:30 - I tidy the kitchen, then check maths is going well. I clean the bathrooms, while fielding intermittent questions from Hobbes on adding and subtracting volumes in litres. Calvin is working on sequences, and is groaning about having to draw pictures of some of them.
10:30 - Calvin comes to find me, saying that he needs testing on his science. He has an exam coming up in November, so science is taking up a lot of our time. I ask him to make me some tea, and to write some Chinese sentences while it's brewing. We will then meet in the spare room for biology testing. While he does his Chinese, I sneak into my bedroom to begin this entry.
10:40 to 12 midday - I test Calvin on his biology. Hobbes has a break, vacuums the hall and works on his set reading for the week (finishing The Children of Green Knowe, and finding out if he's read The Little House on the Prairie before)
12:00 to 12: 40 - I hang the clean pee-catchers on the line, eat an apple, make another cup of tea (which I fail to drink) and put some clothes on to wash. Calvin takes a break. I wash and microwave the cleaning cloths.
12:40 to 2:00 - I serve left-over meatballs and bulgur wheat with steamed broccoli and tomato salad for lunch, then take a walk while the boys have a break. The sun is low in the sky, even at midday, and the cows and horses in the fields are feeding on hay. The blackberries are very ripe and sweet - the boys and I gorged on them yesterday and brought home a bowlful for husband.
2:00 to 3:00 - I come back to find that Calvin and Hobbes have begun their Mandarin. I start the dishwasher, then move both on to English and work with them individually: Calvin on consonance and an analysis of 'Ozymandias', Hobbes on 'qu' words then writing a news report. I warm up (and finally drink) that cup of tea. While they do their English, I marinate and roast some chicken pieces, cook ratatouille for husband's supper, and make leek and potato soup for everyone's lunch tomorrow.
3:00 - 5:00 - Calvin moves to today's science revision, whilst Hobbes and I practise the recorder. For the first time he is playing an accompaniment to my singing, which is confusing for him. I send Hobbes back to his set reading while I help Calvin with some more science testing. At 4:30, C does some Latin while Hobbes and I finish off the day with history; we are just completing SOTW 2.
5:00 - 5:40 - Supper is roast chicken, leftover bean casserole, grapes, and new-season apples from Falkland palace. While the boys eat, I sneak into my bedroom for a little computer time. I suddenly remember that the pee-catchers are still on the line outside, and the other clothes are in the washer, so bring in the one and hang up the other.
5:49 - 8:15 - bus trip to town for Calvin's Taekwondo. We are taking the bus when we can to cut down on pollution. Calvin decides at the bus stop that we've reached long-underwear season. Hobbes runs around with the other kids before class, then I take him for a walk around town. We go and look at some Rosa Rugosa, growing on the cliffs. I'm thinking of planting a couple in our new garden, so I want to see it in all seasons. It still has beautiful red hips.
8:15 to midnight - boys to bed, G&T, conversations with husband, clear up kitchen, tidy out a kitchen cupboard (we have a mouse at present), chocolate, long bath with a book.
A good day. Calvin managed maths, English, Mandarin, Latin and tons of science, as well as an hour of Taekwondo. Hobbes achieved maths, English, Mandarin, history, reading and recorder, plus ten minutes of flat-out running and an hour of walking. And I? Almost two hours of walking, a little pollution avoided, an hour with a book, some household tasks completed, and lots of hugs. An unusually good day.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - Wordless Wednesday: a Georgian House, Edinburgh
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