The difference between...

...skiing holidays pre and post children. (I thought I might lighten the mood after yesterday...)

Pre Children

• You can ski all day
• It doesn't matter if you wake up with a hangover, you can take as long as you want to get out of bed and even kid yourself that it's not the excess of alcohol curdling your brain, just your body reacting to the altitude
• Lunch can be a long, leisurely affair on the side of the mountain, and may even - oh, those far-off halcyon days - be accompanied by wine
• Vin chaud/gluhwine features as one of your of your five a day (What? It - sometimes - comes with fruit in the top. That qualifies in my book)
• If you're in a relationship (or - I'm told - sometimes even if not), you may even get to partake of spontaneous nooky in the afternoon when everyone else is out on the slopes
• You're only paying for yourself, so whilst skiing is never a cheap holiday, it doesn't break the bank
• You get to experience the Apres-Ski to the full.
• Dancing in ski boots in some badly lit slippery-wooden floored bar is good clean fun...
• Did I mention you can ski all day?

Post children

• Ski all day? You count yourself lucky if you manage an hour in the morning between the drop-off of weeping children and the collection of the ski-demons they have morphed into during your 2 hour absence
• Hangover? Fat chance. Not only are you rarely awake long enough in the evening to down more than half a glass of wine, but the prospect of dealing with 2 squirming children unwilling to get into their ski clothes and traipse up the road to their lessons, whilst definitely enough to drive you to drink, is also enough to make you realise that adding a muzzy head to the mix would be a very bad idea indeed...
• Lunch is a cling-film wrapped squashed ham sandwich discarded by your child after you pick them up from their ski lesson. They haven't eaten it as they are too full from snacking on all the biscuits and chocolate you used as bribes to persuade them to stay at their lesson in the first place.
• Vin chaud (and accompanying fruit) is off the menu; you need a clear head to deal with your mini-menace children on the slopes as they simply point their skis down hill and go, ignoring your increasingly frantic pleas to 'put in a turn, for chrissake!' as you try desperately to keep up with them. If you both make it down the slope without ending up in the back of one of those first aid sleighs you see being transported down the mountain, you consider the experience a success.
• Nooky? I'm not even going to dignify that suggestion with further comment.
• By the time you've forked out for your children's ski hire, boot hire, helmet hire, thermal underwear, goggles, lessons, lift pass, and the badge they get when they finish the course (yes, you do have to pay for that), your second mortgage may need to be increased. And that's before you even think about the ruinously expensive plates of spaghetti bolognese they hoover up in the mountain side restaurants when they decide that they are hungry after their lesson after all. (Note to self - always carry extra squashed cling-film-wrapped ham sandwiches for such emergencies in the future...)
• Apres ski? I've heard of it, but...

Life on the edge

So, I'm sure I just heard gunfire. Not a single shot, but a series of short, staccato blasts, in total lasting around 30 seconds.

It's probably nothing. But this 'nothing' sound came from the direction of the Boys' school and nursery.

I call Husband, just in case. "Is this a significant date in the Russian calendar?" I ask. "Can you think of any reason why someone might set off fire-crackers in the middle of the day?"

I expect him to laugh me out of town and tell me not to be so paranoid. But he doesn't. Interesting. Instead, he suggests I call the school and check that everything is OK.

This is where being an expat, away from your usual support structures, norms and expectations (however blinkered they may be), can get a bit raw. I know, rationally speaking, that even if Moscow is currently a target for terrorists, there are 16 million people living here and the chances of any of that trouble coming knocking on our door are incredibly remote. But I also know that my sons attend a reasonably high-profile establishment which, whilst it has fantastic security, could conceivably be on someone's List. And the fact that my Russified Husband didn't fall on the floor in hysterics at my ridiculous suggestion makes me realise that he may think that too.

I push images of Beslan, various high schools in the US and god only knows where else to the back of my mind, take a deep breath, and call the school.

The receptionist who answers the phone sounds as if mine is not the first call she has received in the last few minutes. (That's the problem with having a host of over-anxious parents out of their comfort zone living on the school's doorstep; you might have a captive audience of potential students but you also have to deal with calls like this one.)

"Everything is fine" she says somewhat wearily. "Don't worry."

So I'm not doing. Much.

Note: in the last few minutes I've just remembered that some of the older children are celebrating 'Wacky Day' today - just the sort of event when fire-crackers might come in useful...

Update:

It seems that perhaps I wasn't being totally paranoid after all. Apparently there's an army base in the woods near the school, and it's not unusual to hear gunfire from that direction. It's possible that the only reason I never heard it before is because it's only now become warm enough to have the windows open in the house. However, I'm told that this afternoon it was particularly loud, to the the extent that some of the teachers actually came outside to investigate (rather them than me!); not only could they hear the shooting, but they could smell it too...

Should that make me feel better or worse, I wonder? Discuss...

The Gallery #7: 'Ugly', and The Mads

This week's prompt for Tara's Gallery is 'Ugly'. I racked my brains when I read that; what to photograph? Normally it's examples of beauty - or our interpretation of what is beautiful - that we bother to record. So if I go back through my files I can show you photographs of sunsets over idyllic beaches, of children playing in the mountains, and the sun rising over Glastonbury Plain, but ugliness? Not something I usually want to remember.

I've seen plenty of it, mind you. Just looking around me in Moscow there is the dirt, the crumbling tower blocks, the fumes from the traffic, the beaten up old cars, the expressions on the faces of the people fighting to squeeze onto the metro in rush hour (although, understandably, a lot more people are taking taxis right now...), and the rubbish thrown onto the side of the road.

But all that would be too obvious - and too cheap a shot. So instead, here is a pile of melting snow outside our front door. Definitely not pretty (despite the late afternoon sun glinting off the ice), and I suppose it could even be called ugly. Except, after a whole winter dealing with the white stuff, this sight marks the beginning of Spring - so whilst it is ugly, it's also a very welcome sight indeed...

And whilst I've got your attention, I would just like to indulge in little bit of shameless self promotion and point out 'The Mads' logo on the right hand side of the screen. For those of you who haven't come across this yet, it's the collective name for a series of blog awards to be presented to nominted Mum and Dad bloggers, and I'm delighted to have been nominated for a couple of them;

Mad Blogger of the Year

Best Mad Blog Writer.

Any support would be much appreciated. (It appears that I left both my Natural Modesty towel and my Shrinking Violet hat back in London when we moved...)

Time moves on...

A good friend of mine has just had a baby. Now, in the UK, we tend to hang back a bit when there's been a new arrival to a family; not for us (unless it's a very close relative) the Dutch way of dashing over there as soon as possible to a pre-arranged scheduled slot ('we can fit you in between 2pm and 2.30pm next Tuesday'), to eat special new baby treats and present gifts to the new arrival.

No, we go the opposite way in Blighty, waiting until the dust has settled before popping by, sometimes being so reticent about it that we can wait 6 weeks to present ourselves and pay our respects.

So it should be no big deal for me that I'm unlikely to meet this little bundle of cuddles before July, on our next trip back to London. Hell, if I'm honest about it, with the crazy schedules that we all follow these days, we probably only managed to meet 3 or 4 times a year when I was living there, so really this delay is just more of the same.

But it's things like this - the arrival of a new baby and the subsequent photo arriving in my e-mail inbox - that make the 1500 miles between here and there seem such a very long way...

Congratulations, F. I am thinking of you and your gorgeous-looking boy and will drink a bellini in honour of both of you.... x

And if you're wondering what the picture is of, it's a traditional treat the Dutch serve to celebrate the arrival of a new baby; a crispbread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar covered aniseed (blue and white for a boy, pink and white for a girl). Apparently, the aniseed is good for stimulating milk production in nursing mothers. It's just a lucky coincidence that it tastes good, too...

Dear So & So

Dear Mr Ikea,

just a quick question. Really, I won't take much of your time. I mean, I know how busy you must be, designing all that furniture and travelling round Sweden taking photographs of all sorts of good-looking people showing us how to use tables, chairs, cutlery and other difficult stuff like that. I should - I live in a house almost entirely furnished by your store in Moscow, after all, and believe me, given the time it takes me to put some of your flat-packed furniture together (bookshelves, anyone?), I can't imagine how long it must take you to design it...

Anyway, I do just have one teensy question.

If you can design all this clever stuff (pull-out sofa beds, for example... Who would have thought of putting a special drawer underneath to store your guest bedding in, that doubles up as somewhere useful to hide the rolls of wrapping paper from your sons who are convinced that the shiny red cellophane one is the spitting image of a Jedi light-sabre and therefore ideal for beating the living daylights out of each other with? Genius...), I just wondered...

Why on earth do you make the barcode stickers on the top of your storage boxes so bloody difficult to remove?

Yours, (in search of a plaster following an unfortunate incident with a table knife and the label on top of a certain storage box),

Potty Mummy.

PS - if you want to watch something really funny, (and which I had nothing to do with) I recommend you check out this link to a video by Dan & Dan (courtesy of an inital pointer from Powder Room Graffiti). Go on - you know you want to.

British Mummy Blogger of the Week

We're back in Moscow following our week in the French Alps (expect a post on all that shortly, you lucky things). Our 3am arrival, the mountain of laundry, and the prospect of a trip to Ikea and the supermarket this afternoon aren't exactly joyful, but the fact that the sun is shining and that it must be at least 8 degC outside are definitely helping to combat the post-holiday blues.

Happy Easter, one and all!

Now, after last week's abject failure to come up with the goods on the Blogger of the Week front (please accept my apologies - I can only plead over-excitement at the prospect of a week's exposure to French wine, bread and cheese in my defence), have you ever wondered what the term 'jumping the shark' means, and what the similarities between finding your first boyfriend and Sky Plus are? Me neither - or at least, not until I came across this British Mummy Blogger of the Week. Paparazzi Mum writes of herself:

'I’m a journalist, wife and mother...I set up paparazzimum.tv because I’m a popular culture nut and I love to rant about all things celebrity. I hope you enjoy. xx'

For the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note: It's called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too).

A piste too far

Boy #1 is continuing to improve his skills on the slopes (after making a couple of runs with him this afternoon, Husband commented breathlessly that 'we have created a monster') but unsurprisingly, not everyone in the Potski family is toeing the party line on the 'loving skiing' front.

Yesterday, Boy #2 and I had the following conversation after I picked him up from ski school;

Me: "So, how was your ski lesson today?"

Boy #2: "OK. I only cried a little bit."

Me (heart sinking, but trying to jolly him along): "Right... so did you actually ski at all?"

Boy #2: "Yes. Yes! I skied through the arch. And... I rang the bell!" (There is a sleigh bell suspended on a plastic arch which the children are encouraged to ring as they pass underneath it. This requires them to be standing up on their skis rather than messing around on the ground or even - as has been the case more than once this week - playing inside in the nursery, so this news was something to be celebrated).

Me: "Fantastic! So when you go back tomorrow, you can do that again!"

Boy #2: "Well... no."

Me: "No?"

Boy #2: "No. I can ski now. I know how to do it. So, that's that."

Me: "What do you mean, 'that's that' ?"

Boy #2: "Well, now I know how to ski. So I don't have to go back again."

Ah well - there's always next year.

Note: He did go back. And even appears to be enjoying it - despite an unfortunate collision with both parents on the ski slopes this afternoon... (the only thing hurt was our pride, you'll be pleased to hear).