Things I have learned so far this December...

It's hard to admit it, but I think we may have outgrown The Great Little Trading Company as a hunting ground for Christmas gifts for the Boys.  Sniff...

Acquaintances will blank you if they see you're selling charity Christmas cards they don't want.

Hell really is other people's over-excited, over-hyped, over-excited children...

...and nothing you say will stop those angelic two year old twins turning into devils as they attack the balloon arch over the entrance to the Sinterklaas celebration...

...especially whilst their mother watches indulgently from the sidelines...

...so just chill.  And get over it.

The Dutch Sinterklaas Zwarte Piet tradition is just. Plain. Wrong.  There - I've said it.  And to all those apologists out there, I ask this question; Would you think it a charming Dutch tradition if you were black?

Adding a sledge to the school run mix in the morning makes what was previously a bitterly cold trek in minus 12degC darkness less of a trial, for you and the kids.  (It's still bitterly cold, mind you.  Just a bit more fun.)

Likewise the way home.

Long socks work.  End of.

You can't skimp on price for decent gloves.  Not if you live in Russia in the winter and have Raynaud's Disease, anyway...

Check where your glove warmers are the night before you go cross country skiing for the first time, instead of rushing through the house frantically searching boxes of winter kit whilst simultaneously chivvying the Boys to get ready for school and trying to put on a dark wash.

On the 2nd Day of Christmas, this expat is looking forward to:

...Proper mince pies.

For those of you not aware of what I'm up to here, Next have very kindly sent me twelve beautiful illustrations for each verse of the carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', and to use them wisely I've decided to write about what I, as an expat due to be back in the UK for the holidays, am most looking forward to when I get there.

Which brings me to proper mince pies. I don't care if they're home-made or shop-bought (although obviously - OBVIOUSLY - my mother's are the most delicious in the world), just as long as they are deep-filled, full of delicious spicy mincemeat and, in an ideal world, topped with icing sugar. AND cream. Or brandy butter. If I must. (Well, it would be rude not to, don't you think?)

In the spirit of intrepid expat-ness, I tried to make them here, but unfortunately they came in under the bracket 'sorry excuse for a proper mince pie'. This was last weekend; I had made them to take to my first ever Thanksgiving Lunch.

'Bring something festive from your country of origin' the invitation said. I didn't think a plate of tinsel would do it, so found some mincemeat (purloined from a generous neighbour) and for the first time in my life, made sweet pastry. They tasted - all right. If a little dry.

But I shouldn't have bothered. After the fact, I remembered past experience of having to educate friends of different nationalities that the 'mincemeat' in mince pies doesn't actually contain any meat. (Or at least, it hasn't done for a couple of hundred years). We arrived at the party, along with 12 mince pies that could have done with a slightly less dry pastry. And back home we came again, with 11 of them. Not a single person there - other than me, who took pity on the plate of pies sitting forlornly on the table surrounded by empty dishes - could bring themselves to try something that was supposed to be sweet with the name 'mince' in the title.

But yet, everyone else there was happy to eat pumpkin, in a pie. And I stand by my mince pies in light of that, when I compare them to the pumpkin pie which was served. I tried some. It was OK. Not great. Not earth shaking. Just - all right. Actually, I'm told it was pretty good pumpkin pie as pumpkin pies go, it's just that, well. Pumpkin? As a pudding?

On the plus side, I was able to say hand on heart to my hostess that it was the best pumpkin pie I had ever tasted.

What I left out was that it was also the only pumpkin pie I had ever tasted...

Today's Top Pick from the Next Site

This was a toughie - but only because my chosen area of interest for today, boots suitable for the Moscow winter, was mainly sold out. Living in the UK, as probably most readers of this blog do, I imagine that most people don't need to factor temps of -25degC and below along with the ability to deal with the chemicals etc that get thrown on the roads and pavements here into your choice of shoe; in which case, click here and enjoy!

Shock news; cold weather gear sucks...

I think I may need to smarten myself up a bit.

I reached this conclusion as I arrived at school to drop off Boy #1 this morning, clad in my normal sexy combo of Northface long-line padded coat, ski trousers, moon-boot sized snow boots, woolly hat and embarrassingly grubby gloves. My cheeks were red, my nose was running, and oh joy - as I discovered when I got home - the snow storm I had come through had helped the mascara I applied at 7.00am to migrate from my eyelashes to my cheeks. Not a good look.

All of this would be fine if my sartorial take on the morning school run was the majority choice, but dammit, it's not. Boy #1's school is populated by mummies who arrive wearing delicate high-heeled boots, stylish jeans, and body-conscious jackets. Or fur.

Which, by the way, I object to on principle - or rather, I did, until I found myself enduring the coldest Moscow winter for 30 years. Now, my high falutin' principles and protestations that 'there must be a decent man-made alternative, we are in the 21st century after all' are being worn by down the incessant minus 15 degC temperature to 'Gosh. You look warm...'

Anyway. I'm not cutting it in the yummy-stakes at the school gate. Which, whilst it isn't important enough for me to ditch the padding and shiver in style (hell, I never exactly wowed them in London, now I come to think of it), does make me wonder how they do it. Or rather, it did, until I put two and two together and realised that whilst I am yomping through the Arctic tundra pulling a sledge with two small boys on it, most of the other mums are tripping gaily out to their cars and hopping in the passenger seat as their driver takes them on to their next appointment...

Note to self: Add 'staff' to weekly shopping list...

Life in the Freezer

(with apologies to David Attenborough for appropriating the title of his tv series, but it seemed... appropriate...)

What to tell you about our two weeks in Moscow so far? There's so much that I almost feel as if there's too much. Every day something happens and I think 'I must write / blog about that', and add it to my ever-growing mental list, where it slips to the bottom and invariably gets mislaid. So I think what I'm going to do is take it one subject at a time, and I imagine that from the title of this post you've probably guessed what today's is.

I've never been too good with extremes of temperature. As a wimpy girl I once collapsed weeping on the kitchen floor when informed that Iwould have to go back out into the cold (cold as in, oh, a paltry -4 degC) to catch the school bus that was finally on it's way after having kept us waiting for 40 minutes whilst the driver defrosted it. And when in Holland over Christmas once and I experienced -10 degC, I thought that was probably the most I could take.

When, 15 years ago, Husband was working over here after we first met and regaled me with tales of minus 25, I thought he was crazy. I mean, what kind of idiot would willingly subject themselves to a country that dishes out a climate like that, for chrissake? (Possibly the same kind of idiot who would move to said country in the depths of the coldest winter for 4 years, but let's not go there). Never mind that he always assured me that -10 degC in Moscow doesn't feel any colder than minus 2 in London due to the much greater humidity in the UK (that lovely raw, damp cold that comes in straight off the Channel, in other words), I just thought he was trying to soften me up and get me to move there. Which I never would. Obviously.

But now? I have moved here, and guess what; minus 10?

Minus 10 is for wimps. I laugh in the face of minus 10 nowadays... Pretty much like Husband did in my face this morning when, on discovering that it was minus 21 degC as we walked Boy #1 to school this morning, I remarked that it did feel a little chilly.

God, I hate it when he's right.

Obviously, when it's this cold, you do have treat the weather with respect. And that includes staying inside as much as possible and when you do have to go out, poncing about in some of the ugliest snow boots known to woman, but when it comes to keeping my toes I take no fashion prisoners. Luckily, it seems that neither does anyone else (with the exception of the fur-clad mummies at the school gate, next to whom I feel very dingy in my North Face quilted coat and Monsoon wool hat), and if you make mistake of going out not wearing anything on your head, you can expect to be stopped and harangued by strangers in the street for your stupidity.

As for the children, well they get bundled up in skipants over their trousers, with snow boots, thermal tops, jumpers, ski jackets, hats, scarves, and - in the case of Boy #2 who at 4 is finding this especially hard to handle - two lots of gloves. Let me tell you, getting that lot onto a recalcitrant child at 8am tends to slow you down somewhat. And even bundled up like that, the cold still affects them. What should be a 10 minute walk to school is currently a 20 minute crawl when my youngest is with us, due to the cold slowing him down.

I thought I'd beaten that by buying a sledge so I could pull him along in double quick time (practical and picturesque, how stylish!), but yesterday - dammit - Moscow's road sweepers did what they do best and got rid of all the snow. One day it was there, the next, gone to the great snow pile in the sky at the edge of the city somewhere. So, no snow means no sledge. I must be the only person in the city praying for more of the white stuff in the hope we make it to school on time.

However, I'm determinedly looking on the bright side. It's going to warm up tomorrow; the weather forecast is for cloud and only -12 degC; that's practically tropical compared to today.

I may hang some washing out.