The Gallery: Wk 64

This post is for Wk 64 of Tara's Gallery (click here to see the other entries). The prompt this week is 'My Weekend'.

For once my weekend featured very little of the laptop, mainly due to the fact that whilst I was actually at a blogging conference, I was doing precious little blogging. However, I took this shot duing Jay's presentation on photography, and I like the way the keyboard is reflected in the screen. It's faintly disorientating, and to a certain extent (bear with me here) I find that a relevant metaphor for why I started writing things down in the first place.

Struggling to find a sense a self after stopping (paid) work, and driven to distraction by my attempts to potty train my older son who was unwilling to have any truck with this toilet business, I decided that if I could write the experience down, and - crucially - make it funny, it would all seem so much easier and I would have regained some semblance of control. (On the page, at least).

And that was how it worked out. Writing things down became an addictive habit, it helped me to work things through, and eventually, I found that the more relaxed, centred person that I was trying to be in print started to be someone that I also recognised in the mirror.

I enjoyed CyberMummy, although if I'm completely honest I felt that for me it was more about meeting old friends face to face (some for the first time) than about the workshops and the opportunity to interact with brands. And I don't have a grand plan, as so many other bloggers seem to. I certainly have no idea where blogging will take me. I could continue for years, I may stop next week. But one thing I will never feel, whilst it continues to give me the chance to work things through in my mind, is that it has been a waste of my time.

And I suspect that I may always be addicted to using a screen to reflect & focus my thoughts, simply by the act of writing things down.

Glastonbury, London, and squashed sugar bowls

My parents live about 6 miles from Glastonbury, where right now the festival is in full swing. I can hear the music - even from inside their house - like the noise of distant thunder. I wonder, what must it be like to live closer? Perhaps the locals relocate for the duration, like families I know of in Notting Hill who decamp during Carnival; what seemed a selling point when they moved, young, free and single, into their cool west London pads rapidly turning into a living nightmare when they found themselves trapped inside their home with buggies and young children for 3 straight days at the end of August every year.

Sure, it's cool to visit Carnival, but to live through it with no respite from the partying? Those who could voted with their feet and went to visit gran and grandad for the weekend, or better yet, took the children to their doting grandparents before hotfooting back to London, safe in the knowledge that little Lucinda could sleep through the night whilst mum and dad recaptured some of their lost youth...

I haven't been at Glastonbury, though. Arriving last week, we brought the Boys down Somerset (no worries they would be kept awake by the dull thud thud thud of the bass after 3 days spent with family looking to cram 6 months-worth of treats in 72 hours exhausted them utterly), and then Husband and I travelled back to London. I went to CyberMummy11 yesterday before I spent the evening celebrating a friend's wedding and then, finding myself with an hour to spare before heading back to green space, wandered around the Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy this morning.

Here then are some of the things I learned this weekend...

15 flattened silver sugar bowls, suspended in a line 4"above the floor on fine wires, make a rather more beautiful exhibit than you might imagine.

I can still - after 20 years of living there - get lost in London trying to find a tube station in the City.

This is not a good move when you've been wearing your strappy wedges all day.

Always take an umbrella when you go out in London, even if the sky is cloudless when you leave. Either that, or a hair dryer. If you forget both, then resign yourself to rats-tail hair.

Even the best restaurants can give you a little 'extra' with your salad. A little 'extra' that wriggles unobtrusively on your plate, that is...

CyberMummy is a great place to go for inspiration and impetus to finally get around to all those things you've been meaning to do for ages- either blogging, or writing-wise -but haven't yet got round to.

It's also a great place to meet all those people who's blogs you admire, and some who's blogs you haven't yet got around to checking out but have been meaning to do for ages...

But you still won't have the time to properly catch up with most of the people you want to talk to.

And that there were some drinkers in the bar of a certain hotel on The Strand who got rather more information than they bargained for, when they listened in to a group of 10 bloggers swapping stories on Friday night.

The Gallery; 3 Word Gallery

This post is for Week 63 of Tara's Gallery (click here to see the other entries).

The prompt this week was '3 word gallery', the idea being that the photo we submit can be described in 3 words.

Here are mine:

An extraordinary day.

The fireworks shown above signal the end to a party at which my oldest son took part in a 'Fort Boyard' style treasure hunt (all day) with his face painted as a tiger, where Husband and I dressed up as Ukrainian peasants before he drove Boy #2 around a field on a tractor, where we were treated to an amazing piano recital by a concert pianist, found ourselves on a yacht on a lake watching the sun set at 10.30pm (whilst a friend gave a impromptu water-skiing display), and sat by a fire pit watching the night come in.

And all in celebration of a seven year old's birthday.

Life in Russia; never boring, frequently extraordinary...

So long, farewell...

Being an expat can do strange things to a person, I've discovered. This time last year, I attended the end of year 'Ringing of the Bell' ceremony at the Boys' school, and last week I did so again (for yes, believe it or not we have already reached the end of term. Read it and weep, sisters; we have 10 weeks of summer holiday to get through. My joy knows no bounds...).

Now, last year, whilst I enjoyed the ceremony, I have to admit that it all seemed - to my jaundiced British eyes - just a little over the top. Sure, the parade of the flags of pupils' nationalities was amazing in it's diversity. The speeches by the principals were uplifting. The performances by the dance troupes, and choirs, the presentations to notable departing personnel, and the ringing out of the school year - with the final bell rung by the school director and representatives of various communities within the school - were affecting. But I have to admit that it all struck me as a bit, well, excessive. I mean, it's just the end of another school year, right? Why make a fuss? We'll all be back next August, won't we?

But here's yet another sign of how far down this expat road I've come, because of course this year I understand properly that we won't all be back next August. Friends (mine, and the Boys') are leaving, either to return to their country of origin or to move on to the next posting in their expat life, and their departure will leave sizeable holes in our existence. This time last year the same thing happened, of course it did, but we had only been here 6 months at the time. Now we've had another 12 months to build friendships and attachments, so to say that this year's ceremony was emotional for me, as I stood next to a good friend who is leaving soon, was something of an understatement.

I had taken tissues, and was not afraid to use them.

As I left the school building I bumped into someone who had recently moved here from the UK. She made the comment "Wow, it was all a bit 'God bless America', wasn't it?" The interesting thing was that at no stage was America - or God, for that matter - mentioned during the ceremony, and yet I knew exactly what she meant. She was right; this 'goodbye' ritual did seem very American to me - last year.

This year, though, it just seemed... right.

I must be turning into more of a softy than I realised...

Silent Sunday

Busman's holiday..?

In case the unobtrusive 'See you a CyberMummy 2011' logo on the top of the right-hand sidebar of this blog hasn't given it away, I'm off to CyberMummy 2011 next weekend. Check out the BritMums blog to find out why...

(And apparently I'm 'profound'... Who knew?)

The Gallery; Dads

This post is for Wk 62 of Tara's Gallery. Click here to see the other entries...

I'm lucky enough to have quite young parents. I was born when they were still practically children; my mother was 23, and my father 25. I can't imagine what they would have said had I gone home at either of those ages and announced that I was even setting up home with someone (looking back, I had neither the maturity nor the experience to do so), let alone that I was going to have a baby. However, times were different back in the 1960's, and they married young, as most of their friends did, and got on with family life; within a year of their wedding, I was born.

Now I'm a mum myself, and even though I didn't get around to that until 13 years later than my mother did, the benefits of having younger parents are still paying off, for me. One of them is that they are still hale and hearty, and that despite my sons' increasing size, my father is still able to make memories for them like this one; being wheeled down through the coombe near Gran and Grandad's house in a wheelbarrow...