10 Brilliant Reasons To Keep or Get a Landline Phone

OR…. Am I turning into a dinosaur already?

The discussion started years ago. It seemed that the whole world and his aunt were arguing against me in the name of economy, efficiency, convenience, modernity, but mostly, as ever, in the name of money. I lost.

We no longer have a landline phone.

And every day, when the phone rings (also when I don’t hear it for one reason or an infinite number of others), or when I want to make a call, I wish I had one. I wish I had one plugged into the wall, by the terrace doors on the table beside the kitchen sofa.

My husband’s argument (as with all his arguments) was financially-based. It is loads cheaper not to have one, so we shouldn’t have one (and anyway, only Grannies have them these days).

That’s my husband. But even when I enquire about getting a new one at the phone shop, the guy (the actual sales person), goes, But, seriously, why on Earth would you want one (snigger, snigger old person)? Am I the only one alive under, say, 80, who feels there are just so many sound, even rational arguments for a landline phone? Here are 10 good reasons to have a landline phone for starters

1. You ALWAYS (so key for me) ALWAYS know where it is
2. You NEVER drop it into the lake (also key)
3. It NEVER runs out of battery
4. It NEVER runs into not-spots
5. You NEVER leave it in the car by accident
6. You never accidentally leave it on silent
7. It NEVER EVER falls out of your pocket into the toilet
8. It is NEVER stolen by your 6-year-old to play purposefully addictive mindless games
9. It is NEVER stolen, hidden and lost by your 6-year-old
10. Family and others can phone without betraying who of your family is their favourite member

I WANT MY LANDLINE BACK!

XHS to XIS ; just one letter but a whole world of difference

CHS to CIS – one letter but a whole world of difference

OR

The Principal’s New Clothes

Not yet keeping me awake at night – just hacking my heart with an ice pick at dawn daily.

Recently I have learnt that the solace, sometimes joy, of having your child at a school where you feel every day is increasing his chances of becoming the best man he can be, should not be underestimated. We had found that school in England – and for me it was a stalwart ocean liner that bore us smoothly across the often choppy seas of resettlement. Due to professional commitments, we moved him out of Year one English system there, to its ‘equivalent’ in the international IB system. This was not a good move.

The new school seems to be an anti-learning establishment. I can only guess that the educator who thought up this system – and importantly – managed to persuade others that it was a good idea – was a teacher of legendary lethargy and sloth, who, blessed with exceptional intelligence, exerted him/herself ONCE for a while, for the benefit of a life of sloth – for self – and for the many future teachers and schools who would buy into the system.

This admittedly impressive exertion involved the design and description of an international system of schooling which would require the teacher to do and say as close to absolutely nothing as was possible, whilst being simultaneously able to talk about the nothing they are doing and saying in a way as to make it sound like it was an intentional and very clever nothing that would benefit your child in a myriad of extraordinary ways. He created a glorious system of linguistic smoke and mirrors – featuring blingy, often blinding pedagogical buzzwords and phrases, which can describe and pimp the absolutely nothing they are doing in a way that gives it impressive pomp and educative purpose.

The language is teacher-kind. It will, for example, allow the ‘class teacher’ to throw a picture of a zebra mare and foal on the table shared by 20 children, go into the corner and listen to Spotify on her IPhone with earphones. It will allow the ‘maths teacher’ to lay out snakes and ladders, snap cards, and a text book on algebraic formulations (learning stations) go into the corner and listen to spotify on their IPhone with earphones. And it will enable the ‘science teacher’ to place a large calendar, whiteboard and selection of markers at the front of the seated children, go into the corner and listen to Spotify on earphones.

Even the parent Open Day featured random bits and bobs scattered round the classroom, and the ‘teachers’ IN THE CORNER LISTENING TO SPOTIFY ON THEIR IPHONES.

To add inconvenience to irrelevance (and a further layer of mirrors and smoke), this year, the entirety of this nothingness is organized on a SIX-DAY timetable. This means that Monday, for example, might be day 1; Tuesday, day 2; Friday, day 5, and the following Monday, day 6. Then, mind-bogglingly, Tuesday becomes day 1, Wednesday day 2, and this time Tuesday gets to be day 6, and Wednesday has the day 1 honour. Just WHY on Earth this it is necessary to demarcate all the nothingnesses in this confusing way I cannot fathom. Day 1: nothing, day 2: bugger all, day 3: sod all, day 4: leaning up against the wall, day 5: jack-shit, day 6: twiddling thumbs. And all described in the most florid terms,  so any one less angry, twisted and sad than I would just assume that really clever things were actually happening all the time.

I have never missed a school more than CHS.

The Joys of Job-seeking

How much information,

Can one application

Require? Is this really essential?

So you want every role?

Every course, wage and goal?

All my present, and past, and potential?

(And my referees, too,

They should write straight to you,

And their verdict should be confidential.)

So one more whole day,

I have shimmied away

On this human-resource dirty dance.

I’ve spun this old booty,

And drafted a beauty,

Now surely they”ll give me a chance???

They can see all my learning,

My jobs, feel my yearning

To earn, now my youngest’s at school.

But on page one, they’ll see,

This daft bird’s FORTY THREE,

She’s just wasting our time, the old fool.

Back to the future

So we’re back. After all that. For so many years I had yearned for English schools and the ever-ready-to-chat-&- befriend aspect of many English people. Neither let me down. The school delivered EVERYTHING I dreamed of in an all-encompassing, absolutely nothing left out way, and the friends I made along the way have changed my life. Now I can prove that you can make as many friends in 17 months in England as you can in 17 years in Denmark. Including two magnificent Penny’s – beautiful new friends – whose fate took them in the most opposite of directions life can take in that short time. But those Penny stories, though they have impacted hugely on my own, are not mine to tell.

So, as I said, we’re back! And, like a lunatic hamster reunited with its long-lost wheel, I’m pelting round my lake EVERY DAY. Klopstock, my favourite 800-year-old oak, and my river island, Ooom, are still there as beloved landmarks on my run. And…… get this!

THE NARROW PATHS ARE NOW PASSABLE!! The (presumably Danish?) walkers, runners and cyclists, ARE GIVING WAY. Approaching from in front or the old chestnut of impossibility – from behind – the other path users are LETTING ME PAST!!! OFTEN WITH A SMILE!!!!!!!   Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé????? Que pasa???? (sp?) Hva’ sker der?? Week one and two at least are telling me that manners and things are no longer quite so rotten in the state of Denmark. (Though a new Scottish friend (see below) from school commented that it is probably because there are lots more ex-pats around these parts these days!!)

A chunk of my heart has still not joined me here, and the sadness of the overlapping losses of moving abides, but I am trying. Today brought a foray into the social life around Teddy’s new school – Copenhagen International. And what a simple, yet fabulous and blog-worthy get-together that was. Six women, including me – each from a different country, and each (was I???) so thoroughly delivering on their cultural stereotypes, it was quite a stunning show!

An Italian, a Scot, a Norwegian, a Netherlander and a Chinese American – and me. They all lived up spectacularly to my expectations about how they should be…I wonder if I lived up to theirs, and what they were!

Job search has just been turned on. Again.

And the cashier said: “Won’t you finger my ringlets?” Never in Denmark.

BUBBLES!!! (Never get these in Denmark either!)

A month of utter madness, having decided on a whim (and on the promise of a 21 000 pound bursary for a 9-month course) to study PGCE Secondary Modern Languages. A fabulous course indeed – but transpiringly requiring min 60 hours work per week (full time job plus full time study) – unfortunately not fitting into the available hours of an oft-sole-caring-due-to-spouse’s-travelling mother-of-three. I deferred my place yesterday (to a time when the children need me less), frantic and sweating, but definitely wiser than before – and with lots of new young friends to boot! During the 4 weeks I was on the course, 2 weeks at uni and 2 weeks working in a school – thoughts of life in Denmark, and how it compared to life here in the UK were never far from my mind.

Here’s some things that happened to and around me during those 4 weeks that would absolutely NEVER have happened in Denmark.

1. Perhaps the most strikingly never-ever-in-Denmark one: the cashier at a supermarket at which I stopped on the way home from school, who, on seeing a hairbrush in my basket, started an extremely long and detailed conversation about haircare – which included an urgent plea for me to feel her ringlets.(“You wouldn’t believe it, but my hair is not coarse at all, even though some people think it looks it. JUST FEEL IT! FEEL IT HERE! Isn’t it soft?”) Well, what else could I do?  And I wondered: ‘Would this happen in Fotex?’ And I knew it wouldn’t, couldn’t, ever.

2. At university, everyone on the stairs, in the doorways, in the loos and other public areas, smiled, held doors, said sorry, smiled again, good-morninged in the morning and see-you-tomorrow’ed  in the afternoon. It was lovely. Never in Denmark.

3. Utter strangers commented on your parking, likelihood of getting a ticket and kindly offered comprehensive instructions to safer/ cheaper/ better parking areas. Never in Denmark.

4. Friends were made in seconds and minutes – and by a week or so – everyone was good mates. NiD.

5. Hmmm. And I suppose this is the crux of the matter: the mattering of the happy social side. Because the happy social side of life is very very happy here. But how much does it matter as compared with the professional side? I am mildy confused. At the school – Mr, Mrs/ Ms/ Miss something we all were. But when there was no surname, we called each other ‘Sir’ for the men and ‘Miss’ for the women. What? NEVER IN DENMARK!

6. Teachers. And this is to some extent speculation… But, my word!!! How those British teachers SLOG THEIR GUTS OUT. Five, six and seven hours some of them were going WITHOUT A SIP OF WATER or going to the loo. Some of them a whole school day – doing all manner of duties through break and lunch that I am SURE would be illegal in Denmark!?!? Lessons stop and start at the exact same point in time – so noone has chance to walk to another lesson, let alone fetch a glass of water or have a wee before the next. (I lost 3 kilos in 10 days working at that school!) Most of them work from 08:00 until 16:00 without a single breath – to either then stay late to prepare the next day and mark work – or to go home, do their unpaid housework, then start to prepare for the next day and mark work. And every moment they are being judge, measured, assessed, by themselves and by their peers, colleagues and managers. At the school I was at there was even a motivational brownie/ scout-type badge system…..FOR THE TEACHERS!!! And they were all judged on how many badges they sported on their lanyard (ooh – he must be a dedicated a teacher, he has 33 achievement badges clanging round his neck – and I was thinking, perhaps he would have preferred a Christmas bonus??) I would really like to know how the system measures up to the Danish!!

7. Inclusion, equality of opportunity, that kind of thing. On some aspects, the British go to town. Intense and often wonderful full-on initiatives waged with vigour to benefit one or other chosen disadvantaged group. But it is oddly as if every single individual who has not been protected by statute or specifically singled out as a member of a disadvantaged group – a woman from a leafy suburb with a nice car who happens to be a mother as a random example – may well be subject to the full force of millennia of as yet unregulated prejudice. It’s odd. Quite hard to describe. But it would never happen in Denmark!

8. Voluntary work/ trainee salaries/ balance of power. Gosh – the abuse of power that goes on in this country is shocking. Bullying and exploitation seem common place. Even at school, the teachers – though generally great – were seriously abusing their positions – and berating young students in the name of discipline in a way that I had imagined was most probably illegal these days (it was even going out of fashion when I was at school?!)

So – as probably with so many people who have moved house or country – the comparison between what we were/had and what we are/ have got goes on. We’re kind of getting a feel for where this discussion will take us : – ))

PS.  I have given the bursary back BTW!

I heard you panting so I pulled into the side

 

But goodness! How long I had longed to hear these words!

And coming from a 75+ year old, they were even sweeter than I’d imagined they could be!

To make it even better, he followed up immediately with a gorgeously gratuitous compliment. “Good on you, girl! I used to be able to do that but I’m not so quick these days.”

Running in the wind, like the wind, up riverside steps, an old man had heard me approaching and had pulled into the side to let me pass. 

For me, this was a miracle!

A miracle of England! Because in Denmark, where I have been running on narrow paths for 17 years (and doing other things besides) it is essentially IMPOSSIBLE TO GET PAST PEOPLE ON NARROW PATHS.

In Denmark, NO one will give way without a (at least psychological) fight.

And that is when you are coming at them head-on – apparently in full view. Smiling, grumpy, walking, running, with company or without, exquisitely mannered, angelic, or threatening, however you present, NO ONE will let you pass. (Unless you happen to encounter a tourist or expat who has not yet adapted or ‘naturalized’ their manners to the harsh social realities.) 

People will, however, let you let them pass and saunter their way by, just as if the narrowness and the getting-by was of no import. In these cases, they show, of course, NO GRATITUDE and in most cases they don’t EVEN deign to fake non-gratitude. The utter  indifference to your generosity, cooperation and general into-the-sidedness is invariably entirely and perfectly conveyed.

So, having the bulk of my narrow-path navigation experience in Denmark,  the thought of someone actually PROACTIVELY making an attempt to ease the passage  of me on a narrow path approaching bell-less from BEHIND THEM is UTTERLY UNTHINKABLE.

So now my selfless, gallant, generous, big-hearted, backward-hearing-even-though-it-was-windy 75-year-old puller-into-the-sider is my NEW HERO.

 And I am able to conclude that, apart from the language, the BEST THING ABOUT ENGLAND for me this week is the EASE – THE JOY! – OF GETTING PAST PEOPLE ON NARROW PATHS.

 Worth moving a perfect life for five that was basically only marred by the recurring difficulty of getting past people on narrow paths and in supermarkets? Hmm. I’ll get back to you on that one : ‘ )))

SUCCESS IS THE ABILITY TO….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… GO FROM ONE FAILURE TO ANOTHER WITHOUT LOSING ENTHUSIASM (WInston Churchill)

 

How good is that quote???? “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without losing enthusiasm.”

How inspiring??

It’s just so much more than ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ and multiple similar discursive attempts to soothe the disappointed soul,  and to big up the merits of thick skin, stamina and determination!

I’m just rapt with it, and so glad I fell across it by chance last week which was also the D-Day memorial week (there was quite a lot of Winston around to choose from! How many programmes????).  But Winston Churchill….  I’m familiar with many of the things he said, but had absorbed him more as a brilliant tactician and charismatic leader – not necessarily the father of exquisitely brilliant one-liners. Thank goodness there were plenty of others paying attention and writing them down. When I look at the Winston Churchill quote sites, I realise that so many of them are so good, they have just become part of the English idioms bank – and I for one have not given him enough admiration for the copywriting side of his life!

Another of his genius variations on the heart-warming keep-at-it theme:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

The concept behind those two quotes has fuelled my whole week. To the extent that I might even come to see my life as BWC and AWC – before and after Winston Churchill quote awareness!!

Because it has caused a sea change in my thinking – not just about my own life and developing its professional and other channels, but about my children’s lives – and specifically what I am actually AIMING for on the days when I am thinking about consciously/ actively nurturing my children and trying to shape and prepare them for the future they will at one point enter without me/us ready or not.

(Well, WC coupled with an intensive children’s charity training session last night too.)

Drink, drugs, self-harm, bullying – all these things that so many children and young adults fall into – trying to learn ALONE to cope with the many challenges the world presents them . Who wouldn’t go to the pub? Or try out the drug that’s in the club? Or take a razor blade to their forearm? (Well, I’m not fully on board with that one, but have gathered it is very much coping strategy of choice amongst Britain’s teens right now…..)

And it has all made me think that the main thing I should be trying to teach my children is how to manage, cope, or even flourish when things ARE NOT going their way; not only to try to teach them how to study and attend to and behave and eat and plan and help around the house and exercise and be kind to others and look left and right, and all that jazz.

Because it has occurred to me now (rather late in the day!) that if you know how to deal with failure, disappointment and loss, you know pretty much how to deal with anything – and have much better odds of having a happy time : – ))

 

Light at the End of the Windscreen Wiper

Oddly, the safari-park-baboon-vandalizing-the-car episode led to a trip to the mechanic’s – from which I have just returned feeling HAPPY (of all car-repair related emotions!)

The sweet mechanic (whom I had never met before) was so amused by the baboon story, and thought it so sweet that I had sacrificed my car for the delight the children, that HE DID ALL THE REPAIR WORK FOR FREE!!!!! 

He refitted the number plate, repaired the scratches and will be fitting the new windscreen wipers with ABSOLUTELY NO CHARGE (bar the new wiper blades)!!

I was so stunned at the offer, I did not know what to say, and was actually moved to tears of gratitude on the drive back home!

Goodwill from strangers – you just can’t knock it.

Boys, Baboons and Burials

OR

R.I.P. Flopsy – Beloved Rabbit of Matilda

Mother of NINETEEN! – Builder of deep and intricate burrows

Died 30^th May 2014 – Age 2⅓

 

Worra week.

I think of all the children-back-to-school days I’ve ever experienced, this one – today! – has been the most welcome.

I sit down to my computer, with my tasks mapped out for the day, and NO ONE to interrupt me until the pumpkin hour of 3.00pm : – ) And I am loving it!

Because for the past 10 or so days, I have been parenting right up into the corners, and I feel my camel hump of auxiliary parenting resources – stored up for those unique and challenging events that luckily tend not to come round too often – is sucked flat.

Like when you go to the safari park with your oldest bestest friend and fam, and the baboons not only defecate over your whole newish car, but remove the windscreen wipers (front left, and rear) and scratch the entire roof.

And then, due to the delight and intense pressure of 6 thrilled children (own three and friend’s three high-octane sons) drive in to the baboon enclosure AGAIN (surely we can’t be that unlucky a second time, no one else was? ) and a majorly fat baboon hops straight on and clings unshakably with leather fingers to the stump of your rear windscreen wiper and picks off the number plate! (More scratches to boot!) The children loved it – but it was pleasure at enormous, though yet unspecified, cost! (Thankfully, the ranger found the plate and returned it unscathed.)

And like when you pay hundreds of pounds to fly your cat across the North Sea and find one child is so allergic to the cat that she has scarcely breathed a whole breath since its arrival.

Then the sleepover with three relatively new friends for the 11 year old. Quite a success, but gosh, the rabbit looked odd and scratchy and spookily feeble when we all went to feed her at night.

And stretched out straight and hard as rock when we went to visit in the morning. Rabbit rigor mortis is not the best sight when you have 5 young children in the house – and one (rabbit’s very sensitive owner) who is fairly stressed about up-coming exams and only just getting over the massacre of said rabbit’s seven children by a Jack Russell last month : – (( (Did I even blog about that black day?!)

When the sleepover gang had departed, we started to plan the all-important funeral. Grandma’s house, surely, as we will not be staying here forever. ..So with stiff rabbit swaddled in some lovely coral-coloured Monsoon tissue paper in a moving box in the boot, three children in the back and vague ideas of Myxomatosis and us all maybe going blind from the disease that killed the rabbit so fast on the mind, we travelled to G and G’s with a snow shovel and buried the rabbit while G and G holidayed in Provence. Then we went for a fitting wake at the Trafford Centre Pizza Express.

It has really not been a good season for us and pets.

But on the bright side, I am now equipped with a host of new counselling tec hniquesto validate and soothe troubled minors. And they are really coming in handy : – )) Hold the child in the emotion, and explore! Do not minimize, sympathize or bandage!!!

 

Then a call comes through from the tenants of the top floor of our Danish house saying they know a guy who is really interested in renting the ground floor for 6 months to a year. So husband troops across to Denmark to clear the final floor of our beloved old home – and we both feel our cherished rug disintegrating beneath our feet.

So yes, we’re in this England for another year for sure! And I will not be buying any more pets, or fraternizing unnecessarily with animals in general, in that timeframe.