so much new stuff happening

-- February 2nd, 2006 --

Well, things are look­ing up, in short. I have a new friend, Avery has a new friend, we have a new clean­ing lady and Tues­day we will meet the
new babysitter!

Yes­ter­day my new friend Becky called to see if I wanted to go with her to a store called ASDA, the Eng­lish Wal-mart, to get clean­ing sup­plies for today’s clean­ing lady visit. I was feel­ing at loose ends so we
went, and apart from get­ting lost lis­ten­ing to the GPS tell us the wrong way to go on the motor­way, we arrived safely some­where on the out­skirts of Lon­don and I bought every­thing in sight. I sim­ply love the notion of Fairy Liq­uid, and I have always doted on the term “washing-up liq­uid.” It’s so to the point. Then Fairy make
dish­washer pel­lets too, in some weird self-degrading pack­ag­ing per pel­let, so I suc­cumbed. There were many many prod­ucts that Becky was sure I needed, so I came away with a mop, some bath­room cleaner, some limescale remover for the scary hard water here, some steel cleaner, oven…

Read More

lit­tle idiosyncracies

-- February 1st, 2006 --

We got in the taxi to go to school this morn­ing, Avery all a-flutter about her exam, and the dri­ver, a central-casting Lon­don cabby, said
cheer­fully, “On your way to school, then, my love?” “Yes, today is the ESB exam and I’m SO ner­vous!” she con­fided. He chuck­led and said, “Well, a pinch and a punch, you know,” “No, what do you mean?” “A pinch and a punch, it’s the first of the month! You pinch your best friend and punch your enemy.” Avery, indig­nant: “Not at my school!”

I offered that I had heard in Mass­a­chu­setts one says, “Rab­bit, rab­bit” on the first of the month and he said that was an Eng­lishism as well. Whad­dya know. He also explained that the word “tod­dler” came from the
days when Lon­don drink­ing water was unsafe and they fed babies beer, mak­ing them…toddly!

Yes­ter­day at pickup she came hurtling out of the coach (bus to us Amer­i­cans) from skat­ing, shout­ing, “We luhnt to tuhn!” Say that
pho­net­i­cally and you’ll get an idea of how her accent is pro­gress­ing! She talks that way for about 10 min­utes every­day at pickup, then grad­u­ally reverts to being a lit­tle New Yorker. She defends this say­ing, “Well, Mummy, if you were com­pletely immussed in it as I am all day…” I had to trans­late to “immersed”, but you get the idea.

She’s really ner­vous about her exam today, where she has to read a pas­sage for the exam­in­ers, then recite a poem, then recite a story
about an object impor­tant to her. It’s at one o’clock and I’m meant to be send­ing her sup­port­ive vibes at the time. It’s too early in the morn­ing to ask any of you to do that, I fear, but I’ll report how it all goes after snack­time today. Yes­ter­day because I had had no lunch, I had the most lovely salad: smoked mack­erel, beet­root (as always!) and water­cress, with a mus­tardy vinai­grette. Avery of course had ice
cream. I have to think of some really com­pelling snack for her play­date this after­noon. Hmmm…

Read More

----
Newer Posts