Save water, bath with a friend

I love our bath. It is a real saviour and time eater during holiday times. It's the place where Orla & Hamish can actually get on and not argue for 10 minutes allowing me to wash the dishes or unpack a few boxes without having to involve me in everything they do.

Orla and Hamish have had lovely long, decadent daytime baths all this week. When all else has failed, when all the craft projects have been done, when I can take no more of the bickering and whining about who's not being nice to whom, "How about a nice, deep bath?" restores calm.

Grumpy children become the best of friends again once they both have bubbly beards. And I have just about unpacked all the boxes and watched a fair amount of catch-up on iPlayer while they've been in there. Bonus!

So while I barely ever have a bath, much preferring showers, I have realised in this past week I am a total bath convert. There are some things about this house which I totally love. Maybe I am coming round to life in Blighty.... slowly.

The manual of accidents and mistakes

And a happy World Nutella Day to you too.

I feel a little bit homesick for Berlin knowing that, even though Nutella was banned from our household by Stevie who seemed to think that once it crossed our threshhold it would rapidly become the only foodstuff we'd want to consume.

Anyway, here we are, and day to day life continues apace. The plumbers are here as I type. I'm hoping it looks as though I am working from home. To sit on the sofa watching 'The Real Wives of Orange County' strikes me as looking far too much like what I really do, which is full time web surfer and tv watcher and occasional crisp eater. And patently we can't have that! The plumbers are fixing the leaks in the bathroom which will hopefully put an end to people spitting their toothpaste residue into the bath which is slowly but surely driving me nuts. Well, it's not so much that but the fact that once I have scrubbed the bath of toothpaste spittings, the next time I visit someone else has been in using the bath to wash out their paintbrushes and rollers and I have to stop myself from throttling someone with my Cilit Bang chemically-burned hands (which actually are starting to heal now that I have discovered a pack of latex gloves in one of the boxes).

Everything is starting to improve. I might finally be out of the woods with the DVLA, and hopefully will be in possession of a nice new driving licence by next week. Of course last Thursday it would have been nice to have had one, when after parking in the little car park in front of Sainsbury's I watched a woman not look as she reversed out and swing her car round and right into the side of mine. She looked at the car, then looked at me, then continued reversing to where I thought she must be parking up, but as I got out of the car to walk round and survey the damage (which admittedly was minor) she looked at me again, shrugged, and drove off! Outraged? I'll say! I think the factors that made me more so were the facts that she was in her 60's and looked very middle class and decent, and I was horrified by the sheer lack of good manners.

I phoned the police despite the fact that I wouldn't be making a claim and also wasn't sure I had got the last letters of her number plate right, and spent some time the following day at the police station reporting it in person (which is a requirement) in an area where I was sure the car would come to more harm than it had in the accident. The police were very nice and have told me to keep an eye out for the car as I am bound to see her again at the supermarket and when I do to note the number plate and let them know and they'll hopefully go round and have a chat with her about how bad mannered it is to just drive off after hitting someone's car. So obviously now I am scouring the roads to see this woman in her car again and no doubt will not rest until I have tracked her down.

Not having a driving licence to show the police worried me a bit, but I did have my drivers number and it seems they did check that I was ok to drive with the DVLA, for the DVLA have sent me a lovely letter to brandish stating my validity to drive and aid me in my fight against crime caused by the elderly.

The plumbers have finished and left me with this...

I think in modern circles they call it a wet room... well that's what I'll have as the shower enclosure is in the spare bedroom. Turns out the leak has been caused by the poor fitting of the enclosure in the first place, so Stevie and I have a joyous evening of stripping silicone and cleaning the whole thing up before stuffing a gap with silicone and refitting it again.

I've also just taken delivery of two bits of furniture that have been with the french polisher. I am amazed. The man is a genius. My coffee table and console table got scraped and damaged during the move from Germany amongst other things and while he managed to fix some things in situ, he took a couple away. I nearly wept with joy when I saw the coffee table again it's so beautiful. He's even managed to get rid of the well established paint stains that the kids have caused that I couldn't. So all in all, I'm happy. While it's rotten when things get trashed and broken, there's so much pleasure to gain from seeing things fixed and working again.

Living in between cardboard boxes

I'd like to say this is a 'before' shot, but it feels like it might be a 'during' and 'after' shot too. 

You never see Stevie's face any longer. If it's not at work, it's at the top of a ladder.

But here's mine. 

I feel like this move back into our old house is never ending. I've only just finished collecting stray leftover items from the 'holiday home' (as a friend named it, whose parents-in-law have spent longer on holiday in Australia than we spent in that house), and today (I'm hoping) I made my final visit to read the meters before we hand the keys back. I will be glad to see the back of that place.

Back in Derby we are floor to (nearly) ceiling in boxes, and progress in unpacking has been painfully slow. Stevie had managed to paint the kids bedrooms before we moved in, but hadn't got on to any of the downstairs rooms. The plan was to put everything in the living room while he pained the dining room, but we filled the living room in no time at all and the dining room has ended up full of furniture which Stevie has had to shuffle around in order to get the walls painted.

It's good to be back in our old house. It feels better. I feel more relaxed. I think it's less stressful knowing that a least if stuff goes wrong then that's our problem and we don't have a landlord to have to negotiate with or to deny there is a problem or whatever. Admittedly there is a lot of stuff wrong in the house at the moment, but at least I know that we can fix it and it'll all be nice again. Even if we are still living in amongst the boxes.

I had a plumber out to price up the jobs that need doing in the bathroom this morning. Multiple leaks under the sink, the freestanding taps behind the bath seem to have been rocked back and forward until they have come loose and now lean at an angle that allows water down the back and through a hole into the kitchen ceiling, and the shower has a leak that drips badly through the ceiling but handily waters an orchid in drips that sits underneath it.

The kitchen ceiling is in such a mess that Stevie reckons it's just as well we moved back in when we did as the ceiling is about to cave in. Luckily we have a friend who is a plasterer who is going to re-plaster the kitchen and the hallway and the dining room.

We keep coming across little problems here and there the more we start to live in the house. We seem to have been able to fix the oven door that was hanging off ourselves, but then when I went to use it I discovered the grill pan and insert were missing. I found the grill pan yesterday rusting in the garden and covered in mud, but the insert is still hiding.

I have been complaining too that I can smell urine every time I walk into the dining room. Nobody else seems able to smell it. But it has been driving me crazy. Sometimes I don't smell it, and other times it seems really pungent and disgusting. But still Stevie and the kids can't smell it. I even smelt myself just.to.make.sure! Today I finally located it. Turns out one of our tenants has peed behind the dining room door. I have no idea why as there is a toilet about a metre away across the hallway, but there's just another reason I'm not sure I can be bothered being a landlord again.

So there we are. A boring little update featuring packing, plumbing, plastering, painting, and ...peeing.

The landlord begs to differ.

Tenant: "I really want to make sure I get all of my deposit back"

Landlord Fiona: "Great! That's what we want too. We understand that you need that money for your next place. So as long as it's in the same condition as when we handed it over (allowing for normal wear and tear) there should be no problem"

Tenant: "Ha, ha, don't worry! I think it's in even better condition than before!"*

Because there's artwork on the walls in all the rooms...

We've added 4 water features in the kitchen...

We've enhanced the bathroom....

Cleaned the place from top to bottom...

And added money-saving features...

Landlord Fiona: ".... Really??? really??"



I may be a little quiet for a while. Not least because my head is about to explode from the number of square metres I've had to scrub over the past month, but also because I may be a little busy, you know, doing a few small repairs, cleaning, replacing, painting, moving, etc. And just to add a little drama, wouldn't you know Orla has a stomach bug and is off school. To give her her due, she did scrub the fireplace surround excellently, though I'd also like to take this moment to thank Apple for inventing the mighty iPad which managed to entertain her enough today to let me get one half of the kitchen cleaned.

Now I know why people in the UK buy instead of rent. The citizens are animals**. Either they let you move into their filthy wrecked houses and pay a premium for that pleasure, or they filthy up and wreck your house, leaving you to pay for the pleasure... ANIMALS!!!!!!!

I'm done with this 'being a landlord/tenant' business.


* His ACTUAL words!!!!
**Obviously, not all. Especially not the UK citizens that read my blog. I'm pretty sure you'd leave it sparkling like a wine glass from a Finish dishwasher tablet advert.

miniature disasters and minor catastrophes

Round robin's are not popular in my parent's house. They utterly hate them. "Here!" said my mum as she thrust 2 pages of A4 into my hand with a degree of force, "Read this. See what you think, but I cannot stand people rattling on about how marvellously well their lives are every year". Stevie thinks it's a uniquely Scottish thing; that 'hating seeing people do well for themselves' or rather maybe more that 'taking pleasure in seeing people's lives go wrong after they've enjoyed a bit of success'. I don't think it's that with my mum, but really just, well, I don't know. I don't think it's uniquely Scottish or even British, but I guess people can just sometimes not feel happy for people when things are going well, especially if they keep going on about it, eh.. once a year. No doubt it's got a lot to do with comparing it to your own life and feeling a wee bit like things aren't going quite as well for you. About not being happy with your lot.

I read it and I didn't hate them. I read it and I didn't even think that they were really 'showing off' about what marvellous things they'd been up to. Maybe I have been desensitised from reading so many blogs where people with perfect families are just having the time of their pretty, crafty lives where some new book deal or amazing sponsorship thing by Anthropologie turns up every second day, or maybe that's why my mum has no interest in the internet. I read it and it made me sigh and think, "My life used to be that good".

Let's face it, the return to Blighty has not exactly been a blast. Moving into a filthy, falling-apart yet ridiculously expensive house kind of took the shine off things, and then living amongst piles of boxes while we have waited on a cleaner's quote being approved for the whole of, well, to be honest we are still waiting. It's just not fun.

December was a pain. Aside from arguing our way out of our lease, I didn't seem to achieve very much by way of Christmas preparations. Stevie kept saying "leave it til next week" and I did, though god knows why I listen to him. It's always a mistake. So Orla got ill and was off school for ages and then just as she got better, Hamish got ill and then I got ill. That took us right up to the end of term. I felt so bad that I took myself off to the GP. I was suffering from something flu-like, but I knew I had a pretty bad chest infection as well, and normally they can't get away with just saying 'it's viral. There's nothing we can do'. Especially if you bring out your trump card - "I'm a diabetic". Usually that guarantees you some kind of medicine. The doctor listened to my chest and agreed that I had a chest infection but told me I just needed to go to bed. "But I'm a diabetic" didn't cut the mustard in this place. I blame the constant bombardment of adverts proclaiming that antibiotics won't help a cough or cold so leave the doctor alone. It seems that the doctors have finally noticed them and paying heed to their message.

So I left empty handed and two days later I ended up in hospital dotted with canulas. Or 'drips' for those of you who haven't spent as much time hanging around hospitals as I have. Turns out I really had needed an antibiotic after all. If I hadn't felt so angry I would have felt righteous. Mind you what didn't help was that when I got sent home from the GP's they told me to take ibuprofen for the pain in my chest, and given that it was in an as yet unpacked box and I just wanted to grab something and go off to bed to die; I grabbed the first box of ibuprofen I came across and decided those would do.

They were ones I bought in Germany, and I knew I should look at the dosage on them but I really didn't have the energy to be bothered translating the leaflet. So I took 2 and then 4 hours later when the pain hadn't  really been relieved much at all, I took 2 more. I continued this every 4 hours for 2 days, though by the first evening I had also started topping up with paracetamol because the ibuprofen just wasn't hitting the spot. So when I landed in hospital and they asked me what i had been taking, and followed up by asking me if I "had been feeling down recently". God, yeah! Well, the move had ended up being pretty stressful, and of course I had been worried about the kids settling into their new school, and well the house had turned out to be a total dump, and etc, etc, etc. But when they asked if I had "been feeling depressed for a long time", well I was a little taken aback. Hold on a minute, where are we going here?

Once it was clarified that they thought I was a suicidal chest infection patient, and the first bag of saline which they were blasting through my system was actually an attempt to flush out the ibuprofen from my kidneys before it damaged them, they explained that taking 800mg of ibuprofen every 4 hours is quite a lot. Still... I felt a bit daft whinging on about our crappy move. Anyway, I spent a few days in hospital worrying that I wouldn't get out for Christmas and the kids wouldn't have any presents.

Honestly, when they have to put handrails up to help you hike up the hill, it's just plain wrong.

So far, January has been a breeze compared to December, but give it time. Guess what!? We're going to be moving house in around 2 weeks! Won't that be fun???? Sorry, I got the words round the wrong way. I meant, that won't be fun.

We'll take it!

I could be wrong, but I think there's some irony there.

Myths about life as a returning expat:

No.1 You might not like being back but you will be ecstatic about being able to do everything in your own language.

Living abroad is excellent fun, until you have to deal with a problem in a language that is quite foreign to you. My first experience of this if we don't count having to ask in Kaisers if the mince contained any horsemeat, came as a dreaded phone call to Kabel Deutschland as our pin code wasn't working. Talk about a cold sweat. It still gives me nightmares.

Eventually after overcoming numerous problems in a combination of poor German and excellent mime, you can't help but think back to life in your home country and think "there would be no problem big or small that I couldn't solve! Phone calls would be a breeze! Returning faulty goods would be something I would actually do! Oh the exotic plethora of words I would spill onto council officials and call centre operators!".

And to a degree this is true. You have a problem; you know all the words you need to describe said problem; you understand the response, and bingo! Problem *should* in theory be solved.

But somewhere along the line I wonder if I thought the problems wouldn't be as frequent or as frustrating in my own land. And now, on our return I find they are. The house we have moved into is awash with problems. As I have already listed them in a 32 page inventory that took me hours to complete, I won't go into detail again here. But suffice to say, it does not feel like it has been easier. From front door keys that won't lock the door from the inside because they are either snapped or bent, to french windows that leak so badly that when it rains the carpet soaks right up to the bed which is a metre away from said windows. *sigh*. Oh and everywhere was filthy. So dirty in fact that we couldn't have the boxes unpacked. *double sigh*

I couldn't bath the kids for most of the week because the bath couldn't hold water as the plug had no seal and there was a big crack in the bath which we weren't sure was leaking or not. Nor could we stick them in the shower as it was veering from freezing to boiling and back and forward between the two. The boiler needless to say is so old that it makes it quite difficult to listen to each others moans as it sounds as if someone is repeatedly starting up an old tractor in the utility room.

But don't worry. The landlord says we are "difficult tenants". So that's that sorted then. Problem solved. Except that it's not and he isn't very keen to do anything and when I raced down to the letting agent the first morning after we moved in to ask if there was a 'cooling off' period or a way out of this contract I was told that no we are stuck here for a minimum of 6 months because we signed the contract. You don't even want to know how much rent we are paying for this place. And I can't tell you because I might start wailing and not be able to stop. Ok, let's move on.

No.2 You might not like being back but you will be ecstatic about being able to do everything in your own language.

What? Yes, it's the same as number 1, but shoosh! wheesht! I'm thoroughly fed up and I don't care. Do you remember I lost my phone on the u-bahn a few weeks before we moved? Probably not, but anyway I decided to wait until I was back in the UK to get a new one.

So then I started looking at which phone I liked the look of. Wrong, wrong, wrong, said Stevie. You need to work out what functionality you want and then decide how often you would be on the internet etc. Having never had the internet on my phone before it was nigh on impossible to guess how often I would use it in reality. But he had me doing spreadsheets comparing deals with data, text, and calls and phone cost across a selection of the major mobile phone providers. Then, he had me researching the deals offered by the companies that offer mobile phone contracts bundled with home phone and broadband and tv. I hadn't even chosen a phone at this point because beyond knowing I wanted one that looked nice, had the internet, possibly had sat nav and a half decent camera, I didn't know what else to really look for. So I narrowed it down to approximately 3 phones, but multiply that with innumerable phone contracts and you have at least a few evenings of thoroughly boring work. And that's not even factoring in the fact that I don't know what I am doing in Excel.

By the time I had finished I was pretty sure I could live without a phone if it mean avoiding having to do this kind of thing, and Stevie's popularity rating was reaching an all time low. But I did end up with a phone which was nice, though the relief from being done with the dreaded spreadsheet was only temporary as Stevie announced that we were going to get a Parkers Guide, fire up Excel again and let it tell us which car we should buy. Can I just say, many, many days later, we still are no closer to knowing what we are going to buy.

Now let me tell you what would have happened with the mobile phone in Germany. As indeed when we arrived in Berlin I needed to get a new mobile phone. All I knew at that point was that I wasn't going to get a contract as we weren't sure how difficult it would be to get out of it should we decide to leave before 2 years. So we went to Saturn, the only place we had seen that we knew would have them. We wandered around and had a quick look at them and then I said "That one looks ok, doesn't it?" and Stevie said "yes" and we bought it. None of the faffing about that you see above. Why? Because we didn't have the knowledge to know where to find deals and bundles, and we didn't have the language skills to ask about them. And that was the way we bought a lot of stuff in Berlin. If someone told us you could get tv through Kabel Deutschland then we went to Kabel Deutschland. When we needed a new washing machine we pretty much bought the one that we saw first and looked a decent enough price. And maybe it cost us a few more Euros but it was easier and didn't involve Ex-bloody-cel and dark thoughts of boyfriend hatred.

Goodbye to Berlin

Hello. It's been a while. We've been a bit busy. The movers came, packed a gazillion boxes, and then flung them out the window on a little lift. During all this Stevie and I set up office in the shower room and planned our attack on the crayon marks and flooring scuffs armed with baby wipes and Cif. 

Instead of painting the walls at considerable expense, we spent probably around 60 cents more on baby wipes and around 73 times more man hours scrubbing them clean. It was fun... sort of. At least my finger nails were bleachy clean. Then once the boxes were packed up we moved into a lovely hotel near the Ku'damm which we all thought was utterly excellent due to the single fact that we managed to pocket 17 very nice biros from a glass that they kindly replenished daily. By day we cleaned (and the kids continued to go to school) and by night, well, we pretty much dropped into bed and fell fast asleep stinking of bleach.

We did a bit of wandering around Berlin, caught the Christmas markets before the snow and the real festive feeling arrived, and visited the KaDeWe with the kids and saw their kind of Dumbledore Santa. I liked him for being so different, and also for sneaking me some chocolate from his pocket. Is it just me, or does that look like the beginnings of a "Santa? Yeah, whatever..." face on Orla? Ah, no, you're right, it's just her "God I'm sick of my mother taking photos" face. Phew!

And then, on the 4th of December, it was time to go. So that was a bit rubbish. Exciting, I'll give you that, but rubbish. The kids were over the moon to move into another hotel for a few days, us grown ups less so. And then! And then! after a few days we got to move into our new house! Boy were we ready for it! We were chomping at the bit. We dropped the kids off at their new school and raced to the letting agents to sign the papers and collect the keys. Woo-hoo!

Now, what could possibly go wrong.........................................................................???

Playing for time

What started out as a simple need to gather all the Playmobil bits from the four corners of the apartment has turned into the task of the century. Trying to sort them all into their correct groups and find all their accessories might actually break me. Especially when 'people' come home from school and I find myself growling "Don't you TOUCH a thing!!! I have spent 4 solid hours on this so far and I'm not even half way done!". There will be no "We just want to play with you", nor "Can I help?" allowed to turn my head and let them mess up my cowboys with my air hostesses. "It's MINE!" I yell. "I AM PLAYING NOW!"

Kids: Why can't they just go and clean the windows or scrub the balcony or something and leave me to the important stuff?

3 days of hellish relaxation

We're back! And we are glad of it. Talk about an awful trip! Let's see...

1. There wasn't a hire car waiting on us when we arrived, so we walked with all our bags for quite a bit to get to the Avis office, where we...
2. Discovered the Avis office was closed until the afternoon, so walked back to the airport.
3. Stevie realised bringing his laptop would have been a good idea, as he had no contact numbers for anyone who could sort out the hire car.
4. The next morning we manage to get the hire car booked to be delivered to the hotel while we are racing about getting eye contact lens checks and I have to go to the doctor to try and sort out my soon to expire driving license.
5. We return to the hotel and pick up the keys for the car in order to race to our first viewing. We discover they haven't put any child seats in the car. Argh!
6. Race round to a friends to borrow a too small car seat for Hamish so we can race round to Halfords to buy two booster seats.
7. First two viewings go well, except both kids are tired and decide they have seen enough houses. I am so tired that for some reason (presumably because the houses are unfurnished) think the electricity won't be on and view the rooms in the dark... Until the agent questions my odd behaviour.
8. Day 2 of house viewings. At least half of the viewings are cancelled either because they have already been snapped up or the owner has changed his mind about renting. We turn up anyway because having lost my phone on the u-bahn a week previously, all the cancellation messages are left on our answering machine... in Berlin.
9. We give up looking at houses and decide just to take house number 2. Then we find out that we don't have the right paperwork to enable us to rent a house in the UK. RR have taken care of the utility bills so our names aren't on them; we get our bank statements from a machine in the bank, so our address isn't on them. It looks very much like we can't get past the money laundering checks and might have to just go back to Berlin.
10. Until we remember that both our names are on our mortgage statement and so we race to Santander where you can't get in-branch help and must use a special phone to speak to someone in a call centre, who says they will fax what we need immediately to the branch. 2 hours later... eventually the fax arrives. We race back to the agents to try and secure the house.
11. The agent is pleased but says that they might have a problem getting references for us as our landlord is a German speaker living in Asia. Email! Google Translate! How hard does this have to be?
12. Day 3. S has to go to a meeting at work first thing in the morning. I make him late as I (because of the driving license thing) have to go and get blood taken at the hospital. We then have to race back to the hotel for breakfast and to pack up and check out before S gets back. S says "at least we can relax today". None of us are at all relaxed. We visit the kids new school which is in the middle of nowhere and not accessible by public transport which makes me very nervous about the possibility of my driving license renewal being rejected. Confirmation of the school hours 8:45 to 3:15 make the idea of S dropping and picking up the kids and holding down a full time job seem like a total nightmare and my stress levels about my driving license ramp up to such a level my head aches. S loves the school and feels more relaxed. I am quietly very not relaxed to the point of feeling sick.
13. We stop in a different town to buy stuff to make sandwiches in the car. S moans that what I have chosen will be very dry, so we also select an Italian dressing. S says maybe we should wait until we stop the car. We stop the car and the dressing has emulsified. S gets a little out for my lunch using his finger, but gives the bottle a good slap on the end for his. S unblocks the bottle.... All over the drivers seat of the hire car... Less than 1 hour before we have to hand it back for inspection.
14. The car stinks of vinegar and mustard and S decides to stop at a petrol station on the way to the airport to buy a Magic Tree to mask the smell with something more disgustingly strong. He emerges empty handed as he thinks £2.20 is not worth it! I ask him to weigh up £2.20 against the potential fine from Avis. He seems unable to decide which will be more, so I suggest I try spraying the seat with my deodorant. I spray and spray until I think I have achieved success. As I walk round to the boot of the car I notice it appears there is a cloud in the car. A very smelly cloud. We drive to the airport with the windows down, not feeling very relaxed at all.

We are glad to be back in Berlin.

Bedless in Berlin.

The impending move is starting to feel very real now. Orla has now lost all her beds: the cot bed has gone to a friend (as she was no longer sleeping in it anyway), and the single bed which was on it's last legs has been taken apart by Stevie and secretly deposited in the big bin downstairs. Orla went into brief mourning for the bed until I showed her her next potential bed in the Ikea catalogue. In the meantime, until the move she'll be sleeping on the cot bed mattress on the floor. She likes this idea a lot, luckily for us, and thinks it sounds almost like camping. Patently, she never went camping like I did with my parents as a child, where the only mattress was a rubber ground sheet below your sleeping bag.

Hopefully though, by getting rid of a least one more bed we will be closer to the target of fitting everything back into the container we arrived with. Also this weekend I have sifted through all our dvd's, and thrown away precisely none, and gone back through all the books and toys, and found nothing else there I want to say bye to.

At the end of this week I have my leaving do, which I have to say I am really looking forward to. I imagine it might still be quite a sad occasion for me, but still, I am looking forward to catching up with so many of my friends in the one place.

Diary of a move: I Cif'ed a girl and I liked it.

November already? "Brr... fizzle......pop!" That'll be the sound of me suddenly bursting into a frenzy of activity then. The move is now just 4 weeks away, and while I had thought that I might get away with swanning around in the last few weeks sight-seeing, cake-eating, photo-graphing, blah-de-blahing, and generally having a jolly good time, well, it seems I am deluded.

Did I forget everything that needed to be done before we moved here? Um, no. I think the last time I didn't really need to do very much. And this time round I was thinking it would be the same. Sell stuff, book flights, wait on removal men turning up. But I was forgetting that things are quite different when you don't own the house you are leaving. I was lucky in our old house because the house had been completely revamped just as we moved in, and condition-wise it was pretty excellent. And although I had to clean the place from top to bottom after the furniture left revealing my secret dusty-fluff shame, the kids were still at 'Practitioner' level in filth-making, and not at 'Expert'. 'Expert' level has only been achieved here.

So where to start?

Well, I am not sure whether there is such a thing as 'normal wear and tear' here. The rule seems to be in Germany that you should return the apartment to pristine perfection when you leave. After 2.5 years, well, let's say that it looks 'lived in'. Those of you who have been with me for the long haul may recall that the plane had barely landed on the runway before the kids embarked on a spate of destruction mostly aimed at walls and doorstops. As memory serves we had been in the temporary accommodation a day before I discovered that they had coloured in most of the walls in one of the rooms with all their Crayola crayons.

Orla has revived this particular pet hate of mine from time to time; once when she learned how to write her name (yet couldn't work out how I knew it was her!), and during particularly 'creative' phases when she's been unable to stop her little crayon holding hands from reaching toward the great white canvas of our walls. Most of these marks have remained on the walls because the memory of the hours of scrubbing I had to put in at the temporary accommodation was still too raw. (Or, I'm lazy). Other areas have chocolatey finger prints and so on.

Anyway, yesterday evening we had a visit from my most favourite relocation agent, Heidi. And given that it was Halloween she came with a message that chilled me to my very core. "You're going to have to paint the walls."

Even clipart me would have to stand on top of the wardrobe to paint over the hard-to-reach crayon marks near the ceiling.

Can you see the problem? I have never known walls like these. I love the height, the feeling of space, but my god, the prospect of either having to paint this whole apartment, or pay someone else to, is a frightening thought. So last night we cracked open the Cif and the baby wipes, which as you may also recall was the technique I used to amazing effect in the temporary accommodation. It works brilliantly, but it can take a long time. We worked on some of the worst bits last night and I think managed to achieve an excellent job, but it may take a good week or two to just work our way round the whole place cleaning from floor to child level.

In other exciting cleaning news, I purchased a new grout pen and silicon sealant yesterday. I managed to re-do the sealant around the shower and bath while the dinner cooked, and I simply cannot wait to get stuck in with my grout pen later today. Kill. Me. Now.

I'm delaying taking down all the pictures until next week when I have to skillfully fill the holes and make it look like they've never been there because otherwise I think I might burst from excitement.

Diary of a move: swirly carpets and leaded windows.

I am so bored now of the whole move thing. I am fed up of sorting through all our belongings, and trying to decide which of them could possibly be taking up 35 cubic tons of extra space. I think I've narrowed it down to either the stash of free eyeshadows and mascaras that I get free in some kind of free makeup bag every time I go back to the UK and stock up on No7 products in Boots or Orla's extensive felt tip pen collection. I haven't worn eyeshadow ever really, apart from a brief foray which involved a lot of orange eyeshadow and a misplaced belief that I looked good in it. But still I keep all these free eyeshadows because I convince myself that you never know, there might be a night where I want to wear it and somehow miraculously will be able to apply it first time to achieve perfect smoky eyes and not look like I've been the victim of a rather nasty mugging.

Anyway, I suspect the current source of my moving gloom is Rightmove. A week or so ago I vowed to myself that I absolutely was not going to look on it again until 1 week before our house-hunting trip back to Derbyshire. But Rightmove is the crack cocaine of my life; I keep saying just one more hit and then I'll stop, but I can't stop, and I know it, and it's making me mental. I started out, during the whole fiasco of not being able to get the kids into school, by saying I didn't care where we lived or what we lived in as long as I got the kids into a decent school. And at the time and maybe for a few weeks after we secured the school I stood by that. Then Stevie started saying that he felt we should really look at much bigger places because it would be a real shock for all of us moving from our big apartment into something tiny. And I agreed with him. Then I went a wee bit mad and started looking at places with pools and paddocks and stables for horses that I really would never, ever want to look after or clean out.

Then as more time went by I could hear the first rumblings of Stevie saying "actually it doesn't matter what size of place we live in: it's only temporary", and I knew I had been saved the hassle of having to clean an outdoor heated pool. Bugger.

Now I keep looking at the same measly 5 properties that all look like they would fit in our bedroom and are decorated in the style of 'old person non-chic' and I feel my heart sink. I'm spoiled. I know that. Nonetheless, I can't help but rank them in order of preference and choose an online favourite - which I can guarantee wouldn't be a real life favourite, and then I pretty much set my heart on it. And then someone goes and rents it before us, and before I know it, I am gutted at being beaten to some really hideous carpets, hiddy leaded windows, and the same 'Adams' fireplace that has been a horrid feature in quite a few of our Derby house moves in the past.

So now we are two and a half weeks from our house hunting trip, and after a quick little browse of Rightmove I am totally not going to look again until one week before the trip when I need to make appointments to view.

Maybe.

Diary of a move: when life gets in the way

I think we've all woken up in Barbie's shoes after 6 too many cocktails.

I can't help but think that sometimes in life things happen in order to teach you important lessons about not being too lazy and disorganised and not to leave all the sorting through and throwing out until the day before you move. I believe this because this kind of thing happens to me quite a lot, and my personality type is aligned to just ignore it and carry on merrily surfing the internet without a care in the world. La, la, la-la, la!

Given that Hamish is still getting over his hernia operation, and I am utterly beyond tired keeping tabs on his movements like a Stasi agent with strong suspicions that he's up to no good; I was comfortable with the fact that I was pretty much incapable of doing much else. The dishes have pretty much sat in the sink since Monday night, though I have become more experimental in trying out non-dishwasher safe things in the dishwasher (who knew that Calpol measuring spoons melt in relatively hot water!?), while I have been dealing with the pretty much constant chants of "Mama! Mama!" (Hamish has decided to go German post-operatively it seems). So you can imagine the delight in my voice as I exclaimed "Oh. You. Are. Kidding!" at 1am when I heard a different voice whimpering "Mama! Mama!" from a different room. And ta-da! Orla had  a temperature.

Orla keeps in generally good health. A fact that always surprises me when I realise she hasn't missed a day of school through illness since she started. I like to pat myself on the back thinking that my general shoddy levels of household cleanliness have contributed towards a sterling immune system. Anyway, talk about hard work: it's been crap. I had to take Hamish back to see the surgeon at his clinic in the middle of nowhere yesterday and thankfully Stevie stayed home to look after Orla while I took him. I was really pleased that the operation seems to have gone very well, and Hamish was especially pleased to have the dressing removed and to get the news that he could now have a bath (albeit a camomile tea bath).

I am trying to be more organised about this move, and am taking the opportunity whenever I have it to sort through a cupboard, or clean a bookshelf or whatever while I supervise Hamish to make sure he's not abseiling or whatever in whatever room he happens to be in. So I decided to clean the world's most awkward corner bath before Hamish bathed in it - best not to allow the sediment that lingers under the bath toys that never get removed because they're too awkward to get to, to get into the wound. Anyway, given I had Stevie to take over child supervision, I went for it, and cleaned the giant tiled shelf behind the bath. It's like a metre deep and I can count the number of times I have properly scrubbed it on one finger.

Armed with my Cif with Bleach I scrubbed and scrubbed until everything was sparkling. It brought tears to my eyes to see it so clean, though I suspect that was the fumes from the bleach. Then I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed some more, before running Hamish's bath and boiling up a nice 4 bag litre of tea to pop into it. This is the second prescribed batch of camomile tea baths in our house in the past two weeks - seems to be far more popular here than in the UK. I imagine it is very soothing and gentle on the skin; ideal for after an operation. It was not camomile though that Hamish smelt of as I lifted him out of the bath, but the rather pungent perfume of bleach. God, I felt sick at the thought of it. Mind you, at least the wound was clean.... (arrgghh!!!!)

So terrible a mother I felt, that I did my utmost to make up for it, cooking favourite meals, letting Hamish play a little bit later than normal before bed, etc. Guilt makes me awfully productive. It does nothing for my prioritisation skills however. So instead of getting the dishes done, I stayed up late sewing sleeping bags for Barbie to go camping with. I knew Orla really wanted them and given how rotten she was feeling, I knew she'd be over the moon to discover them in the morning. Today has been a marginal improvement on yesterday, though Orla's temperature keeps going up every time the medicine times out, but we're getting there.

I'm still shattered, but what this has taught me is that things like illness could really put a spanner in the works if it had happened closer to the move, so I need to be organised and get things done early. The removal team manager phoned yesterday and told us that we have 50% more stuff than what we came here with. In my opinion that's utter nonsense, but nonetheless, I am now going through stuff ruthlessly. Or rather I would be if  I wasn't sitting here messing about on the internet....

Diary of a move: inventory

I've got a bit of a headache. The kind of headache brought on by days of counting and Googling. I've spent the past few days re-doing our household inventory, which was something that we had to do before the move to Berlin. Basically the way the move works is that you don't pack anything yourself, something which is very disconcerting as you still have full cupboards and your toiletries sitting out on shelves on the day you're moving, but you leave it all to the removal men to pack. Otherwise, apparently, if you've packed anything yourself it's not covered by the insurance.

So instead of merrily flinging things into boxes and binbags (our usual method of moving house) admittedly, usually on the last day, you have another job to do. The household inventory. Talk about a pain. List all the rooms in your house, then room by room list every item in it. Then for Google fans, you have to go through it all and find out how much it would cost to replace each item in your list brand new should it get broken or lost during the move.

That's what I've been doing. Yesterday the guy from the removal company came to have a look round and judge whether all our stuff would fit back into the same sized container that it came across in. The good news is, it does. I thought we were also going to be handing over the inventory and going through that. The bad news (for me) was, we didn't. he didn't need it. I feel like printing the damn thing out and eating it.

In other news, we are just about to book our flights & hotel for our house-hunting trip at the beginning of November! i'm quite excited about that, despite the fact that the very limited choice of houses in the area where we're hoping to rent are all pretty horrible. I'm living in hope that something that I like will appear just a couple of days before our trip at the right price and in a good location. Well, you never know.

Pumpkin Dinosaurs are in season.

Of course this move is not all exciting stuff like doing an inventory of every book I've hoarded over the past three decades. No. Indeed sometimes I feel the need to get away from the dust as I crawl around under beds and sideboards looking for the 37th fork, and the need to celebrate finding sausages that went missing in June rises up and we escape from this house into the fresh air, kicking up our heels like Dick van Dyke dancing in Mary Poppins. At the weekend we went to a place I can't talk highly enough about: the Spargel farm. Or Buschmann-Winkelmann Spargelhof in Klaistow to be precise.

We wanted to fit in another visit before we left Berlin, and I knew that it was pumpkin season so it seemed like perfect timing. Because they do this thing where they make stuff out of pumpkins, and I'm not talking about soup and pies. No, they make giant dinosaurs out of pumpkins. If that's not enough to excite the little folk in the backseat of the car, then well, of course you have everything else that the Spargel farm offers. My two particularly wanted to have a last bounce on the inflatable pillows, but sadly it was pretty rainy when we went so bouncing on soaking wet pillows with no spare socks was out.

Anyway, aside from the rather spectacular dinosaur display, I couldn't help but just laugh at the sheer number of pumpkins that were dotted around. They were literally everywhere. On roofs, on fachwerk, in piles in corners, adorning tables, in displays, lining pathways. Everywhere. I wouldn't want to inventory them, let's just put it that way.

If you like pumpkins then this is the place to come. Actually, I'm not such a massive fan of pumpkins myself, my enthusiasm for them if you had asked me a week ago would probably have extended as far as 'indifferent', but the sheer number and variety of them breeds a strange interest in me. I guess it's a bit like the button thing at Knopf Paul the other week; i'm a sucker for things en masse and stacked up stirred up with a little variety. But even if you aren't drawn to this sort of thing, the Spargelhof still has a ton of other things to offer. There's a Mais maze, or should I say a corn labyrinth at the moment, and as always there are weekend events with music and breakfasts and so on. The little stalls selling farm grown produce and smoked fish and honey and all sorts of other things seem always to be in attendance and well worth the money.

Inside the restaurant there is also a really nice little butchers/deli which sells a big range of sausages and meat including a whole section of 'Wild' sausages: Wild Bockwurst, Wild Bratwurst, Wild Blutwurst... but I don't know where they get that from... cough cough...

But I imagine it probably has a high pumpkin content....

Links:
For the love of asparagus - my post about this awesome place during Spargel season.

Buschmann-Winkelmann Spargelhof - the official website complete with tweeting bird sounds.

How will Santa know we have moved?

Good grief, is that October already? I feel like I've lost a few days because I dived into the big pile of Harlan Coben novels that I ordered off the Book People, and I've not been able to stop reading until they're all done. I'm on my last one. And Stevie has just broken me from my reading marathon with a phone call to say the removal team will be visiting later this week, and I need to have the apartment fully inventoried before they arrive. And by that I don't mean "Living room: curtains, light fixtures, wood flooring, phone/braodband/power sockets", oh no..... what it means is documenting all our belongings room by room complete with a value for them if we needed to replace them as new. Fun, fun, fun!

To give you an example of how horrific a task this is, I wrote about it here when we were preparing for the move out to Berlin. Let me just say, I have tried really hard not to buy *stuff* that might take us beyond the limits of the container that we must fit it all into, but I have not tried very hard at getting rid of things that we possibly don't need, and haven't needed for a very long time. Things like the highchair which admittedly has performed a really useful role as a coat rack should not be returning to the UK with us. There are other things which looking back at my old post probably should be got rid of. That hurricane lamp is still sitting stuffed with letters that I haven't looked at since before we came here...ugh.

Anyway, I am setting off now, armed with Excel, bin bags, and a strong cup of tea, and I am going to go through this apartment room by room, ruthlessly pricing and tidying, or chucking out or ebaying, and I will not stop until I get bored!

In other news, we finally told the kids that we are moving back to England. After the cheers of "Yay! We're going back to our old house!" subsided we were able to explain that in fact, no we would be going to a different house as we have to find a house near to a school that we can get them into, they were still very happy. Orla in fact couldn't be happier. She asked about her new school, but mostly wanted to know that she would be able to visit her cousins more. Hamish, had one concern, which was "How will Santa know we have moved?", to which I said that when we write to him we can pop in a change of address card, which seemed to satisfy Hamish.

We also told them that we are planning a trip back a few weeks before we move to find a house. I am thoroughly looking forward to this trip as there is nothing I enjoy more than looking round houses. The downside though is that according to Righmove there are very few houses that suit our requirements in the right areas. Hamish asked whether he can choose the house. I think he may struggle to find what he's after even more than I will as he says he wants either a blue house or a black one.


Links: Get ready for a rush of activity!

A brief history of houses

"Have you started looking for somewhere to live?" is the question I'm hearing on an ever-increasing frequency. "No, not really. It's much too soon." I say. Who am I kidding? I have had a rightmove addiction since I first discovered how effective it was for whiling away hours at work and how much it satisfied my secret craving to nosey around people's homes.

We always liked to move every couple of years when we lived in Derby. We started off in a little house that Stevie rented which was frankly awful. Stevie and his flatmate bought a household of furniture off some guy (probably in a pub) for about £20. This included fridge, freezer, washing machine, disgusting sofa with hideous pattern that was loud enough to disguise some of the stains, but not quite enough to hide the holes. They also had a selection of bar stools (the only other seating, and really, more preferable than sitting on the sofa), and a tv on a stand which I called Evil Edna. If you are familiar with Willo the Wisp, a cartoon on British tv a couple of decades ago, then you'll know exactly what kind of tv I'm talking about. Let's put it this way, it had no remote control, and if you wanted to watch BBC1 after watching ITV then you had to switch the tv off and then on again because you could only go forwards with the channels and not backwards. And that was if the tv didn't decide to switch itself off in the middle of whatever you were watching anyway.



The rest of the furniture was pretty grim, and still when I think of the bed we slept in I have to think of something else very quickly instead or I soon start dwelling on how many people might have died in it.I'm sure the very first item of furniture we bought together was our bed from Habitat because I was in a massive rush not to get scabies from that bed. Happy days, huh?

A 4 bed cottage with a heated pool the size of a large bath? YES! Who cares if it rains: I'll be wet anyway!

Shortly after we bought our first house together in Mickleover, in the outskirts of Derby. A small two bedroomed terraced house which had a tiny kitchen and a bathroom with a louvre door so you could hear your guests peeing from downstairs, and even watch them if you chose the right moment to go up the stairs and angled your eyes the right way. Oh, but we loved that house. It was tiny but it had great streams of light pouring into it, we'd just discovered 'laminate' and thought it was AMAZING, and I solved what I thought were the kitchen and bathroom's worst problems with my discovery of tile and grout paint. Alas, not everything was perfect: I hated the leaded windows (leaded UPVC seems to be a love it or hate it subject. I caught a property programme when I was back in Scotland the other month and there were still people on there going "Oh I LOVE these windows!".) and after writing off our neighbour's car at 6 in the morning and then howling on his doorstep about how sorry I was, it seemed time to move on.

This would be perfect for a ping pong table. I could make pancakes at the same time!

Our next house was a new-build in a new estate in Chellaston. A bit more space, an extra bedroom, a bigger kitchen now we were more experienced in cooking pasta. It was perfect. Except that it was kind of soul-less, and you needed a car to get anywhere, and we had a neighbour from hell. It was the house we brought Orla home to and I quickly realised as I wandered around with her in the pram that during the day there was literally no one else around, everybody was at work. We missed Mickleover.

My hobbies are broad ranging. I like listening to live harp music while riding endless miles on my rocking horse.

And so back we went. A 3 bed semi, but great sized rooms, brilliant bathroom, and we loved it. And then we came here for a couple of years. But what's next? In reality what we rent is not so important to me; I don't see it as a long term move, but I am enjoying rightmove in the meantime!

At last we can live the dream! A dedicated ping pong room with a commode in the corner!

All pictures courtesy of Rightmove.co.ukhttp://www.rightmove.co.uk

Derbyshire welcomes careful scholars

Ta-da! Absolutely no prizes for guessing that we're going* to be moving, not to Derby, but to Derbyshire. Forgive me for not being more specific, but as yet I'm not sure where exactly we'll be living, and also, much as I like you all, the illicit pretzel factory I'll be operating from my kitchen needs to remain just that. Can't have the police turning up to drag you lot away from peering through my windows while I am trying to produce enough pretzels a day to keep my little German's happy.

I managed to get the kids places at a school deemed 'satisfactory' by Ofsted. but I quite happy with that, as a friend of mine has her son there and they are all very happy with it. I'm never 100% convinced entirely by Ofsted reports. Schools and nurseries have enough advance warning of inspectors coming that they have time to brush up their act. On top of that if any points are highlighted they are told what they are and when the inspector will be coming back to see if they've sorted it out. Shouldn't be too hard to sort it out, but then again...

Mind you I am basing these views on the nursery reports, I think the schools take into account levels of achievement, so it's not that easy. Even so, a friend went through all the Ofsted reports, chose a nursery based on that, the (high) cost, and a visit, where she inspected how clean the toy boxes were, and still ended up removing her child after a while because they were feeding her 9 month old baby giant chocolate muffins and hotdogs, and leaving him sitting in filthy nappies for hours on end until official nappy changing time. So you can't always tell.

Anyway, I was happy with the decision and happy with the school and then...

Someone told us about another school which might have places. Kind of out in the middle of nowhere, very small, and outstanding according to what we've heard. And so, we now have 2 new school places where the kids will start in December, and now things feel really right. I have reignited my loving relationship with Rightmove and have been pre-browsing houses for rent in a giant radius surrounding this school. I'm struggling a bit with Britain's love of pattern - there are an awful lot of wallpapers for rent that would make your eyes bleed. Still, awesome fun!


* That's if nothing else changes between now and then, and who knows, it probably will.

(And yes, these photos have nothing to do with the content of the post, but we were at the Berlin Air Show yesterday.)

The one where I can't get my kids into any local school

"You'll find that everything's changed while you've been away". Fool that I am, I wasn't quite sure that that would be the case. I read that quote in an article about the perils of repatriation. Turns out, after an initial toe dip into 'sorting' things out for our return, I discover that in fact things have changed quite a lot and in ways we never thought would affect us. Let me tell you a story...

We have a house in Derby. A house in a nice area that we chose because we liked it, the area, and the schools round about it. We fully intended giving our tenant notice that we would be moving back, but then I spent a morning on the phone to various local schools and the local council to see where I might get school places for Orla and Hamish. Let's just say, I hadn't foreseen it being as problematic. I started off by phoning the school I would prefer them to go to, which told me that they were fully subscribed. Then I phoned the council to see where there might be places locally, and was told there *might* be a place in Reception for Hamish, but not one in year 1 for Orla in one of the schools near our house in Derby. This particular school was bottom of my list in preference, but I have heard that it has improved a bit.

So I thought I might as well phone the school and see whether they *might* have a place for Orla too. Ugh! Nothing. Not for year 1 and not for reception either. The school told me they were having 90 kids starting in Reception which kind of shocked me. I was flummoxed: not a single school place in Reception class across 4 schools in our area of Derby? That's over 300 places! Let me just say that when I was walking around a few years ago with Hamish in the pram, the place was not teeming with babies the same age as him.

In fact, before we left for Germany I phoned the education department to get an understanding of what we would need to do to get the kids into school on our return. I was told that we might not get our first choice but that we would definitely get our catchment school. In fact, it wouldn't be a problem. Hmm.... And now everything has changed.

And at the end of a long morning on the phone I had in front of me the following options:

A) move back to our house and send the kids to two different schools (there are/were only 5 with places in Reception across the whole city) in different corners of the city.
B) move back to our house and send them both to the same school - of the 5 schools mentioned above, 2 also had places for Orla in year 1. Both of these schools are special needs schools.
C) move back to our house and send them to private school. I would need to get a job before our return that would allow me to fund this.
D) move out of the area into Derbyshire, as opposed to Derby, where the problem is less acute.
E) forget all of the above, and stay in Berlin which would require taking both kids out of their current school, putting them back into Kita and hoping with fingers crossed that both could get places in the bilingual school with Orla starting in 2013 and Hamish in 2014.

So what would you do?

And why am I unable to send my children to any of our local schools? According to the local council their has been a baby boom. A baby boom which wasn't apparent 3 years ago in our area. According to someone else I spoke to in the council the problem is down to immigration. A bit of Googling on the 'lack of primary school places in England' brings back lots of newspaper reports agreeing with this. And the more you tell people that you can't get your kids into school when you return, the more you hear stories of people who have found themselves in similar situations. What's going on?

And what do you think we have chosen? Answers on a postcard in the comments please!



http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/31/primary-school-places-your-stories
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9138541/Warning-over-acute-shortage-of-primary-school-places.html#

Turmoil in the house of Fiona

Hamish is a few days into starting school, I've just paid for and received 24 kg of assorted stuff to be shipped over here, and I'm not long back from a trip to Scotland which left me ranting and moaning about the state of life and obesity and everything else in the UK. And what does it all add up to?

We're moving back.

That's right.

I can hardly believe it myself.

And what's more, I don't feel too terrible about it.

Not that it's not without it's complications, and changes of heart, and hours and hours of discussion on whether we stay or go, but I *think* we're settled. I feel pretty certain that I am making the right decision for us as a family. More to come!