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.

Wherever we go... Hugo!

Do you remember we had a date with Hugo?

Hugo in Tiergarten

Well, much to our own surprise, we had him to stay for a sleepover. I'd mentioned that we would be happy to have him should his owners ever fancy a weekend away, and it just so happened they did. It was brilliant fun. And it was a really great experience for the kids. I think they learned a lot from having him here.

Hugo and his pack.

He came on Sunday morning and we let him settle in and have a good sniff around the place. I made best use of Hugo's visit by getting the kids to tidy up all their toys in case Hugo swallowed small bits and choked on them. Hugo had no intention of eating any of their toys, but still it kept them nice and tidy for a couple of days. So it was worth it for that alone.

We took him on a good long walk around Tiergarten. His 'mum' had said that he enjoyed long walks, so that's what we gave him walking via Hansaplatz to the English Tea Garden then on through Tiergarten to the playground and a little picnic and a rest, then straight through the middle of the nude sunbathing area (can I just say Stevie chose the route: Hugo hardly knew where to look for all the sausages on display) and then back home via the boating lake, the Zoo, and then I 'think' we might have stopped off at the American Festival of the People in Breitscheidplatz on the way back.

He's the perfect size for little girls.

Not knowing Hugo's routine very well I tried taking him out again after dinner, and again at bedtime. He wasn't very keen on going out after dinner, and when it came to the bedtime walk he just looked at me as if to say "Seriously, you want to go out again?" and then refused to leave the apartment.

The kids were thrilled to have Hugo to stay. Stevie less so. Mostly because he was being selected as a test subject to see if he *really* was allergic or just pretending as I suspected. "What a hassle" he kept muttering, until after a couple of hours he realised that Hugo was in fact a miniature fraction of the hassle of our two kids. I think he particularly appreciated the fact that you can walk with Hugo attached to you and he's not trying to pull your arm from it's socket by spontaneously swinging off it, and he doesn't whine and moan every few steps about 'how much further' it might be. He was a joy that way.

It was such a big learning experience for us all. The kids learned so much over the course of a couple of days about how Hugo is different to a person ("Are you sure he won't talk AT ALL???", "Why is he not having lunch???" "Couldn't we help him use our toilet?"), we learned that Stevie is allergic, in the sense that it was as if he suddenly developed a really bad cold and was sniffing away all the day, but not so allergic (eyes puffy and red and streaming) that it would completely put me off. But we also learned, or rather I did, that now is not a good time for us to have a dog. Man, being a grown-up actually sucks.

If we got a dog, then it would be *my* dog and I would be the one to look after it and take it out, and the trouble would be that it just wouldn't always be practical to take the dog out given we have the two kids. Hamish was getting a bit bored of going out walks all the time (though admittedly Hugo could have been walked a lot less, but my only dog walking experience was my springer spaniel when I was a teenager, and she enjoyed a lot of walking) so I am sure there would be a lot of arguments about having to accompany me on walks with the dog on rainy, cold, or snowy days. On top of this, with Stevie often away with work, I just couldn't take the dog out at night if the kids are in bed. We can't just stick the dog out the back door when we live in an apartment, and even though it is likely we will move back to our house with a garden at some point, it made me think about how the kids get narky at even 7 o'clock when I'd need to walk it at it's early evening walk.

So much as we loved having him, we had to hand him back, and we all miss him quite a lot because he added to our family. And I still think it's crap that I have to be a grown up and can't just follow Hamish's instruction of "just tell his Mummy that he's ours now".

I love it when a plan doesn't come together

Because today I should probably have been packing up our stuff, waiting for the removal men, spending the afternoon cleaning and scrubbing the empty apartment, and moving us into a hotel with a couple of suitcases, our passports, and our tickets home.

And that would have made me sad. Because it was a glorious day, nearly 30 degrees, and I'm not ready to leave Berlin. Not yet. So instead I bought some fresh strawberries and raspberries and sat out on the balcony with a nice book. And I had a quiet celebration in my head. Because I love it when a plan doesn't come together.

Here's to November! (Or maybe next May)

Exciting things to look forward to..

I have been nice and ill over the past few days. It's been both horrid and pleasant. Horrid being ill, but rather nice to have the luxury of actually lying in bed and being ill. Anyway, aside from being able to watch back to back episodes of Masterchef, I have been able to have a think about the possible move back to the UK. My list of positives has grown:-

1. I can park the car facing any direction I like in the street, so there. And I shall. Just because I can. Though I will lose the privilege of parking 'Berlin-style' unless I want the car towed. Schade..

Really, I am a Berliner at heart. I can't be arsed reverse parking either. 

2. I won't need to wait for the green man when crossing the road, though it's highly likely I will continue to stand waiting until until the green man tells me it's safe to walk because I have been successfully re-programmed. I will however use this knowledge when I see people standing by traffic-free roads waiting to cross as a way of identifying German expats (potential friends).

AARRGGGHH! To walk or not to walk?? I have given up the ability to look up & down the road and judge if it's safe to cross for myself. Where's the Tufty Club when I need it??

3. I will no longer have to bank with the Commerzbank. Though god knows I will no doubt miss their charming ways. I am not entirely comfortable slagging off a company in a public place, but well, they deserve it. I have had more bank cards from them in the past 2 years than I have had in the rest of my banking life. Even if you include the Mr Spendy passbook I had as a kid, I am now into double digits with the number of EC cards they have cancelled on me. They are convinced it's my fault (even though my UK cards still work just fine and they are nestled in together) and the last time I was told that it was most likely my "cheap jewellery (female bank clerk helpfully points to the silver Tiffany necklace I am wearing) causing it to de-magnetise", or else I "need to buy a better bag" because my Orla Kiely obviously just isn't good enough for their cards...(!?). Not that she was sitting there exactly dripping in De Beers diamonds herself, but I can admire a woman who can wield her banking power and admonish the customers for their poor purchasing choices. Though Germany better be careful: with bank clerks like her encouraging people like me to go spending the mortgage money on diamonds and Hermes bags.

Though if they want to 'help' me upgrade, I would be happy with this. 

The sad repatriate goes a-walking

The Bierpinzel in Steglitz, Berlin. Just because it cheers me up.

This not knowing whether we are staying or going thing is really putting a dampner on my blogging. It's all I can think about. Well, not all, but it's taking up far too much of my thoughts. It's a difficult subject to  talk about too. My Berlin friends all think we should just stay, and most haven't had to consider a return move (yet), and as I have been talking to my Derby friends about how I feel about the whole thing, I've found it's difficult to really tell them how I feel about the whole thing.

I would love to see inside this place, but it's been closed for quite a long time.

I am not entirely sure that it's not insulting in some way to hear that I just don't really want to come back to Derby. Certainly, the pause that I hear after I say that seems to indicate surprise at the very least. Of course I don't mean it to be insulting; what I am certainly not saying is that I don't want to see my friends again, or that Derby is necessarily a crappy place to live (even if I secretly think that), but I think that's how it's being perceived. It's hard to explain to my friends why I find Berlin far more enjoyable a place to live compared to Derby without it sounding like a total put-down. I start to explain the benefits to living here, but to people who would never consider a move here or perhaps even a move out of Derby, it's almost met with silence.

I have this horrible feeling that when we do return (which is more than likely), I am going to feel more than a little alone. For I have an inkling that I am not going to feel comfortable sharing my real feelings with my friends. If I think about my list of positive things about moving back to Derby, even I am ashamed by it. It's embarrassing.

1. English. Everyone speaks it. Won't that be lovely?
2. The shops. Endless things and all at amazing prices compared to Berlin.
3. .......eh.....

Awful, eh? I'm not counting the closer proximity to friends & family, because I will probably see my family just the same amount as I have done here, and while I will gain my UK friends, I will lose my Germany-based friends.


I've been talking and emailing a few friends who have been through this and they have all found it quite hard to settle back in to UK life. I know what to expect, and I am planning on launching myself into a few projects as soon as I return to try and meet new people and offset some of the sadness I think I am going to feel.

Still, if anyone can think of anything brilliant about my impending move back to the UK,  that I have missed  please let me know. I could use a few more things on that list. Everyone else I know has returned mentions the Peak District. God help me, I never set foot in it before, it's not really my bag, but if that's all there is then I guess I'll need to get me some walking boots & get out there. By the sounds of it the place must be jumping with sad repatriates, so maybe that's a good way to meet like-minded people!

The less you care, the happier you will be.

bear sea rescue.

God, I was in a foul mood. But, today I feel good. Very good!

I am working on solving Hamish's Kita problem out one way or another. All the hitting which I have spoken to the Kita about over the past few months is getting Hamish down, and the final straw seems to be his best pal smacking him one in the face. I get it. So, it's all in hand. I'm going to speak to the Kita manager on Monday; I would really like them to sort this out once and for all because the staff are nice, and there are people working in Hamish's class who I really like. There are others I have less time for, so if it comes to it I will strike a deal with them where every time my son gets hit, spat at, bitten, punched, I get to do the same to the staff member of my choice. I can see her with the Sport form getting a bit of a raw deal... ha, ha!

But seriously, if this isn't something they feel they can resolve then I will just remove him completely and find somewhere else. This little episode has made me feel much better about the prospect of returning home. And in actual fact I feel more at peace with whatever outcome we end up with. Whatever happens will be fine.

I am still making plans for the possibility that we get an extension to our secondment, and still making plans for if we decide to stay on without the secondment extension, and now I am making plans for if we go back to Derby. Admittedly, the return to Derby plans come down to me having a darn good think about what colour I am going to paint the walls (very, very pale grey?) and where I might have a plate wall, and whether I could talk Stevie into a carpet the colour of purple heather. It's hardly major life decisions... unless you count being stuck with a really bad carpet colour choice for quite a few years.

Thinking outside the brown cardboard box

'Heaven knows I'm miserable now'

'You've got everything now'
(and for a bonus point, name the album which I have never owned but am strangely referencing in these captions)

The decorations in our house are down; the Christmas markets have been dismantled; and yet yesterday, for one day only, it was Christmas once again. For finally our big, annual box of Christmas goodies arrived. And there's nothing more fun than opening a giant box of presents you have already opened when you haven't seen them but have longed for them for ages*  (*or just over a week which can seem like ages to a 3 and 4 year old.).

This year we shipped one box less than last year. Not for any reasons pertaining to the recession, but because Stevie is starting to resist allowing new things into this apartment given our potential return to the UK in just under 5 months time. Still, very little can dent the joy of enthusiastic parcel receivers like Orla, Hamish, and myself, and we were more than satisfied.

The only dampner on the day was the news from work headquarters that we may not be able to request a years extension to our secondment. Stevie, immer upbeat, says that "this just provides us with more options". But still, I feel a little sad. I am just not ready to go back to Derby.

While I do miss my friends from there, I now feel like I have some really good friends here. People who I not only want to keep as my friends for years to come, but also whom I wish I had been able to have met sooner. People who share my new, altered view of the world; people who understand how awful & amazing all at the same time it is to live here and make me laugh like mad about it; people who...I am beginning to feel settled with. And the thing is that I would miss them terribly in a way that I didn't have to miss my Derby friends, because then I was departing on an unknown adventure, and the excitement of that offset those feelings, whereas a return to Derby feels like a trip into the known, and not much of an adventure at all.

BUT, of course there are things about a move back that I would love. So in fact, I am not wholly against the idea. In fact, let's face it, the fact alone that I have known that I would/could return is the reason I have been able to enjoy my stay in a foreign land so much. I could never deny that I have adored my little safety blanket.

And now, we have options. And more than likely over the course of the next few months, I'll start talking about what those are for us. In the mean time, my job is to investigate them and see which ones would realistically work for us as a family. And options are good, for in the very least I will have loads of big brown boxes to open somewhere, be it in Derby, Berlin, or somewhere in between.

"There's no place like home" - or 'the worry of repatriation' (pt 1)

And why would you look at the Brandenburg Gate when there are giant bubbles to marvel at?

I can honestly say that I hadn't really thought much about repatriation. Of course it's always been on the cards, we are due (at this current time) to return to our Derby home in June 2012. Occasionally we have had chats about whether we want to stay on here; for an extra year, for a few extra years, for....ever....and while I practically get a funny shiver at the thought of staying anywhere forever, the prospect of another year seems nice, and another couple of years? Well, maybe, that would be ok too. But equally, I feel, or thought I felt, fine about going 'home' in June.

After all, what's to worry about? We still have our house, I have primed myself for the worst case scenario in terms of it's condition after renting it out for two years and am hoping that I can only be pleasantly surprised that it'll be better than my imaginings. Stevie would go back to work in the same job or better probably. The kids would go back to speaking English and still have their friends in the UK. Both of them would start at school where everybody would speak English as a first language and life would be nice and easy for them. I would have all my UK friends to go back to and all the wonders of UK shopping, and magazines and books!!! (Oh how I miss going into a bookshop and having more than a couple of shelves to choose from!). It sounds easy enough, a breeze even.

But October brought with it a couple of things that really got us thinking. Thinking specifically that going back might not be as easy as it appears on the surface. The first thing was a visit. Our visitors came to see us, not Berlin. Which is fair enough. I think we can be very enthusiastic about the city and we really like taking people round all the sites and showing them just how much this place has to offer. I'm pretty much convinced that no matter your hobby or interest, Berlin will be able to show you something on that topic that will rock your world. These visitors though weren't interested in the sites, the Brandenburg Gate, the emblem of the end of the Cold War garnered barely even a first glance never mind a second. We asked them (an adult and a child of under 10) what they were interested in, what they liked to do, and they said "nothing much". The adult liked going to the pub (tick) and playing on his iPhone (....we don't have one), and the child likes her/his Nintendo DS, watching DVD's and not an awful lot else. So we took them to the Zoo. What kid doesn't like animals, right? Well, um, this kid. It took a bit of persuasion, and when we got there he/she lacked any enthusiasm and wanted to leave because it was smelly and dirty.

Nothing to see here: even during the Festival of Lights.

The rest of their trip followed a similar vein, it was pretty much 5 days of iPhone apps and disinterest. The only thing they seemed to enjoy was Legoland, so that was good, but by the end we all felt a bit down. It made me think that life in Britain leans far too much towards an indoor life, where playing is becoming more and more often an activity done on a computer, and less inclined to getting out and about and discovering new interests. Of course even I knew that that was a sweeping statement, and not at all the way that everyone behaves in the UK. What we were looking at was (hopefully) a very small segment of society, but it still made us think. The weather for example is much better here for getting out and doing things. There are far more sunny, summer days, spring and autumn can be rainy, but mostly it is dry and unlike in Scotland where we were during the half term break, even if it has not been raining the ground is still wet! Winters here of course can be hard. We can have snow from November through to March, but it is manageable. The weather is a big issue for Stevie. He far prefers it here because he can get out and do things with the kids and enjoy it rather than look out the window and think it might be better to stay in. We led a far more indoors life in the UK even though we did still go to lots of places and take the kids to zoos and aquariums and see steam trains and all those sorts of things.

The other thing that happened was that I saw someone's Facebook status and it made me sad. It said:

"Anyone clued up on these Android tablets. Looking to buy one for a 4 year old for Christmas and no idea where to start?! HELP!!"

I hope I don't need to explain why that makes me feel sad. I realise that not all parents of 4 year olds will be buying their children iPads, but by the same token it's not uncommon for me to read on FB about friends whose 4 year olds will "do anything to get to play on the iPad!" or "really needs their own iPhone just for the apps". The more of these things I read the more I feel like things are changing if not beyond our recognition, but beyond our comfort zone. I can't think how to really describe it. I just have this weird feeling of losing that feeling of belonging  to the 'group' and it's wrapped up with kids having iPads, packs of pre-peeled boiled eggs (admittedly I was looking for a link to the pack of 3 you can buy in Morrisons at the sandwich/newspaper bit), and big plastic tubs of fridge pack Heinz baked beans (to see it in real life is to make a sound like 'uuuggghhhhh....'.

And with all these things in mind I started to Google that frightening word 'repatriation', and oh...that leads me on to part two ...tomorrow when I'll tell you what I found out.

Should I stay or should I go?

I'm feeling a bit uneasy. I'm having to think about the future and important things like what I really want to do, and even more importantly, where I want to be. And I haven't really got a clue.

The trouble you see is that Stevie got offered another job at Rolls-Royce. Which is all well and good, and clever old him, but it was a permanent job. And I have a feeling I might be a bit of a commitment-phobe when it comes to location. Because going permanent would mean staying, and I can't get it out of my head that that means forever, and then I feel a bit funny inside and start thinking about eating that Russian chocolate that I am meant to be sending to my niece.

Of course it doesn't necessarily mean forever, there is always the option of Stevie chucking his job and us moving back to the UK, but at the moment I have a rather lovely option where we have been told we'll be here until June next year and if I wanted to come back sooner all we'd need to do is say, and then me, the kids, Stevie, our belongings would all be back in our old house, living our old life as quick as a flash (well, as long as it's a flash that lasts 12 weeks). And that is an awful comfort to me.

It's not just Berlin that has me location-commitment-phobic: I was also this way in Derby. I always thought it would be temporary and it never really felt like 'home', and then one year would merge into the next and all of a sudden I've lived in 4 houses there, and accumulated 2 children, and a bunch of root-making friends. But when I think of Derby, I still don't see myself as living there for any length of time. And do I really want to go back to my old life?

So what to do? Well, this time I've been let off the hook. Stevie turned it down (because of me being happier on secondment), but sooner or later I will need to decide whether I want to keep living in Berlin for a while longer, or whether I want to return to Derby. I need to write a list of pro's and con's.

Girls Week

We're having 'Girls Week' this week. Hamish is back at Kita, and Orla and I are spending some quality time together. Mother and daughter time. We've never really been able to do too much of that, she was only 15 months when Hamish came along, and normally I have them both together and don't have much opportunity to spend one-on-one time with them.

So before she starts school I thought it would be nice if we spent some time doing some of the things that she would like to do. Admittedly, we've also had to do some things that she hasn't wanted to do, like picking up documents from the doctors and taking Hamish for his U7 tests (that's the standard age 3 tests here), but we've also gone to the cinema and saw Cars 2 in German ( and because the German schools have gone back it was easy to explain the bits that she didn't understand as we were the only ones in the cinema. And we went to an ice-cream shop, and we went shopping for art supplies and things for her schuletute, and we've done some craft projects.

And because I knew it would make her really happy, I finally got my act together and finished sewing the dress I've been making for her. It's been hanging on the outside of her wardrobe for hmm... months, so it was about time. I also managed to make a drawstring bag to hold her school tights in which was easy-peasy and I'm rather chuffed with. We've also done some baking and some craft projects, and while my house is now awash with sequins and Hama beads which keep appearing in the oddest of places (like Stevie's dinner), we've had some really good fun. If you want to see more of the bouncy bed pink dress photos then head over to fiona gray . paints.