Party of Five

It has not been particularly long since my last blog update, but a fair amount has changed. Most significant of course, was the birth of our daughter Rae, on 11 November (a hundred and one years to the day after the end of the First World War). I think it would be fair to say that having a third was more Helen’s idea than mine, but I can't say I wasn’t involved ;-) Now that Rae is with us, she is the nicest Christmas present I have ever received from Helen. Rae is now nearly three months old, but that period of time is sometimes described as a ‘fourth trimester’ when the baby is too big to remain inside the mother, but is still pretty unresponsive to the outside world. She is more alert now, and we are starting to see a few smiles and hear her make some noises, but for the most part she sleeps or eats, and has those things interrupted only by digestive moments, sometimes this sadly includes a fair bit of howling when she has trapped wind (in this regard she unfortunately takes after her father and has already let off a number of belting ‘parps’ that would do most adults proud). Helen has coped remarkably well, and this time she has taken to sharing a bed with Rae at night so that she can feed easily – at home this has seen us largely in separate bedrooms, while on holiday it meant that most of the time I slept on a mattress on the floor (quite happily, I might add, rather than being pushed out of bed or woken up multiple times per night).

 The boys have been delighted with their little sister and are both very affectionate to her. In fact one of the biggest problems has been persuading them to leave her alone and not to poke or prod her, particularly when she’s feeding. In preparation for Rae’s arrival, we were joined in October by our Italian au pair, Laura, who has been fantastic support to us all. The boys love playing with her, and she has made our lives so much easier by helping with getting them ready in the mornings and picking up one of them from school, and then playing with them in the afternoons. Laura is incredibly considerate and has been a great support to Helen as well, particularly with Rae when sometimes Helen just needs a few minutes to have a shower or make herself some food. In the first few weeks my parents, and my mum in particular (despite her on-going troubles with her botched foot surgery), were also a huge help, as Helen could not drive after surgery and Pam was taxi driver and full-time granny for Calvin and Mackenzie at times, especially when I was away some days.

 

Our other  big news is that despite the warnings that pregnant women should never make big decisions, in the last few weeks before Rae was born, we found our dream home and will be moving in mid-March (barring any unforeseen calamity – in England a deal is apparently never a deal until it is totally complete) to Woking in Surrey. There is a very nice, if perhaps slightly academic, school within very close walking distance of our new house, and another school just a 5-minute drive away if any of our children don’t take to the first choice. Woking is on an unusually fast train line into London (being one of the few stopping points of the Southampton to London route) and it takes under 30 minutes to Waterloo. Our house is at the edge of a protected area of housing that features leafy streets and 1930s homes. We get the benefit of being right next to this, but our house is not covered by the heritage restrictions, which means that the sellers were able to completely modernise the house with large glass windows, lots of natural light, and modern heating and fixtures and fittings (no legendary English plumbing we hope!) On the other side of the road from our house is a golf course and a larger area of protected green space. The only downside is that it is potentially quite a busy road at times, but we are on a shared cul-de-sac for four houses only, so we are fairly secluded from that bustle. 

We are obviously a little bit daunted at the prospect of starting afresh in a place where we know no-one (any friends who know people around Woking or near Guildford please do let me know!) But at the same time we’re excited that we’ve found a place to call home, and will be putting down roots – with our intention being to stay put indefinitely. Woking itself seems quite a mixed sort of place, with a wide range of socio-economic groups and a diverse assortment of different people – hopefully that means we won’t be the only newcomers, but we’ll also be able to find a range of like-minded people around us. We’re particularly hoping to make friends with other parents at the school where the boys will be going. No doubt it is going to be a bit of an adjustment for them, especially Calvin, who has really taken to his current school, but we believe it’s the right move for us in the long run. We should still be able to see the few close friends we’ve made in Harrow with reasonable frequency, and will of course still see my parents reasonably often. But, for me especially, it is good to know that we’re setting out on our own adventure and moving into a home that is ours, rather than remaining as tenants in the house where I grew up as a teenager and twenty-something (although we've very much enjoyed it and been lucky to have the opportunity).

Our holiday to South Africa in December was filled with family and sunshine. We spent a week in Plettenberg Bay with Helen’s siblings and their spouses and her parents, as well as all of the boys’ cousins. We then all moved along the coast to St Francis Bay where, as part of Helen’s 40^th Birthday, we rented a house round the corner from my parents’ house there, so that we could have both sides of the family all together for Christmas. After about another week in St Francis after Helen’s family had left, we then spent several nights in Johannesburg, staying with Helen’s folks in her sister’s house, and seeing many of our old friends there. Our boys thoroughly enjoyed seeing cousins, building sandcastles on the beach and learning to swim and boogie board in the waves, and it was a very enjoyable and delightfully warm break from the rain and cloud that we returned to. But we felt happy to be coming home to London and we’re looking forward to the adventures coming our way this year. Woking is not far from Heathrow or central London, and we will have a guest room, so if you are thinking of coming over to this part of the world please do let us know as we’d love to catch up.

  

On the work front I’m afraid I haven’t been struck by any bolts of inspired lightning yet. I’ve been working two days a week as a visiting lecturer in the Education Faculty at a small university just north of London. It has been interesting to see the way things are done: not only the precariousness and poor pay of a lot of academic jobs (I turned down two other part-time lecturing jobs because of the poor pay combined with potentially significant transport hassles – a 2 hour round trip for an hourly paid job makes a fast food chain job rewarding by comparison), but also the academic- and literacy- level of the students, the course content, and the way most of the permanent staff seem to be scrambling all of the time as they are spread too thin. It has been reasonably enjoyable and relatively stress-free, but it will be too far for me to commute from Woking after this term ends, and in a way I think I’m ok with that at this point. More recently I have also been contacting various other organisations and even managed to secure some contract work from an Educational Book Publisher (sadly their offices are a huge distance away), editing an education non-fiction book. The writing itself was a lot of work to edit, but it was written by a psychologist who is something of an expert on bullying in schools (and covered a whole range of information about child development) so it was pretty interesting and stimulating to read while I was doing the editing. 

I’m considering finding a job in or near Woking, so hopefully that would be another way to start to get to know more people in the area. Rather than focusing entirely on the operational aspects of work, as I may have tended to do in the past, this time I will also try to use a job as a way to meet people, hopefully some based more locally rather than coming from a huge radius, as tended to be the case in my previous jobs in central London - which means that you only ever see people at work. I still haven’t quite figured out what kind of people I’d be most likely to get on with, hardly surprising given that I’ve never tended to do well fitting into just one social group. So I’m not yet sure whether I should go for something more along commercial or educational lines, or even something completely new and different. I guess I’ll have to see what opportunities I can find and go from there. I'm trying to be philosophical about it all. As many of you will guess, that can be a struggle at times, given my nature, but I'm out to prove that I'm not an old dog yet.