wordgeyser

So How Would You Define Success?

Posted on March 11, 2011 by wordgeyser

Why is it when I’m with a group of smart, confident and self-assured women I come home feeling like an inadequate underachiever?

There is no logical reason to feel like this, they say and do nothing to belittle or deflate me. I enjoy their company, they’re stimulating refreshing and energising. I just walk away from them feeling I’ve failed on so many levels.

They all have/ had high powered careers, reams of academic qualifications and efficient, successful domestic lives. Their offspring work hard, have the maturity of thirty somethings and careers mapped out from the age of sixteen.

They believe, genuinely, that life will be perfect if they just work hard enough and stick to their life plan. Oh boy. I have enough life experience to know it doesn’t work like that unless you also factor in a large dose of denial to cover the inevitable cracks.

This morning I’ve decided to rid myself of this illogical feeling of inadequacy. I’m not a total idiot or underachiever. There are things I’m good at comparable, if different, to the successes of some of the women I know.

I sit with pen poised and paper pristine determined to list my life achievements, letting my mind wander and drift into oblivion remembering past glories.

Sadly, the first thing to pop into my head is me, aged around seven, at the National Brownie Revels in England. (I was a Sprite). Along with another girl the two of us paraded through hundreds of cheering, clapping and stomping Brownies, beaming, blushing and bursting with pride clutching a large and heavy trophy between us. We were joint winners of the National Brownie Poetry Competition. I’m not sure this compares to a Masters in Astrophysics but I have to start my list somewhere.

Looking back, I’m wondering if my first literary success was even completely my own as my father had made some enthusiastic and witty contributions to my masterpiece.

‘Write a poem with the starting line ‘there was a little toadstool all red and white and blue’.’ I’m wondering if there was some national event to celebrate that year as I’ve never seen a blue toadstool but admit that’s another arena in which I have no expertise. Beyond that, and starring as Aladdin in a school production of the same name aged nine, my mind is a complete blank.

I’ve sat here for ten minutes doodling and procrastinating and my mind is a fog. Not because I can’t remember but because there are so many things I no longer consider important.

I have yellowing pieces of academic paperwork proving I once gained certain levels in particular academic fields a very long time ago and they just don’t seem relevant to life today, here and now. There is no need to drop them in conversation, ever.

Which leads me to wonder how do we compare success when it’s such an individual concept? And why would we want to compare unless it’s to feel better about ourselves?

It seems success is defined differently by people in diverse life situations.

If you’re with a group of academics they will trade universities/ colleges, degrees and research papers even if it was twenty years ago. Talented individuals compare creative achievement. Scientists strive to be the first to make new discoveries. For people fighting illness, addiction or grinding poverty getting through another day is right up there with splitting the atom.

More importantly, unless you’re impoverished and starving, monetary success seems to be secondary. Seems to be.

So if I acknowledge success is defined by the individual why do I feel so darned inferior when I’m with people who define success in a different way to me? No clue, but it’s a real feeling and not a positive one.

If my kids were having this conversation with me my immediate response would be (and has been) ‘find people with the same definition of success (values, behaviour, creativity and drive) as you and hang with them’.

It dawns on me that the women who intimidate me most are high achieving, driven women with a 5, 10 or 20 year life plan they will follow come hell or high water. They are super organised.

And that is the first place we differ.

I’ve learned over the years that life will hit you with a curveball from left field when you least expect it and all plans, dreams and hopes go out of the window.

I may not have an engraved or polished life plan, a gazillion relevant degrees, be a CEO of a global company or have a coded weekly family schedule stuck on my fridge, but I’m pretty good at dealing with life’s curveballs.

The life mantra, for me and my family is, It doesn’t matter what life throws at you, it’s how you deal with it that counts’ And you know what? I’m darned proud of how we’ve handled some of those balls.

After sitting here far too long I’ve decided to abandon my list. I know what the list is, where my strengths are and what’s important to me and that’s all that counts. Whenever I’m in a situation where I’m feeling inferior, dumb or insignificant I shall define those around me by my own criteria of success – grit, wisdom, loyalty, friendship, empathy and generosity of spirit.

Life’s too short and too important to get hung up on anything else.

Posted in Expat Experiences, Family Life, Inspiration and Reflection, Personal challenges, Women and Female Related | Tagged defining life success, definition of success, feeling inadequate, self confidence, self-esteem, what to do when you feel inadequate, women, women and loss of confidence, women and self-esteem | 3 Comments

Negative? Moi?

Posted on March 8, 2011 by wordgeyser

There have been grave rumblings in our household of late which were finally verbalised over dinner the other night.

It seems my family members are concerned by – in their opinion – negative aspects in my blogs on life in the Netherlands. I’m aghast.

Who knew they were reading my blog?

More importantly how could they have made such an assumption from anything I’d written? Where have I been negative? Am I negative?

It’s not a word I’ve ever hung on myself. I’ve always thought if I’d been caught on the deck of the Titanic I’d be handing out cups of tea telling everyone things would be fine.

Fine. The word every woman knows holds so many layers of meaning it’s almost mystical. Oh Lord.

Thinking about it, a dear girlfriend did ask recently whether at any time in my past I’d killed an albatross. I accept an awful lot has been happening in life of late but it has been happening round me, not to me, so negative? I don’t think so.

I strive to see the positive; if someone is rude or objectionable I try to figure why they’re that way to someone as nice and unassuming as me. I’m not special, important or (I hope) rude enough to have people be mean to me for the sake of it.

What I’ve learned is not everything is about me.

It’s quite a relief. I used to feel responsible for the world and everyone in it, now it’s refreshing to take a back seat and accept some things are just what they are.

I read a book years ago, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, which really did change the way I looked at life. It was one of the books chosen by the GRITS (see ‘January Blues and Southern Belles’) for our book club and I would never have read it otherwise.

A terrible read (in my humble opinion) but I’ve tried to live by its four edicts ever since and boy does it change your perspective on things.

To save you from stressing and looking up this stuff yourself, the four agreements you make with yourself are

Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Don’t disrespect yourself or others. Don’t gossip.

Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality and circumstances.

Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, hurt and drama.

Always do your best – Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different depending on whether you are healthy or sick. Always do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-doubt, self-abuse and regret.

This is all stuff we know in our hearts but powerful when written down and presented as a manifesto for living. Since I started to apply this knowledge life has taken on a different quality.

Previously if someone had upset me or was rude I assumed it was because I’d upset or offended them. Now I understand they may have had a row with their spouse, found out they’d lost their job, someone they loved was sick, or maybe they were just having a bad day.

In other words nothing I’d said or done had any impact on their reaction to me. OK, they shouldn’t have been rude but it’s not the end of the world.

So I have a wonderful mantra for living and think I’m applying it to my daily life yet that ‘negative’ comment is still itching like a scab forming over a cut knee and has been for days.

I’ve started looking for a negative in everything I’m doing and honestly can’t find one, yet my loved ones think I’m downbeat. A brave move from all parties given my default response to criticism. I never said I was perfect.

I can’t think of a single thing I’m feeling down or negative about. Life is good.

So, what the heck is making me appear pessimistic when in my heart of hearts I know I’m not??

I have no clue. Honestly. I’ve looked in the mirror and wondered if my facial expression looks sad, when in fact it’s merely lack of collagen, but that doesn’t explain why a negative element has been picked up in my writing.

Or perhaps, after rereading the four agreements I should realise that it’s not all about me, ignore their comments and just get on with it.

Sounds like a positive attitude to me.

Posted in Expat Experiences, Family Life, Writing | Tagged Expat, negative writing, Netherlands, on reading, the four agreements | 5 Comments

Leash Laws and Dog Wardens

Posted on March 2, 2011 by wordgeyser

The bell tolls long and loud for all Dutch dog owners from 1 March through to 1 August.

The annual leash laws mean rather than running freely through public parks and woodland (in slow motion with the theme to Chariots of Fire in the background) dogs must be on leash only.

The reason for this? The nesting season for birds. Admirable of course, but as one disgruntled – Dutch – dog owner said to me, ‘there’s more danger to the damn birds from foxes, other wild animals and rampant unrestrained children than from dogs’.

She has a point. None of the dogs I know is remotely interested in chasing wild birds – other dogs, cyclists, cars or anything thrown to/ at them, yes, but birds?

How to explain to our canine friends that yesterday it was fine to race around at full speed with fellow canine friends, roll unfettered in crackling dry leaves, or swim in the nearest canal, but today it’s ‘heel’ for the whole of the walk. Ever seen a depressed spaniel?

Should you wish, in a moment of complete insanity, to flout the edicts of the Gemeente (Town Hall) there is the stress of avoiding the local dog wardens. Only in the Netherlands.

We have several in our area who carry out their task with the enthusiasm always associated with the over zealous having right on their side. That and a leather pocket book for handing out dog tickets. An automatic €60 on-the-spot fine (irrespective of size) for any dog in violation of various articles under the Canine Convention of The Hague.

The Hague is home to the International Court of Justice, Europol, the OPCW (Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons), the International Criminal Court and 150 other international organisations, so what chance does the regular dog walker have?

Our local dog warden has a shiny immaculate bike, uniform with logo and the ubiquitous peaked cap. He reminds me of a slimmed down Benny Hill as he cycles along, a man on a mission, sun glinting off his spherical wire-rimmed spectacles. It makes it hard to take him seriously.

And it is serious. I have a girlfriend who, on a ramble in the dunes and having not seen a living soul for over an hour, decided to let her West Highland Terrier, Svitzer, off leash. The dunes are open, rolling and covered in tall scrub-like bushes, a beautiful place to restore the spirit and enrich the soul.

Svitzer is not known for chasing anything. His aim in life is to posture and threaten any large male dog, usually Rottweilers or Alsatians with dramatic and often catastrophic results. His standard forms of intimidation are a throaty growl and an aggressive stance, made from behind a tree, bush or his mistress’ legs. He is not the bravest of souls and nesting birds hold no interest.

Within seconds of my dear friend giving Svitzer his freedom a dog warden leapt out from behind a bush in full camouflage gear brandishing his little black book, manic gleam in his eye and hand held out for collection of the aforementioned fine. No kidding.

She has not been the same since – walking the streets around her home she can be reduced to a wreck if she sees an approaching bike and the silhouette of a peaked cap. Not helped I might add, by Switzer being an object of note to all un-castrated males in her neighbourhood.

With our dog warden living close by I see him out and about and we are on nodding terms – bad news as having known him for so long I should know the rules. I can no longer pretend to be newly arrived and ignorant (the general default position) should I allow the Archster an off-leash, 30 second sprint through fallen leaves on a particularly beautiful glad-to-be-alive-day.

I have spent days watching the warden’s comings and goings. He sets off at 6.30am when he starts his rounds, back home for breakfast, morning coffee, lunch and home by 5.30pm. This gives me, on brave days, certain windows of opportunity. This has been screwed though, when the object of my scrutiny decides to alter his schedule. The stress is unrelenting.

Although the winter months are cold and muddy it’s great to walk for miles, see no-one and have a gleeful spaniel jubilant and full of life running alongside. The only time we see the dog warden then is in his secondary role as traffic warden.

Sometimes this involves his bicycle as he wobbles around town, checking the time on parking tickets. Same uniform, same pocket book, same cap. Other times he drives a swanky, brightly coloured and Gemeente logo-ed pick-up truck, wears a high-visibility jacket and brandishes a glow-in-the-dark baton for directing traffic. And his cap.

At least if he’s in his truck we know we’re safe on the dog front, but automatically start to stress about where we’re parked and if we’re in danger of a parking ticket. Such is the nature of living in a country where rules and regulations are a defining national trait.

So how to exercise our reigned-in dogs once the leash laws come into effect?

Well, there is a way.

It involves risking life and limb, having good insurance to cover accidents to road users, pedestrians and other dog walkers caused by this unique method of exercising the family pooch. It also requires a well trained, obedient, focused dog and nerves of steel on my part.

I’ll let you know about it in another blog. I need rest, relaxation and be up to full mental capacity before I can begin to talk about it…

Posted in Advice for New Arrivals in the Netherlands, Dutch Culture, Dutch Laws, Taxes and Bureaucracy, Expat Experiences, Family Life | Tagged dog laws in the netherlands, Dogs, dogs in the netherlands, Expat, expat family, expat pets, leash laws in the netherlands, Life Around The Hague, Netherlands | 2 Comments

Raunchy Daffodils and Randy Tulips: Learning the Lingo Part III

Posted on February 23, 2011 by wordgeyser

February, and those fragile signs that winter is finally drawing to a close and spring is just around the corner.

Spending time outdoors walking the Archster I’m perhaps more aware than most of the changing seasons – when the first snowdrops appear and where, the first tentative buds on bushes and trees, softer hues in the daylight and the scurried movement of tiny woodland creatures in the dried leaves from last Fall.

My first winter here after the warmth, glorious blue winter skies and dazzling light of New Orleans was pretty grim.

One pleasure in the gloom of January and February that dismal year was walking past the local flower shop and seeing the rainbow hues of the new season’s tulips, after months of subdued winter foliage. A whispered promise of the longer and brighter days ahead.

After Dutch class I would wander down the wet Langstraat, clutching a warm coat to my frozen body as I battled arctic winds under a leaden sky, and treat myself to a bunch (or three) of brilliant yellow tulips. In the winter gloom their colour seemed unnaturally intense and bright.

Yellow and green have always been symbolic of spring for me. Growing up in England I would look for those sprouting tender green shoots of daffodils pushing through the earth, watching them grow and bud until they exploded in a riot of colour. It was a joy to watch their heads dancing in the slightest breeze, nodding and chatting and so obviously jubilant to be above the ground and heralding in the spring.

During our years in New Orleans my heart would ache for those vivacious daffodils, I missed their gaiety and brilliance. Now, of course I miss the swaying palms, vibrant crepe myrtles and heavy-scented gardenias of Louisiana. Guess that’s just the way I am.

To see a splash of brilliant yellow on a bone chilling, dark day in the Netherlands soothed my soul and lifted my spirits – they may have been tulips not daffodils, but what the heck.

The flower shop man was always a hearty soul, pausing to nod and occasionally wink at his customers as they wandered past his shop, all in a harmless, non-threatening way. Usually because his wife was there keeping an eye on him.

Each week I would practise my basic Dutch and ask him the names of the flowers or colours if I was unsure. He was patience itself – January and February were obviously slow months and there were never many people around that early in the day. Yellow was the colour I wanted for my flowers and it was this innocent request that caused him great hilarity.

Yellow in Dutch is geel.

The g is that awful letter pronounced h along with that guttural throat rasp so evocative of the Dutch language. It causes a lot of stress for anyone learning Dutch, me among them.

So geel (or gele in some contexts) is pronounced hale (as in hale and hearty) but sounds like hgchgch-hale.

Not quite so straightforward then.

On one particular morning after a gruelling Dutch lesson with Dorien, my brain was surrounded by an impenetrable fog and completely disconnected from my mouth, but I was determined to persevere.

‘Hebt u gele tulpen?’

‘Do you have any yellow tulips?’

Obviously he had buckets of them but I wanted to do this properly.

His smile broadened and he asked me to repeat myself. I got flustered. What had I done wrong? It must have been that first letter, that darn guttural h – it always seemed to make the Dutch smile when a foreigner tried to pronounce it. I tried again.

He tried hard to suppress a laugh and I began to feel stupid, not good for my fragile self-esteem in the language department. I pointed at the sunny blooms.

“Wat deze kleur in Engels is?” “What colour is this in English?”

I was beginning to doubt my very basic vocabulary.

“Geel, mevrouw” he beamed. Okay, so it was the right word then. I repeated it back to him. He repeated it back to me. The exchange went on for several minutes with me getting more frustrated, and his grin getting larger, with each exchange.

Maybe in an attempt to pronounce the first letter of the word correctly I had screwed up the last few. Hell, there were only four letters in this word, how hard could it be?

Did my hale sound more like heil (as in Hitler) or was I mis-hearing the man? I tried one last time and the poor guy had to look away coughing to control his hysteria.

Mortified I gave up, pointed to my purchases, paid and was escorted from the shop by the grinning shopkeeper. As he waved an enthusiastic goodbye he gave me a hearty wink with a flick of his head and a click of his tongue. For whatever reason I’d obviously made his morning.

I spent the week wondering how I’d screwed up this time. Whatever I’d done I knew the flower man hadn’t been laughing at me, he wouldn’t have been that unkind, but I was confused. When the next Dutch lesson came around I explained my confusion to Dorien and asked why I’d been the source of such amusement.

‘How did you pronounce it, Jane?’

‘Well, I thought I was saying hale but I’m wondering… ‘

Her lips twitched, she roared with laughter and banged her hands on the desk, finishing the sentence for me, ‘ …if you were you were saying heil?’

I nodded, totally bemused. Wiping her eyes she explained that by changing the pronunciation ever-so-slightly I was saying a completely different word.

Great.

Instead of asking the flower man for yellow flowers, I’d been standing in his shop for over half an hour discussing the beauty of randy tulips and how much I missed the raunchiness of English daffodils – not to mention the sauciness of creamy lilies or the downright horniness of winter jasmine.

All I can say is if this is amusing then the Dutch have serious humour issues. And obviously they do as I mentioned this to a Dutch girlfriend who fell apart immediately I recounted the tale to her.

How was I to know? Yet another subject not discussed in Dutch class.

I mentioned this to Harry who rolled his eyes in mortification and asked how I could NOT have known something so basic. Perhaps because, unlike teens, adults don’t feel the need to look up dubious words in the Dutch/English dictionary. Perhaps we should.

The flower man continues to smile and wink whenever he sees me, but I try and stay aloof and if I ever want yellow flowers I point vaguely in their general direction and keep my mouth firmly closed.

How the English Approach Language Learning: Learning the Lingo Part I

Cataracts and Breast Implants: Learning the Lingo Part II

Posted in Dutch Culture, Expat Experiences, Family Life, Learning Dutch, Personal challenges | Tagged daffodils, Dutch language, Dutch tulips, Expat, expat experiences, expats and new languages, how to speak Dutch, learning a foreign language, learning Dutch, Life Around The Hague, Netherlands, speaking Dutch, Tulip | 3 Comments

Cataracts and Breast Implants: Learning the Lingo Part II

Posted on February 15, 2011 by wordgeyser

This was one of those times I dreaded (there have been many) when the reality of living in a foreign country and not having a complete command of the language can cause undue anxiety and stress.

I sat in the bright new waiting area of the eye department of a large hospital in The Hague. It was not the hospital expats would usually be steered towards, this was the place my optician insisted I go as it had, in her opinion, the best eye surgeons of any local hospital.

The downside?

It wasn’t quite so geared up for the 50,000 or so foreigners from all over the world living in The Hague. For most expats the common language is English, although it may be their second or third language – fifth or sixth for some.

I stared at the clip board and questionnaire attached to it with mounting horror. Being typically Dutch this wasn’t one sheet for basic information, this was a six page dossier delving into every aspect of my medical history.

Some linguistic background here.

The English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, (which I am more than happy to accept as a world authority) has 616,500 words. Strange it is such an exact amount, but there you are.

This is the language I grew up with, speak, write and dream in. I understand the nuances, the colloquialisms and accept there can be five words for the same thing but each will have a different tone, hue or emotional response.

The Dutch language on the other hand has 240,000 words according to the Dikke van Dale (pronounced Dicka van Darla, got to love it) the official Dutch dictionary.

This was why I naïvely believed I would get to grips with Dutch – half a million fewer words than English, how hard could it be to learn the language?

Fewer words maybe, but an equal capacity for, and understanding of, language – the Dutch use one word but it will have a different meaning depending on the context, pronunciation, position in a sentence, or the angle of the sun on any given day.

I sat with my questionnaire to be completed, in Dutch, before seeing my eye specialist, and no-one around with a working knowledge of English beyond the social niceties. Despite my blind panic I’d figured out most of the questions, but several had me confused and one in particular was causing me grief.

Here and now in my defence, I would like to point out I was in a highly anxious state.

The procedure ahead involved a long needle going into my eye, and before anyone starts rolling their eyes at my pathetic level of squeamishness and points out that obviously anaesthetic would be involved, I’d like to make it clear the needle WAS the anaesthetic. All I’d be given before that were a few measly drops of something cold and stingy, which would continue to sting – I know because I had been warned.

That was all to come. I was still pondering question 50. There was a word, obviously put together with another, which I couldn’t figure out.

The start of the question was ‘Do you have… borstziekte?’

I had no idea whether I did or not. I focused on the first part of the word – borst – and got stuck. Borst is the Dutch word for breast. What did breasts have to do with eye, or more especially, cataract surgery? Was this a question for both sexes or just females? I stalled on the possibilities.

In my panic I defaulted to past medical questionnaires involving breasts – the mammogram. There was always the, ‘do you have breast implants?’ question, therefore that must be the meaning here.

Frankly, I was bemused why this had any relevance to having cataracts removed. That I was the youngest in the eye clinic by at least 30 years only added to my confusion. (I put this rather annoying failure of my eyes down to living in bright climates for a long time rather than any physical or genetic deterioration).

I wondered idly how many of the senior patients in the waiting room this might apply to, and whether breast implants had even been invented when the elegant Grande Dames around me were in their prime. Which I rapidly calculated would probably have been around the Second World War. I liked to think they may have had other things on their minds around that time, like survival, rather than worrying whether their breasts were perky enough.

I sighed. It was pointless struggling any further, I needed help.

I stood in line to speak with the intimidating, bespectacled, large bosomed receptionist. I had no doubt implants weren’t something she’d ever worried about. Even with my fuzzy eyesight I could she was a formidable person and wasn’t taking any prisoners. I started running my question through my head

‘Pardon, kan u me helpen? Ik begrijp deze vraag niet’ ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I don’t understand this question’.

Beyond that limited introduction I intended to direct my gaze at the questionnaire and illustrate my point with hand gestures. The prospect for success was not good. I realised this could be a tricky, and once again I’d found myself at the head of a line of people who would no doubt find the whole debacle of great amusement.

It was my turn. Her English was as good as my Dutch. I pointed to the question, she smiled and answered – I had no clue. I outlined a Marilyn Monroesque figure with my hands, emphasising the upper part, and my smaller one. She looked as if she might reach under her desk for the panic button. There was a stifled guffaw from behind me in the line. This was par for the course these days and had happened so many times of late I ignored it.

I tried desperately to think of the word for implants and decided to anglicise the Dutch.

I pointed emphatically to the question on the sheet and said, ‘borst implaten?’ to the receptionist, hopefully with enough upward inflection in my voice to ensure it was understood as a question referring to the questionnaire, not her anatomy.

Her expression was paralysed for a second and I sensed the line behind me catch its breath. Her face cracked into the biggest smile and she roared with laughter, followed by the hyenas behind me. I was so glad I’d enlivened the afternoon for everyone.

She shook her head while trying to control her giggles and called over a young intern to help me, presumably the only person around who could speak Engels.

She was delightful, and explained respectfully that no, the question did not relate to implants, but chest illnesses. It seems that as well as meaning ‘breast’ borst also means ‘chest’. My apologies were abject, I explained why I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, and blamed my appalling language skills.

She responded by saying she thought it was a waste of time for foreigners to learn Dutch – most of the natives had no clue about grammar, construction or even how to speak it correctly themselves. This information was gratefully received at the time, but I’m sure it was only said to salve my mortified feelings.

Meanwhile the hyenas had dispersed, but I knew they were savouring the moment they could regale their tale of the crazy foreign woman and her breasts to their families over dinner.

I found a hidden corner, completed the questionnaire and then sidled back to the reception desk to hand it in. I was met by broad smiles and told to go to another waiting area.

I sat back with relief, another hurdle jumped, one more embarrassment survived. Now the only thing left to deal with was that needle the size of Texas coming straight for the whites of my eyes…

How the English Approach Language Learning: Learning the Lingo Part I

Raunchy Daffodils and Randy Tulips: Learning the Lingo Part III

Posted in Dutch Culture, Expat Experiences, Learning Dutch, Women and Female Related | Tagged dutch health, Expat, expat experiences with new language, expats learning a new language, how to learn a foreign language, how to speak Dutch, learning a new language, learning Ditch, learning Dutch, speaking Dutch | 4 Comments

New Orleans – Proud to Have Called Her Home

Posted on February 5, 2011 by wordgeyser

It is the traveler with real soul who will go beyond the guide books and tourist hype to find the beating heart of a place and the rhythm of the people who live there.

If you are someone who feels a stirring deep within, is drawn by a sense of adventure and a desire to experience something outside the sanitised and sameness of much of the rest of America, you may feel your spirit lured to the dreaminess and wildness of the American South.

Half a century ago Route 66 was the coolest way to cross the country, and still is for many, but there are other roads less travelled which may appeal to those who want to take time, linger a while and shoot the breeze. One of those is the Interstate 10.

Starting on the Atlantic east coast in Jacksonville, Florida, it heads west, the sweltering tarmac shimmering in the southern heat like a water moccasin, snaking its way for 2434 miles and terminating on the west coast in the City of Angels, Los Angeles.

The journey crosses six states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California), four time zones (Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific) and four climates (humid sub- tropical, semi-arid, desert and finally on the west coast, Mediterranean). On its journey west it skims the Gulf of Mexico, bridges the Mississippi and the wetlands and swamps of Louisiana, crosses the pasture lands of Texas, and journeys through desserts and sierras to the Pacific Ocean.

It passes through places and cities ingrained in the American psyche and folklore – Tallahassee, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Houston, San Antonio, Tucson and Phoenix to name a few.

The western states from Texas to California are vast with big skies and dry heat; the east bathes in the sunshine of wealth and groomed perfection of Florida, but the real south, the Deep South, nestles between these extremes, the brooding, sultry states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

They are the pulsating heart of the American South, slumbering in the brutal heat and humidity of a country within a country. A past of jaded elegance and decadence mixed with a dark complex history is embedded in the culture of its people – still tangible if you’re prepared to spend the time and linger for longer than a stop on the tourist bus.

The mighty Mississippi river meanders through Louisiana and Mississippi, a lumbering, heavy, silt-laden gargantuan winding and coiling its way through the heart of America, splitting east from west for 2320 miles culminating in the massive delta where it drops its onerous muddy load and rushes free into the azure glittering waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

South-east of where the I-10 and the Mississippi river intersect (at Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana) lies the dazzling jewel in the crown of the south – the City that Care Forgot, New Orleans.

It is unique with an old soul and rich history. It has a depth and complexity of spirit unlike any other city in the USA. It will not embrace you as a long-lost friend and share intimate secrets over dinner. It is a place that weighs you up and tests your endurance, challenges and demands the best of you. She is a hard mistress, but once she accepts you, you’ll never want to give her up.

For many passing through on their tour buses it is a strange place, slightly tawdry, tacky in parts, confusing, a cultural oddity past its best. Don’t be fooled. The natives are happy for you to assume that – they save the best for themselves.

The city has always been a magnet for poets, writers and visual artists, attracted by the raw energy of this great city perched above the Mississippi delta, closer in spirit to its Caribbean neighbours than her countrymen upriver to the north. She has spent much of her history deliberately under the radar of mainstream America.

Think of the writers who came and wrote with eloquence and savage beauty of this city and the south – Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, John Kennedy Toole, Ernest Hemingway and those southern belles who put the south on the literary map, Margaret Mitchell, Harper Lee and the city’s own Anne Rice.

Think of the musicians born here and those drawn to the city by them; Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey, and a myriad of others. The birthplace and cradle of jazz; the home of the blues. Walk through the French Quarter, day or nigh,t and you will hear music – all types of music played by people who have grown up absorbing this rich and heady heritage.

The food is sensational. There are so many small exquisite cafes and bistros in the city it’s said you can dine out twice a day for a year and not eat in the same place twice. I have no doubt it’s true.

Every day is a party in New Orleans. There are music, wine and food festivals throughout the year, several in any given month, and the daddy of them all? Mardi Gras. The city never sleeps. Its motto? Laissez les bons temps rouler – let the good times roll.

Enmeshed with this larger-than-life façade, New Orleans charms and seduces with the graciousness of southern living. There’s a reason for porch swings, Spanish moss draped from the trees, the slow paddle of ceiling fans and the relentless chirping of cicadas. Time ticks to a different clock in the south. Many Americans are frustrated with the perceived archaic attitudes, slow pace, skewed politics and closed mindedness of the locals – they miss the point. People here walk to the beat of a different drum.

Allow yourself to sit a while, sip iced tea or a mint julep and feel that beat – a deep, resonant vibrating in your soul. Spend some time here, live awhile in its mellow gentleness, engage with the people who have always called the south home and you will be humbled.

You will leave with a greater understanding of their tenacity and goodness and a gaping hole in your heart for their warmth and generosity. The south gets to you that way. Once you’ve breathed its humid air, been caressed by its balmy breezes and wrapped yourself it its warmth, it will be in your blood. Always.

Posted in Expat Experiences, Travel, USA | Tagged expat homesickness, feelings of home, Louisiana USA, mississippi river, New Orleans, southernliving, United States | 6 Comments

Fear and Indecision: Unlocking Painful Emotions

Posted on February 4, 2011 by wordgeyser

This morning I find myself in a mad mood, not at all conducive to creative thought. If I started to vent I would end up looking bitter, twisted and in need of immediate psychological help. This does not sit well with how a woman of my age, wisdom and maturity should behave. I know because past experience has taught me it would only end in tears – mine.

I have no wish to expand on the reason for my simmering mood and intermittent chuntering – all I will say is the Dutch Health Insurance Company and leave it at that.

Unfortunately in my angst and rage against the DHIC I can’t focus on writing and I really want to. As usual there is a silver lining – I have a piece of writing I wasn’t sure I wanted to post but I’m going to.

Here’s the issue – it’s not lively or funny or quirky, it’s actually quite grown up, something I’ve spent my life trying to avoid. Essentially it doesn’t feel like me. But what I discovered behind the words was an emotion I am uncomfortable with, something I can’t identify. Or refuse to.

I was recently asked to submit an introductory writing sample about the American South for an audience not familiar with the area – a pretty huge chunk of the USA you’ll admit, and a pretty open remit on how to present it. After some discussion it was decided to start with a general overview, some facts and figures and zoom in on a smaller area, the Deep South.

Once I zoomed in and started writing it pretty much wrote itself, and I realised as the words came out that some of them were coming from a place deep inside about a city I had a love/ hate relationship with for ten years and who I still feel ambiguous about.

The place I raised my children, the place that taught me more about myself than anywhere I’ve ever lived, whose endgame was a challenge that proved the human spirit is greater than any of us realises and at the end of the day other people and our relationships with them are all that matter in life.

I didn’t write any of that in the piece, but I realised behind the conversational tone and informative chit-chat there was a deeper emotion at work, one that is determined to find its way out. Perhaps it’s time to let whatever force is in there express itself, who knows. What I do know is that the prospect scares the hell out of me.

My argument against it is some things are better left in a box and stored way, that opening the box and examining it’s contents will be like picking at a scab on your knee – painful, messy and only of interest to you.

Then of course there is the problem of the box itself. Its fine while it sits there happily, content to exist quietly somewhere deep in your psyche, quite another thing when it decides to start making escape plans.

So what to do?

What I usually do, nail the lid back on, wrap it in chains, and sink it in concrete. Only this time something has changed, oh so subtly, but it’s there. I think about Pandora, and realise that in opening her box she was left with the greatest gift of all.

Oh Lordy, I’ve rambled on again. Guess I’ll post the Deep South thing as a separate blog, as I’d like to know what you think.

And at least it takes my mind off the bloody DHIC…

Posted in Inspiration and Reflection, Personal challenges, USA, Writing | Tagged dealing with suppressed emotions, Deep South, Expat, expats and feelings of loss, fear of writing, homesick for new orleans, missing new orleans, New Orleans, Writers Resources, writing about pain, writing about painful emotions | 1 Comment

Life’s Certainties: the Dutch and Taxes

Posted on January 25, 2011 by wordgeyser

It’s January and there’s that sinking feeling in my stomach. Not the winter blues, nor the realisation that the New Years Resolution to lose 10 lbs by the end of the month is a lost cause.

No, this is the gargantuan beast from hell, the preparation of the annual tax return. You can’t forget about it, or pretend it’s not happening, stick fingers in your ears and hope it will pass you by.

This is serious stuff and like many people here in the Netherlands, we have to file returns to both the Dutch Tax authorities – the Belastingdienst – and the United States Department of Revenue – the IRS. They both provide hoops, we jump through them.

If we’re lucky and all goes well, the paperwork is completed and we pay any due balances to whoever demands it (who’s going to argue?). Worse case scenario we face a revenue audit by either country and go to purgatory. There is no get out of jail free card.

Before I go further I must stress the Captain and I are of the school that is upright, honest and likes to sleep at night. Life is stressful enough without trying to pull a fast one over a bunch of accountants. Our affairs are simple and straight forward, we are ordinary folk.

Unfortunately, as far as every revenue service in the world is concerned we are all secretly running mafia-like laundering operations worldwide, with off-shore accounts in tropical locations. Please. We’re not going to take on the revenue services, we’re too exhausted. We have children who run rings round us on the financial front, what chance do we stand with experts?

We want to pay our dues and get on with life.

Generally speaking the Dutch have a wonderful system of taxing foreigners – you are only taxed on what you earn in this country, which seems really fair to me. The USA, on the other hand, wants details of everything anywhere in the world, whether you reside in the states or not. They also demand that Green Card holders file a return too, not just citizens.

The American hoops seem a lot more intense or perhaps that’s just me. Filing, late filing, extensions, a gazillion forms, late payment penalties, interest penalties, these are all things that sink me into a gloom of despond. The aim every January is to get ahead of the game so we deal with as few of these hoops as possible. We have a life.

We experienced how these hoops can take over your life our first year here and it’s a dark place neither of us want to revisit.

Arriving in the Netherlands we met with representatives from a company of international accountants. Let’s call them Delights. They would guide us through the ruthless waters of international tax, advising us on the best way to navigate between the Dutch and USA systems with as little stress as possible. We would pay them an exorbitant fee, but would be free from stress and the ravages of worry.

It was an interesting meeting. We felt we had missed the point entirely. Obviously our tax affairs were so straight forward the grey men didn’t feel there was much need for discussion. This was not what we expected from the Dutch at all. They are a measured nation, conservative, methodical and fair. Paperwork and documentation are a specialty. They are thorough, consistent, and dogged. You can trust the Dutch, and that’s a huge thing to say.

The Delightful accountants took months to prepare our return, weeks to respond to an email and if you phoned no-one had a clue who you were. The information on the Dutch return is required for the USA. We were months behind our schedule.

Finally Delights got back to us – our return was ready. There was no review, no recommendations. Their job was done. There had been no consultation with their own Delightful US tax expert, something we naively expected to be part of the process.

This was because Jacques, their US consultant, was operating out of Belgium and it was very difficult for him to be reached down there.

Interestingly enough I had no problem getting hold of him.

His advice was sound and professional. When I expressed concern over the poor level of service offered by his company in the Netherlands he was most helpful. I can’t repeat what he said due to libel laws, but we took his advice and engaged a competent company.

Meanwhile in Louisiana our wonderful CPA (Certified Public Accountant) was struggling to deal with everything in the aftermath of two hurricanes and a heart attack. She hadn’t been able to start work on our US return until Delights had filed theirs. She didn’t need the stress.

The final straw was receiving a phone call from her in a cardiac ward at the Louisiana Heart Hospital. By the time she’d worked her way through the complexities of our taxes and realised the amount of our tax liability in the US due to bad planning and delays, the paramedics were called. The effect was pretty similar on us too.

Neither the Captain nor I wanted a repeat of that dreadful time and started a search for the perfect tax preparation company.

We have found it. Two separate companies, one for Dutch taxes, one for US, both working in the same office, with the same staff.

We decided to take the initiative and headed off to interview them. We were the customer after all. We would lay our cards on the table and make it clear what our expectations were from a company we were trusting to act on our behalf, in our best interests.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Of course they responded to emails the same day, of course they took phone calls personally, of course they dealt with the Belastingdienst in a timely manner. More importantly if we wanted a return completed and filed by the end of February of course it would be done. We were the customer. They were shocked our expectations we so low.

Hans and Constanze were the consummate professionals. Knowledgeable, smart, willing, engaged and great to talk with. Their office staff were friendly, smiling and courteous. By the time we left I was in love with them all. The Captain was a little more wary – they’d talked the talk but would they deliver?

Yes they did. It’s been wonderful to work with people who know what they are doing and who you can trust, without that nauseous feeling you get when you know you’re being screwed.

So why do I still have that awful feeling in January when I think about tax season?

Because we do not want a repeat of that awful first year – the issues from incorrect information submitted on that return were finally resolved with the Dutch authorities only last December.

Because having demanded and been given such high levels of service and commitment from our current accountants we have to deliver too. They can only do what we’ve asked them if we give them what they need to do it, which is why you’ll find me scrambling in January making sure all my files and paperwork are in order.

Anal I know, but this way our affairs are in order and we feel in control again. I even have my first piece of documentation in my 2011 tax file…

Posted in Advice for New Arrivals in the Netherlands, Dutch Culture, Dutch Laws, Taxes and Bureaucracy, Expat Experiences | Tagged belastingdienst, Dutch taxes, Expat, expats and international tax, Internal Revenue Service, international tax, international tax in the netherlands, IRS, IRS and international tax, US citizens and Dutch tax, USA taxes | 3 Comments

How the English Approach Language Learning: Learning the Lingo Part I

Posted on January 18, 2011 by wordgeyser

The Captain and I settled into uncomfortable silence, looking down at the space between us. We had made an executive decision to, maybe, engage the services of a private Dutch tutor to finally get to grips with the language. There was no excuse as the company would pay. We looked up at each other in mute resignation.

Our Dutch is not at the level we want it to be, but we get by. Navigating the menu selections when phoning anywhere is not the ordeal it once was.

Most of our day is spent speaking English giving us little incentive to make a concerted effort to get beyond the every day stuff. Much to the disbelief and embarrassment of Harry, who, with the sponge like qualities of youth, speaks and reads Dutch fluently, although at the American School.

When we first arrived in The Netherlands I was enthusiastic, positive and ready to hit the ground running. Within five minutes I’d signed up for everything including Dutch classes. How hard could it be? Sixteen million Dutch manage to speak it and it’s only polite and good manners when moving somewhere new to integrate and engage.

I know, the optimism of the naïve.

It must be pointed out that in my newly acquired enthusiasm for linguistic learning I’d overlooked a few basic facts about myself and my appalling language skills.

I am genetically English. We do not do languages. In our glory days of the British Empire under Queen Victoria, one-quarter of the globe was under British rule. I’m sure it must have been at this point in history that English took hold as the global language for politics and commerce. I’d like to think so.

Growing up against this historic backdrop, the British approach to dealing with people speaking a different language has been to speak loudly and enunciate clearly (in English of course), as if speaking to a rather dim two-year old. The hope being that somewhere between the spoken word and receptive ear an act of symbiosis would take place garnering understanding between the two.

When observed from an external viewpoint I can see this may be rather alarming for the recipient.

The British Education system, in its wisdom, did make a rather half-hearted attempt to introduce modern languages to the curriculum when I was at school. As Latin and Greek had been the only options available up to this point, it was a very enlightened move for its time.

Unfortunately, all innovation stalled there. The concept of selecting something imaginative and useful like Spanish, this at a time when Britons were flocking to the Spanish Costas for their holidays and Spanish was regarded as major global language, was far too avant-garde a step for the Establishment.

In their wisdom the black gowns of academia decided French and German were the more appropriate options. Dear God. Why?

It is a truth acknowledged by the whole of Europe that little love is lost between the peoples of the mighty Great British Island and its neighbours across the English Channel. Particularly the French and Germans. There has been some history.

Scratch the surface with the French and the Battle of Agincourt 1415 (Henry V, we won) still rankles. On their side, regaining Calais from Queen Mary (1558) is still current enough to be conversational.

As for our Teutonic neighbours to the east what can I say? At last years World Cup the loudest taunts from English fans to the German soccer squad were the rousing jeers of, ‘two world wars and one world cup’, along with the two fingered British salute, allegedly a gesture made by British archers to the French at Agincourt.

There are some serious issues going on here.

Wanting to embrace our new culture I pushed these matters to the back of my mind, believing I would overcome them with determination and will power. I ended up one rainy Tuesday morning sitting in a cold, dark room with a group of recently arrived expats, all jet lagged and looking like deer caught in the headlights. To me, they all looked smart, multi-lingual and sophisticated. I wanted to run.

Our Dutch teacher was the dear Dorien, a recently repatriated Dutch expat, the very best Dutch person there is. I realise, looking back, that having returned ‘home’ from her final posting in Brazil, she was probably struggling to adjust more than we were.

My first shock was discovering our work book was in Dutch. Duh. I raised the matter immediately with Dorien. Where was the Dutch/ English vocabulary at the back of the book? Apparently not everyone learning Dutch is English speaking. Really? Not even as a second or third language? The whole notion was alien to my genetic make-up.

More importantly how the hell would I be able to remember anything if I couldn’t constantly refer to the glossary at the back?

After the first ten weeks the stress was beginning to show. The more classes I attended the less I seemed to know. I began to use long forgotten German words, or used Germanic pronunciation, mortifying as I hadn’t spoken the language since leaving school and remember nothing of it. Apparently a typical brain response when learning a new language is to recall languages learned in the past. Hmm.

I continued Dutch into the spring semester despite being frustrated by my inability to grasp any more than the basics. I went mainly because I loved seeing my new friends, going for coffee afterwards and talking about our experiences in the Netherlands.

The biggest problem with the Dutch I was learning was its inappropriateness for the life I was leading. Introducing yourself at formal gatherings (‘My name is Jane, I have moved here from America. I have three children’) presumably whilst juggling a wine glass and a plate complete with a sliding canapé wasn’t what I needed. I could make reservations for the theatre or a restaurant but in real life I didn’t need to.

‘Please can you help me, my car has broken down, I need to collect my son from school, my husband is in Singapore and the dog has just thrown up – can you recommend a vet?’

‘The heating system you installed last week is making a horrendous noise and we haven’tslept for three nights, please send someone out today’

‘We have a water leak and our neighbours are threatening legal action, please can you tell us where the stop-cock is?’ would have been far more practical but weren’t covered in our Dutch book.

All these classes and I still hadn’t managed to go to the local shops, gather my courage and speak, in public, in Dutch. The mere thought reduced me to a gibbering, mindless wreck. It gave me far more insight and empathy for people who moved to my home country and struggled to learn my language.

The day came when I looked myself in the mirror and gave myself a stern talking too. I had to decide whether I was a lion or a mouse. I would have a Dutch day. I would go on my bike with my shopping list, converse in Dutch. I would have a beaming smile, apologise for murdering the language but be brave and have a go. I practised my stock phrases all the way to the shops.

The cheese shop would be my first port of call. I felt like I wanted to throw up, but there was only one other customer in the shop and the staff had always been a friendly bunch. Of course by the time it was my turn a line had formed behind me.

The lady behind the counter was a little fraught, her encounter with the previous customer had not gone well, the line was growing and she was on her own. Her impatience with life in general was obvious.

I took a deep breath and started on my well rehearsed patter. She interrupted almost immediately, in English.

‘What? What are you trying to say?’ her voice was harsh and mortifying loud. The conversations behind me stopped. I froze. I didn’t know where I was, what I wanted, what to say or in what language. As I stood, mouth opening and closing in terror she rolled her eyes, banged on the counter in frustration and yelled, ‘Come on, come on! What language do you want? English, French, Russian, Spanish, German? I haven’t got all day!’

Mutely I pointed out a couple of random items, paid and turned to walk out of the shop, past the Dutch shoppers who eyed me with curiosity and barely disguised laughter. I wanted to get out of there before the stinging in my eyes translated into public tears.

I got on my bike and pedaled home as fast as I could, utterly destroyed. This learning a new language was going to be a little more difficult than I’d anticipated. But I was damned sure I wasn’t going to be a mouse.

Cataracts and Breast Implants: Learning the Lingo Part II

Raunchy Daffodils and Randy Tulips: Learning the Lingo Part III

Posted in England and Things English, Expat Experiences, Family Life, Learning Dutch, Personal challenges | Tagged Battle of Agincourt, Expat, expat experiences with languages, expat life, expats learning new language, how to learn a new language, humor, languages, learning a new language, learning Dutch | 1 Comment

January Blues and Southern Belles

Posted on January 13, 2011 by wordgeyser

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been feeling a tad low and rather sorry for myself.

It may be due to our plague-ridden Christmas/ New Year and ingesting a cocktail of heavy-duty antibiotics and foreign over-the-counter-medication which have left me looking for the nearest cliff to jump off. A bit of a challenge in The Netherlands

Like the rest of my family, my body has finally surrendered to the onslaught of bacteria and I have pneumonia. At least it is an illness no-one else has had. I do not have to argue the severity of my symptoms over theirs, I own this.

The worse part, other than the obvious, has been an inability to read, watch television, spend time on my lap-top or luxuriate in any of the guilty pleasures you look forward to enjoying when you’re sick. Even having a conversation has been exhausting. It has been rather grim.

I will not bore you with the medical whys and wherefores of the past week or so – there is nothing to be gained by discussing the weird and wonderful workings of the Dutch health system.

Let’s just say that a bollocking by our stand-in doctor telling me I should have seen someone at least a week earlier did not go down too well. Admonishment from the doctor was a bit rich as her general mode of medical diagnosis is to send you home to ‘see how it goes’. You’d think she’d be pleased I’d already skipped the first appointment.

Having spent a week in social, intellectual and emotional isolation feeling totally abandoned, tearful and a having strange craving to eat worms, I now recognise that my malaise, although health related to a degree, has more to do with the January Blues.

Let’s face it, it is the most awful of the twelve months if you’re living in the northern hemisphere and has no redeeming features whatsoever. As I write the rain is lashing the windows, the wind is howling and screeching like some demented banshee and it’s dark out there, although it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning.

The Netherlands definitely has more shades of grey in its meteorological repertoire than any paint catalogue I know. Add snow and this monochromatic landscape has to be the most depressing of anywhere I’ve ever known. No wonder Van Gogh cut off his ear and packed off to France. Maybe he got fed up of the howling wind and limited palette of January too.

January Blues it is then, and has to be endured. It’s a month where your mental, physical and emotional strength will be tested and one’s ability to overcome the dreary and dire will define how you face the rest of the year. No pressure there then.

In the past I have prepared for this annual nightmare, galvanised into arranging social engagements for January and February to deflect winter and look forward to the warmth and extra daylight of the spring.

So far this year getting out of bed has been a major triumph. This morning, though, I have felt the faintest stirrings of rebellion and the gentle whisper of defiance caressing the cobwebs of inertia and depression.

The cause of this change in mental attitude?

My dear friend Ann in Louisiana posted a photograph on face book last night. It was of my old GRITS book club – Girls Reading In The South – obviously.

One photograph yet so many memories behind it came flooding back. Friendship, laughter, and most of all fun, whatever else might be falling apart around us. These were the people, along with other dear friends, who walked beside me before, during and after Katrina. These steel magnolias would not be impressed by my appalling lapse in standards just because it’s January.

Qu-hite simp-lay this is no wh-ay a sou-thern lay-day should be be-hav-ing… ev-ah.

Scarlett O’Hara would be horrified and ladies, you are absolutely right.

The rain is slowing and the clouds are slightly (only slightly) less gray, but I will listen to the southern blood which still sings so sweetly in my veins. The make-up will go on, the hair will be done and the perfect smile will be placed just so.

My heart is warmed by thoughts of the blue skies and the wafting breeze of the Deep South, but most of all by the grit of my southern girlfriends, ready to face whatever life throws their way, with perfect lipstick and exquisite manners. It is time to move on, reconnect with everyone and let the sun shine in on a new year.

I will not allow the ravages of a north European January day to drag me down into its gloomy and depressing depths.

Heel no.

Mardi Gras is just around the corner, and although we may be 4000 miles away it’s time to dust off the beads, get making a King cake and maybe, just maybe, it might be time to party…

Posted in Expat Experiences, Inspiration and Reflection, Personal challenges, USA, Women and Female Related | Tagged depression and pneumonia, Expat, expat illness and pneumonia, expats and homesickness, feelings of homesickness, feelings of sadness and loss, January blues, king cake, Mardi Gras, missing friends and family, missing new orleans, New Orleans, post christmas blues, southern belles, southernliving | 3 Comments

Diplomatic Incidents: The Memoirs of an (un)Diplomatic Wife by Cherry Denman

Posted on January 6, 2011 by wordgeyser

For anyone who has lived abroad, is planning on living abroad or just dreams of it, this is a book to get you started.

Delightful in its honesty, upbeat and gloriously irreverent you can share in the nightmare of life overseas without ever leaving your armchair, or remind yourself of your own disasters living in a foreign (to you) country.

This is not a book you would expect to be written by the wife of one of HMG Diplomats. The fact she has opened the door (a chink) on life in the Foreign Office overseas and is not currently in the Tower says a lot.

This is a woman who has faced head-on the quirky, often distasteful (literally) and sometimes crippling realities of living away from her home country. She does not flinch from faulty plumbing, homesickness or buying food in places left off the map, behind politically solid curtains or closed doors.

If you’re a trailing spouse (male or female) in the cause of diplomacy, oil or other spousal career this book will resonate deeply. From packing up and moving on – again – to being the one left behind, Cherry Denman has done it all and survived. She’s done it accepting life can be, and often is, pretty shitty, that there are times divorce is a viable option and some days living overseas doesn’t do it for you any more.

Her biggest strength is recognising these emotions as being part of the bigger picture, riding with them and coming out the other side. She finds humour in the absurdities, the differences and the downright weird but is always respectful of the community she finds herself in, and laughs most at herself.

What surprised me was how Cherry’s personality shines through every page, she’s seems less Superwoman and more Mrs Okay-this’ll-do. I appreciate this is an entertaining literary device but it’s far more refreshing to read about someone who spends her life winging it with the best of us rather than Mrs Super-Organised and Perfect.

I finished the book with a smile on my face wanting to call Cherry and thank her for brightening my day. She’s the kind of woman you’d want by your side in a tight spot and would probably know how to create something useful out of a roll of duct tape, a wire coat-hanger and some sticky backed plastic. She’s one of the last of a dying breed, the kind of woman behind the building of the empire.

Did I mention her illustrations throughout are pretty damn good too?

Diplomatic Incidents: The Memoirs of an (un)Diplomatic Wife Cherry Denman

Publisher: John Murray (13 May 2010)

Language English
ISBN-10: 1848542410
ISBN-13: 978-1848542419

Posted in Expat Related Book Reviews | Tagged book review, cherry denman, diplomatic incidents, Expat, expat books, expat family, expat wives, Humour - Dark, Light and Shades Inbetween | Leave a comment

Diplomatic Incidents In the Sick Bed

Posted on January 4, 2011 by wordgeyser

I have been forced back to bed for the day by my husband, not for the bliss of carnal delights, but because he seems to think I’m ‘going down with something’. The possibility of the domestic helm being unmanned has galvanised him into action, and armed with a thermometer he has talked me into resting up to avoided the pestilence sweeping through our Holiday guests.

The Captain was floored by bronchitis on Boxing Day, followed by eldest son keeling over with a chest infection/flu on the 28th and his girlfriend following with the flu two days later. I am not making this up. All cases have been confirmed by The Hague’s Bronovo hospital and our GP.

Harry has been closeted in his room for the past week in trying to avoid the plague – Missy flew out to Baton Rouge ahead of the major wave of sickness.

So what to do with an enforced day of bed rest?

I have on my night stand a copy of a book I should have reviewed before Christmas. It is described on the inside cover as, ‘hilarious tales of global misunderstanding’ – to be told something is funny always makes me slightly nervous and, I have to admit, wary.

I was asked to review it as, like the author, I have lived away from my home country and experienced the pitfalls of living overseas. However, the book is written by a diplomat’s wife and as the Captain will attest the words ‘diplomatic’ and ‘wife’ should never be used in the same sentence when referring to me.

I’m a little nervous about the project. How many books have you read which were described as stomach clutchingly funny only to read them and discover you’ve missed the point, or worse still, the writer has?

As far as I’m concerned there is only one book in the English language which I have ever truly thought of as funny. One I read as a teenager and have read every year or so since. I was actually given a detention by a teacher who refused to believe my uncontrollable mirth and inability to speak was due to reading this book during a study period.

It’s not a book for the faint hearted – there are parts which I struggle with, but the comedy and use of language, although from a different era and century (1889 to be exact) manages to capture the essence of human nature across time. Its humour and wit are still fresh and alive today.

I defy anyone to read the first chapter of Jerome K. Jerome‘s Three Men in a Boat and not close the book with a smile, feeling more uplifted than before. Forget the movie or TV adaptation, the humour is in the writing – the style and measured tone, the use of imagination in a time before television and film.

That’s all I ever hope for in a book – enrichment, entertainment and education. To turn the last page feeling edified as if something significant has ended. I want a book to stay in my head for days afterwards, allowing my thoughts to drift over the plot and style, to probe my initial emotional response and see if it still holds true.

These days I’m often left deflated and disappointed on reading books regarded as the latest and greatest by critics. It’s rather depressing to have spent time and emotion on a book that leaves you feeling a bit let down.

So here I am. Looking at Cherry Denman’s book in my hands and wondering… I’ll let you know how it goes.

Posted in Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Expat Experiences, Family Life, The Netherlands | Tagged diplomatic incidents, diplomatic incidents by cherry denman, expat family, expat wives, Jerome K. Jerome, Life Around The Hague, three men in a boat, what makes a book funny | 1 Comment

Expat Kids Home for Christmas – In a Place They’ve Never Lived

Posted on December 27, 2010 by wordgeyser

I know, I know. We all feel that sense of anti-climax after Christmas. The present buying and wrapping, decorating the house, cooking, getting excited for the children coming home, travelling to friends and family, constant activity and mania – then nothing.

By Boxing Day the limp balloon of expectation has deflated into the inertia of waiting for New Year. A long, long week of over indulgence, forced jollity and ennui.

Normally the Captain would be rallying the troops but he is sick. The third Christmas in a row, which would give any psychologist food for thought. We spent last night at the Bronovo hospital in The Hague getting him sorted. The Captain is now in bed, out of it on prescribed and over the counter medication, and the children are going stir crazy.

Let’s face it, the older two have never lived in the Netherlands, this is not their home. They have no connection to anything or anyone here except us. They’ve done all the touristy stuff they ever want to and have no desire to keep doing it every time they visit.

The weather right now is pretty grim and Missy is struggling in the arctic temperatures and desperate to get back to the relative warmth of Louisiana and her real life there. Joe and his girlfriend have arrived from northwest England and enjoy it here, but like Missy, find being in the Netherlands far removed from their real life.

They are not residents or tourists. They have come home, but it isn’t home – they are foreigners in a country where they are unsure of the cultural rules and codes of behaviour. They are never here long enough to fully absorb it. It isn’t their home and never will be.

In the short time we are together over the Holidays we have to meld the USA, UK and European cultures we live in during the year, and recreate the sense of family the five of us have made for ourselves over the years. It’s complex and because it’s Christmas emotions run high.

I hate this limbo before New Year, there is no normal structure to our days and, being realistic, our routines are not those of Joe or Missy. So what is normal for us in the end days of the year?

We play cards, charades, and go eat at the Hard Rock café in Amsterdam. Not earth shattering or exciting but a touchstone for each of us to reconnect with each other. We watch the same movies, laugh over family stories, josh and chat. Every year at this point I get maudlin and melancholy and hate myself for feeling this way. And no, it’s not alcohol induced.

At the back of my mind the spectre of Joe and Missy heading off again is looming in the dark place in my psyche and we have no plans for when we’ll get together again. They could live on the same street and we might not see them for months but having hundreds, and in Missy’s case thousands, of miles separating us is difficult for me to get my head round.

Joe and Missy will enjoy their time here and go back to their lives quite happily, especially Missy who is counting the hours to being home, in her own bed, and seeing her dog. Her life. As it should be. Her quote for this year has been, ‘I don’t know how y’all live in this awful weather’. Truth be told Missy, neither do we.

So here I am, sitting in my closet thinking it all through. For the last 27 years we have spent Christmas at home (wherever it has been) trying to give us stability and continuity through some pretty tough life challenges. We created something which has remained the same while everything around us has changed, including us.

Our family Christmas no longer reflects who we are or who we will become. No wonder the kids are bored and I’m in the closet. To say nothing of the sick Captain.

I mentioned last Christmas I thought it was time for a change and was shot down by Captain and off-spring, but maybe now is a good time to reopen negotiations. Perhaps we should establish new traditions to accommodate the changes in the lives we have and will have as the children create their own families, wherever they choose to settle.

This is a positive and constructive way to move forward for all of us. It’s exciting. Oh yes, this could be very, very positive. I’m thinking sunshine, travelling and fun, not a god damn turkey in sight…

Posted in Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Dutch Culture, Expat Experiences, Family Life, Women and Female Related | Tagged Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, empty nest, expat family, expat kids home for christmas, expat kids home in country they haven't lived in, expat moms, post christmas blues, TCKS home for christmas | 2 Comments

Planes, Trains and Snowmobiles

Posted on December 20, 2010 by wordgeyser

Here we go again. Further adventures in the Snowmobile. The Captain is en route from Harwich along with refugees from the nightmare of Heathrow and the other London airports.

Guess who’s designated to pick him up?

I’m also collecting Don and Stuart, husband and son of Liz, who have ended up in the same boat as the Captain. Literally. Having mentioned Liz in a earlier blog I’m now on a parallel adventure related to her. Weird karma.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sat in the dark at the Hook of Holland ferry terminal. Not in the terminal, in my car. It’s taken one and a half hours to get here with no traffic on the roads. What other idiot out in this at 7 on a Sunday morning?

I’ve already reversed into one vehicle, a white van (divine retribution for what I said about the white van tribe last week) and the Captain has called to say the ferry will be two hours late. The temperature is -3°C.

Oh joy.

There is no obvious reason the ferry is late, it left on time, the weather was okay and there’s not much to avoid in the North Sea. The Captain, being a maritime man, assures me from his cabin there is no reason on this God damn earth for the delay. I’m sensing a small amount of frustration.

He’s secured himself a luxury cabin below the bridge, with an eight-foot diameter porthole allowing the same view of the ocean as the crew on watch above. I have a feeling he’ll have spent most of the night propped in his bed looking out of the window keeping a steely eye on the weather and his ears cocked for the subtlest change in engine noise. He’s probably feeling a tad manic now.

I haven’t told him that the reason for the delay is here at the Hook. In the last 15 minutes I’ve seen four gritting trucks and three snow ploughs fairly whizzing round the ferry terminal. It’s just started to get light which I’m sure is no coincidence.

Not having seen a gritting truck for the last five days I watch in awe as these mythical beasts growl and bellow their way around scooping up the very snow which is offering the only traction any of the vehicles around me have, exposing sheet ice underneath.

You’ve got to wonder.

I have to say it’s all rather grim. Not a photo op in sight and another hour and a half to go.

There’s a kind of greasy Joe’s café with steamy windows at the terminal entrance, full of jolly truckers bundled up in layers, with scarves knotted jauntily under their chins, cupping steaming buckets of tea in their hands. Someone is obviously recounting a hilarious tale as periodically they rock back on their heels and roar with laughter.

Glad someone’s having a good time.

There’s also the terminal building itself which I know has only vending machines and toilets which I will need. Soon.

I’m loath to leave the snowmobile. I’m parked, like everyone else, in a no parking zone and need to move quickly should a uniform appear. This is Holland, I’m sure one will.

I’m trying to factor the warm air inside/ cold air outside ratio. How long will it take the cold air outside to leech the heat from inside the vehicle? I wonder vaguely if there is a law for that, one of Newton’s or Einstein’s, but did they have a car? I refuse to turn on the engine until hypothermia is imminent.

Having been trained well by my father, I’m wrapped up warm in several layers topped with a down coat and six-foot scarf suitable for head, neck, and in extreme conditions, face coverage.

The biggest debate was which boots to wear. Uggs for warmth and ultimate comfort but useless in the wet and hated with a passion by the Captain, or waterproofs in case of vehicle breakdown and having to trek through snow. I’ve gone with the waterproofs and two pairs of socks including Harry’s Scooby-Doo slipper socks which he’s never worn.

Already the cold is sucking the heat from my feet and knees, but there is a dog blanket in the boot/ trunk which I could reach in an emergency if I climbed over the seats, not an easy task wearing all these clothes. I can’t feel my feet anymore and wonder if my lethargy is caused by first stage hypothermia.

I have my insulated ‘to go’ mug of tea, which I haven’t drunk in case I need the bathroom but decide to drink it to avoid dehydration becoming an issue. The one thing I didn’t throw in the car was a shovel.

Time passes.

I’ve cleared candy wrappers out of the door pockets and collected all the loose change from under the seats, made my shopping list for the week and filled in the Christmas order for vegetables from the greengrocer on the Langstraat. That done, I’ve reorganised the centre console and found two working torches, 500 ibuprofen, several key rings, pens and a pair of broken glasses I didn’t know were there.

The contents of my purse are even more surprising. Five teabags in handy container – a trip to the greasy Joe’s could be on the cards – umbrella, camera, fabric samples from 2006, tissues, nail polish and file, hair brush and clips, eye drops and sundry lotions, potions and hand sanitizers. Eat your heart out Mary Poppins. I’m surprised there’s not a spare pair of knickers in there.

I’ve found some wet-wipes, wiped over the dashboard and organised the coins into size order in the ashtray. I always keep a few US quarters in there for using in the shopping carts, and less likely to disappear than the 50 euro cent coins.

More cars are arriving at the terminal, it’s a real hive of activity again. It’s very murky out there and getting colder in here but I still don’t want to leave the relative security of the car, especially as it’s now decluttered and clean.

I’ve never understood why, in every horror movie I’ve ever seen, people always leave the sanctuary of the tent, vehicle, house etc in the face of demonic or bestial danger. Guess that’s why horror films don’t really cut it for me.

Oh. My. God. Through the murky greyness a white ‘S’ on a red background is looming through the mist like a prehistoric leviathan and lumbering slowly alongside the dock.

The Captain is finally home.

After leaving JFK (New York) on Thursday, arriving at London City Airport Friday, transferred to Heathrow by nice (at that time) BA staff who found a car and a driver and put him in a hotel Friday night, four trains across London to Harwich on Saturday, the Harwich/ Hook of Holland ferry Saturday night, my hero is finally home.

Shoot, I’d better go find the bathroom and some hot water so the Captain can have a decent cup of tea…

Posted in Expat Experiences, Family Life, The Netherlands | Tagged driving, driving in snow, Harwich Rotterdam ferry, Heathrow, hook of holland ferry, international travel delays due to weather, keeping warm in vehicle in snow conditions, snow mobile, stuck in vehicle in bad weather, travel delays due to snow, travel delays due to snow in europe, travel delays due to snow in the Netherlands, travel delays due to snow in UK, travel problems, winter driving in the Netherlands | 4 Comments

Wassenaar White-out

Posted on December 18, 2010 by wordgeyser

I’m done with the snow and you can cancel Christmas too. We woke up this morning to the wonderful light and deep quiet of a new snowfall, a real magical winter wonderland.

Like an idiot I’d promised Harry I’d drive him into school as he’s had exams this week. We headed out in swirling snow, and by the time I’d dropped him off and returned home I was frazzled.

I’d planned a calm, peaceful day spending some down time with Missy, who hadn’t emerged from under the duvet since she arrived in the Netherlands from Baton Rouge, USA on Wednesday. When the Captain returned home from New York via London later in the afternoon I wanted to be serene and relaxed waiting to soothe his hassled brow.

After a cup of coffee it was time to take on the challenge of the day. My dear friend Liz was storing two of M&S’s finest turkey breasts (with chestnut stuffing) in her refrigerator. I’m sorry, but the days of cooking a 20lb turkey à la Martha Stewart are long gone – I do not have the wrist strength to lift the darn thing in and out of the oven and baste it every half hour.

Liz called yesterday and asked the turkey breasts be removed from her residence immediately as she needed the refrigerator space. Fair enough, she’d driven to the UK to get them so I was suitably grateful. I could be there and back in less time than it would take Missy to get up and showered, so no time wasted.

By 9.15 I was back on road. In normal conditions it takes 15 minutes each way. Once I hit the highway I had a feeling it was going to take a tad longer. The clear road surface of half an hour before was covered with several inches of fluffy white flakes, the sky an inky black and snow falling in chunks rather than flakes.

I sighed and decided to go with the flow, switched on the radio and tuned my brain out. Only that wasn’t possible. Driving was taking every ounce of concentration.

My vehicle has all wheel drive, a snow button (see Snow Day in The Hague), a manual override on the automatic gearbox and I still managed some pretty spectacular skids without touching my brakes at all. I’ve decided I’m getting old – I used to love driving in conditions like this, now it’s just a pain.

The trip took three and a half hours.

I never want to listen to Sky radio 101 FM or the chirpy ‘hundert een FM sky radio’ jingle ever again, but it was the only station where they spoke Dutch slowly enough for me to get the gist of the traffic news. Nor did I want to figure out what they’d been doing to slow their speech down to understandable levels.

Utrecht was having a bitch of a time and there was a 30km gridlock around the Amsterdam ring road and most other major roads were at a standstill. Worse, Schiphol (Amsterdam) airport was on the verge of closing at the same time the Captain sent a text to say he had landed in London.

There was nothing I could do except listen to the radio but the overly jolly Christmas songs were enough to make you bang your head on the steering wheel, which I did several times to alleviate the boredom and rid myself of the throbbing headache which started one hour and twenty minutes into the expedition.

I debated several times whether to turn round and go home, assuming I could do a U-turn safely, but having got so far I kept thinking conditions would improve.

They didn’t.

There are only so many traffic light changes a person can tolerate without moving before anxiety and stress levels started to increase. The Dutch are a stoic bunch and I was impressed by their calm and reasonable behaviour in the face of major gridlock, well, for the first hour or so at least, then white van man began to crack.

Before long white vans were slithering all over the place causing chaos and mounting resentment among the rest of us. After observing several rear-end shunts the situation reached critical and a number of white van men were out of their vehicles threatening each other with extreme violence. This cheered the rest of us up no end and injected some much needed entertainment into the proceedings.

Whilst they were sliding their slightly scrunched vans from the highway we started to inch forward. The headache was getting worse and Archie cross-legged and cross-eyed on the back seat.

Did I mention he was with me?

He was dragged along so Missy wouldn’t have her beauty sleep disturbed. He loves being in the car but even his enthusiasm had waned. He’d managed to climb over from the trunk/ boot into the back seat and made himself very cosy. From there he had the perfect vantage point to suss out what was going on and check out other travelling canines.

He and a rather vicious looking Alsatian in a white van exchanged throaty growls and several of those ‘come on then, let’s see what you’re made of’ barks. He was also rather taken with a pretty little Bichon who was frantically trying to attract his attention for a couple of hundred yards. He played it very cool.

We had the windows down for a while so he could catch snowflakes on his tongue, but even that palled. In the end he adopted a superior sphinx-like pose and expressed his ennui with heavy sighs and the occasional disdainful yawn.

Back in local territory I decided we both needed some fresh air – there’s something about being stuck in traffic, or airports, which make you dream of running through sunny meadows or along a sandy beach. We settled for a copse near us which we had to drive past to get home.

Boy, was that fresh air good. The quiet was absolute – that wonderful muted softness which absorbs all sound and makes you think you’ve walked through a wardrobe into heaven. It was glorious and by a quirk of fate I had my camera in the car.

By the time we got home a sense of calm had replaced that awful thick-headed fugginess and I was hopeful the day could only improve.

Oh, what optimism.

Within half an hour it was clear the Captain wouldn’t be flying home tonight, and school had sent an emergency text message to say it was closing early. Another forced trip into the winter wonderland was endured, only to find Harry had jumped on a bus to get home.

It’s late and I’m sitting cupping a mug of mulled wine in my hands – come on it’s been a tough day – watching the snow fall outside. The Captain is in a hotel at Heathrow where he’s scheduled to fly out in the morning.

We may still need to implement plan B – he hires a car, drives to Harwich and comes over on the ferry tomorrow night. Assuming there are tickets available and I can get down to the Hook of Holland Sunday to pick him up.

Oh well, that’s life and at least I’m not one of the two thousand people expected to sleep at Schiphol tonight, my turkeys are in the freezer and everyone’s safe. Maybe Christmas could be back on the cards after all. Talking of cards…

Posted in Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Expat Experiences, Inspiration and Reflection, The Netherlands | Tagged Christmas, December in the Netherlands, driving in snow, Expat, loving snow, serenity of snow, snow days in the netherlands, snow in the netherlands, Thanksgiving and Holidays, traffic delays in snow, winter driving in the Netherlands, winter traffic in the netherlands | 1 Comment

Expat Moms and Global Sisters

Posted on December 13, 2010 by wordgeyser

Today I feel especially close to expat moms like me who are counting down the days and hours to their off-spring heading ‘home’ for the Holidays.

As a family, we’ve celebrated Christmas in the same way every year – familiar food, decorations, and traditions linking us to the past we’ve left behind and the unknown future ahead. From each place we’ve taken some of the local flavour and carried it with us to the next Christmas.

We’re scattered over the globe now, living individual lives in different cultures but this is the time we get together, close the door on the world and just be.

Like many families we have rituals and customs linking us with our relatives and friends wherever they are. We do the same things at the same time and there’s a sense of connection despite the differing time zones and geographical distance. We feel part of a bigger whole.

Aside from the religious aspect (yes I know, technically, it is the sole reason, but bear with me) the symbol of Christmas and family for me is our tree. It stands quirkily decorated, not with designer precision or fashionable baubles, but adorned with memories of the people and places who are forever woven into the fabric of our lives and hearts. Each year the decorations are unwrapped with love and care, and the memory behind each one draws me back to a special time, place, or person.

Christmas is a time for reflection on so many levels.

In the past few years, since the older two have left home, and particularly as our youngest has started university in Vancouver, Canada, thoughts have turned increasingly to the lives we lead and the impact this has had on our children. And let’s face it, the impact on us as our children are often far from the nest.

Whatever we say publicly about the positives of global life, deep inside there is often a quiet voice wishing the children were closer and we could see them more often. Hug them, breathe them in. That sense is most acute at this time of year, for me at least.

It’s complicated. There are no right and wrongs, we have to figure out what works best for us and our children and in our rational moments we pull ourselves together and get on with it. We all know life moves forward and generally celebrate it with open arms, embracing the challenges.

Sometimes on a quiet, gloomy winter afternoon like this, I sit by the tree watching the lights flicker on the ornaments and relive memories. My global sisters are in many of them.

They know who they are. I see their smiles, laughter and support in the mismatched and sometimes tacky decorations bought as a joke or a dare. Among the comical and fun are the ones which touch my heart, bringing dear friends close, as if they’re sitting in the room with me. I remember the glorious times when we have been a part of each others lives, watched each others children grow, even if it was for a short while. And I smile knowing somewhere in the world they too are reflecting and waiting for their children to come home, just like me.

Happy Holidays to my global sisters and expat moms everywhere… have to dash, there’s a plane to meet…

Posted in Advice for New Arrivals in the Netherlands, Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Expat Experiences, Family Life, Inspiration and Reflection, Women and Female Related | Tagged empty nest, empty nest christmas, expat christmas, expat christmas experiences, expat families together for christmas, expat family, expat friendships, expat girlfriends, expat kids heading home for christmas, expat moms, girlfriends, TCKs and christmas, TCKs heading home for christmas | 5 Comments

Our highlight of the night? Coronation Street…

Posted on December 7, 2010 by wordgeyser

… and the much anticipated 50^th year celebration of Coronation Street on British television (watched here in the Netherlands on satellite TV).

To anyone not having a British heritage you may be scratching your head in confusion.

Coronation Street is a soap opera running on British TV for 50 years. It is regarded with reverence by the nation, shown five times a week and can bring the country to its knees when moved from its regular time slot to accommodate declarations of war, royal engagements or Manchester United playing a big game.

This is a National Treasure you don’t mess with.

It’s one of those soaps where you can live abroad for twenty years, move back and pick up the storyline. Should there be any confusion over new characters brought in during your absence, you only have to ask another Brit to fill in the gaps and you’re back on track. It helps that several characters in the soap when you left are still there, older but recognisable.

What has always set the show apart is its dead-pan humour and one liners that leave you gasping with admiration. And, having watched it, who can ever forget Reg Holdsworth and the water-bed? I don’t need to talk about the characters, they have been well documented elsewhere over the years and are beloved by the nation.

Set in the north of England, the back streets of Weatherfield are somewhere near Manchester, a territory little known to anyone south of Birmingham. The northern tribe is regarded with suspicion by its southern cousins, who find the northern accent foreign, blunt and Neanderthal compared to the elongated vowels they use in warmer, soft climes

I’m not a TV columnist, and my opinions on programming are private and verbal, yelled at the TV screen during transmission but I hope the storyline improves tonight if they want to sustain the ratings.

The explosion and tram crash were reminiscent of watching Thunderbirds back in the day. All a bit wooden, wobbly, and long shots to hide the strings. Great concept – current storylines filmed as they would have been 50 years ago. Sadly, it was wasted on me.

Expect I’ll lynched for saying it, but feel I missed the point. The Captain assures me I did. He and Harry watched both episodes with a level of rapture usually reserved for a Man United game. They loathe soaps and kept asking who was who. The Captain insists I fell asleep half way through, doubtful given the questions thrown my way, but entirely possible as the second episode did feel shorter than the first.

Will I be watching tonight? Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Corrie doesn’t need all this hype and staged drama, its strength is, and always has been, its solid characters and gritty northern bite.

As someone raised in the midlands, with two children born in Yorkshire, and one dating a Lancashire lass, I know where my loyalties lie.

Posted in England and Things English, Family Life | Tagged award winning british soaps, british television soaps, British TV, coronation street, coronation street 50th anniversary, Corrie, manchester, tv soaps, weatherfield | Leave a comment

Snow Day in The Hague

Posted on December 2, 2010 by wordgeyser

Snow Day! Well, we have about an inch but the way the Dutch roads have ground to a halt makes you think we had at least six feet. Driving into The Hague this morning was easy – driving out after four hours of continual snow was not.

The roads which had been clear and relatively fast-moving at rush hour had turned into skid pans. By the time I got back to the car, I was amazed there wasn’t a parking ticket flapping under my windscreen wiper. Not that I would have seen it as the windscreen was, of course, buried under snow. It had covered the parking tag, technically violating the ‘parking ticket must be visible at all times’ rule.

I brushed dry powdery snow off all the windows, climbed in the driving seat and started preparations for pre-ignition countdown. Front and rear wipers working – check. Front and rear window heaters, there were buttons somewhere I knew there were, but the instruction manual was in the trunk/boot… okay, found them – check. Heated seat button, essential for comfort, well-being and sanity of driver – check.

A flask of hot tea would have been nice, but I only had 6 km to travel. I realised that might take some time as I’d been sat in the car for ten minutes and still hadn’t started the engine.

My parking time had expired, I needed to get moving. I saw a traffic warden approaching. Not that he seemed worried about me, he was too busy moving from lamp post to trash can to anything he could grab hold of to keep his balance. I have to admit to a frisson of pleasure at his discomfort. Mean, I know, but I have been on the receiving end of a traffic warden’s wrath and it was a humiliating experience.

Right. Ignition sequence. The car burst into life, Houston would have been proud. I manoeuvred into the traffic, never easy in The Hague with so much going on in a relatively confined space. The bikes for one thing – it was way too dangerous being out in that weather in a car, let alone on a bike. Do the dutch have a death wish? They were all over the place, ignoring the bike lanes and weaving and wobbling everywhere.

And was it necessary for the elderly Dutch to take their Zimmer frames out in conditions like that?

Mirror, signal, manoeuvre, there were no loud bangs, crunches or screamed obscenities (amazingly dutch curse words are very similar to english ones – too much foreign TV) launch sequence was succesful. We had lift off.

Unfortunately, I had not pulled out fast enough for White Van Man who was screeching up behind me. I swear he had not been there thirty seconds before. For a moment I wondered if his trajectory was intentional or whether his ABS had failed, resulting in a sideways skid. Sorry, not my problem. As long as he didn’t careen into the back of me of course.

It dawned on me I could override the automatic gearbox and put it into manual, giving me better control of the car, and debated whether the centre of The Hague, in snow, was the best time to initiate the changeover.

Thinking this through I navigated a traffic circle at a bizarre angle. I was trying to figure out how the roads were frozen and slushy at the same time. It was -5°C (21°F) outside. I checked the wing mirror and my eye caught the glint of a switch to the south-west of the steering column marked ‘snow’.

I had no clue what it was for but it looked interesting and rather seasonal.

The car was going up a slight incline and there was no traffic around. The snow was deeper here, perhaps because of the higher altitude, so I went for it and pressed the ‘snow’ button.

Sheer, sheer bliss. I. Was. In. Heaven. It was an adrenalin rush of pure pleasure. A heady mix of fear and excitement. Okay, so this was a side road in The Hague and I was actually only doing 40mph, but I felt like Toad in his new sports car.

Heading into Wassenaar the roads were worse and it was wonderful to steam along the empty frozen tracks of what had been busy thoroughfares only a few hours before. The car felt more like a John Deere than a car, but who cares, it was fun. Bring on more snow, I’m sooo ready and the forecast for tonight is looking good…

Posted in Dutch Culture, Expat Experiences, The Netherlands | Tagged driving, driving in snow, driving in the hague, driving in winter conditions, humor, John Deere, Life Around The Hague, snow in the netherlands, Wassenaar, winter driving, winter driving in the Netherlands | 1 Comment

The Problems of an American pre-lit Christmas Tree in Europe…

Posted on November 30, 2010 by wordgeyser

Right. It’s involved two step ladders, several beer mats (for balance, duh) and it’s time for the big switch on, tad-daa… okay, so who moved the transformer? It’s kept in the same place all year, and at this point in the proceedings I get it out, plug the lights in and va-voom, the perfect tree.

Only someone used it during the year, isn’t owning up and we have no clue where it is.

We have the perfect tree, no twinkling lights (1300 of them should be on and sparkling) and a dog who’s looking at it as if we’ve provided him with an inside toilet.

I am beyond mad. I hate putting up the tree. In an ideal world it should be done calmly with joy and serenity whilst listening to Christmas carols, and yes, maybe, sipping some festive cheer.

Instead I’m hot, sweaty, covered in dust, scratched by the 3649 bloody branches (the box it came in has these alarming facts written all over it) and instead of carols I’m listening to the dog bark and howl at this new thing in the room. It was here last year, and it was no problem. This year it obviously offends his karma. If he doesn’t shut up he’ll end up being a decoration on the darn thing.

But I can’t put the decorations on the tree till the lights have been tested. We all know that. Arrgghhh. There are boxes of Christmas stuff over every bit of floor, the dust cloud is getting worse. And the transformer is STILL missing.

Yes, I have checked EVERYWHERE in the house, so I’m hotter, more sweaty and in need of something calming. Forget festive cheer, I’m thinking vodka.

This is supposed to be fun and lovely – the highlight of the domestic year.

Yeh, right.

The dog is commando crawling towards the tree with low throaty growls and a manic glint in his eye. The snow’s starting to fall outside again and I need to get a grip. It’s a Christmas tree, the transformer will (please God) turn up.

If this is stressful I’d better not think about the Christmas cards I was planning to write this afternoon. Well, if I find the transformer they could still get done…

It’s time to get outside and calm me, and the dog, down. At least the below freezing air will get the dust out of my lungs.

Will let you know about the transformer.

Posted in Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Expat Experiences, Family Life, The Netherlands | Tagged american pre-lit Christmas tree in Europe, Christmas, electrical transformers, Expat, expat christmas, pre-lit christmas trees, putting up a christmas tree, taking pre-lit tree from USA to Europe, Thanksgiving and Holidays, usa pre-lit christmas trees in europe | 1 Comment

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2010 by wordgeyser

I’d never given much thought to American Thanksgiving, other than it was an American holiday at the end of November. I knew it commemorated the pilgrims first year of survival in the New World and that was about it.

We moved to the USA in 1997 and our first Thanksgiving was a revelation. In my superior British way, I assumed this was an American excuse for a fun time, shopping and good TV. After all, this was a young, brash, in-your-face-country which couldn’t hold a candle to Europe when it came to tradition, spectacle, and let’s face it, class.

I know, I was an a**.

We’d been invited to spend our Thanksgiving with business colleagues of the Captain. They’d generously invited us to share the day with them and their extended family. We had no clue what to expect and had been told to bring nothing but ourselves.

As Thanksgiving approached and the nation went into overdrive we began to sense this was a much a bigger deal than we’d thought.

Christmas trees were appearing everywhere (one notable local family had their 15 foot Christmas tree dressed and in their 2-story foyer at Halloween), along with exterior lights and decorations. The only comparable reference I had was Oxford Street, London, at the switching on of the Christmas lights. I was seriously worried about the ability of the national grid to handle the load.

We hadn’t realised the Holiday season started at Thanksgiving. Or rather the day after, Black Friday, the biggest day of the year for retailers. Shell-shocked by this cultural anomaly we arrived at our hosts on Thanksgiving Day.

We were assaulted by glorious cooking smells, noise, and general mayhem. This didn’t sit well with our English sensibilities. Nor was this was a typical Deep South Thanksgiving (we realised later) but a New York Jewish one, with all the lively banter and chaos that entailed.

The women chatted in the kitchen and the men passed considered opinions on the Big Game, while they watched the pre-match analysis on the TV. Amongst this children were racing around having a good time, watched indulgently by relaxed adults.

By the time we sat down for dinner the last thing we felt like was food. From the minute we’d stepped through the front door we’d been offered a constant supply of appetizers and knew it would have been ungracious to refuse. Food is love and this was the season to celebrate both.

We couldn’t believe the amount and variety of festive fare on offer, some of it traditional all-American, some Jewish. We started with matzah ball soup. The kids handled this well, and managed to disguise their surprise when mashed sweet potato topped with melted marshmallows followed with the main course. It was very different to anything we had previously regarded as a turkey dinner.

By the time the meal over everyone was ready to explode. We left pretty soon afterwards, feeling, as only brits can, that our hosts may appreciate some time with their immediate family. In reality they probably thought we were rude and churlish for leaving before the end of the day, such is the warmth and welcoming nature of every American I’ve ever met.

From our perspective as British naturalized Americans it has been wonderful over the years, to observe how people celebrate Thanksgiving and we fully appreciate – now – how deeply ingrained it is in the American psyche.

America is an embracing nation, whatever your opinion on the global and national politics of the country its people have huge hearts and great generosity of spirit. They are curious, enthusiastic and embracing.

It has diverse nationalities, cultures, colors and religions all trying to get along. Of course it’s not easy, but once a year the nation observes a tradition that transcends race, color, creed and politics, with everybody bringing something of their own to the table.

Literally.

Thanksgiving celebrates life and shared humanity. Whatever our backgrounds or ethnic origins we all want the best for our families and the freedom to live and worship the way we choose. It has a purity at its core which is sometimes lost in the hurly burly of life. It allows us to focus on family, friends and sharing food, acknowledging two of our most basic human needs, companionship and sustenance.

So to our friends and family all over the globe, whatever country you’re in, whoever you’re sharing the day with, safe travels and have a happy, reflective, Thanksgiving.

For anyone who’s interested in how Thanksgiving is celebrated in the south, check out www.southernliving.com

Posted in Christmas, Thanksgiving and Holidays, Expat Experiences, Family Life, Inspiration and Reflection, USA | Tagged american thanksgiving, celebrating thanksgiving as a foreigner, Expat, expat experience of Thanksgiving, purity of Thanksgiving, southern living magazine, Thanksgiving, thanksgiving as an expat | Leave a comment

Mutton or Lamb?: Being comfortable with yourself…

Posted on November 21, 2010 by wordgeyser

I spent much of my younger life dressed as mutton not lamb. Bringing home new clothes and showing them to the Captain, he’d say, ‘Lovely darling, but why don’t you buy something younger looking and more, well, you?’

In my first proper job we had to wear business attire, preferably a suit. This look worked surprisingly well when accessorised with 4-inch heels. With the arrival of children I dressed how I thought a mature and responsible mother should do, ie. bland, boring, and inoffensive. Not a high heel in sight. Think Princess Diana before she got into her groove.

As I’ve got older I’m more tempted to screw what I ought to wear and go for what I like.

Not as easy as you think. Most stores seem to cater for our daughters – you look great but the face doesn’t fit, or our moms – nofurther comment necessary. And whilst I’d love to swan around in designer clothes the practicalities of dog slobber and dog hairs makes that a no-no except on special occasions.

Day to day wear now is jeans. After 10 years in New Orleans when wearing jeans in temperatures below 80*F happened maybe a week or two a year, I’m enjoying being in a four season climate again and wearing sweaters and – yay – jeans.

So today, excited by an express shipment from the UK I tried on my new jeans in front of the bedroom mirror – one of those awful ones that seem to add at least 10 lbs – and stared at my reflection in dismay.

I’d had a discussion recently with my son Harry about mothers wearing what he scathingly referred to as ‘mom jeans’. I’d assumed he meant they were the wrong label or leg cut. I hadn’t expected the answer I got when I asked him to explain what he meant.

‘Well, you know, the waist on the jeans is too high and the pockets on the back are too low.’ I’d snorted in derision and the conversation had stopped right there.

Now looking at my reflected gluteus maximus in fascination I understood what he meant. The pockets were lower than they would have been on perfectly pert buttocks so I’d have to oik them up for the perfect fit.

To do that, and move, I was going to have to spend the day totally rigid, breathing in and walking like C3PO rather than Kate Moss. I knew from experience that a larger size would be too baggy on the legs. Oh shoot, they would have to go back.

Feeling queasy and faint, due to the tight waistband, I decided to go find Harry and ask his opinion. Sixteen, and brutally honest he had, on one memorable occasion and without prompting, uttered the words, ‘Mum, I really wouldn’t go out of the house dressed like that if I were you.’ I figured he could be trusted to tell me the truth.

He was in the kitchen ears plugged into his Mac book.

‘Harry, what do you think of these jeans? Honestly.’ He pressed pause on the keypad, looked me up and down, and then nodded slowly with the due gravitas the situation demanded.

‘Mom they’re fine.’ I’m stunned. Where’s the brutal honesty? The esteem-shrivelling blow?

‘What – even the pockets?’

‘Yeh, honestly. Why would I lie? You know I’d tell you if you didn’t look right. I’d hardly want you walking around in public like a total embarrassment. You really need to get over yourself,’ he grinned and I realised he was being straight.

Surprised and, I have to admit, a tad pleased, I went and stood with my back to the mirror, straining my head over my shoulder trying to get a clearer view of my tightly packaged rear. Not so bad as I thought. Harry’s right, sometimes we need to get over ourselves and have fun with what we wear.

The jeans are staying.

Posted in Family Life, Women and Female Related | Tagged best design for jeans, design, feeling comfortable in jeans, finding jeans to fit, fit, how to wear jean, jeans, looking like mutton dressed as lamb, mutton dressed as lamb, perfect fit for jeans, self-esteem and self image, self-image, women and lack of confidence with clothes, women and self-image | 3 Comments

Just When You Think Your Daughter is Finally Grown Up…

Posted on November 18, 2010 by wordgeyser

I hear the phone ringing off the hook and curse that the one on my desk is dead again. Pressing the send button on my keyboard I jump up and dash through to the kitchen and grab it before it stops. I glance at the number and smile automatically, its Missy calling from the States. I press the answer key.

‘Hey Missy, I’ll call you back!’ She’s a student at LSU, and as I dial her number I’m thinking it’s a strange time of day for her to call. Two rings and she picks up.

‘Mom, I need to ask you a question real quick.’

I smile indulgently wondering what sage, motherly advice is required, what the crisis can be. A recipe emergency – ‘What meat do I need for lasagna?’ A medical issue – ‘Can I take NyQuil and Tylenol at the same time?’ Or the correct answer to a trivia question, drunk-dialled at two in the morning her time – more often than not British monarchy related – her girlfriends all assume by being born with a British passport I’m on first name terms with the Royal family.

“Okay sweetie, what is it?’

‘How often should you clean the toilet?’ Sometimes you’re stopped in your tracks as a ball hits you from left field and you’re struck dumb.

‘I’m sorry?’ Not an imaginative response but a good default one in the circumstances. Missy has been at university, sharing an apartment with three high school girlfriends, since August last year. It’s now the end of the spring semester.

‘How often do you think you should clean a toilet darling?’ I’m playing for time wondering where this is headed.

‘Well, that’s the thing Mom. We’ve decided to have a bit of a spring clean and kind of wondered how regularly the toilet should be cleaned. Just as a general thing.’

How can she NOT know the answer to this? All her life she’s been warned to be careful, there’s bleach in the toilets or sinks. The Captain is always coming home complaining the house smells of Clorox. I’d even given her a lesson on how to clean the darn thing before she left home, although to be fair, she had looked rather underwhelmed at the time.

‘When did you last clean it?’ I hold my breath.

‘We’ve been having a think about that and we figure the beginning of last September,’ Oh. My. God… that’s over eight months ago, ‘and we’re a bit concerned about the maggots.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Underneath the toilet seat and the carpet around the pedestal. We’re a bit worried about the bath too – it’s looking a bit grubby.’

Dear God. I hope not literally.

‘Well… ‘

I can’t get the vision of a maggot infested bathroom out of my head and I’m panicking it’s going to be there for the rest of the day, possibly longer. I fight the urge to retch and I’m aghast at my daughter’s, and it has to said, her girlfriends, appalling lack of basic hygiene.

Outlining the minimum requirement of toilet and bathroom cleaning, I advise calmly and informatively what products to buy, how to apply them, and how to deal with maggots, like it’s perfectly normal to have this problem.

I decide to ask a few tentative questions about the rest of the apartment, in particular the kitchen and fridge.

Further dialogue follows, with several enlightened and drawn out ‘ohhhh’s and ‘wow, I never knew that’s from her end of the phone, and reassurances from mine – if they hadn’t already died from food poisoning or maggot attacks everything would probably be fine.

‘Aww Mom, you’re a lifesaver! None of the other girls dared phone their moms to ask in case they got yelled at.’ I can relate. ‘I’ll call you later – let you know how we do. Hey, I guess we should really get some latex gloves to deal with the maggot situation, yeh?’

I walk back to my desk shaking my head in disbelief. These are supposedly, bright intelligent girls. I log onto http://www.Amazon.com and express ship The Cleaning Bible: Kim and Aggie’s Complete Guide to Modern Household Management down to Baton Rouge.

As a last note: Missy emailed later to say this was the GROSSEST thing she’d ever had to do, and due to the excessive fumes from the cleaning fluids they’d had to vacate the apartment for two days until it was safe to return. She was also amazed at the variety of mould it’s possible to get on different types of rotting food.

Posted in Expat Experiences, Family Life, USA | Tagged advice to daughters, Baton Rouge, Children, college bound kids, college kids and hygiene, college kids managing on their own, Expat, kids in college, kids in college and cleaning, LSU, parenting teens, tck's in college, teens and house cleaning | 1 Comment

Dog Days and Birthdays: November in the Netherlands

Posted on November 16, 2010 by wordgeyser

Some days you get out of bed feeling you can’t make the effort, then you do and the day takes off in ways you don’t expect.

I’d psyched up for another day of rain, mud, and the company of equally bad-tempered, dour faced and grumpy inhabitants on this over crowded piece of north-east mainland Europe. Sadly, waking up to pitch-black darkness in the morning will do that to you.

My mood was worsened by bad planning – nothing on the calendar but mundane chores and the high-spot of today? Archie’s birthday. Archie is an English springer spaniel and he’s 2 today. Whoop-di-do. You’re with me so far, right? He has no clue, and if that’s the highlight of my day then I need to get a life.

Today was pretty normal. The Captain across the Atlantic on business, Joe working in the north-west of the UK, Missy asleep in the American Deep South, and Harry packed off to school on his bike this morning here in the Netherlands – with dire warnings of the dangers of pneumonia if he didn’t wrap up well. We’d watched the sun struggling to creep over the horizon and in the light of its cosy glow made out the traces of heavy frost and the icy strands of fog in the gloom, so definitely a gloves and scarf day.

In the quiet of Harry’s absence I sighed. Today was obviously not going to be full of high level executive stress and pumping adrenalin, the biggest decision – what time would be good to walk the dog?

By the time I’d finished the domestic tasks, the rosy glow on the horizon was expanding and I realised the sky was not one of the usual hundred or so shades of grey, rather a hint of pale blue emerging in a cloudless sky. I held my breath. Today could be a perfect north European day – frosty, crisp, and a winter-washed sky bright with sunshine.

Decision made.

One important fact about living in the Netherlands, shared with me by a smart and sassy Dutchwoman, is if the sun comes out, drop whatever you’re doing and get outside because hell knows when you’ll see it again. Sound advice.

Archie was beside himself, he’d caught the scent of the cold, like the smell of clean laundry brought indoors. As I wrapped up in layers, along with obligatory hat (it may still rain), scarf and gloves, his excitement reached fever pitch.

Forcibly jerked through the (open) front door attached by a heavy-duty leash to hurtling dog flesh, I grabbed my camera, always at the ready on the hall stand. I wanted a record of the perfect November day, although most of the leaves were stripped from the trees by the gale force winds last week. Oh, and a birthday portrait of course.

We entered the woods alongside our house, the air pure and cleansing and underfoot the fallen leaves crunchy and white-tipped. My mood began to lift. Archie, off-leash, was jubilant, racing in every direction and by turn digging, scattering dirt, rolling in the leaves and springing from all fours in sheer delight. Constantly moving, alert, almost manic with excitement, he was a joy to watch.

There was no chance we would get home without him throwing himself into water somewhere, this is the Netherlands after all, and we float on the stuff. I knew the cold would be no deterrent to Archie’s optimism, and it wasn’t – there’s water therefore I should be in it. He didn’t flinch as he launched himself at full speed from the wooden jetty into the glacial water. I was still struggling to pull his ball from the pocket of my jacket.

I flung it haphazardly and, watching him swim purposefully to retrieve it, realised this morning was a much-needed break from things we think we should be doing. That sometimes doing nothing is exactly what we need to reconnect with ourselves.

Walking home through the sun dappled wood, wet and happy dog at my side I felt calm and content. Life is good on so many levels – it doesn’t have to be about achieving, accomplishing, reaching targets, sometimes it’s just about being.

As I sit and write, huge steaming mug of tea to hand, I listen to the contented snoring and snortling of the Archster, who, after a warm shower, rub down and food, is asleep. He’s laid on his back, neck stretched, front paws dangling casually and back legs splayed exposing his manhood to the world.

Happy Birthday Arch, glad I got to share it with you.

Posted in Family Life, Inspiration and Reflection, The Netherlands | Tagged back to nature, Dogs, English Springer Spaniel, finding calm in solitude, inspiration, joy of nature, life balance, Netherlands, nourishing the spirit, november in the netherlands, reconnecting with yourself, serenity in nature, solitude, Sporting-Gundog Group, weather in the Netherlands | 1 Comment

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Dog Days and Birthdays: November in the Netherlands

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