Faux vintage

About a month ago TLOML, P and I headed up to the Central Coast for the weekend. We had 'won' a wine tasting and lunch at Tablas Creek, in Paso Robles at a charity auction (I'm not sure buying a fancy lunch is truly a prize, hence the quote marks). We decided to make a weekend out of it, as I am British and feel that driving for more than three hours is unacceptable for one night away.

I've wanted to visit Ojai since I first saw an article about it in Sunset magazine. There's nothing like Sunset magazine for making you want to visit some artisan enclave. So I bamboozled TLOML into thinking it's on the way to Paso Robles (as he discovered, it's really not).

Ojai is just as beautiful as I had expected. And that pink mountain sunset is just gorgeous. It's a town full of hippies, I think, based on the artisanal honey tasting rooms, the fact that chain stores are banned, and the protesters with 'ban the bomb' placards. I'm not kidding - and they were being honked supportively by most of the Subarus that drove by.

Friday night in Ojai

Formerly known as Nordhoff, Ojai rebranded itself during WWI, as anti-German feeling grew. Around the same time, following a fire, the town was rebuilt along Spanish Colonial Revival lines. Colonial Revival architecture itself was a bit of a pastiche: a 20th century attempt to recreate a style of building in use in the Spanish Missions of over 100 years earlier.

All the buildings in downtown Ojai have to fit that mould, and chain stores (except banks and petrol stations) are prohibited. Banning the big chains and maintaining a strictly uniform building code makes for a very charming main street. Between dinner, ice cream and morning coffee we patronized three different, interesting, locally owned businesses.

But stretching that Colonial Revival style still further to accommodate, for example, 21st century gas stations and supermarkets, starts to feel more than a little bit phoney. I wrote about this last year when we visited Santa Barbara, another triumph of 'historical' preservation over diversity and innovation.

Ye olde Chevron garage

 Although when it looks this pretty, who really cares?

Speaking of phoney, on our way back from Paso Robles we stopped at Solvang. It's another town I'd been curious about, having heard it described as a Danish town. How Danish can it be, nestled in the Santa Ynez valley, I wondered?

Quite Danish, it turns out. It is apparently a great place to buy clogs - and the pastries there were the best I've ever had in the US.

But it's a peculiar slice of Danish culture. Solvang was built in 1911 by a group of Danish settlers. Eager to maintain their traditions they built in the sixteenth century style - which is rather an odd thing to do in the twentieth century. Half-timbered buildings abound, as if steel, plate glass and concrete had never been invented.

As a Brit I find it all rather unsettling. spending time in these fake old places. In London you can stick any tatty old shop on the front of what might once have been a rather attractive Georgian (Victorian? Whatever... rest assured it's older than Solvang) terrace.

We had a lovely weekend in those charming spots, but it was something of a relief to return to scruffy, determinedly non-uniform Hermosa.

Santa Barbara, where even the no smoking signs are Mission-era

A couple of weekends ago TLOML, Lady P and I drove up to Santa Barbara for a weekend at a friend's place. Besides the obvious pleasures of a mini break, eating and drinking and catching up with friends, and exploring new playgrounds, I especially loved Santa Barbara itself.

After life in Hermosa (founded 1907), it was really lovely to be somewhere with more than a hundred years of history. Santa Barbara was established as a Spanish mission in the 1780s, and much of it was built in a grand colonial style after an earthquake in the 1820s destroyed the adobe huts they'd been living in before then. Which is to say, it is an old city, by Californian standards at least. And it's architecturally coherent, in a way that Hermosa, with its Portuguese castles next to modernist white boxes, is just not. Much of the city's roofs are red tiled in the Spanish style, and there are some really well preserved buildings.

Take the courthouse, and this fire station, for a couple of examples. Both still functioning with their original purpose, and in their original form.

The courthouse

An actual working fire station

Then there's this charming multistory carpark, beautifully preserved from the colonial era with the original signs and all.

Wait... what? The dudes who ran the Mission had the foresight to build parking structures? No, you're right, it's just a modern car park that has been designed to meet Santa Barbara's code for downtown construction, and blend in.

Much like these signs, which I'm guessing weren't there when the courthouse was built in 1850.

Hey, I'm not hating this faux-old stuff. Santa Barbara is such a beautiful city, and much of its appeal lies in the visual unity of its architecture. It's entirely fitting that the powers that be would want to preserve that appeal. I felt rather shame-faced about how little regard I paid to the 16th century buildings of my college.

Still, it was refreshing to get back to messy, chaotic, apparently unplanned Hermosa with all its quirks.

I still love London. Sorry.

That trip to London did not, predictably, cure me of my love for my former city.

How could it? A trip to Buckingham Palace and a couple of days with the originals of my family was just an absolute treat. There was the delight of an evening at the theatre, something I never do in LA. And a morning at the National Gallery, because in London you can just wander in off the street and gaze at Renoirs and Canalettos and Gainsboroughs and it’s no big deal (I’m still building up to the 40 minute drive and weeks-ahead booking required for the Broad here in LA). I've been visiting the National for almost twenty years but I still see something new every time I visit: I'd never really paid attention before to the awesome mosaics on the landings.

And quality time – not quite enough of it, but still – with some of my oldest, dearest friends, setting the world to rights and catching up on trivia and gossip. There was really really good cheese and passable black pudding at perfectly ordinary cafes. Proper cups of tea. Sitting on the top deck of a bus and enjoying the view. Pubs. Dogs in pubs. That thing they're doing where they put pianos in stations for anyone to play.

Classic London corner shop

Mosaics on the floor at the National

Piano at St Pancras

Bricks and mortar and old fashioned signs

Grey skies over Hampstead Heath

Brick houses all in a row

Dogs in pubs

And there were the perhaps less obvious pleasures. Like WHSmiths and corner shops and Marks and Spencer. Brick houses all in a row, pleasingly uniform in design. Painted road signs on the brick houses. Walking into the Booking Office bar, at St Pancras, to be surprised by a row of men all in suits. Because lots of men in London do wear suits. To my eyes, accustomed to t-shirts and flip-flops everywhere, for a moment it looked like a scene from a period drama. But that's just London.

Oh, and the cosy pleasure of wearing knee socks pulled up under jeans. That’s right, even the alternately freezing and damp weather couldn’t dint my happiness at being in London. I even enjoyed running for a train and having to stand up on a cramped tube. Admittedly those pleasures might fade after a long winter or a regular commute.

Having said all that, I was in fact extremely, giddily happy to come home to Hermosa. Any pangs I felt on leaving London were suffocated in Lady P’s excited embrace, and TLOML’s relieved one. For home is where the heart is, after all. And sweet, sunny Hermosa Beach is where my heart resides*.


*All of it except that little sliver I left behind, somewhere between the Portugese deli in Kentish Town where a pound of parma ham costs three quid, and that walk in the drizzle across the bottom of Hampstead Heath.

Weary travellers

When I see red-eyed, grumpy infants being dragged around airports late at night I often think 'what kind of idiot parents plan their travel that way?'.

Well, this weekend we were those idiots. But it wasn't planned that way. We had scheduled our flight back to LA yesterday at 7.30pm, just around Lady P's bedtime. By the time we boarded it was 10pm, and Lady P was past herself. Wired and fractious and really quite shouty. We had been sedating her with the iPad for an hour but there's only so far the Peppa Pig icecream game app will take you. One delayed flight and one late night wouldn't be so bad but it came on top of six days of travel and disruption. So she was already predisposed to be wired and fractious.

I would have felt worse about what we put her through this week, but she had such an absolutely brilliant time that I don't. Let me break it down.

On Tuesday we flew to NYC, where we had dinner with Lady P's godmother, one of our dearest friends. Lady P marveled at the tall buildings and the swarms of yellow taxis, and enjoyed having her godmother read her many bedtime stories.

On Wednesday we took a three hour train ride up to West Hartford, CT, for 24 hours of fun with New England's best family. In a parenting fail typical of the week's events, Lady P's lunch was a Dunkin Donut's ham and cheese muffin eaten on an Amtrak train.

Fortunately, it all got a lot wholesome once we arrived in West Hartford. There was canoeing in the pond in their backyard, a friendly dog, a swing fixed to a tree, and there were home made waffles.

Lady P did not want to leave, but on Thursday we returned to NYC where she was delighted to see her godmother again. And on Friday we flew to Rochester, in upstate NY, for a family wedding. There, Lady P was showered with affection and attention by her grandmother, two doting great aunts, and five cousins who were thrilled to play with her.

On Saturday she was a flower girl at the wedding, at which TLOML was officiating. He was recently ordained a Minister of the Church of the Latter Day Dude, and took his responsibilities very seriously. Lady P was not quite so dutiful, refusing to wear a beautiful floral crown, removing her shoes at the last minute, and insisting she would not carry her posy. The sugar high provided by a sweet (the bribe for putting her shoes back on) saved the day, and the instruction 'run to daddy' made for a very telegenic trot up the aisle. It would have made for a better wedding album shot if she hadn't been chewing a Starburst but she was there, she had her shoes on, and she made it up the aisle: I think we did okay. Afterwards she paddled in her beautiful dress, in the great new American wedding tradition of 'Trash the Dress'.

And on Sunday we reconvened for brunch, debriefs and gossip with the family. All in all it was a wonderful week. I love spending time with TLOML's family, and Lady P had some memorable adventures.

We finally got home at around 2am this morning (5am East Coast time, but hey, who's counting?). Lady P looks a little frazzled today, and I'm sure her sleep patterns will be out of whack for a couple of days. And to keep the peace for all those flights she did spend a lot of time with the iPad. But I think it was all absolutely worth it.

And now we can relax, as Lady P isn't leaving the Hermosa bubble again for the foreseeable future. Me, I'm off to Boise, ID tonight - consumed with envy for Lady P's low mileage week ahead.

Adaptability

Lady P moved house, from London to Yorkshire, when she was six weeks old. By the time she was 13 weeks old she had crossed the Atlantic twice. And she moved again, from Yorkshire to California, at the tender age of 11 and a half months.

So from an early age she was trained to be adaptable, which has stood us in good stead for overnight stays in strange places, and those summer trips back to the UK. We keep her bedtime routine extremely, rigidly, consistent which gives us free rein to conduct said routine pretty much wherever we want to. She gets milk with a story, a bath, one of a rather limited range of bedtime stories (the usual suspects: The Big Red Barn, The Going to Bed Book, etc), her beloved dog, and a song to fall asleep to. Whether she's in a hotel room, at a friends' place, or lying on the floor at the bulkhead of a 747 - okay, we skipped the bath that night - it's all the same to Lady P.

On our recent UK trip we put her adaptability to the test. Including flight UA934, a couple of nights when she was put to bed at my sister's so we could share babysitting, and an unscheduled night in a hotel, she went to bed in seven different beds within the space of a fortnight.

And only once did I get a glimmer of a suggestion that all this change was bothering her. It was the morning we woke up in a nice hotel room in Hampstead, and Lady P said 'What is this house?' with just a hint of a frown. I explained that we were holed up in a hotel because her projectile vomiting of the previous day had rendered us unsuitable house guests, and she nodded gravely, and we got on with our day.

Of course, even the most amenable, flexible of children can't ignore their body clock, and after two weeks in England Lady P remained on UK time for a few days. For the first time, today, she woke up at a California-appropriate time.

It's a good job she's such a good traveler because we're about to leave again. We're off to the East Coast tomorrow, for a few days of family and friend reunions and a wedding. We will be staying in a different place for four out of the five nights we are gone. Brace yourself, Lady P. But we will be packing The Big Red Barn, and the Going to Bed Book so I'm hoping for the best.

'Helping' me pack

Cramming it all in

We're back in the UK for our annual trip, and working hard to cram it all in. Last year we came for a month, which was indulgent, and not entirely successful: we couldn't take holiday for that whole time, which meant doing a slightly poor job of keeping up with work and of catching up with friends and family at the same time. This year we are here for just two weeks, which in theory means better quality time, if less of it.

So far, so good. Within 12 hours of landing I had eaten more cheese than in the previous 12 months. Cheddar, stilton: quite a reunion we had. Within 24 hours of arriving at our first base camp we had caught up with a dozen friends and their children, done a fair amount of reminiscing, and drank a solid volume of Pimms. The next day we packed up and headed north.

And within a day of arriving in Saltburn, Lady P has played - joyfully, I might add - with 4 out of her 6 cousins, seen several steam trains, and more cows and sheep than she could even imagine. Certainly we could go a long time in Hermosa Beach without seeing so much livestock, so many steam-powered vehicles, not to mention so many family members. She is beside herself, and so am I.

Skipping through a tunnel with cousins and aunts 

Grosmont station

We are only a few days into our trip and loving the quality, and the extra intensity of this year's experience. Only one thing may not - ever - be compressed: the time it takes a wash to dry, on a clothes horse by the radiator, on a wet day in May.

We definitely will have a brilliant time up here. But will the clothes I washed today be dry before we leave Saltburn? I will keep you posted.

Long distance love

A long distance relationship is hard to maintain. That's why I moved from London to LA to be with TLOML after barely six months of dating. Being far from those we love is just hard on the heart. That's why sometimes I feel glum when my sister sends pictures of my nephews playing at my parents' home, or I hear of another dear friend's 40^th from which I'll be absent.

The travel BigCorp requires of me at the moment is taking its toll too, although the distances involved are not so great. For most of November and December work is taking me away from home each week. My trips are usually just a couple of days long, so in the grand scheme of things it's no great hardship.

But with early starts and late return flights, I often don't see Lady P between putting her to bed on Monday night and seeing her again on Thursday morning. Which is an absolute eternity. I hate it. And I know she feels the same. I know because the first time we FaceTimed her delight on seeing me was quickly followed with a demand, 'Mummy! Up!' which is shorthand 'please pick me up, squeeze me, and make me feel both loved and also as tall as an adult'. 'I can't, I'm sorry, not till tomorrow', I said. She wailed.

Just like those (rare, I might add) disagreements TLOML and I had on Skype when we were first dating, all parties ended the call feeling sad and dissatisfied. Lady P and I still FaceTime when I'm away, because it seems better than not, but there's a 50/50 chance it'll end in tears.

It's not just Lady P who's affected. TLOML dolefully said to me as I embarked on my last trip, 'I'm going to have to start season 3 of The Wire without you I'm afraid. You're never going to catch up now'.

But Lady P is the one I worry more about. Of course I know she's in perfectly good hands. She has a brilliant time with her beloved daddy and our nanny is all round fantastic. When she forgets I'm not there, Lady P is quite content. Still, I am not. Nor will I be, till this stint of travel is over and I can revert to my blissful, working from home, seeing Lady P every morning when she wakes up, and at every mealtime, and at every bedtime, life.

Idyllwild, in pictures

I may have been a bit quick to say we won't go back to Idyllwild. In fact, apart from the absence of snow, it is a very lovely place.

Proper scenery, trees, mountains, etc

 There is a town monument involving a strange configuration of eagle, bear and mountain lion. And a very helpful sign.

Looking for the Idyllwild town monument?

Look no further. 

It's a town for outdoorsy types. The gun loving, horse riding, cowboy hat wearing kind.

Actual guns for sale just in a regular outdoorsy shop. Weird.

Niche market, no?

The quintessential rugged Western look, reinterpreted for today's hot blonde.

 Their town Christmas tree is the best I've ever seen. It is a real live tree, possibly even taller than the Norwegian Spruce in Trafalgar Square.

 And there's shopping for more than just guns, obscure cookbooks and dodgy denim. Unlikely though it may seem, we bought something at the Idyll-Beast Research Center Museum and Gift Shoppe.

All in all, it's a town with something for everyone. I think it's fair to say this won't be our last visit. We'll just leave the woolly hats at home next time.

In search of winter

It's about this time of year I get nostalgic for proper winter weather. I hanker for woolly socks, roaring fires, hearty soups and pink cheeks. I am also a little concerned that Lady P will think it's normal to conduct winteryactivities wearing sunscreen and shorts.

So I planned a family jaunt to Idyllwild, a haven for artsy and/ or horsey types, high up in the SanJacinto mountains east of LA. I found us a cute little A-frame cabin in some woods, by a creek, and was expecting snow: all the ingredients of a truly wintry getaway. Given that we were at 6000ft above sea level, this was not an unrealistic expectation. In other years there has been snow up there as early as October.

However, in 2014, snow has yet to fall. In fact, the weather was disappointingly balmy. Basically the kind of temperatures that wouldn't be out of place on a May day in Yorkshire.

I'm proud to say we did not let that deter us. We still wore our woolly jumpers and winter boots – we just left our coats and hats indoors. And we still lit a fire.

Something is missing from this picture... The ground should really be white

You almost wouldn't know it was 15c outside

Fortunately we weren't there just for the weather. I also wanted a weekend without obligations and errands, and some time for us to switch off (albeit from our pretty stress-free life). So we kept the sightseeing light, content with a drive up to a nice viewpoint where Lady P clambered on and off the same rock about a dozen times.

Rock climbing in winter woolies

We ate hearty mountain food, and played cards and drank whisky, and poked about downtown Idyllwild. And we didn't watch TV or go to Target. It was almost perfect. But next year I'm thinking we'll go to Aspen instead.

Hosts with the most

An influx of house guests has the Sugar Cube all abuzz and excited. Very dear friends for many many years (as in, we met in the '90s) have made the long trip to Hermosa Beach.

We are thrilled to have them here, and determined to show them a good time, so that they come back every year. Ideally, twice a year. Or better yet, move here. 

Highlights so far include 24 hours in Vegas during which TLOML used his many Vegas connections to secure us upgrades and VIP access. We consumed some face-sized steaks and gigantic poolside cocktails and agreed that Vegas is a little ridiculous. But fun.

Then back to earth and a more wholesome way of life in Hermosa. Some fine SoCal dining - kale caesar salads, panko-crusted fried avocado, ahi poke - and Old Fashioneds made with orange peel harvested from the Sugar Cube's backyard. And, to work off those excesses, plenty of bike rides along the beach.

We've also laid on pleasingly consistent sunshine, and just the right amount of swell for a beginner surfer.

If there's more we could do to sell this part of the world, I'd like to know. If they don't return within a year there's just no pleasing them.

Leaving the bubble

I love to live in a bubble, and hate to leave it. Anything north of Manhattan Beach (a 30 minute walk along the beach), south of Redondo (ten minutes on a bike), or east of PCH, I consider leaving the bubble. It means getting in the car, and maybe even trading my flip flops for a more formal shoe. Bleurgh.

Despite my aversion, most weekends involve a trip to see friends in Santa Monica or Venice. That's not so bad. It's a 40 minute drive, and when you get there you could almost still be in the South Bay bubble - they are beach cities, at least, and my flipflops fit in.

Worse is having to leave LA altogether. I had a good run of working from home when we first arrived, but more recently have had to pack my overnight bags and show my face at other Big Corp offices. Airports I have passed through in the past three weeks include IAM, ATL, BOS and BOI.

That last is Boise, Idaho. Land of big skies and potato farms. It's beautiful, by the way. Driving to Big Corp as the sun peeked over the mountain ranges that ring the city I got the sense of what Boise might have looked - what, 100, 150 years ago - when it was just a circle of wagons on a trail. Or something. Until I passed the outlet mall anyway. Plenty of people in Boise appear to be staying true to America's cowboy and pioneer roots: fully 80% of vehicles in the corporate car park were pick up trucks. And I saw two people wearing a cowboy hat in the office. So many stereotypes were ringing true, loud and clear.

As for the other cities I stopped - for just a few hours in each case - they were pretty much as expected too. I noted many fried chicken restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia where Southern hospitality is alive and well, as embodied by the insanely over-helpful and bouffant-haired Big Corp receptionist. I saw a man wearing cowboy boots in Houston, Texas. And in Boston, I saw many many Irish bars.

I will never scoff at Americans who 'do' Europe in a matter of weeks again. I have learnt that 24 hours in a city - even if you only go from airport to hotel to office and back - is more enough to confirm a few prejudices.

On the move again

I have been winkled out of my hiding place, the lovely office in the back garden of the Sugar Cube. A client wants to see me in person. Damn it. This totally ruins my work-life balance: I have to get properly dressed for work and can't sneak off for a run or a nap or a potter in the garden in the middle of the day.

What's worse, the client is based in the Bay Area. So it means being away from home for a couple of short trips, this week and next. In the grand scheme of things it really isn't much to grumble about. I've worked at home every day for the past 12 weeks.

And yet, ouch! It hurts! I hated leaving this morning with barely a by-your-leave from Lady P. Today when I facetimed home she was a bit grumpy in that late afternoon way, and I wanted to be home to cuddle her so badly it turned my stomach. Luckily for Lady P (and for me) she has TLOML at home to provide all the comfort she needs. Still. Working away sucks and these two weeks are going to seriously drag.

The balance will be redressed pretty dramatically though. We are going back to England for a whole glorious month. Barring the odd babysitting session, and allowing her doting grandparents some exclusive quality time, we'll have Lady P with us 24-x7. She's really good company at the moment, full of chat - if repeating the same word at a crescendo can be considered chat - and giggles. So I'm holding fast to the treat that's instore - all that quality time, and with family and friends to catch up with too - during my enforced absence.

While we're in the UK, our nanny will be getting to know another family, who we're hoping to do a nanny share with. They will be dropping their baby off at the Sugar Cube two days a week, and she will only be 4 months old. It makes me realise, not for the first time, how lucky I am. When Lady P was that age I spent all day, every day with her.

Yes, we have had a jolly good run of quality time with Lady P, and barring the odd trip, there's no real end in sight yet. So I'll enjoy some trash TV and room service, sleep in as late as 7.30am, and be thankful that for the most part, I get to have my cake (quality time with Lady P) and eat it (that's where the salaried job comes in).

Leaving the bubble

As you may have noticed, I love Hermosa Beach. I also, as previously posted, like being in a comfortable rut. So two months into our new life here and I have established a fairly small radius within which I operate. It's about the size of Hermosa Beach. Well, we have everything we need right here, why would I ever leave?

It took our first house guest to drag me out of the bubble. Lady P's godfather, my old and very dear friend, The Gambler, has come to town. He loves being schooled in animal sounds by Lady P, and jogging along the Strand with me. But after a couple of days in the bubble I sensed he had itchy feet.

So it was that we hired bikes from the Hermosa Cyclery and took the bike path up to the Marina Del Rey.

As we passed the industrial sites of El Segundo I started to doubt the merits of leaving the bubble

...but before too long we were enjoying the cheesy delights of 70s tourist spot 'Fisherman's Village'

... and we got to gawp at plenty of beachfront real estate on our way too

Emboldened, I braved the freeway traffic to take him even further afield. The Getty Center was well worth the drive, and an afternoon's mooching around Santa Monica was fun.

But it all started to look a bit hairy again when we ventured into hipster paradise, Downtown LA, full of warehouses and pop up shops and moustachioed boys in jazz shoes. We had a lunch reservation at Factory Kitchen and parked a couple of blocks away (being the Brits we are). Wow, those downtown blocks are long and bleak.

DTLA. Not as pretty as Hermosa.

Lunch was great but the walk to and from was not. 'Hurried and tense' is not my ideal post-meal constitutional. Having learnt our lesson we drove the remaining 2 blocks to the heart of Little Tokyo. A brief sampling of Japanese American history and coffee rounded off our big city adventure perfectly.

Then it was back to the beach. Phew.

It was really great, being forced out of the 90254 bubble. There's a whole exciting world out there. But The Gambler's gone now. So TLOML are now enjoying not leaving the bubble again till someone else makes us.

Friendly skies

Up until about a fortnight ago, Lady P was a notably chilled out baby. You might almost have called her placid. Sure, she has her moments of wild giggling. And she loves to stampede about on her hands and knees. But she's one of those babies who will lie in her cot chatting away to her toys for a good 45 minutes in the morning. The kind who doesn't squeal if you take away, say, the iphone she's got her hands on, so long as you replace it with a rattle.

More to the point, she was a baby who would sit on TLOML's lap in a cafe, quite content to play with a sugar packet or pepper grinder while we enjoyed a relaxed coffee. And she honestly enjoyed sitting with a book. I'm not sure she fully appreciates the narrative ark of 'That's Not My Lion' but she loves turning pages, saying 'oh' at each turn, and touching different parts of the page in wonder. Her mealtimes were leisurely, if messy, affairs as she worked her way through a range of flavours with interest. She made her own amusement, fairly quietly, in many a confined space. So you can imagine we weren't too worried about travelling with her.

That was up until about a fortnight ago. Now it is a different story. Now she shrieks like a pterodactyl* if anything she wants is not immediately placed within her reach. Mealtimes are a rollercoaster ride of pleasure - when she finds something she likes - and terror, when more of that thing isn't instantly provided. Books are for shouting at, bashing and throwing on the floor. And her favourite game is moving at pace into a place of danger, shouting and shrieking on the way.

They say babies change quickly and everything is 'just a phase'. Please pray that this phase is a shortlived one. Or pity the poor sods who are on an 11 hour flight with our tiny tyrant in a few days time.

------------------------------------

*Actually we don't really know what a pterodactyl sounds like. But if you close your eyes and imagine a high pitched, repetitive shriek... well, you get the idea. It's what we imagine a prehistoric angry bird sounds like.

Have baby, will travel

Given our transatlantic lives, we knew we couldn't put off travelling with Lady P for long. Our recent trip, as she was hitting  the grand age of twelve weeks, was something of a baptism of fire then. We headed to a somewhat inaccessible resort town in the US for a week on a beach and a wedding, taking in TLOML's old college town on the way home.

Yeah, got my passport, ready to fly, whatevs

Getting to the Outer Banks is no short hop: it involved a couple of long drives, and three flights. We laid our heads in plenty of places too, staying in an airport hotel the night before we left, then a beach house for a week, then a couple of nights in different hotels as we made our way home. Plus Lady P met about a dozen family members - not to mention the guests who cooed over her at the wedding we attended.

All told, it was for a little baby to handle. And Lady P managed admirably. She was passed from person to person, all of whom wanted smiles, cuddles and photos. She actually seemed to enjoy socialising most of the time. And when she wasn't exactly smiling, she at least wore an expression of bemused tolerance.

Lady P in the glare of the paps

Perhaps we'd worried too much. But we did spend a good deal of effort preparing for the trip. For example, we had her sleep in a travel cot at home for a few nights so it would feel familiar once we hit the road. And her clobber took up almost as much room as mine. As well as that travel cot, we packed several blankets, the BabyBjorn sling, a couple of familiar toys, and enough nappies to pad a small cell. I think it was worth doing all of that, as it reduced the number of emergency dashes to supermarkets, and meant much of her surroundings smelt, felt and sounded like home. I made sure in the mornings to sing the songs I always sing at home, and every night we followed the same bathtime /bedtime ritual we established when she was just a couple of days old. I think all those things helped her stay calm and happy.

(In retrospect we could have packed about a dozen fewer blankets, and we should have remembered to pack a bottle brush. We'll know for next time.)

By the end of the trip our ability to control Lady P's environment was severely challenged. We had no means to sterilise her bedtime bottle* in our hotel room. We went to Rite Aid in search of that weird sterilising fluid, but to no avail. In the end I spent about half an hour cleaning her bottles, using rubbing alcohol and piping hot water that the hotel kitchen promised us had been thoroughly boiled. Plus our room had a shower, which rather put paid to her sacred nightly bath. Again, we thought creatively and Lady P enjoyed her first shower. We figured anything that involves splashing water and nudity would do the trick.

Our resourcefulness paid off. She didn't get a horrible dirty-bottle-related sickness, and she slept like an angel that night. (In her buggy too - allowing us to sample the culinary delights of Chapel Hill.)

All in all, Lady P proved to be a very good, adaptable little traveller. Who knows, we may even take her on a trip again one day.

*Don't judge us, breastfeeding police! We all have our vices. Hers is a bottle of formula before bed.

Going to Carolina (various observations)

Before our recent trip I hadn't spent much time in North Carolina. Not unless you count two weeks running workshops in a faceless office on a faceless business park.

So, now I know it a little tiny 8-days-longer better, I thought I'd summarise my observations of North Carolina. None of them amount to a post in themselves but in the name of documenting my transatlantic adventures, I think together they add up to something worth posting. (Don't tell me if you disagree).

5 Things I Just Learned About North Carolina:

1. When you order a tea in North Carolina, they think you want a sweet iced tea. When you order tea in an English accent in North Carolina, they'll look at you like you're crazy and say 'hot tea?!?'. Hot is pronounced 'haht', by the way.

2. There are many porches, and rocking chairs. People clearly like to spend their time rocking gently on porches. Who can blame them?

A government building in Duck, NC

3. They know just exactly how to make fried chicken and biscuits out there. And how to eat the sides (with a spork).

Bojangles, home of an excellent fried chicken biscuit

4. There is plenty of history in North Carolina. And you know something's old because it says so on the sign. Or should that be, 'signe'?

5. The sky really is as blue as the songs  (Allman Brothers, James Taylor) suggests.