A linguistic melting pot

As previously discussed, Americans love to use a foreign word and to pronounce it in as foreign a way of possible. Like the way they pronounce envoy 'on-voy'. Maybe it's because they are a nation of immigrants. Maybe it's because they have a New World inferiority complex, albeit thinly masked with virulent patriotism. As a rule if it sounds a bit Euro it sounds a bit classier. Not my rule, theirs. 

The melting pot culture of this nation of immigrants gives them license to adopt words from wherever they choose and with no consistency. Hence the adoption of French 'bleu' cheese, and the use of endive (instead of chicory). They went with the Italian zucchini instead of courgette, and Spanish cilantro for coriander. So far, so confusing but its their prerogative to appropriate as they wish. And for the most part we can all navigate and translate our way around the ragbag. 

My theory is that the Ahmanson Theatre and the Center Theatre Group spell themselves the British way  to distinguish their productions from those low brow, populist ones in other theaters. Although they're fine being associated with a standard American Center. 

If they're not careful, people will just think they are misspelling it. 

A visit from P's Godfather

We love our guests. We love the solo travelers and the parties of six, and all the sizes in between. We love the people who stay for a night, and those who move in for a fortnight. We love the ones who are here to sightsee and the ones who are here to do nothing at all. We love them whether they came from the other side of the state, or the country, or the Atlantic.

There are no prizes, no winners and no losers. I am always grateful to have time with family and old friends. TLOML is always glad of an excuse to fix someone an old fashioned. And P always welcomes extra storytellers and puzzle makers.

That said... perhaps special mention should go to the guest who, after his ten hour flight from Tokyo, was at the gym with me within half an hour of arriving. Who provided the perfect reason to dodge work and visit LACMA for a couple of hours, and to spend Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl singing along to Grease (because let's face it, great though that venue is, you do need an extra push to face the schlep up there). And aside from the excellent LA cultural jaunts, just fit right into my workout, taco and beach routine for ten days.

Best of all - as well as reading her endless stories, he willingly joined P's yoga session.

We are now bereft of guests for the rest of the month, before we head to the UK to be someone else's guests for a couple of weeks. But when we get back we have two families visiting in quick succession. I don't think they'll quite share P's Godfather's commitment to Crossfit Horsepower. But hopefully they'll catalyze some good sightseeing (I've STILL never been to Griffith Park) balanced by plenty of lazy afternoons at the beach.

Nailing the Fourth of July

I love the Fourth of July. It took me a while to get used to the flagrant patriotism. I know that's the point of the Fourth of July, but the sheer volume of stars and stripes still surprised me. I'm from a generation of Brits who are raised to be slightly embarrassed about our nation's past. With the exception of skinheads and everyone during a world cup, we don't fly our flag quite proudly. 

But if the idea of a day of national pride and the preponderance of patriotic outfits took me aback at first, it didn't take long before I was decking P out in red white and blue and asking friends what they were doing for the Fourth.

Having said all that, this year we didn't quite join the party. The last couple of years we went to a workout buddy's massive beach party, but he switched gyms, and now I haven't seen him since the last Fourth of July, so the ratio of catching up with him vs making small talk with hardbodies I don't know from Adam is all out of whack. We could have joined our good friends' block party, for a more wholesome option. That'd  be fun, but it's not our block and our neighbours, after all. We could have gone to a party in Silverlake, but who wants to drive for an hour on the Fourth of July?

It turns out we didn't want, or need to drive anywhere.

Instead we made the most of a day off in the middle of the week the best way we know how. An early surf for TLOML, and a run for me, and then we wore our smuggest smiles down to the beach. It was crazy busy but we found a quiet patch with space for P to dig in the sand while we did very little. 

TLOML body surfed for ages, and not to be outdone, I took my first - very brief - ocean swim of the year.  P collected about a hundred shells. We enjoyed some late afternoon margaritas and burgers on our deck with a couple of friends, and fell into bed feeling sun kissed and tipsy by 10pm.

It's no pool party, but I think we may have found the perfect way to celebrate America's birthday.

The cold comfort of being an expat

I'm a Green Card holder, aka a resident alien, that is to say I'm unable to vote or serve on a jury. I believe I now qualify to apply for citizenship but frankly I'm in no great rush.

There have been plenty of times when I've enjoyed being able to shrug and declare 'I'm not a citizen, it's nothing to do with me'. November 9, 2016 is a good example. A few months earlier I found that distance from home softened the blow of the tragedy that is Brexit. I was fairly active, politically, before I became transatlantic. Not just voting, but displaying posters, joining marches and protests and just generally being one of those talkative, self-righteous left wingers that will save the world one day if you'd all only let us.

Then came the luxury of shrugging and saying 'it's nothing to do with me'. The luxury of opting out of difficult conversations with family members who have different points of view. The strange experience of watching an election in the country where I live as if it was happening in a parallel universe - I've never not voted in an election before, large or small. I'm a bystander. I can still march for gun control, donate to Planned Parenthood and ACLU, and wear my 'Nevertheless she persisted' t-shirt. I can exercise my consumer power. But that's about it.

I'm ashamed to admit that I enjoyed knowing that what I think - about, say, gun control, a woman's right to reproductive choice, or the inhuman 'zero tolerance' policy that is ripping infants from their parents at the border - doesn't count in the country where I live. It's an easy way out when you live in a country where - to quote this Guardian column - 'kids get bulletproof shields for their backpacks as a gift for graduating middle school'.

But it's cold comfort. And as I drove to pick P up from pre-school today (she's safe - no school shootings in Los Angeles since May 11, in case you wondered) I listened to a story about the border separations on KCRW. That's our local NPR station, the bleeding heart liberal's station of choice. And my heart did bleed. I was moved to tears by this harrowing 7 minute recording of inconsolable kids - little, little children, the same age as P - crying for their parents. It's a horrible inhuman exercise, being carried out by a frighteningly authoritarian administration, and I can't vote them out. I can't even, really, make those phone calls we're supposed to make to our Senator - to tell them 'You represent me and I support the 'Keep Families Together Act' (Americans - if you're reading this and feel the same way - call 202-224-3121 and tell them you support SB3036).

I mean, I can make that call and I did, but I think they can tell by my accent I'm not an American - and I hope they don't check the voters roll because then they'll know they don't represent me at all.

Calling Kamala Harris and asking her to support the 'Keep Families Together' Act is redundant. Voting for progressive, liberal policies in California, is like wishing for sunshine in LA. There's really no need. But being unenfranchised (I figure I can't say 'disenfranchised' sine no-one took it away from me...) is untenable. And since we aren't planning on leaving any time soon, I may just have to bite the bullet (get it?) and pursue the path to citizenship. With a heavy heart.

Backdoor weddings

We went to a backdoor wedding recently. No, wait, I don't mean that. I mean a backyard wedding. But that name has sort of stuck for me. When chatting to a British friend, she tongue twisted it into a backdoor wedding, because frankly it's not the sort of phrase Brits get to say very often. First of all we don't have backyards, we have gardens. But more to the point, we don't get married in our backyards or gardens or indeed anywhere other than a place licensed according to the Marriage and Civil Partnerships Regulations.

The Brits are missing out, because a backyard wedding is a lovely thing. Informal, intimate, purely focussed on the two people and their vows, surrounded by friends and family - oh, and maybe a Dudeist priest. TLOML is ordained by the Church of the Big Lebowski and in that capacity can conduct legally binding wedding ceremonies. For real.

It wouldn't happen in England, that's for sure. There, only a minister or a proper, registered registrar can marry a couple.

One of the many lovely things about this backyard wedding was how relaxed it was. We hung out, drinking wine and chatting, until the couple were ready to say their vows, at which point we gathered to watch them exchange vows under a charming chuppah on the lawn.

That also wouldn't happen in England. First of all, there'd be no alcohol in sight. No alcohol or food may be consumed in the room where the ceremony is to take place, for an hour before the ceremony. Not sure if they are afraid of people getting wed without their senses about them, or just crumbs spoiling the vibe or what.

You also can't get married outside, as you need to be wed within a permanent structure. My BFF got married under a cool little gazebo, with guests sitting outside, which was a creative and charming solution. But gazebos that have been recognized by the Home Office are few and far between. And so, as a result, are backyard weddings.

Which is a shame. It was no St George's Chapel, but this backyard ceremony was truly one of the loveliest, most heartfelt and honest weddings I've ever been to. 

A better breadth of butter

Two failed butter dishes, rejected because they were so annoying, and I finally get it. I realize why so many butter dishes here are long and skinny. Long and skinny in a way which makes no sense when you're trying to accommodate a normal sized pat of butter.

But of course, it's because I'm buying European butter. The American stuff comes in 'sticks'. No, I'm not kidding. A pat of butter is made up of two sticks. I realized this the other day when my glance fell on some Land o' Lakes 'butter' (horrible crumbly stuff) - and put two and two together when I read a recipe that called for 'a stick' of butter.

It's madness! Butter shouldn't come in a stick! It's firm, but not hard enough to be a stick. It's not soft either though, by the way, which makes it very difficult to smush into a measuring cup when a recipe calls for a cup. Which is another thing: why measure it in a cup? Well it turns out that a cup is 2 sticks, or a pat. So it's actually not that difficult. I suppose it's easier than using measuring scales which are apparently beyond the nous of the American home baker. Took me a couple of recipes to figure the stick thing out but I'm pretty sure life would be easier over here if we all just used a proper, precise system of weights when baking.

Anyway now I know, so I no longer have to work out what a stick or a cup of butter looks like. And thanks to TLOML, we have a lovely new butter dish of just the right proportions.

The one on the top is the old one, perfectly shaped for a stick of butter but look how a real pat of butter splays out over the edges. The one on the bottom is the new one, showcasing what is probably half a stick but could just as easily be a perfect pat. Peace is restored in the toaster/ bread bin/ butter dish corner of the kitchen.

Earning a day at Disney

Believe it or not, P has never been to Disneyland. She must be the only five year old in Southern California who hasn't. As it happens, I haven't either. People look surprised when I tell them that - it's like saying you've never been to London, as a Brit (same cultural significance) - but given that I moved here in my thirties, it really isn't so strange. Before that my closest Disney option was Eurodisney, and there are about a million better things to do on a trip to France than go to Eurodisney.

And so it is that we are a pair of Disney virgins. I could go to my grave without ever visiting, but P would be a deprived child if we let this situation go on much longer. Up until recently she's been content playing on broken slot machines at Redondo Pier, but we think it's time she saw what a real amusement park was all about.

She's of an age now where kids chat - at least, I assume that's how come she knows about Shimmer & Shine, because it certainly didn't come from our house - and I'd hate her to miss out on something all her buddies get to enjoy. Wait till her schoolmates find out we only have one TV. They'll think she's a complete freak. It's not only caving to peer pressure. I also know she will absolutely love the experience.

So we told P that once she was five she'd be old enough to go to Disneyland. And hope none of her friends told her they've had a SoCal Family pass since they were toddlers. She turned five in February. So what's taken so long?

Well, once we decided we should take her, we decided we should make the most of it. Hence, the sticker chart. The road to Disney, for P at least, was paved with good deeds. For every good deed, she earned a sticker, and once she has a sticker in every spot, we will take her to Disney. As you can see by the state of it, P has got properly invested in the chart, adding her own titles and pictures. She spends a lot of time counting the stickers and the empty spots.

 In case you're curious - ooh, you'd get a sticker for that - she gets stickers for being helpful, kind, brave, curious and adventurous. Aka tidying up after herself, eating vegetables, and generally being compliant. It's really not that hard.

We've enjoyed two months of extra helpfulness, and an incentive for her to do things that are challenging. She's only a few stickers away from the big reward now. I'm pretty sure she'll love it easily enough for us to add some extra empty spots into the next sticker chart. 

Kitchen pioneer

The early settlers in the Americas had to be pretty resourceful. An unfamiliar land, with different flora and fauna, required them to be canny about what to hunt, what to eat, how to store supplies for long winters, how to make a bolt of calico make dresses for all the girls in the household, and so on.

And so it is with me. You'd think one can get all the specialty foods imaginable in a world city like LA. Actually you probably can, but not in the bubble of the South Bay. Maybe Koreans, or Mexicans, can find all the ingredients they need at the local H-Mart, if not the Vonns. But us Brits are a tiny minority. The only specialty store for British food is the lame-oh King's Head which is fine for wine gums and hobnobs but not for proper food (plus driving to Santa Monica is the equivalent of 'going to town to buy calico' in terms of effort). It's a culinary desert, at least where British baked goods are concerned.

Not only do I need to make my hot cross buns from scratch but I have to make the raw ingredients too. I cannot buy candied peel - say for Christmas cake or hot cross buns - for love nor money. Nor can I find stem ginger for proper ginger biscuits either.

So I've learned to make them. It turns neither are particularly difficult. It's a bit of a faff, as in it takes longer to make candied peel than it used to take me to walk to Sainsbury's and buy some. But not much longer. And the results aren't as good - not as neat, or sugary - but they aren't bad. They'll do. Same goes for the end result, really:

Not quite as good as the kind you get in the supermarket. But better than nothing.

I'm my very own pioneer woman, it turns out! And P is working alongside me learning not only just how to bake from scratch, but actually using weighing scales (because that's how British recipes are written), which takes 'from scratch' to a whole new level in this country.

Unlike the Starck lemon squeezer, the scales are not just for show

Now if only I can figure out how to make a proper granary loaf I'll be quite content.

Jack Junior

We've added to our family. Not in that way, gosh, when will people stop asking?, that ship has sailed for goodness sake. No, with a much less effort (albeit less rewarding) addition: a small black cat.

Meet Jack Junior. So called because he looks a lot like Jack Senior (RIP), only rather slimmer. For now, anyway.

I'd like to say that welcoming Jack into our home was the fruition of many months of planning and the fulfillment of a long-held dream of P's. But no. We decided to get him as we were driving home from lunch and talking about the bad night's sleep we'd had - hearing what we suspected was a rodent in the walls of our house.

I'd like to say that I carefully researched cat adoption facilities to find the best one. But no, we just went to the one that was still open as we got back into Hermosa after 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.

I'd like to say that we chose Jack carefully from a large cast of options, or that he 'chose' us with some sweet friendly gesture. But no. The choices we were faced with, 20 minutes before the cat adoption place closed, were either Jack, or a pair of cats that had to be adopted together because they were siblings and one of them was going to go blind so needed the other one to take care of it. I know. Don't forget, we were looking for an emergency mouse catcher - not a special needs burden. Sorry. But also not sorry.

I'd also like to say that he hunted or scared away the suspected rodents. But no, we got the pest control people in for that. In fact Jack has proved entirely useless in that regard.

But he is very very good at other important things. P absolutely loves him, and he tolerates her petting him very nicely. He snuggles with us while we're watching Netflix. And at night he curls up in a ball at the end of the bed.

So, it may have been a whim but it might just be the best whim we've ever acted on. And we may not have had a second child but as a family we are replete with contentment.

Winter sports

I didn't want to be the kind of woman - certainly, the kind of mother - who goes to the ski resort and just hits the spa. But then again, I never wanted to go to the ski resort at all. Always in search of sunshine and beaches, I never saw the appeal of snow-based holidays. I only tried it to please TLOML. And it makes more sense when you live by a sunny beach, then a snowy mountain is a bit more appealing. So I snowboarded - between tumbles and sprawls - slowly down a few green runs a handful of times during our pre-parenthood days. I quite enjoyed it, as it happened.

But I've never done it since. The last couple of times we've taken P up to Big Bear I've had the excuse of work, or it being handy to have someone to carry the clobber, so I've been able to avoid putting myself out there. Or rather, down there falling on my ass in the snow again.

Well, now I've run out of excuses. P officially likes skiing. This year she did a full day of ski school, and liked it. She was ready to tackle a few runs with TLOML, going up in the chair lift, snow ploughing her way down the nursery slope effectively independently (with reins on her boots, she's not a prodigy or anything). And now I have to decide - am I going with them? Or am I the mother carrying the bag and holding the camera at the bottom of the slope?

I signed up for a 2 hour snowboarding lesson as much as anything to prove that I don't have it in me, I am the kind of mother who goes to the mountain and doesn't go on the piste. But at least I could say that I tried. Unfortunately I was just capable enough to stay upright, link a few turns, and get to the bottom without incident. Albeit extremely slowly. Honestly the video clip of me looks at times like a still: except for my flailing arms I'm barely moving. Still, I made it.

The next day, off we went for the family mountainside fun. It was raining - and I hoped that would put TLOML and P off.

No chance. She's got the bug. Up we went. And down we came... P and TLOML moving easily three times as fast as me.

Now I have a new choice to ponder. Is it worse to be the mum who goes to the ski resort and just hits the spa? Or the mum who goes to the ski resort and keeps her 5 year old daughter waiting at the bottom while she moves extremely slowly down the nursery slope? I guess I'll either have to raise my game, or start exploring those spa options.

Transatlantic Mother's Day

Four years after I first suggested it, TLOML is finally taking the bait. He's celebrating Mothering Sunday - aka the British Mother's Day, which moves according to the Church calendar. I have just been given some flowers and am about to be taken out for brunch.

This is great for a couple of reasons. It's very nice to be taken out for brunch and made a fuss of - and much nicer when the restaurant isn't full of other mums who are also being taken out for brunch and made a fuss of. It also creates some space between Mother's Day (the American version, in May, according to the Hallmark calendar) and my birthday. This means we can avoid a repeat of last year's incident when TLOML referred to a gift as 'for your birthday... or Mother's Day... whichever'.

And of course, because America will be marking the American Mother's Day, with a bit of luck I'll get cards and flowers again in May. But not brunch in an overcrowded restaurant. Winning!

Or is it? True Mother's Day also involves a lie in and not doing any housework. Those components are missing from this Mothering Sunday. But if I try to score a lie in and a day of rest on American Mother's Day will I be told we already celebrated back in March?  And will TLOML demand two Father's Days? I may have made a tactical error here. Still, probably worth it to avoid the oversubscribed brunch.

That party in pictures (aka bragfest)

Thought I'd create a little pictorial update on the party, since I obsessed over it for so many long hours. It was over too soon but this blog post can be the legacy.

Flower Market did not disappoint

Flowers everywhere

Chuck enough balloons and flowers at a room and bingo! Fairy Land!

Professional Fairy - money well spent

Nailed the cake

If you like flowers, fairies, and sugar, you were in the right place

I hope she doesn't want an outsourced party next year - I had the most fun!

The joys of creating a flower fairy party. Who knew?!

Great leaders know it is better to bend like a willow than break like a mighty oak. It's true in parenthood too. When you meet resistance, when your child does not share your vision, it's better to adjust your course in the pursuit of peace and harmony.

So it is with P's birthday plans. TLOML and I had a grand vision for a large, fully outsourced party. Somewhere with plenty of capacity, so we could invite friends from her current school and her old school, and other friends we've made along the way. Somewhere we could just specify a theme and they'd take care of all the details. P briefly considered our suggestions of the climbing gym, ice-skating, or My Gym. But ultimately she decided against - and she was unshakeable.

Her vision, instead, was for a party at home. A fairy party, at that. I tried to persuade her to have a horse or safari theme just so it wasn't so painfully girly but no. She really wanted fairies. And so, like the wise willow, I bent.

And I didn't bend just a little. I have now moved heart and soul into the Land of the Flower Fairies. I've made fairy treasure for pass the parcel, and a 'pin the wings on the fairy' poster, and special Flower Fairy signs to welcome our guests. I'm practicing making leaves and flowers out of buttercream to decorate the cake. I've ordered pink staples so that when I attach the pink crepe paper flowers onto the green ribbon I'm going to wrap the bannisters in they won't show up. I'm planning a trip to the Los Angeles Flower Market to buy sprays of flowers, and I've hunted out the best green rugs from the local Goodwills (because what kind of Flower Fairies would hang out on hardwood floors?). Today I sorted Tootsie Rolls so we only have ones which match my colour scheme. No oranges or blues, obviously.

Fairy treasure aka beaded bracelets

I can improve on these leaves. Watch me. I just need to watch another couple of hours of Wilton's videos.

I can't believe I wanted to outsource this! I am enjoying all this crafting and shopping and decorating more than I ever would have imagined. I'd say I've spent almost as much time and invested easily as much ardour into P's 5th birthday party as into our wedding. Thanks to Amazon and Dollar Tree hopefully it will cost a little less. The ratio of hours of preparation effort to party time is about 10:1. But it's all pure joy in the making, and I could not be happier.

On new things under the sun

They say there's nothing new under the sun and one would think that was absolutely true of nature's bounty. But then the Americans started inventing new fruits, like pluots (a cross between a plum and and an apricot) and apriums (same, apparently, and no I am not kidding). Actually the Etruscans did it first, with broccoli, and the Japanese have a sort of mania for breeding different citrus fruits with nuanced but highly prized / priced differences. So it's not just the Americans.

But with the odd silly exception it's rare that one comes across a truly new fruit or vegetable. Short of traveling to an exotic land, and not counting subtle variations on familiar fruits and veg, I thought I'd seen it all. At least, as far as fruit and vegetables go.

And then I encountered the sunchoke. It's probably been around since the dawn of time but to me it is a whole new vegetable. I've seen it on menus and assumed it was just an American name for something I'd eaten before. Like zucchini (courgette), eggplant (much more appetizing when it's called aubergine), or cilantro (coriander).

But lo! The sunchoke is its own distinct and wonderful vegetable. And it doesn't taste like anything else I've ever eaten. It looks, at least in the meal I was eating, like a knobbly potato. It tasted like a cross between a parsnip and a leek, and also at the same time completely different to those vegetables. Here's a picture of some sunchokes on a salad, which is how I first met them.

Apparently this startlingly exciting new vegetable is also known as a Jerusalem Artichoke - which rings a bell as something I may have read about in a Guardian recipe or ignored in Earth Natural Foods.

I'm still counting it as a new discovery. I see it on menus all the time here in sunny, healthy SoCal. And what a nice thing it is, to discover I'm not too old to have discovered all the good stuff  just yet. I wonder what other exciting foods there are out there. (Still not ready to embrace bone broth and kombucha though).

The great transatlantic gift tag chasm

On our festive flying visit to the UK, I was struck as ever by some transatlantic differences. Here’s a little nugget you may never have considered.

Some people – and it’s honestly not just my family – make gift tags out of the previous year’s Christmas cards. They cut out the nice bits of the picture from the front of the card to make little cards, and write on the reverse. I suppose if they’re feeling really fancy they could punch a hole in and tie them on with ribbon, but otherwise they just get taped on to the present.

I was thinking about what a nice little project that was. Just the sort of thing P and I like to do – it involves making piles of things, looking at pictures and cutting stuff out (witness our snowflakes on Instagram for more evidence of her love of cutting paper). It’s also something we can do while I drink coffee and flick through a magazine. Ideal!

Then it struck me that I’ve never seen an American give a present with a recycled gift tag on it. It could be because they wouldn’t match the wrapping paper. But not everyone cares that much about co-ordinated gift wrap, so it’s probably not that. It’s more likely to be because they would consider it a bit of a waste of effort, given that you can buy gift tags for very little money. Of course by that way of thinking no-one would ever make anything they could buy, and Michael’s would be out of business, and the world would be a poorer place for it. Anyway, I don’t think that’s the reason.

The real reason Americans don’t recycle their Christmas cards is completely unrelated to profligacy or a love of co-ordination. It’s blindingly obvious. It’s because all their Christmas cards have pictures of people they know on them.

By contrast, almost all the cards sent by Brits are shop-bought and hand-written.

My parents' display this year

38 out of the 39 cards we received from Americans had family photos on them. Often so carefully styled and retouched as to look like a professional effort, but look closer –those aren’t models, they are real people!

A sampling of our cards from American friends

How weird would it be to cut out pictures of little Lulu from pre-school and her baby brother and stick that on a Christmas present next year? I’m tempted to try it just to find out.

Festive travels with P

After a fabulous Hermosa Christmas, P and I jetted off to the UK for just over a week. It was a little experiment in ‘travels with P’, to see how we fared on a long haul trip without TLOML. He loves my family and my homeland but not quite as much as I do, so we spared him the British winter weather, and the hours inside doing jigsaws on dark afternoons. I was a little trepidatious about the 20 something hour trip (flying straight up to North Yorkshire after our LAX to LHR flight) but we didn’t encounter any problems some M&Ms and an ipad couldn’t solve.

And it was totally, absolutely and completely worth it. Everything I wanted, and more. Plenty of goofing around with cousins, playing with aunts, uncles and grandparents for P. Mince pies, decent cheese, bread and chocolate for me. We had some muddy walks, fish and chips on the sea front on New Year’s Day, and even a little snow. P’s delight at seeing misty breath – ‘look mummy! That dog has smoke coming out of its mouth!’ – and moss, something she mostly sees in Brambly Hedge stories, was priceless. And I got to enjoy some fine evenings of conversation and vino collapso with my lovely sisters and a couple of very dear friends. Bliss.

'Look mummy! Moss!'

Just enough snow for a snowball fight with cousins

I hope by exposing P to a slice of British winter to continue her education as a Brit. Albeit a Californian Brit. But as we stepped out into the Valley Gardens, she looked in horror at the muddy path she was walking on and wailed ‘Mummy what is this we are standing on!?’, I realised we still have a long way to go. I’m not sure I want to abandon TLOML every New Year, but a trip along these lines may have to be repeated at some point. For P, you understand (nothing to do with the bread, cheese, and vino collapso at all).