Sometimes

To quote the popular poem*, 'Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse'.

Sometimes, after a week of absurdly wintry weather, the sun comes out. Instead of going back into the house to grab a rain coat, you go back in to pick up your sunglasses and ditch your quilted jacket. The sun shines so convincingly that the icecream van makes the trip up from Whitby, to sell 'gothic' (blackcurrant and liquorice) icecream on the cliff top.

Sometimes, after a month of waking constantly during the night for snacky, comforty, unnecessary-but-impossible-to-deny feeds, a baby sleeps for four or five hours on the trot.

Sometimes, after weeks of refusing to take the 9am nap that is the bedrock of a pleasant morning, the baby just shuts her eyes and sleeps for fifty minutes straight without any fuss.

Today was such a day. At first I was lost. What to do with my morning, now I didn't need to spend it pushing Lady P around Saltburn in the grumpy pursuit of sleep (for her) and caffeine (for me)?

The answer was to take my rested self, and my smiling, happy baby, off for a walk on beach and some coffee and cake with my sister and her family. To sit in the sun and watch my nephews play sweet twinny games. And to amble along the cliff top eating a Whitby gothic icecream.

Good times. Long may they last. And, oh yes, may they happen for you.

---------------------------
*Like many people I first saw these lines on the tube, in the Poems on the Underground series. Apparently Sheenagh Pugh 'long ago got sick of it'. It's a solid poem, but perhaps she felt it was cheapened by its popularity - kinda like the way I imagine the way The Lumineers might feel about that Ho Hey song. Anyway, for those who didn't see it on the tube, here it is in full.


Sometimes
Sheenah Pugh (b. 1950)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you. 

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.

Large cars and long journeys

As I have mentioned a number of times, everything is bigger in America. Including the steak we grilled last week. And the average beach house.

This is what passes for a 'cottage' in the Outer Banks, NC

And, of course, the cars. The cars have to be bigger because the road trips are so much bigger too.

We drove for about three and a half hours from the airport near Raleigh, to the Outer Banks, and back again a week later. I though that was a fairly long drive. How small the British think! At the wedding we went to in Duck we met one couple who did the same Raleigh-Duck drive, and back, in a day. Another guy we talked to had just driven up from Miami, 17 hours away.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit my sister in Cambridgeshire, probably a three and a half hour drive. I think of it as very far and consequently it's not a trip I expect to make very often from Saltburn.

An American would think nothing of popping down to Cambs for Sunday lunch. Is it because America is such a big country? Or is it because the cars are so big? Or are the cars so big because the country is so big? And is that why the roads are all so very long?

Answers on a postcards please. Or just drive up and tell me in person.

The generous portions of the American South

TLOML, Lady P and I are enjoying a week on a North Carolina beach, catching up with family and friends and introducing Lady P to the many benefits of the American lifestyle.

Like being brought iced water when you sit down in a restaurant without having to ask twice. And massive top loading washing machines, and gigantic fridges and dishwashers. And many other features I'm sure I've posted about before.

Perhaps most important of all, certainly for TLOML, is the food here. We are in the land of shrimp & grits, fried chicken, pecan pie and other heart stopping delights. And we bought some steak to cook on the grill at the beachhouse.

These are they. The hardback book next to them is for scale.

Thick, aren't they? When we get home we'll have some similar cuts waiting for us at the butcher in Saltburn. But they had to be ordered three weeks in advance so he could hang the piece of beef for us ready to cut to TLOML's specification. Over here that's just a regular old steak, on offer at the Food Lion.

Sometimes, I suppose, the best things come in rather larger packages.