Driving Me Crazy

My daughter is about to start driving lessons, and while that fact is going a long way to making me feel very old, it is also filling me with a peculiar sense of chest-tightening anxiety more akin to panic than pride. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I strapped her into a car seat for the first time, and here she is, 17 years later, about to strap herself in and drive off into the unknown.

 I certainly won’t be strapping on the L-plates with enthusiasm and offering to accompany her on the open road, as patience is not a virtue I am blessed with, unfortunately. I will use this excuse to her whilst simultaneously handing over a humungous cheque for lessons, so as to hide the real truth. The truth is, I don’t want to pass on my freshly fostered neurosis to my motoring green offspring. I used to be perfectly confident behind the wheel of a car, you see, and then I went to live in the Middle East.

Years of living in Dubai have transformed me into a nervous driver, and I realise this now that I am back in the land of the Highway Code. Car parking spaces have definitely got smaller while I was away in the desert, and car parks have shrunk to Tonka toy proportions. What sort of sick mind designs and builds a multi-story where cars have to do a three-point turn to get up to the next level? Is space that much of a premium that they couldn’t allow a few more inches for manageable manoeuvring? How does anyone drive a 4x4 in a UK city?

 I can’t get away with parking in the ‘mother and baby’ spaces at a supermarket anymore as my kids now tower above me. It’s not fair on either count.  Don’t get me started on these ridiculously narrow streets where two cars can’t even pass each other let alone squeeze into a parking space. I’m much more likely to drive round for half an hour looking for a slot I can easily glide into, rather than risk the ridicule of public parallel parking.

The Highway Code obeying residents of the UK see a car at a junction and they don’t see what I see. They see a law-abiding citizen waiting their turn to pull out of the junction in a controlled, orderly fashion, slotting safely behind the driver owning right of way. I drive past junctions these days and I turn into a gibbering wreck. What I see is not an upstanding member of the driving community, but a potential junction junky. A crazy, death-defying motorist who, in the seconds before I pootle past them, hurtles out of the junction into the path of my oncoming vehicle, causing me to brake furiously, missing my car by centimetres, just to get ahead.

My nervousness isn’t greeted with the patience and recognition I deserve as “Nervous Ex-Expat Driver”. It produces a variety of responses from drivers here: confusion, annoyance and blatant aggression. Maybe I should get a bumper sticker.

To counter all three responses I have perfected ‘The Stare’. Well, to be honest with you I actually perfected ‘The Stare’ whilst I was still an expat. It comes in very handy. My hands remain furiously clamped to the steering wheel as I penetrate their evil force field with just one flashing glance. “Take that you angry motorist”. For really annoyed, red-faced, fist shaking insults, I unleash ‘The Stare’ along with ‘The Mind Swear’. This basically means that I hurl inaudible profanities at them from the safety of my locked vehicle. That’s the other habit picked up from the Middle East: silent road rage.

We all heard the stories in Dubai of the poor expat motorist, a victim of one junction junky encounter too far, who flipped the bird at a blacked out window, only for the occupant to be the police chief’s brother-in-law-twice-removed. The next thing, the middle fingered fool finds themselves on the wrong end of the law, banged up in Bur Dubai nick for months on end, while the rest of the family members are deported in shame.

Urban myth or absolute truth, motorists in Dubai learn the art of silent road rage or face the consequences. It’s quite a shock to see blatant displays of motoring anger directed at me, “Nervous Ex-Expat Driver”. One more reason to invest in that bumper sticker.  

The thing I’m not used to, however, is a driver being courteous. There are some lovely people in this country who actually allow you to change lanes when you indicate, rather than speeding up dangerously to make sure you cannot, under any circumstances, execute the manoeuvre you are trying to undertake. They flash their lights kindly, which doesn’t mean, “Stop what you are doing- I’m coming through regardless”. It means “after you”. That’s nice.

Hopefully my daughter will get on very well with her confident driving instructor and become a confident driver herself. I’m just glad she’s not learning to drive in the UAE. Bumper sticker anyone?

Stand By Me

I’ve just got back from a Mum’s On Tour weekend in Copenhagen and, yes, it was wonderful.  Wonderful to stroll round the streets of a strange city with no husbands or kids in tow, although there was the slight whiff of mother guilt and the occasional panicked look as if one of us had forgotten something, we didn’t let it spoil our enjoyment.

The group of mums who attend these sneaky city breaks are the same ones who have been going since our little angels were in junior school together, and will be celebrating their Tenth Anniversary Tour next year with a totally indulgent and slightly more ambitious New York jaunt.

I was on the inaugural tour to Barcelona, which took two weeks and a shed full of Milk Thistle to recover from. Oh yes, we do all the cultural stuff but we do let our hair down as only mums on the loose can do.

I’ve got a good excuse for missing the rest of the tours, as an Easy Jet hop to Europe becomes a whole different matter when one is travelling from the U.A.E. Undeterred they forged on to numerous cities without me, although I was always kindly included in the emails, just in case.

These are the same friends that have welcomed me back into their fold after my years of exile in Dubai and I was finally able to respond to the last email with a resounding “Yes!” Which is how I ended up with them all in Copenhagen.  

Reminding them of my existence every year I spent away became my cunning plan to make sure I was not forgotten. I managed to catch up with most of them during summer visits to the U.K while on a mission to escape the oppressive heat of the season in Dubai. And yes- we used to moan about the heat over there the way we moan about the lack of it over here, which just goes to show how we like to moan about the weather whatever it’s doing.

Is it possible to use this cunning plan in reverse with the friends I made over there? How easy is it to keep those friendships going from seven thousand miles away? Every year as an expat means another friend lost and in that transient expat society friendship risks being a commodity that can be traded on a whim. Gathering 300 plus ‘friends’ on social networking sights renders the term almost ineffectual, especially when those friends are lost almost as quickly as they are gained. Shedding old pals past their sell by date is as easy as hover, click, delete. Gone.

The flip side of this two faced coin is the incredible friendships that are made in the strangely superficial expat society. Without family around, the alliances formed are fiercely intense. Bypassing the organic methods of friendship development, expats grab onto each other very quickly as crewmembers of the same boat they’ve been thrown into.

However, without history to back these relationships up, they can be dumped sometimes quicker than they are made. It takes a lot of effort to keep in touch, and there’s a whole heap of truth in that old saying “Out of sight, out of mind”. Promises made in the heat of the sun can get easily forgotten in the cold light of a grey UK day, so I hope I can keep up the effort too, as I couldn’t have got through the last six years without those precious pals. 

Cunning plans aside, some friendships run out of steam of their own accord, where as others appear to be forcibly ejected, sometimes without obvious reason. Emails go unanswered as your usefulness runs out. You’re on the old friend shelf, as the light shines on someone else.

It’s hard to explain to our kids about the shifting dynamics of the bonds that draw us to another, especially when they see that adults still have to deal with playground politics even at our ripe old ages. I’ve seen fickle friendships end on the base of one misplaced comment. One minute you’re having coffee and the next you’re a victim of hover, click, delete. Gone.

Next year it’s New York, so I’m stocking up on Milk Thistle and looking forward to another Mums On Tour. With no plans to return to Dubai, I hope I can use my cunning methods of keeping those expat friendships going during their summer visits to the UK. (I just hope they don’t go on about the weather).

After all, as my Copenhagen comrades have demonstrated, a good friend is for life. Not just for Dubai.

Not Such An Average Girl

Wandering through the bustling streets of the cosmopolitan city I call my home, there is nothing that really stands out about me. Nothing to distinguish me from the hordes of mackintosh clad commuters, bargain seeking consumers and day tripping tourists going about their daily business of living, working, shopping and sightseeing. 

As my hometown happens to be Brighton (well, Hove actually) there is also a liberal smattering of mumbling crazies, dreadlocked hippies and pierced, tattooed, stretchy-eared tribal types too. OK, maybe I stand out a bit from them, as I try to keep my mumbling under control and all my tribal marks are hidden, but looking at me, what would the average person see? The answer is just another average person. 

How wrong would those average people be? I am not just another average person. Not any more. I belong to a covert, highly select group of individuals who do all we can to conceal our secret identities to the masses under our mackintoshes.  If our identities were to be revealed to the wider community we would risk being shunned, persecuted, ridiculed, and at the very worst-totally ignored. No, I am not a spy. I am an ‘Ex Expat’. 

I’m not talking about being an expat individual from Wales who has lived most of her life in England, as that detail only gains me entry into the lower echelons of the aforementioned club. Only when one chooses extreme displacement from ones native land to travel across land and sea (and not just a quick jaunt down the M4 motorway) can one gain entry into the secret society of elite exiles.

The reason we don’t reveal our identities is that on the whole, people don’t really care. Most folks aren’t interested in hearing about lives lived in far-flung, sun soaked, culture submersing corners of this wide and wonderful world, unless they fancy going there on holiday at some point. The ones that do ask questions, therefore, risk being bombarded with dazzling experiences that burst forth in a frenzy of enthusiasm, having long been kept supressed and buried deep inside.   

Among friends and colleagues in the UK who know my expat secret, there is the tacit understanding that these facts remain unspoken about, as they bear little significance to their lives anyway. Unless:

1.) They have been, or are planning on going there on their holidays, 

or:

2.) Have a strong opinion on the country having never even been there. In this case they have free reign to talk about it in whatever terms they want.

In the case of being an expat from Dubai, I have found there is a wealth of opinion out there, which people are more than willing to share with me once my secret has been revealed. Maybe in the years that I have been enjoying all year round sunshine, desert landscapes, five star hotel restaurants, beautiful beaches, warm seas and of course, tax free living, Dubai has been getting some bad press. A valuable lesson not to believe all you read in the newspapers, I say. Yes, there were some negative aspects of life in the UAE, but I for one was quite happy to put up with them as long as that sun was shining. And it was, most of the time. So don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it, even if it was only for a fortnight. 

But as Dorothy says, “There’s no place like home”, and rather than risk becoming completely displaced, Hove beckoned (in a kind of seagull squawking siren call). Now I can scream down the M4 whenever I want, to get as close to my roots as I like and return to the city of mumbling, crazy, tribal types where nobody judges you if you don’t fit in. Not being able to fit in anywhere is why most people feel at home here like nowhere else. 

There’s been a bit of adjustment, a lot of shopping for woollies and wellies, and apart from missing the sun, sand and expat friends, life in Hove is great. Walking along the prom I hear a huge variety of accents from all over the world, as the 'average' people of this city pass by. This town is full of expats.   Maybe that’s why it feels so familiar. Don’t tell anyone though, it’s a secret.

'Write of passage'

‘The school years are the best years of your life’. How many times did you hear those words uttered by bespectacled relatives when you were growing up? I remember feeling pretty annoyed at these sweeping proclamations of the supposed fun I was meant to be gleaning from institutional education, while also feeling slightly anxious for the future. If this was as good as it got, then what was the rest of my life going to be like?

Hindsight is a weird and wonderful thing, and while I don’t think my school years were overly traumatic or riots of raucous fun, so nothing particularly memorable, I am now looking back on those years through my rose tinted reading specs and thinking that, yes, they were darn good. So it beats me that my kids don’t agree that revising, taking exams and the anticipation of results, then the relief, joy or even the shared tears and disappointments are something to relish, to savour and to thoroughly enjoy.

We are right in the middle of exam season, and kids all over the world are hunched over their papers, sat in silence at their desks while invigilators peer at them for signs of weakness, or are holed up in their bedrooms surrounded by giant tomes cramming for the next day’s test. At least in the UAE we are blessed with a good climate most of the year, and sitting upstairs swotting while the sun shines doesn’t fill youngsters who live here with a sense of loathing. The sun only ever shone in the UK during the run up to the exams, when we where banished to our box rooms, and seemed to stop as soon as the last exam was sat. That was the one thing I didn’t like about revising during the warmer months, as sunshine was a precious commodity and not something to be wasted. The same does not apply here. At this time of year it’s already too hot to squint into the pages of textbooks, trying to get to grips with Pythagoras’s theorem, or the pride of Mr Darcy whilst simultaneously working on a tan, so they may as well be studying in their air-conditioned wombs for hours on end. But just try telling that to your little darlings, and see what reaction you get!

The pressure children are under during this time cannot be underestimated, and the stress statistics are staggering for all ages undertaking exams. This pressure is not relieved in any way by parents and teachers themselves constantly telling them that the results they get in the important exams will affect the rest of their lives. That’s a pretty dramatic statement for a teenager to handle. We all want our kids to do the best that they can but not to the detriment of their health. However, I have found that making comments like ‘If you think this is stressful, wait till you get a real job’ don’t seem to soothe situation or help in any way. Don’t forget it’s a stressful time for us parents too, especially as we try to make sense of the intensely confusing examination timetables, and my reoccurring dream now is of my daughter missing a test because I forgot to write it on the calendar.

It’s all about reaching for the A stars these days, and I don’t want to sound like an annoying Auntie when I say that in my day, they were few and far between, hence exams were harder, but they were, so there. I’ll be proud as punch if the stars are shining for my daughter in August on results day, although I will refrain from posting and boasting any results on Facebook, as that sort of posturing is vulgar and shows a lack of sensitivity to those who won’t have done as well as they wanted. I just hope and pray we fall into the first category and not the second, and there will be thousands of other parents with similar prayers to mine.

So to everyone sitting exams this summer, good luck, do your absolute best, don’t miss any, keep calm, and remember to enjoy them. After all, these are the best days of your lives. I say that as one looking back through my rose tinted reading specs, which also recall long hot summers in Pembrokeshire, when all I can remember were blue skies and sunshine. I’m not sure how reliable these specs are. Maybe I should get a new prescription.

'Halloween is a scream!'

It’s amazing the things we pass onto our children: eye colour, mannerisms, a certain taste in food, or the urge to dress up as one of the un-dead, smear ourselves in fake blood and scare the heebie-jeebies out of each other.

Kids love to dress up, from raiding mum’s shoe cupboard to skipping round the local supermarket dressed as a fairy princess or sword-wielding prince. Halloween’s popularity has increased over the years faster than a witches broomstick, and the majority of kids embrace the chance to put on a costume and feel the thrill of scaring each other in a fun and friendly fashion. That rush of adrenalin mixed with the rush of sugar is a heady combination that is totally addictive. Of course there are also some adults who never grow out of the urge to don a ridiculous outfit and show off, myself included. There’s no greater feeling than terrifying hordes of tiny children with a carefully constructed zombie costume. Hearing their petrified screams as they run away from my ‘mwah ha has’ warms the cockles of my cold, Nosferatu-loving heart.

I know I am not the only ‘grown-up’ with this compulsion, as one look around the streets on October 31 will verify, so when it comes to packing away the pumpkins for another year, I always feel a little bit sad. Unless someone has a themed birthday party, it’ll be another 12 months before I can get my fangs out again.

I was into Vampires a long time before they became trendy, but thanks to Edward and Bella, everyone is into them.

In films and on TV, the vampires, werewolves and fear-inducing creatures of today have technological advances on their side, as well as a fine set of abdominal muscles in some cases. These computer-aided apparitions are far scarier than the ketchup covered schlock of generations past, and I embrace this progress. Some of those old monsters would be laughed out of cinemas now, with their furry tails between their legs. We all want to shield our children from bad things but watching scary movies is relatively harmless, despite the increase in technology, and should be made compulsory for anyone over the age of the recommended film classification guidelines (all right, not compulsory, but certainly not frowned on as some parents do). Every child has a different scare-o-meter and as parents we have a sixth sense as to what we know our kids can watch, but sometimes we are guilty of over protecting them, when really they could benefit from a little bit of fear.

Mothers who refuse to let their children watch anything remotely scary are setting them up for a fall, as by the time they are in their teens they won’t know their orks from their elbows. When their peers are on either ‘Team Edward’ or ‘Team Jacob’ and they are still on Team Tom and Jerry then their credibility in the classroom will be slaughtered. Introducing a hint of horror at the right time and in the right doses does the world of good, that’s why Halloween is a party for all ages to embrace. I love the way their imaginations run riot at this time of year, as they attempt to out-scare their pals with outlandishly creepy creations. One of my proudest moments was during a Halloween party held at my youngest daughter’s junior school a few years ago, when she freaked out the teachers by wearing a white blood-splattered nightie whilst carrying a plastic severed hand. That’s my girl.

Some say Halloween is commercialised gobbledygook that has been made popular to increase the profits of severed hand manufactures and Haribo, but I say so what? Let your children’s imaginations run wild and werewolfish, gather round the pumpkin lanterns to tell tales of ghosts and goblins or watch a vampire movie and let them decide whose team they’re on. (Team Jacob all the way!) Enjoy your chance to dress up this Halloween no matter how young or old you are. Go on and get your fangs out and put your claws away. Let’s banish those evil spirits and the miseries that bah-humbug the whole tradition with a blood-curdling cry. ‘TRICK OR TREAT!’

'Last Minute Christmas Shopping'

‘Present to follow.’ What would those words mean to you if they were written in a card? You might be lead into believing that you will receive a lovely gift in the near future. You may be lulled into thinking that the empty card with its empty promise is a binding contract of bountiful pleasures to come. I think you are being a tad naïve. In my family, the utterance of these three little words is a secret code, passed down from generation to generation, to mean one thing, and one thing only. ‘You are getting nothing.’

It’s not that my family are averse to gift giving. On the contrary, we love to give and receive and are known for our generous natures and party spirits. We just can’t seem to perform under pressure.

At this time of year, the pressure to purchase is immense and, coming from a long line of rubbish present givers, I am thrown into a complete kerfuffle mixed with a curious sense of denial. This is not helped by the smug comments of those organised individuals who take great pleasure in announcing to the world that they finished their Christmas shopping sometime in July.

That is just weird. How can they get into the festive tradition of rash and reckless panic buying when they have their stockings well and truly stocked towards the end of summer? There is something quite comforting in knowing that there are only so many days to go until the big day and we are not alone in our inability to buy.

The clock keeps ticking away and we are reminded daily of the fact that time is running out. No wonder people panic and want to get it all done before the dreaded countdown. On the opposite side of the festive fence are the people who thrive on leaving everything to the last minute. It’s like a game of ‘chicken’. How late can you leave it?

I love to announce to all who are listening, especially those early birds, that it’s 6pm on Christmas Eve and I’m just off to the shops. I see behind their pitying looks into the depths of their souls, which shine with admiration for my wild and whacky bravado. Maybe they should try it next year, as it might be a revelation. You mean you don’t need six months to prepare the presents, as it can all be done in a few hours? True, those hours are wracked with anxiety, but that’s what it’s all about. There’s no time for self-doubt or looking around for another option, and we late birds don’t have the luxury to think about a present and come back to it. (Although in Dubai, it will probably have gone anyway if you don’t buy there and then). It’s in times of crisis that we make the most important decisions. That’s the way to shop.

The other way to shop, of course is online. What a marvellous invention the internet is when it comes to buying presents. I have discovered the joys of this type of shopping for friends and family back in the UK and it has gone a long way towards making me slightly less disorganised. I still tend to leave it to the last minute, or the last possible posting day, but at least my family haven’t had to make do with those three little words from me for the last five years.

It’s amazing the range of items that are available to buy at the click of a little finger. My sister would never have received my most inspired purchase to date without the help of the Internet: a pair of purple, furry microwavable slippers. Well it does get cold in Pembrokeshire in winter, (Spring, autumn and summer).

It’s a shame my family haven’t made the same technological discovery, however. The excuse is they can’t seem to convince anyone to ship microwavable slippers and the like to the UAE, giving even more credence to the old family saying. The only things they can ship here, at great expense, are books or CDs. Well a book or a CD would be better than nothing and certainly better than furry slippers in these temperatures.

At least my family members are never guilty of the terrible phenomenon of ‘re-gifting’. I have a friend who is notoriously renowned for giving un-tagged offerings to unsuspecting souls.

I once received a clutch bag from her that had a note inside confessing undying love. (No, the note was not meant for me.) Now, call me old fashioned, but I would prefer a gift that was bought for me, not one that had been given already, rejected and then passed on. Although I confess I kept the note. I sent her one back this Christmas, with my own version of those special three words. ‘Present to follow.’ I hope she likes the bag.