My Birthday Month :)

As I turn my calendar page from the dreary, grey month of January to the new month of February wonderful images come to me.  For me February is full of anniversaries, birthdays and expectation as the days become longer, and the garden begins to awaken.


Roll on Spring!

February is my birthday month.  I was born on the last day of Aquarius and my parents joked about the significance of my water carrier birth sign as we toted buckets of water around the garden in the month traditionally known for water rationing, drought and wilted gardens.  Back in those days my parents filled their garden with water hungry English roses, bedding plants, and Northern hemisphere bulbs. Australian plants were considered straggly, boring and only fit to populate the bush while pride of place in our back yard was taken by two enormous English Oaks grown from acorns planted as the house was being built in 1951.  In the Australian climate they grew three times as fast as they would have done in England and when, after sixty years, my parents moved from their house, those oak trees had taken over like giant triffids.

February is also the month my son was born, two and a half months early in 1982.  Three years later in February I was heavily pregnant with my daughter. Visitors brought armfuls of beautiful golden daffodils and now these joyful flowers always remind me of my babies – now considerably larger!

I met my present partner at the beginning of the first February of the new millennium and this Sunday we celebrate those such happy years together while we look forward to many more. I’m sure he is looking forward to not many more years of coping with me stressing over coursework deadlines and getting my referencing system right!  In our first year together I started my final year of my anthropology degree.  Poor thing got landed with proof reading my dissertation, and putting up with my son doing his final year of A levels and my daughter starting GCSE’s – not a particularly peaceful household.  It must have to be true love – we are still together!

When I was at school February was the start of our school year as we returned from our long summer holidays. Here in England February is buckling down time.  We are halfway through the academic year, tired from a long cold winter and working hard to meet coursework deadlines, the requisite number of clinical hours while balancing work and social life. 



Is this the cure for enquiry unit ear?

I have just begun working each Mondays in the Enquiry Unit which gives me one and a half days of regular hours per week.  On my first day it seemed that all I did was ask questions and bug all the more experienced staff but now I have been there three weeks I am finding my feet more.  I have discovered a new condition called Enquiry Unit Ear.  Its symptoms are one ear feeling quite warm, puffy and worn out after having a phone handset in close proximity for seven and a half hours!

My regular readers know that I have decided that I have moved New Year match with the Iranian New Year called Nowrah celebrated at the Spring solstice; this year it falls on the 20^th March.  There is a wonderful Persian shop in Peckham called Persopolis where there will be celebrations with treats and different events – right up my street! As it is also my daughter’s birthday the next day we have even more to celebrate.

Safe and Sound :)

Since I last wrote I am happy to report that all my family are safe from the floods in Australia.   Over twelve thousand homes have been flooded and I cannot imagine how awful it must feel to lose everything.  However, it is so much worse in Sri Lanka and Brazil where hundreds of people have died.  Although the floods are off the front pages here, they are still happening and the centre of the state of Victoria – my homestate – has become one very large lake.  It seems so recently that I was concerned for my family being caught up in the devastating bushfires of the summer two years ago.  One of my sisters had to evacuate three times, knowing that if the fires threatened her township the authorities had planned to let them burn so they could concentrate on saving the next town that they considered to be more strategically important.  It was only a very fortunate wind change that stopped her losing the home she and her husband had spent twenty years building.

Australia is such a land of extremes.  Everything is so big, rugged and raw.  At school we were taught the poem ‘My Country’ by Dorothea McKellar.  I could recall the first lines of the second verse which I had always remembered as the start of the poem.  It was only when I revisited it this week to write my blog that I realised there was a first verse.  I had never taken any notice of this one, but having now lived in England for over thirty years, these words really resonate for me.

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

 ‘My Country, Dorothea McKellar, 1885–1968)

There are several more verses and I became quite homesick reading it, not helped by my Skype calls to sisters complaining of too much sun and too many hot days!

I have been back at college for two weeks now. I have passed my first course work and met with my tutor for my case discussion review.  We meet in groups of five students with one tutor and each week a student presents a transcript of a recent client session.  After it is read out with students taking the ‘parts’ of counsellor, client and narrator, the presenter remains silent while the rest of the group discuss the session in detail.  The presenter takes notes of the feedback then goes away and writes it up with his/her reflection.  S/he then returns the following week to present it.  It is a fantastic learning opportunity and I get as much out of my presentation as I do from the other students’.   I am enjoying my clinical work immensely and have completed 43 of my required 80 hours. It feels like the more I do the more I have to learn!  This week marks the halfway point of our course – I’m not sure that I mean it is all downhill from here though!  I am finding this year much tougher than I expected although I am really enjoying it.

After seeing five clients on a Thursday morning followed by an hour of personal counselling- an essential requirement of the course, I am thoroughly ready for my stained glass class in the evening. There all I have to worry about is getting the right stain colour, cutting the glass accurately and choosing which pub to have a relaxing pint in afterwards!

First Day back to Uni...

It’s my first day back at uni and the thought of the amount of work to do this term is quite scary!

We finished last year with extreme weather in London and I am starting this year concerned about my family experiencing the extreme weather in Australia.  I have an uncle in Brisbane that no one can contact as all power has been cut so I am waiting to hear how he is and a sister living a  little further south who is on higher ground and quite safe.  I come from Melbourne, 2000m miles south in the state of Victoria, where most of my family still live.  Three hundred mls of torrential rain has fallen already and the much of the state is in flood.

I remember many years ago walking through flood waters up to my neck in North Melbourne.  Over the years when I have told people, many have looked at with great scepticism and I began to doubt whether my memory was correct. I now realise that I am not dreaming - it must have been the 1974 floods that are being recalled by the newscasters commenting on the current crisis.  That day I went to play netball after work.  After catching a tram with water up to the running board (about a foot deep), I had to disembark in the centre of town when the tram could get no further.  I remember taking the hand of a woman much shorter than me to help her cross a road while the water ran swiftly past us.  I vividly seeing cars and motorbikes swept into buildings with great thuds.

At the time it didn't bother me. I really was not fully aware of the danger I was in. I was young and it seemed like an exciting adventure.  I feel differently very differently now. Two years ago, another of my sisters almost lost her house to bushfires on three separate occasions, only saved by a change in the wind direction.

This week the situation in Australia is expected to get even worse as the flood waters continue to rise.  I feel so far away from my beloved Australia and grateful to be safe. Somehow my apprehension about the coming academic term pales into insignificance!

New Years Eve 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This is my last blog for 2010 – my 17^th .  I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are enjoying the break.

 

My Christmas was lovely – lots of seeing friends and family, exchanging gifts and sharing wonderful food and drink. HWKATT gave me a vey useful pressie – a Sony Reader e- book thingy.  You may recall I have only just mastered his last Christmas’ present, my IPOD so I am determined I will get to and it is amazing.  I am looking forward to reading my jourmal extracts on it saving on printing ink and trees

We are still enjoying the peace and quiet of this time of the year when routines are thrown out of the window, there is such a lot of rubbish on TV, interspersed with the occasional gem, and I manage to read a few books that bear no relationship to my course whatsoever. 

We are now recovering from too much good food and wine, going for lovely long walks in the greyness of midwinter.

Although the calendar says it is the new year, to me this time after Christmas is one to still conserve energy, hunker down in the warmth with loved ones and good food.  When nature wakes up and shoots appear on the trees, to me that is the time to make new year resolutions, dust off my bicycle and spring clean the house from top to bottom around March time! Starting diets and punishing oneself at the gym when everyone either has nasty colds or is just recovering from them seems completely crazy!

Wishing you a very merry christmas!

Today is my last day of working in despatch before Christmas.  There is very little work to do so – time to send you a blog!

The campus is very quiet, the car park empty and all is still covered in snow.   It feels very strange having our Christmas arrangements so unpredictable while we wait to see what the weather will be like.   We cancelled our family get together in West Sussex on Sunday; it seemed mad to try driving so far in such adverse conditions.  Instead I spent the day catching up.  We finally got to writing Christmas cards – yes I know I am really late, especially for Australia!   I find it really difficult to get in the mood and think of what to write any earlier – I like to do all my Christmas stuff in December so it feels really festive and that bloomin’ assignment took up far more time and energy than I wanted.  Writing cards in November to post overseas seems just too early for me!  I finally manage to make edible mince pies that we happily munched while we wrote.

I love the family traditions of Christmas which I have passed onto my own children.   When I was a child, on Christmas Eve my Dad would drive our family into central Melbourne to look at the shop windows.  As we drove the twelve miles, my brother and sisters would have a ‘counting the trees’ competition,  half counting Christmas trees on left side of the road, while the other half counting them on the right. It did get a bit raucous at times!  By the time we reached the city centre we were all very excited and would rush to Myers, the big department store, famous for its Christmas story windows.  We gazed in silence, transfixed by the moving figures and the beautifully constructed scenes.  My parents would have to drag us away bribing us with the promised of special treats when we got home.  We’d count trees on the drive home and then rush in to munch on shortbread, chocolate and mince pies while we prepared the carrot for the reindeer and the brandy for Father Christmas.  Before we went to bed our last task was to select a sock and tie it with sting to the ends of our beds.  As we got older we would play tricks on Santa; hanging a glove, tying a knot in the sock, hanging a pair of tights; all to try and confuse him enough so we’d catch him.  He was so clever, we never managed!

I was once of six children and we always had very simple presents, often home made.  One year Dad built us a playhouse. Our family house was built of wood and rested on stumps set into the ground.  Where the ground sloped away from the front of the house it left a space underneath.  Using second-hand wood, Dad boarded and floored a corner of it to form our playhouse which gave us years of pleasure as we made it into different settings – a shop, a place, a house.  Another year he built us a swing that seated at least two and a see saw,  while for another Christmas he made a set of table and chairs out of fruit packing cases.  All of our dolls’ furniture was made by my brother or my dad while Mum and Grandmas would make us dresses, aprons and petticoats and beautiful doll’s clothes.   My sisters and I learnt to sew and knit and would make each other all sorts of strange gifts! These home -made presents are the ones I remember the best.  They cost so little but were made with such love and care.

After such wonderful reminiscences it is time to come back to the end of 2010 and wish you all

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

School’s out!

Well dear reader, I survived- and I have the battle scars to prove it!!

Getting that assignment in was extremely traumatic and I am still exhausted.

I guess it wasn’t the best idea to have our Open House mulled wine and mince pies on Sunday but – you know what – sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!  I had cancelled everything for two weeks and slogged away at that essay re-writing it three times and still not getting nowhere so I thought I may as well pile on the stress, have a great party and then concentrate on that deadline!  I was very disciplined on Saturday, concentrating really hard on writing; not even taking a teeny tiny peek at Strictly Come Dancing on YouTube!  I allowed myself the little treat of putting the Christmas tree in its bucket and putting the lights on.  I’d left everything else to do on Sunday – cleaning, cooking, decorating before the party started at 2pm.  Luckily my Kate came early and helped dress the tree.  It is always such fun unpacking the family decs built up over the years. Pride of place is taken by Kate’s little felt stocking and her brother’s ‘loo roll Santa’ made when they were about five years old.  That was in the 1980’s!  I then began to make mince pies, but with all those veggies coming thought it would be a good idea to make the pastry from vegetarian suet…..BIG mistake….take notes Jamie!!  You know those dog chews made out of dried up hide?  Well …now you know what our mince pies turned out like – great for jaw exercise but not much else!

Next, I thought I’d do gingerbread bikkies.  I followed the recipe precisely.  As I had no gingerbread people cutters, I decided on an Oz theme and made maps of Australia, koalas, kangaroos, Opera Houses, and Sydney Harbour Bridges.  Well they came out of the oven having spread all over the place.  The koalas and kangaroos looked like road kill and the others looked like amorphous blobs.  Meanwhile the serene, organised he who-knows- about- these- things (HWKATT) had cooked two great big casseroles, one veggie and one meat that turned out completely perfect – just typical!! 

Luckily the mulled wine turned out well so everyone had a fantastic time and we got to bed at 1am after finishing all the cleaning up.  I couldn’t do much writing on Monday as I was working on the Maritime campus as an ambassador for a visiting school. I enjoyed catching up with the others from the events and educational liaison teams and the school kids were much better behaved than the last lot thank goodness! I really had to get cracking on the essay that evening but I was too tired to get much done.  Gone are those days when I could stay up all night working!  I finally finished by midnight on Tuesday.  The deadline wasn’t until the next day but I really wanted to get it in before I went to sleep.  I kept trying to submit it until 1.30am with no luck so finally gave up and collapsed into bed.  The next day I learnt that there had been a technical fault in the system – aaahhhh! It was finally fixed at about 10am and it was with great relief I pressed that ‘submit’ button! I went into uni early to hand in my placement manager’s report placement because it is hand written and needs to be signed.  I celebrated by having turkey roast dinner with all the trimmings in the Dome – a bit sad but it was yummy!!

That was our last day in college before Christmas and I came home to a house that looked like a hurricane had been through it -papers and books strewn everywhere.  Instead of doing the sensible thing and spending a day sorting everything out ready for the new term, I chucked it all in one room, shut the door firmly and began to prepare for an annual event in my calendar - the Christmas Sweat Shop!

 

This is when my friend Chloe comes over with fabric and ideas for Christmas pressies.  I have to then figure out how we’ll make them and we then set up the production line. I do all the machining and  issue instructions about what to pin cut, iron, trim etc.  We made four retro style aprons, a cushion, and cupcake shaped pincushions and the kitchen was covered in pins, sequins, scarps of fabric and stuffing when HWKATT came home.  He promptly picked up the shopping list and recycle bags and headed off for a bit of retail therapy in Sainsbury’s!!

Panic Mode!!

The most used key on my computer

After being stuck in so much of last week with all the snow outside, one would think I’d be completely on top of all my work; totally organised with a serene expression of smugness on my face.

Well…no…that was the intention but it just didn’t quite work like that. I battled away with my assignment due in next Wednesday but it just got worse and worse.  The more I wrote the more muddled I got.  Trouble is – we aren’t given a title and the subject is me!  It is a professional log meant to be about my professional development though these first few months. We are supposed to incorporate all the elements of the course with lots of theory that relates to it and at least 25 references aaahhhh! We are meant to have a theme and I just haven’t got one.  I finally had a proper melt down on Saturday afternoon and he-who-knows-about-these- things copped it big time, poor thing.  He sat me down with a cup of tea and listened to my tale of woe and despair then became the glorious voice of reason and declared that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.  He then told me to pack it all away have a night off and start again in the morning.  That was good advice and  after sleeping on it, I managed to cobble something together  on Sunday and Monday.  Although it doesn’t need to be handed in until next week I am so busy between now and then I really want to get it in asap. I have not started Christmas shopping and we are having our mulled wine and minced pies Open House on Sunday.  We only just sent out the invites and I still have to get the decorations up, muck out of the house (yes it does look like horses have been living here!) and make the mince pies. I know I could buy them but they just don’t taste the same….




How I would like to be...

 



Reality!