Tag: Fish and chips

Going back to my roots

I was supposed to go and see a Cuban band on Saturday night, but in the end did not make it, my heart wasn’t in it.  Rafa flew to New York the next day for the Icaro film festival that he founded in Guatemala many years ago, and I found myself with the children in a beautiful park in Nottingham, where by chance I got to hear a great local band reminding me of how much I love our cool urban edgy multi-cultural music.  As I looked over to my 3 little ones contentedly devouring their mister Whippee icecreams, I felt strangely contented too.  As I swayed to the music, Paulo gave me a nervous glance.  Mummy please don’t start dancing, he said.

Happy with their British icecream
Afterdark Movement

Just as I didn’t expect to be leaving my country pregnant 10 years ago, I didn’t expect to be arriving back here unplanned with my husband and three children a couple of months back, but here I am living in middle England …… literally!

We had planned a holiday back to the UK and France for a month but ended up with 5 huge suitcases and 2 small ones like shell-shocked refugees on our friend’s boat on the Thames in London.  But just as we had left Cuba surrounded by love and support we arrived to the same in the UK!  Thanks to all our wonderful family and friends who were absolutely there for us, listening to our crazy tales of another world that was beginning to sound more and more like something so weird and wrong that it was fading fast.

Going through a lock on the way to Tower Bridge

Then we headed down to Devon, finding it difficult to enjoy our stay on the beautiful Jurassic coast with grandparents, as we were still being bombarded with lies and libel online from people who should have known better.  But when Rafa finally got chance to write his document telling the truth, they all shut up and really should be totally ashamed of themselves.  But as I have realised in the last few weeks, some people have no shame. But we splashed on the beaches, ate ice cream, cream teas and fish and chips, found fossils, visited donkey sanctuaries and really did our best to salvage some kind of holiday.  The children were unsettled and anxious, and I still felt angry about how their lives had been turned upside down by a few deeply vain and selfish people.  But as the days passed I stopped waking up with a knot in my stomach that had been put there by so much injustice.

Hanging out in Devon

Chocolate chip icecream on the beach
Saskia in a place called Beer

Next we moved on to Nottingham, my old university city and where I had spent many happy family Christmases in my aunt and uncle’s beautiful house.  We decided to stay, as my wonderful aunt and kindred spirit had a little house for us to live in and we had to start looking in earnest for schools to bring some normality back to my children’s lives.  We bought a car, spent a lot of time in the school admissions department of the council, met some new friends, had lots of fun and lovely dinners with my aunt as we waited for our house to be fixed up for us.  The children were still anxious and naughty and would not sleep ……….. but bit by bit everything fell together.  But it was weird to be the one in charge, the Brit back in her own country and language.

In Newstead Abbey Lord Byron's gaff
My new view

Now we are in a lovely little house, Saskia has a free nursery place at the end of the road, we are registered with a doctor round the corner, have found a dentist for the first time in 2 years and finally at the last moment the boys got a place in a school less than 10 minutes drive away.  We found some old carpet tiles in a rubbish skip, Rafa cleared out the cellar, carpeted it and we have installed the boys a Lego den downstairs.  Second hand Lego from Ebay helping the healing!  The children are amazingly happy in their school and have friends from Afghanistan, Somalia, Jamaica and a few from England.  We enrolled in a beautiful little public library 2 minutes away, so they are forgetting about all the books they left behind too!  I still have the odd pang when I see something in someone’s kitchen that I used to have or the children ask me where something is and I have to say, Mummy couldn’t fit everything in the suitcases …..

The first to start school

At times during my ten years away I worried that my children would never know what it was like to be British, so I say thank you to serendipity for this unexpected but strangely welcome opportunity and I intend to make the most of it.  Not long to go until Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night (a truly British event) and maybe my children will get to see snow this Christmas, something I’ve been promising them for many years.

The next to go ..... love the smart new uniforms

So now I feel like a middle England Mum, enjoying the wonders of British supermarkets, (Aldi we love you), pootling around in my little car listening to Radio 2 (how ucool is that!).  Everyone has been very gentle and friendly to us in Nottingham and we have discovered the delights of the alternative cinema and the new Contemporary arts centre, bumped into Latinos in parks and Ikea, and the boys are already playing football in the street with their Indian neighbours.  How long we will be here, or where we go next we do not know yet, but for the time being we are safe and happy in Nottingham.  Nobody can keep the Rosal Wilkie family down for long and we are having a well-earned breather until the next adventure begins.

Just off to browse on line for my first winter coat in 10 years …….. hmmm.

 

England ……..looking backwards

It is always tricky dipping back into England every year but this year it was particularly hard.  We were homeless, in limbo and I think we all felt disconnected and confused.  I always go for a month but by 3 weeks I am on my knees.

The intensity of trying to catch up with a year of family trials and tribulations can be emotionally exhausting.  Dashing round and trying to spend some time with my oldest friends is great too, but usually demands a bit of drinking and bad parenting (i.e  too much TV and bad food to keep them quiet while I chat, no baths or teeth cleaning and every routine goes out the window).  All this usually leads to lots of bad behaviour and two cheeky boys fighting and refusing to sleep.

Last year I went without the boys and just with Saskia who was 5 months old.  I only went for 2 weeks but after the first week I was missing the rest of the family so much it felt strange but was certainly an easier and more relaxing visit.  I even managed a great little trip to my beloved France to visit Saskia´s godmother, which really did feel like a holiday.  Great food, wine and chat and swimming in a pool surrounded by ancient oak forest.

This year for the first 3 weeks we were staying in a cottage in a beautiful Cotswold village close to my mother and sister full of smart well-preserved retired people.  I had ordered a USB internet connection, which did not work and always have my mobile phone reconnected (which had no network coverage). I had happened upon a village that had communication problems that rival Cuba.  I had so many things to do and so many people to call and catch up with on the phone but could not do much more than try to get through the days without one of my children spilling food on English carpets or waking up the neighbours during jetlagged nights.

We climbed up to Broadway tower with Paulo´s godmother and watched the boys chasing sheep trying to catch them and stroke them in their red El Che T-shirts.

They became experts on CBeebies, rude English words and fruit pastels, maltesers, Fruit Shoots, Hula Hoops and all the rest……..  I was so sad when they didn´t like cherries!

Before Rafa arrived ……… just trying to work out all the appliances, recycling and the TV and get them all in the hire car every day to shop at Budgens was enough.  And having the elderly couple, who owned the place pop in all the time to remind me of the various recycling collections.  Phew………..

By the time I managed to get them all up and fed in the morning Saskia was ready for her morning sleep and I had to put the TV on to keep the boys quiet and feed the pay phone, then it was lunch for the three of them and maybe a stagger to the park to see if I could find a corner of the playground where my phone might work whilst keeping my eye on three children ……….. not easy believe me.

I was supposed to be sorting out all the admin of my English life:  banks, credit cards etc, shopping for the whole family for a year (no shopping in Cuba and 3 growing children and things as ridiculous as bath plugs and car parts, deoderants and low sugar Ketchup, tampons, toothpaste, digital radio).

We spent a wonderful half an hour in John Lewis with a fantastic Indian mama who kitted us out with footwear for the children for a few months.   I dragged my non-consumerist man into New Look to get a wardrobe for Cuba in a 20 minute Sunday Summer Sale power shopping session before hitting the amazing Salisbury Cathedral.  That was after a 20 minute Stonehenge stop off.

My boys had their first taste of surfing on a Devon beach and ate fish and chips and sausage rolls.  We buried them in the sand of the dunes and experienced every weather in one day.  Typical English seaside stuff.

When Amy Winehouse died it hit my hard.  A strange thing when the death of a famous person feels close and personal.  It was quite a shock and I hadn’t even been living in the UK for her rise to fame but I loved her voice, her style and her vulnerable irreverence and never read all the tabloid rubbish about her life.  Maybe there is a bit of Amy in me, or maybe it was just the moment.

Then the riots …………..  a sociological disaster that will be discussed in newspaper columns for years.  At this point we were all staying with a friend in London close to the action and the police sirens were going off all night.  It felt quite strange to be with my Guatemalan husband in London during the worst social unrest in 26 years,  But such is life ………

So my beautiful England I do love you, but I am not quite sure I understand my old world so well anymore.  But thanks to all my family and friends for making this trip so wonderful despite the challenges of being on holiday in your own country, you always make me feel so welcome and loved.