I bet you have all forgotten what that sounds like. I have to admit to feeling very nostalgic when I heard that old familiar noise.
Sorry for my absence from the blogsphere but the last few weeks have been a rollercoaster and I feel I have dragged my children all over England to family and friends for way too long with the usual highlights and low points that it always entails.
Now arrived in Cuba and just spent a wonderful day eating delicious food and tropical juices and swimming in the sea and most importantly getting my family back to normal.
So far loving the relaxed rhythm of Habana and the chatty friendly Cubans. My children seem so happy and at home and Rafa and I feel as though we are having the honeymoon we never had, holding hands and being wistful. Lets enjoy it while we can …….
Just watched the sun set over the sea and all my children are asleep in their own bedrooms albeit not in their own beds. Got all that to come … getting our stuff.
Will blog soon about jumping back into British society during a tense and sad summer of a mix of death (Amy Winehouse) and disappointment (the looting of new trainer and plasma screen riots).
My wonderful girlfriends that I left in Guatemala and London.
We finally moved out of Guatemala, and are on our way to Cuba via the UK. So much has happened in the last few days that I don´t know how to coherently write it all down but feel I must blog something.
Leaving Guatemala was harder and more emotional than I had even imagined. I am not so great at goodbyes and in the end I was emotionally drained and the logistics of packing were tough. We left in the shuttle though the streets of Antigua that held so many memories for all of us. We were all quiet and reflective, even the boys!
After many rainy grey days the sun was shining as we left so we got to say goodbye to those beautiful volcanoes. The country that give me my wonderful husband and three beautiful little hybrids and so many great friends is now officially a chapter of my life that is over. We will visit of course but we are on our next chapter now, a page has turned ……
The Casa Comal leaving party was amazing. Grown men were holding back tears and so many hugs and goodbyes all from the heart. Thanks to everyone for such an amazing night, and yes we danced a lot!
Leaving Juju who his second mother to all of us was tearful and traumatic.
We arrived in Habana and one of our 5 suitcases was stopped by the famous customs and I was imagining hours and hours of complications but in the end it was the two children’s lunchboxes that I had filled with English tea and Indian spices that were causing the problem and a quick check to prove that they weren’t hard drugs meant that we left the airport pretty soon and got to our future home without too much of a problem.
We hardly left the house the two days we were there and I spent too much time fighting back tears whenever I thought about all the good people that I will miss so much in the next few months. The boys were delighted to spend the two days swimming in the Caribbean and eating way too much icecream.
The flight to England alone with the 3 little ones was relatively painless compared to previous trips. Although I think I will be ordering a children’s meal on Virgin next time I fly as their food was much more yummy! I only had the energy to eat comfort food pasta and suck apricot puree from a tube.
My noble sister had got up at 6 to get to Gatwick and meet us and got caught in bad traffic on the M25 but was there within minutes of us passing through the gate. I was slightly annoyed that with my 3 children and 3 suitcases I was supposed to magically have a pound coin for the luggage trolleys. Gatwick Gatwick you really need to get better, no wonder Richard Branson has been fighting to get more slots into Heathrow.
Now we are installed in a little village in the Cotswolds that seems to have worse communications than Cuba (my mobile (cell) phone does not work in my house nor the USB internet connection that I had ordered) but the flowers and gardens are picture postcard beautiful and we are settling in nicely!
Moving into an unknown house with jetlag and trying to work out all the appliances was trickier than you imagine. I had forgotten the stress of recycling. It seems you have to wash and file all your rubbish. I know this is all good but surely the responsibility lies with the big companies who insist on so much packaging and pollution.
The children are delighted to see their British family but seem to have forgotten that they need to listen to me sometimes ………. Their exotic transatlantic accents aare already sounding more English but they are still speaking Spanish to each other. We spent the first morning at their cousin’s sports day in the village school in summer drizzle. Saskia is very chatty and will learn a lot of English words in the next month before she hits her Habana nursery in a few weeks.
I just feel happy that I am holding it together. An old friend is arriving tomorrow to visit and my cousin will visit the day after. Rafa is meanwhile still in Cuba evaluating students finals and will arrive next week.
Thank God for British TV, it still leaves the rest behind especially when you have the scandal of the Murdoch case going on amongst other things.
We have moved out of our house and our things have left in a big truck headed for Cuba but not without some interesting issues along the way. One of which, I would like to share here as maybe it could be symbolic of my future life in Cuba!
Anyone who is British or has visited a British home or spent any time living in the UK knows the importance of the toaster and the kettle as the most humble but most valued of kitchen appliances. We are brought up on TOAST ……… Marmite toast, beans on toast, egg on toast, honey toast, toasted sandwiches, toast can be for breakfast, supper or just whenever you feel like filling up. Toast can be beautiful wholewheat toast with smoked salmon, toasted bagels with cream cheese, toast soldiers to dip into your boiled egg, or just plain white sliced toast soaked in melted butter ………. and they all can be equally delicious depending on your mood.
As a nation we are not so obsessed with having huge fridges, enormous gas fired barbecues and ridiculously extravagant domestic appliances that after a few days get forgotten about. But we always have a toaster and a kettle in every kitchen.
Now that I remember there was even a hit in the eighties by that popster Paul Young when he was still singing with Streetband called Toast ……… everybody was humming it. (I have shared the lyrics at the bottom of this post for your amusement). So you see our affection for toast reaches quite tragic levels that others really should not mock. Toast crosses all regional and class boundaries and in school common rooms is almost like currency, or in mine it was!
Anyway, not to put too finer point on it, the toaster is as important to a Brit as the comal is for the tortillas of Guatemala. I don´t think anybody would make a fuss about a Guatemalan wanting to import their comal into Cuba but I suppose it doesn’t have a tiny electrical element which apparently is not allowed. However I think I can bring my hairdryer so not quite sure about the logic. Rules are rules I suppose.
Anyway my poor husband has learnt the importance of toast to his wife over the last few years and now we even have toast with our desayuno chapin (typical Guatemalan breakfast) that my husband always makes for us on Saturday mornings. I now do not miss HP sauce but have chili sauce on my breakfast, something a few years ago I would have found impossible to contemplate. So I don’t see myself as someone rigid and inflexible but TOAST is TOAST!
When we visited our future house in Cuba there was no grill and no toaster and we were reduced to microwaving Bimbo style bread until it become like a rock. The two women in the kitchen urged me to bring a toaster and anything else similar. So on my list of essentials was my toaster and my little oven/grill. Anyway a few days ago we were told absolutely not to even contemplate bringing anything like that. I have to admit I took the news badly, there are many things I am willing to give up ………. potatoes, lemons, avocados, mangos, grapes and whatever else, as usually it is liberating to discover other alternatives and expand your gastronomic horizons. However TOAST is TOAST!
The Offending item - my humble toaster.
Needless to say my concern about not having my, soon to be abandoned, toaster (pictured here) seems to have incited what I can only describe as thinly disguised prejudice. Me and my humble toaster have become a symbol of extravagant capitalism rather than a simple cultural reference point. We have been told that the Cubans have lived for 50 years without toasters and we should use our contacts in the diplomatic world to acquire our toaster in Cuba as though it is diamonds or a Rolls Royce that I am hankering after.
So once again I feel difficult and my poor husband has been fighting nobly for my right to have TOAST but now I have been made to feel like the Princess of the Toaster ……. it could be the next Harry Potter sequel. I bet JK Rowling likes toast no matter how many millions she has made.
Toast by Streetband.
Morning all. I’d like to tell you about when I was a young boy. I must have been three or four months old at the time. I didn’t really know what I wanted, and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anybody, ‘cos all I could do was gurgle. So I sat there in me highchair, thinking one day, looking at me tray and thinking what I’d give for a meal on there. So I started looking round to see what I could have. I was rubbing me eggy soldier in me head, trying to think, and then I looked in the corner and there’s a little breadbin with its mouth open, just staring at me, like. And then I looked in and I saw bread.
I thought, oh yeah, I’ll have toast,
A little piece of toast.
Well, then I started getting older,
I hated this, I hated that,
Expensive state was ludicrous
And cafes couldn’t cater for the finer things in life:
The upper crust was not for me,
I could tell that.
So I’d go back home,
Switch the kitchen light on,
Put the grill on,
Slip a slice under
And have toast,
A little piece of toast.
‘Cos there’s so much to choose from.
There’s brown bread, white bread,
All sorts of wholemeal bread;
It comes in funny packages
With writing on the side,
But it doesn’t matter which one you have
‘Cos when you cut the crusts off,
Have it with marmalade
Or butter, cheese, tomatoes, beans,
Banana
Or chocolate if you’re strange,
It doesn’t really matter.
Oh no, it all goes with toast,
Just toast.
I’m gonna think about it some…
That’s toast, mmm yeah,
Just toast,
That’s toast,
Just toast.
Well I go down the supermarket
With me basket in me hand,
I’m walking from one counter to another
Trying to find the bread stall,
But I can’t find it anywhere
And then I bump into a mother
With a baby in a basket
And she says
“Oh look, you’ve started him off again,
I come down here for a little bit of peace and quiet
To get some bread to go home to make toast,
Just toast,
I like toast”
Yeah, but I don’t half like toast.
OK, scrape that toast, boys.
That’s toast,
Yeah, just toast.
[Spoken]
I can’t think about it any more. I’ve got to go and have some, it’s no good. Here listen, I’m getting a bit browned off standing here. Me too. Shall we go and have some toast? Good idea. Why not? OK. I’ve got the grill on. Got any brown bread? Yeah! Have you got wholemeal bread? Wheatmeal bread? All sorts of toast. Let’s go………
(They proceed to make toast, accompanied by various kitchen noises.)
Here in Guatemala all my friends have nannies, niñeras, muchachas or whatever terminology you care to use. It is par for the course, and a well known advantage of the third world lifestyle – a hangover from a colonial past, or a reality of the present apartheid labour system. It is also a common pastime for mothers to get together and sit around complaining about their nannies´ incompetence. Not me …… no never. In this one matter I am quite splendidly smug.
My nanny is the BEST.
In my native country, to have a nanny is a status symbol of the super rich or royalty. It is also something which harks back to another time. An England of AA Milne and Winne the Pooh and Edwardian nurseries. Not one of my friends in the UK has one, or had one when they were children. I didn’t grow up in a house with a nanny, neither did my parents. And really, I did not expect to live over 6 years with a nanny coming into my house 5 and a half days a week. But serendipity played me a huge hand when I was introduced to Judith Han, who will always remain one of the most wonderful and amazing people to have come into my life. I don´t have a nanny, I have Juju. She has been my support system, my social services, my home grown remedy advisor, comedian and all round superstar. How will we all manage without her?
Smiling and laughing as usual .......
Juju, as she was christened by Paulo, has a Chinese grandfather and comes from a different part of Guatemala out towards the Pacific coast. She has a strong, happy face that always is a mili-second away from a giggle and we have laughed so much with her that I am seriously worried if I can live without her laughter, never mind anything else. Just listening to her good natured funny ramblings to my baby girl and my boys over the years is enough to put a smile on your face. But on top of that huge attribute, she is a person who can grow anything, fix anything, cook anything superbly, clean the house, mend clothes, ……… the list is endless, and all this while playing and chatting with my children.
Right now as I am writing, the rain is pouring down and all I can hear is the sound of Nico laughing with her. Yesterday she spent the afternoon playing football in the garden with Paulo whilst carrying a smiling Saskia. A mother of 6, she takes multi-tasking to a whole new dimension. She helps them with their Spanish homework, plays chess and Monopoly with them and hardly ever has raised her voice to them in 6 years. I wish I could say the same for myself.
I always thought how weird to have a stranger in your house. Not used to servants, it took me a while to get used to the concept, but if there was ever a person that I could hang out with peacefully it is Juju. On Saturday mornings she sneaks into my house so not to wake us up. Faultlessly thoughtful and incredibly kind, she regularly arrives with a little present from the packa for my children: some clothes, some books, toys, silly bands (the latest craze). She always knows the name of a plumber or a painter or a mechanic. She has plastered walls, macheted huge parts of the garden during the rainy season and is always available for more. She drops Christmas tamales at our house every year around midnight. She has come on trips with us to San Salvador and Atitlan. If you have Juju with you, a family holiday almost feels like a holiday! All my friends love Juju and she likes a lot of them too. Especially my great friend Felix who makes her laugh even more than usual.
5 of her 6 children on my famous sofa
Some Guatemalans would warn me about being too close and relaxed with my nanny. The apartheid rules are hard to shake. But bollocks I thought. I will eat lunch with my Juju trust her with my life and share my worries and my secrets. I went to her daughter´s wedding, her oldest son´s graduation ceremony, she received me home with baby Nico in my arms with Sopa de Gallina and so much love, and 4 years later Saskia too. Her husband helped us move house, has rescued me from flat tyres several mornings, and often plays football with our boys. All her children adore mine like siblings. And my children love hanging out in her house and garden with all the animals and friends and family. They even met the famous tacuazin in the jaula. Juju caught it while walking the two blocks home one night. She shared the hunting technique with me if anyone´s interested. You see there is just no end to her talents.
Juju in days gone by with my boys and her youngest
Husbands are husbands, and mine is a pretty good one most of the time, but over the last few years if you exclude time spent sleeping next to each other, I have easily spent more time with Juju than Rafa.
Juju has been there for me when no-one else has. She has seen my tears, two panzas, my pain, my laughter. My children are blessed to have known her and be loved by her. She has been my rock. To think that I will no longer have her strong light in my family is the thing that is breaking my heart these last few days. Juju we love you and we will miss you. What more can I say ……………..
Everyone is telling me that I will be arriving in Cuba for a time of great change and not all of those changes for the good, depending on who you are talking to. The Cubans apparently are going to go through some tough times as the paternal arm of communism untangles itself and they are left with …….. who knows? Rations are going, enterprise is arriving, property can be bought and sold and a lot more tourists will be coming they say. But in the meantime I think your average Cuban will have to suffer to move forward and that does not always seem fair.
Meanwhile in Guatemala the elections are approaching and I realise once more how rightwing this part of the world is. It seems incredibly possible that they could elect rightwing candidates involved in the genocide of the 80s and there is lots of finger pointing from the right to people who were involved with the guerrilla, as if it is an automatic given that to be involved in the guerrilla makes you more dysfunctional than the people involved with the genocide. Otto Perez Molina you know what you did in the name of God we have film footage! When I talk about what I call the rightwing here, they are the kind of people that make Margaret Thatcher look like a pussy cat. I do not think that even she would have wanted to kill a trade unionist. Maybe bop them over the head with her handbag if she got the chance but I don´t think she would have been up for massacring a few mining villages up North where I am from, even though they gave her a big headache and did not go easily into a future of mass unemployment and social deprivation. But I digress …….
When I mention that I am going to live in Cuba, a lot of Guatemalans (most of my friends excluded) have a reaction that I am beginning to find of sociological interest. It is a kind of trigger response. The very mention of Cuba seems to make them nervous. It is as if they have to justify their country´s inability to move out of its poverty and narco violence and corruption by pointing out how great it is that they can buy what they want in the ever increasing shopping malls in Guatemala city or in the pretty tourist shops and delis of Antigua. How they are free and can fly wherever they want. (I do correct them on this one though as now any Cuban can leave Cuba for a holiday but like most Guatemalans they don´t have the money). Anyway, these people don´t seem to have a clue how most of their country lives and that maternal mortality, malnutrition and domestic violence and murder rates are all on the up to name a few social problems. But evidently as long as the richer people can buy what they want and even fly to Miami to do it, that makes all the other things ok, because they are free to consume. But right now in Cuba nobody is starving, Guatemala however has a child malnutrition problem that is worse than a lot of African countries.
I begin to think about it a lot this week in the last balmy days before the rains arrive watching the fireflys play in the back garden. Thinking am I one of those people? Selfish and happy to live in a bubble. I have to admit I do like shopping (but in the markets and boutiques of Europe looking for a steal or something entirely unique that I will treasure all my life …… rather than in Gap or Target or Dolce Gabana). As long as I can buy my nice things for me and my family am I happy to live in a country blighted by violence and poverty? Can I ignore the realities of Guatemalan society, as long as I surround myself with good people and beautiful things and fine wine? Issues such as gendercide and chronic malnutrition. A people who have grown stunted for generations due to the slavery and apartheid they find themselves born into. It is their fault they should have less children. It is their fault they don´t know how to eat properly. It is their fault for getting involved with the rebels. I have heard it all! I am still baffled as to how people can be starving in a country like this where everything grows. But one thing I am sure about ……..it is not their fault.
But in the end what can I do? I have 3 little ones to bring up and that overwhelms me most days. But I can try to always be informed, know the truth, try to see other people´s arguments and make sure that my children know the truth about both their countries and their adopted ones. Just keep learning I suppose.
I am not sure why, but certain people from the US think that they are the oracle of world opinion, as they quite clearly are not ………. just go and read some Chomsky, Democracy Now or Consortium news or any quality European paper and you can see that a lot of us have different opinions and we are not crazy foaming at the mouth commies or fundamentalist ragheads (a popular term for Arabs in the US). A rich surburban gringo in Antigua told me with such authority that Cuba has been a disaster since they kicked the US out. By that I suppose he meant the Mafia, Batista and the CIA. And don´t get me started on the weird and shameful existence of Guantanamo. I am just relieved that there are no longer British prisoners there but Obama´s promise to close it is still pending. And Cuba has human rights issues!!!
I don´t profess to be an expert in geopolitics and certainly not in the unique and fascinating history of Cuba but I think there is one thing that I will never stop thinking. For better or for worse, Cuba is an ideological miracle and still is. How the hell did the CIA never manage to poison Fidel? Just that is a miracle. I know the Miami Cubans and a large part of US population won´t agree with me but not sure I care! In fact I have never met people so full of hate as the Miami Cubans. That can´t be good for them or anybody. And unfortunately their bad taste and bad humour does get transmitted back to Cuba along with an extra layer of white trash mentality born in the USA.
And yes I am packing carefully for our move to Cuba and I am slightly nervous about being in a no consumer zone but I hope I can survive happily without faceless shopping malls, guns on every street corner, apartheid, darkened car windows, suited bodyguards, awful cable TV with more advertisements than programmes, schools like prisons with gun toting armed guards at the gates …….and all the rest which goes with a narco capitalist state.
I can only promise the Cuban people that I will try to understand and not to judge them when I am living as a guest in their country as they are put through yet another sociological challenge. Good Luck Cuba! I will write about and record your hardships and your happiness and your apparently famous ability to resolver.
I had no specific plans to emigrate from my country and if I did, in my daydreams, it was to my neighbouring countries of France or Spain that I pictured myself setting up home. I had lived or spent enough time in these countries already, enough to feel comfortable with their culture and lifestyle and more importantly, comfortable with the fact that they knew my culture the good and the bad. I always imagined that I would stay close enough to my country so that phonecalls and quick trips home for family occasions and weddings and laughs would never be a problem. But following my philosophy of serendipity I always had a sneaky suspicion that I would not be living in suburban England. And also, maybe more importantly my biggest fear was boredom, of ending up like Lucy Jordan of Marianne Faithful´s famous song. That awful feeling that you would just get to a certain age and realise that you hadn´t lived and done all the things you wanted. I had already achieved many of Lucy´s missed dreams including driving through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair . (see note 1)
When I set off for Antigua Guatemala for a 6 month break I had no idea that I was making such a huge step into a completely new life on a new continent. (check out the archives on this site and you can see how I arrived). For me the geographical isolation was also a huge physical and cultural barrier in this part of the world. Two huge oceans separate this continent from the rest of the world. On my other travels I always felt that I was connected by land and small sea hops from London to Beijing, Paris to Cape Town, Yorkshire to Afghanistan. Here on this continent it is easy to forget that other continents exist, especially with the empirical mass culture exporters who live right above us. In Guatemala, such a small country, you can swim in both the Atlantic and the Pacific in the same day, if you set your mind to it or own a helicopter!
Now after nearly 8 years here, who am I? I gave birth to 3 children, learnt the language and the cultural issues, tried to make sense of the society whilst recognising the history, stopped being Jo (at times) and became Josefina or Doña Jose, my Spanish speaking alter ego!
I know that I will never know how it feels to be Guatemalan but my affection and acceptance of the country that gave me my husband and my children and the last 8 years of my life has been part of a long and interesting journey.
It has not been easy and I missed my country and my continent so much it hurt at the beginning, like a physical pain. I missed the OLD WORLD, the British sense of humour, the great music that enters your psyche like osmosis, cricket, pubs, Sunday newspapers, delicious apples, the best cheese (700 of them!), from the gritty working classes to the eccentric aristocrat I missed them all. I got tired of people talking to me every day of dollars, estados and gringos. I was frustrated that people knew very little or nothing about my culture even the ones that should. Generally people here view us as all the same. We are all gringos, white people from the North. I rarely get any acknowledgement of my own culture. A poor muslim peasant knows more about Britain than a rich Latina. How could I explain that this gringa felt more comfortable with an educated Iranian or Bosnian than someone from Idaho who looks just like her.
But I am who I am ……. a foreign mother who does not know if she will ever live in her home country again. What does that mean? How do I instill my children with the Britishness that made me who I am? These days the two older ones speak less and less English to each other as they always used to (mother tongue), their apron strings are now more elastic and Spanish is the language. Last year I only managed a trip home with my baby girl and left my two boys for two weeks. They missed out on their little month of immersion in all things British. Which can be anything from Bagpuss (note 4) to the use of the word bollocks!
I did not flee into exile from my country like my husband and his family but I live in serendipity exile never-the-less and the feeling is similar. I have never been a mother anywhere else and I will always be grateful for the kindness and acceptance that I have received from the ordinary people of Guatemala. Will I find it difficult to be a mother anywhere else now? Or does the emigre mother live in a different bubble of multi-culturalism which at times feels as though I don´t belong anywhere anymore ……….. just the unbearable lightness of being. (see Note 2)
As the last weeks of my adventure here in Guate are dwindling I wonder how I will live without the volcanoes, the sweet kind humble people, radiant colours of the flowers, the fun of market day and our nanny who symbolically represents to me and my family the best of everything this beautiful and troubled country has to offer. (see note 3)
So Cuba here we come, I hope now I have learnt how to move as an emigre to see the best in the cultures that I immerse myself in. As my husband said all those years ago (in a wise and reassuring moment) when I shared by deepest fears about leaving Europe.
You are not losing your world you are gaining another.
My family and I will be enjoying a few weeks in my old world this summer with family and friends before heading to a fast-changing Cuba for four years.
Note 1 The Ballard of Lucy Jordan was one of my mother´s favourite Marianne Faithful songs and I listened to it with her as a teenager and the lyrics never left me. A surburban housewife full of regrets for the things she never did. I don´t think my mother felt like Lucy Jordan but maybe all of us mothers have Lucy Jordan days! I was determined to never feel as trapped as she did.
Note 2 I read Milan Kundera´s book The Unbearable Lightness of Being at an early age and at the time I felt the power of his writing and began to understand the importance of identity for people forced to change their lives due to ideological or geographical issues. One of the characters ends up in California looking out to the Pacific and feeling not the freedom but the unbearable lightness of being as she thinks about her old world and the people that inhabited it.
Note 3 I will be writing more about Juju ………..
Note 4 Bagpuss is classic BBC children´s TV from the 70s
I did not expect to be writing a post about my own country quite so soon especially not one about the Royal Family but when I got up this morning and put on the TV to catch up on the news, I had totally forgotten that Prince William was marrying the beautiful Kate the commoner (I love that expression, only used in relation to royalty, just like gentil only used in relation to Jews). I have to admit I felt rather tearful watching it all and I had to stop and try to think why.
I do not consider myself a royalist or a republican in fact INDIFFERENT in capital letters would be the category that I would put myself in. I realised that the fascination for our Royal Family that was all over the world was good for our tourist coffers if not for our image as a modern democracy!
I think I just felt homesick and sad that my children and I were not there to enjoy and remember what is essentially a great big party with a truly British sense of irony whether you spend most of it slagging off the Royals and making fun of them or watching on adoringly …….. that is our prerogative. Yes we are a modern democracy that still has a House of Lords and a Monarchy and that is ridiculous, but I like the fact that we are ridiculous.
In this time of celebrity culture I think I would prefer to watch this wedding more than J-Lo´s or Tom Cruise´s. A New York friend was surprised that I was watching it and said ¨ohh that is so tacky¨. A British Royal Wedding can be many things to many people but tacky no, we leave that to the Hollywood stars they do it so well.
SO what would I be doing if I was home. I noticed that there was the usual alternative Royal Wedding Party in Shoreditch my old stamping ground in the Bohemian multi-cultural Eastend but I have to say the party in Hyde Park looked pretty good! Lots of great British picnics and lots of bottles of champagne being passed around. And even though I am a socialist I am a champagne socialist! The weather was good, London looked beautiful and so did Kate and her dress and for a moment I felt as though I was watching Shrek with my kids and the sadness of the real world melted away.
The Syrian Ambassador was disinvited. Tony Blair didn´t receive an invitation (cool, slimy little toerag) but Margaret Thatcher did (very uncool). Victoria Beckham managed to get in there hanging on the arm of her husband (very uncool as she is TACKY).
Nico asked me. Is that what you did when you married Papa? I didn´t like to tell him that we had never had the time or the inclination as I sat there staring at the screen wondering if I could wear that dress like a pathetic teenage girl!
I wonder how many people watched the Royal Wedding in Cuba? Not many I suppose! I wonder who watched it here in Guatemala? My nanny Juju just arrived full of questions. She liked the dress too!
