Cave

Whilst boarding a boat at the port in Ko Lanta town in Thailand, it was sprung upon us that the day’s outing would involve swimming in a cave. No other information was mentioned, so I instantly and purposefully forgot about it. I’d been offered the opportunity to swim in a cave once before, on a boat in Greece twenty years ago, to which I replied using only my hands because the power of speech had failed me at the thought of swimming in a cave. I can only wish that that had also been my response on this otherwise-beautiful Thai day.

The day had been so far spent stopping at various bays and islands for snorkelling, which was an event in itself because we had our six-year-old with us, who had never snorkelled before. The sea was fairly calm but it wasn’t still, and both my partner Jake and I can swim but are not overly comfortable out of our depth. Once I had a panic attack whilst holding my friend’s two-year-old in the sea (sorry Moo!) and had to chuck her into a nearby boat whilst I hyperventilated. So I was feeling slightly apprehensive about letting my wild little son loose in the sea, with only my marginally-less wild teenager present as extra back-up, should my partner and I prove to be useless in the child-saving department. Bearing in mind we have lost one child (to a genetic disorder), it wasn’t my most relaxing day out ever. But the little wild one mustn’t be wrapped in cotton wool because of his brother dying, right?

So, kitted out with a mini lifejacket and snorkel set, Tatu (small, wild) stood at the side of the ladder down into the sea whilst I faffed around trying to get my own mask on. I looked up, ready, and he’d gone. I rushed over to that side of the boat in time to see him jump off the ladder and swim off with his face in the water as if he’d done it hundred times before. I even heard him laugh in delight through his snorkel, watching angel fish beneath him. Jake and I exchanged a glance: partly ‘thank goodness he swims like the teenager and not like us’ and also ‘bloody hell!’

Returning to the boat, the captain announced that we would proceed now to the cave. A cave. Which we would swim in. ‘WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?’ I shouted at him, but only in my head. We arrived at the mouth of the cave to find that the sea behaves differently when presented with caves, and was throwing waves in and out of the entrance like it was playing tennis with itself. At no point did the captain say a) this is a strange thing to do, b) if anyone is uncomfortable in deep water they should stay behind, or c) there is no way on Earth that a six-year-old can physically do this. I personally feel that he should have said all of the above. I had spent the previous twenty-five minutes wondering aloud whether or not I could do it myself.

Tatu, unencumbered by fear, jumped off the flippin’ ladder before Jake or me but luckily immediately followed by the teenager. My friend David told the captain that I was nervous and asked him if said captain could swim alongside me. ‘Of course!’ replied the captain, and promptly jumped off the boat, never to be seen by me again.

Now Jake and I were in the sea which was swelling up and down by a couple of feet, and our two children were about 20 feet ahead of us, having been caught up in the waves and the crowd of about 15 other swimmers heading into the dark cave. ‘Fucking hell!’ I shouted, and we both started swimming towards the boys without me having the chance to even consider getting back on the boat and hiding from the stupid cave like any reasonable person would do. The teacher and the group of school children that he led into a flooded Thai cave, where they got stuck for a couple of weeks, did cross my mind.

At the mouth we found a tunnel stretching back through the cave, towards a bend beyond which we could see nothing. What we could see was our boys, swimming like mad against the strength of the sea, following a guy with a small handheld torch in an otherwise pitch-black cave with sharp, jagged rocks surrounding them on both sides. They were corralled in between several adults, all of whom were swimming inefficiently after Torch Guy. Disbelief struck me again and again – I am a sensible person who long ago discarded most of the recklessness of youth and who mainly spends her time trying to keep my remaining children safe. At no point had I made a decision involving letting them swim miles ahead of me in a dark, sharp, sea-flooded fucking cave!

The swim inwards was laborious because of the waves pushing and pulling at us – we would gain a few feet and then suddenly be drawn backwards through the water we’d just covered. It was also tricky because we were trying to swim as fast as we could to catch up with the boys, which was a non-starter of course because we’re both crap at swimming quickly. Luckily the teenager is an excellent swimmer and very strong in general, and he had stayed with Tatu. It soon became apparent that in no way could Tatu actually manage this, and the teenager hoisted him onto his shoulder and carried him, whilst swimming with his left arm (he’s right-handed) – and for this reason only, Tatu made it through the cave. Seeing one carry the other gave me some relief, but I was shouting in frustration and Jake, who by now was pulling me along with one hand and swimming with the other, kept telling me to just swim. Getting battered in the face by saltwater and pushed backwards every four feet felt infuriating, and I kept shouting rude and pointless enquiries about the reasons that made people do this by choice.

The next fun thing that happened was that the teenager was suddenly swatted sideways by an enormous wave, towards the wall, which was covered with stalactites of jagged rock pointing out and down towards my children with their sharp teeth ready to tear into them. Torch Guy was close to the boys and he grabbed Tatu off the teenager’s shoulder, rescuing one but not the other, and the teenager crashed unceremoniously into the wall but miraculously avoided the worst spikes. At this point, with the torch and with my young child still on his shoulder, Torch Guy disappeared round the bend. This left us all in total darkness and I had some stuff to shout about that. I didn’t have time to feel scared though, which was a bonus I suppose.

The captain presumably was behind us all, as an extra small light source appeared and we approached the bend ourselves after what felt like another fifteen minutes but was probably two. At the bend Jake swung me from behind him, all the way past him and propelled me forward (probably because he was sick of dragging my fat arse through a sea-cave) and I started swimming like an excited little puppy towards the daylight I could now see at the end of this 85-metre-long ridiculous excuse for a fun activity. By the time we emerged at the other end, I was dazed and confused about my life choices – although I still maintain I had no choice – and relieved to see my small wild one and my man-boy one wading out through the shallows.  

As if the *insert expletive here* cave wasn’t enough excitement for one day, we were now on a hidden and exceedingly beautiful beach, in a massive hole. Imagine a volcano that has had its lava column plucked out, leaving the tall sides around the empty centre. In the centre we stood, on soft sand completely surrounded by jungle. The rock sides soared straight up, way above us and that perfect blue Thai sky was visible at the top. It was incredible but we were too busy laughing about the cave, in that raucous way people do when they’ve just finished doing something totally nerve-wracking and stupid and they can’t believe they’ve got away with it. Tatu ran around yelling with joy, and when questioned about getting there he declared a lack of fear and wasn’t bothered about the fact that the only way out of the hole was the same way we came in. Mind you, he was carried most of the way.  

After the allotted ten minutes only (to avoid being stuck there for the night due to the incoming high tide – another previously undisclosed gem) we splashed back into the clear water, me privately sighing resignedly. Torch Guy suddenly had a large lifebuoy tied to his wrist, floating along behind him – had he had it on the way in?! I called to the teenager, who moves more quickly than me through water (and in general), to attach Tatu to the ring so that he could be safely pulled back through the cave, which by now had assumed evil intentions in my mind. What I did not foresee was that Tatu would once again be pulled out of sight right in front of my eyes, but too far ahead for me to do anything about it. Having told Jake again that this did not constitute fun just to make sure he definitely knew, I started swimming into the fucking cave again! Aaargh!

And the teenager? He, now with the use of both arms, swam expertly off after Tatu, only pausing to call back ‘Are you alright Mama?’ Oh, how the tables have turned.

As we were discharged by the cave, my facial expression was a mixture of physical exhaustion and bewilderment at the leisure pursuits of other people, albeit with a newfound respect for British Health & Safety laws. David, who had sensibly remained on the boat, saw the mixture of emotions on my face and, wanting to do something to help me, took a photo.

P.s. It was the Emerald Cave in Ko Muk 🙂

Oak leaf

Four years and nine months have passed since my Begu died, and he was four years and nine months old. After this week, he will have been dead for longer than he was alive. This is a fact that makes my body feel like it’s inside out, my brain feel like it might implode from the lack of ability to process things like this, and my heart… well.

Begu is everywhere, all the time, and he’s nowhere. Occasionally people still reassure me that I’ve got his memories – I wonder if they would be content with only the memories of their child. I don’t want only the memory of him laying next to me in my bed, his lashes resting on that smooth, perfect skin, his small hand with his short, chubby fingers grasped in mine while I monitor his breathing. I want him actually in my bed. If I could have him again as a new baby, knowing that he was going to die shortly, I would do it again, and again, and again for evermore, even though it broke me so badly that I still can’t work.

Today he is in every aspect of the forest. Of course for me he’s always in orange flowers and blackbirds, and roses, and all his favourite things. Thank goodness he had a passion; imagine him dying without having loved nature with all of his tiny heart. But today he is in the forest. I brushed my hand against an oak leaf and it made me cry. All the little acorns he collected in the cloth bag attached to his walking frame. All the seeds and stones he planted, hoping to grow trees. All the conkers he made me carry around in my coat pockets. The last night he was alive, Jake and I pushing him round outside the hospice, him in one side of the double pushchair and his oxygen tank in the other. He was sedated, so Jake and I collected his acorns for him. Much later, we planted three of them and they turned into tiny oak trees and he would have been so pleased. One lives at Granny’s, and one didn’t make it. Our last one died when Jake went away for a few days last year – it was an extremely hot summer and I was in a bad way and I didn’t water anything, and it died right in front of me and I could do nothing to stop it. So often my heart has been wrenched about not looking after it. Last week I noticed a small but definite oak tree growing in our memorial garden at Begu’s school, about four inches tall. I pulled it up and planted it at home, and I feel like nature has given us a second chance at growing Begu’s oak tree. It is being watered.

Today he’s in the blackberry flowers. They are small and delicate, swaying slightly in the breeze, and they’re pale pink, mauve. Begu loved growing strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries at home and he delighted in doing his rounds each morning harvesting a few from each in a bowl. Watching him eat those gave me a great deal of pleasure, much more than the pleasure he derived from tasting them.

Today he’s in the dens that he never got to build enough of. They look strong but they’ll fall with any old knock – like me. Being unsteady on his feet and unable to trust his legs, he was not really able to fully enjoy the forest as his little brother Tatu does now. Begu wasn’t able to climb trees, jump over logs or even run through the trees. His walking frame couldn’t move properly on the forest floor, so we gave up on visiting woods for the last year of his life, though we didn’t know it was the last year and now I’m wishing we had carried him around. The huge fallen trees that are Tatu’s playground in this park with the forest in were never an option for Begu, not unaided anyway. But today he’s still in the impossibilty of them.

Today he’s in every dog that would have sniffed him and licked his legs. He would love every sweet one, as he loved all creatures (but especially fluffy ones). The saddest thing about my daily forest excursions is that it reminds me that of all of us, it would have been him who loved our own puppies the most. He would have fed them by hand, so gently, and brushed their fur until it sparkled. Of course he never met them as they’re only babies, and this brings me much guilt, and I wonder why the hell I didn’t get puppies when he was alive. Obviously I wasn’t in a position to do so, but the OCD lodged in my mind loves to torment me with these thoughts.

Today he’s even in the breeze itself, lifting my hair and swirling it around my face. Begu’s beautiful hair, for which we would be stopped in the street by old ladies (shoulder-length white-blonde surfer sort of hair) should also be swirling and lifting, cowlick fighting against the breeze, getting in his eyes.

And he’s in me, observing all these things, like I do every day. Every birdsong, every fruit growing wild, every flowering weed, every berry on the Rowan, every bumble bee sniffing round a foxglove. He’s in the small waves at the beach, soft, never giving up on reaching up the shore, like he never gave up on trying to walk better, trying to run, trying to throw beanbags into a hoop accurately, trying to control his muscles. He’s in the occasional pink pebble under my toes, in every smooth piece of sea glass I find, every ‘mermaid’s purse,’ every interesting thing I know he’d love to investigate. He’s in every new baby I see, every time those babies smile at me, reach for my fingers, gurgle, cry. When they cry it makes me want to cry.

All the time I want to cry. On his friends’ birthdays or when they learn to ride a bike, or when Tatu learns to swim or when he realises how much fun tennis is. When my bare feet touch grass, or the sun or rain touches my face. Begu is everywhere, all the time.

There’s no point to this blog post really, other than to tell you that it’s unbearable, the combination of him being gone and him being everywhere. Yet we bear it because there is no other option.

September

Nearly three years ago my little son died. He was four and three quarters. We were under the impression that he had about another ten years, but fairly suddenly he seriously deteriorated over a two-week period and then died.

*

September: the shittest month, as my foul-mouthed friend once said. September for almost every other family in the UK means the start of a new school year; a new class, a return to friends and beloved staff, a safe place for many. And I have got two children doing just that, one excitedly and one begrudgingly. September for me means having to see dozens of back-to-school photographs of my friends’ beautiful children in their uniforms on social media, and hundreds of children at the crossing outside my house, and hundreds of new, excited children at Begu’s school, where I now take Tatu into nursery every day. The memorial garden my partner and I are creating in the school is starting to take shape, but the bench I’ve had installed breaks my heart a little bit more every day when I go to touch Begu’s brass name plate on it. I often force myself to stand still in silence on the playground while the rivers of happiness wash around me on every side because if I move or speak I will lose it and scream and smash things, which is what I want to do all the time.

Later this month will be the anniversary of his death. How can I have lived for three years without him? How can it be that Tatu doesn’t know his brother? How can the world still turn? Why didn’t it just explode when he died? September brings all the terrible details into the forefront of my mind. I relive again and again and again the moment that we received the diagnosis, the moment we worked out that he would eventually die, the moment we realised he was dying, the moment he died, the moment they took his body away, the funeral. This happens regularly anyway but currently it has taken over. The worst part of my OCD (it’s different for each patient) is the power and regularity of my intrusive thoughts, which now means that I can never escape these memories and that they rage in my head all day, wherever I am and whatever I’m doing.

September marks the start of autumn, which is the season of Begu’s antenatal friends’ birthdays. Over the next three months they will all turn eight. The week before Christmas, my partner and I will cry on Begu’s birthday when he should be eight as well. We will have another Christmas without him, two sets of gifts under the tree instead of three, me running upstairs every so often so that my tears don’t ruin the day for the other two. Then a new year, receiving texts at midnight from drunk people that say ‘Happy new year!’ so that when I awaken into another new year without him, that’s what I see from people who are supposed to be thoughtful.

I remember all the worst bits of other people. Begu’s teacher, who upon seeing me in the supermarket a few months after his death, looked in my eyes then turned on her heel and walked away. Everyone who has told me ‘at least you’ve got the other two.’ The woman in the soft play place who was pretending to her friend that her son was dead; she told him to flop back across her arms and she dramatically cried ‘He’s dead!’ Her friend wasn’t paying attention so she told the boy to lay back again and she cried out again. It wasn’t long after Begu had died, and I was frozen in shock at the hideousness of this moment and at her stupidity and unconcern for others around her. I wanted to shout at her, ‘That isn’t how it is!’ but I couldn’t speak. Tatu and I had to leave the soft play place. I hated her, I hate her now and sometimes I briefly hate everyone whose children are alive. I hate people who complain to me about the rain, when entire towns in Libya have just been washed away by the burst dams – this is typical of Brits, who moan about their lot when they are actually among the luckiest people on Earth. Many people insist on complaining to me every September about having had to look after their own children “all summer.” What I wouldn’t give, to have to look after all my children all summer. I would give my life, if Begu could have his. My friend’s mum told me when I was 23 that she would lay down and die right now if it would bring Joe, her son, my friend, back. I tried to console her then, and didn’t fully understand the depth of her words. I do now. I wish that it was as simple as me laying down and dying for his life.

I’m trying to find something positive to say but there isn’t much, today. The other two are alive. Begu made it to school, which is a mercy, but a very small one – he had eight days, and school was all he wanted. But everyone else gets twelve years and spends half that time moaning about it. He loved his uniform. He loved having what he considered homework. He loved his walking frame making his mobility a bit easier. He loved baby Tatu, eight months old, collecting him after school. He loved being a schoolboy and at the dinner table we had to say ‘Hands up if you’re a schoolboy,’ and his hand would shoot up, straight and proud. I miss him more than you know possible, every minute of every day.

That is my September.

I’m not sorry for making you sad, because this is my life and if you love me then you’ve got to hear it.

Kiss your children when they come home today.

Children and phones

Lots of my friends have children of an age where they will be given phones at some point soon. Here are some suggestions based on the experiences of me, my 15 year old, and his friends. Learn from our mistakes!    

• Delay, delay, delay. As long as possible. We gave in in the third term of Year 6 (age 11), because my son was due to attend a different secondary school from the rest of his class and I wanted to allow him to collect phone numbers before they all left. (Now he’s in Year 10 (age 15) and meets up with a few primary school friends on long weekends.) However, if you don’t get them a phone before high school they’ll be literally the only one without one. A very strong-minded child could deal with this if they were on board with it. If they’re going on public transport or across the city though, it’s useful to be able to contact them.  

• Get the child whichever operating system you’ve got. If you’ve got Android, don’t get them an iPhone, and vice versa. If your systems are different, you can’t properly set up parental monitoring/controls on their phone.

• Lay out the ground rules from the start, so that they know what to expect before getting the phone. These could be time limits per day, weekend use only, no weekend use, after school for an hour then off, whatever. These will need to be eased off as they get older.

• Build in a phone-free period to the week. They need not to become obsessed and addicted, even though they probably will at some point! Delay! And make them stare at the tops of trees or something far away to counteract staring at tiny screens, or their eyes will get messed up. Look up digital eye strain.  

• Set the phone (through parental controls on yours) before you even give it to them so that it turns itself off at a certain time each evening and can’t be accessed by the child until whatever time in the morning. This way you are not the big baddy taking it away every night, and they’ll get used to having a non-negotiable, automatic switch-off time – like when a shop closes. Some friends of theirs will be awake all night long (yes, all night sometimes) messaging each other and then attempting school in the morning. My son wakes up to 1000 messages in group chats sometimes.  

• Restrict their use of the internet on the phone, content-wise, or even turn access off completely at first. Other children will use their phones at times or suggest things to look up, and a lot of parents aren’t paying attention to what their children are doing on their phones. Your child will be introduced to porn and all sorts of inappropriateness at some point, and much earlier than you would like. Talk about porn before this happens, how it doesn’t represent real sex. Talk to your boys about respecting girls and women, and stepping in when others don’t show that respect. Talk to girls, and everyone in fact, about demanding respect. Some kids might already know/suspect they’re not hetero/binary. Teach all of them about consent, online as well as in real life.   

• Make a rule about data use. Ours is that he gets a certain amount every month, and if he uses it all up on the first day watching YouTube videos constantly, he just has no data until the next month. Make your rule and stick to it. They can always ring you, if you save your number in their ‘emergency contacts.’ 

• Do not assume they will stick to any of your rules! Remember their brains can be quickly addicted to the phones/games/messaging services – which are purposely designed that way – and they might be sneaking in extra time purposely or they might be unable to restrain themselves. Remove the temptation with automatic time limits, and expect them to be moody or angry after a longer screen session.

• If they need a bus ticket to get to school, it’s easier to have it in the bus app on the phone than it is to replace multiple lost paper tickets.

• Tell them that if they have the phone out/on at school (not allowed) and it gets confiscated, you will not be rushing into school to pick it up. Do they really need to take it to school? In (British) primary schools, there’s usually a box in the front office where children can leave their phones for the day on their way in.

• CHECK THEIR PHONE. Every day at first. I have seen many, many, many messages (mostly in group chats rather than individually to my son) with racist, misogynist, transphobic, disablist, homophobic and anti-immigration themes, sometimes from children/teens I have previously thought were really lovely. Your children do not know what to do with this yet and will likely just ignore it, or might laugh just to fit in. Start as you mean to go on, and teach them how to challenge it. My son often leaves group chats these days because either he can’t be bothered to listen to the macho bullshit (or read through the 1000 messages), or he’s sick of reading jokes about Black people. You are also checking for anyone bullying or grooming your child, the latter of which they will not able to recognise.

• Don’t let them have passwords that are secret from you, at first. Having a phone is not an opportunity for them to develop an entire new persona online without your knowledge. Unfortunately you need to be able to check their phones sometimes without telling them too, so that they can’t delete things before you see it – if this is way things have been going. Remember it might be your child doing the bullying.

• Rule: they can only say things to people online that they would say to their face.

• Apps: look out for anonymous messaging services; apps that hide other apps; requests from people that you consider dodgy but they don’t; friend/follow requests from strangers – most children want high numbers of followers/friends and don’t understand why it’s dodgy to have lots of strangers seeing where you are, for example. Snap Map in Snapchat tells followers where the child is at all times, if it’s turned on. If they’re on Snapchat (which I don’t recommend until they’re older, although it’s currently the main medium of communication between teenagers), get yourself an account too and link them. Check their Snap Score – if theirs is rising very quickly, they are collecting followers very quickly; it’s unlikely that your 11 year old knows 900 people in real life. They could have a new app for a trial run; if they behave in it, they could keep it, and if they misuse it they lose it. Wait for a certain period of time then try again if they still want it. A new app could also be a reward for something. They can’t have social media accounts that you can’t see – they have to befriend you or it gets deleted. Don’t outright ban the ones you don’t like or don’t consider safe – we did this and he just set them up behind our back (see app-hider). Instead talk through rules for each service or app and give reasons.

• They will fuck up. Sometimes they will fuck up massively. Try not to lose your temper like I do because who knows what the bloody hell you might have done if you’d had to deal with this crap as a 12 year old.

• No matter how many times you tell them, they will give out their address or school or photo or agree to meet a stranger in the park nearby or something similar. This is why you’re checking their phone. If they’re going out to meet friend so-and-so, make sure it really is them they’re intending to meet and not a stranger who is pretending to be a child/sexy teen.

• Sexting. Much later! Only with actual partners? Only with people they know? Not strangers, no matter how sexy their picture appears. Teach about their images being sold on to others, sold on to paedophiles, used for scams against your child or someone else, revenge porn, etc.

• No phones upstairs until whatever age.

• No phones at the dining table.

• Having a phone is a luxury and a privilege, not their right. You can take the phone away if it’s going badly.

• When they come home from school, first they spend time with the family/do chores/homework before they can play on their phones. Give them a total screen time allowance and they can divide it between their devices; eg. if they use up their one hour on the phone, they can’t then go on the PS/Xbox as well.

• Direct them when needed to www.talktofrank.com for info on drugs. They need sites that are safe and truthful and that they can access in their own time without you sometimes. There is a similar site for info on sex but the name escapes me.   

• Phones live in the kitchen at night, not the bedroom.

• Turn off the wifi when you go to bed, especially if there are devices/games consoles in their bedroom.

• Explain that if they lose the phone through carelessness, automatic phone replacement will not be provided by you, unless you a) are a millionaire and also b) want the child to have zero sense of value. Until they do such and such, or pay this much towards it, and they don’t get to choose the latest iPhone that costs a million quid.  

• They don’t need a contract. Giffgaff (for example) do monthly data packages ranging from about £7 upwards, which my 15 year old doesn’t usually get through despite his best efforts.

• Have a family password. If they text you this word/phrase, or ring you and say it, they need picking up straightaway but don’t feel able to say so in front of whoever is there. Ring and tell them loudly that you need to come and get them because something has happened, ask where they are, and go and get them. For example, if my son rings and asks for the one food I know he hates, I will go and get him.

• Put down your phone. If you’re showing them that you can’t be without it, they’ll think it’s okay not to be without theirs either. Start now, years in advance of them getting one – let them repeatedly see that the phone is not the most important thing in the room. Put them both in the cupboard on silent whilst you’re playing your wholesome board games after dinner 🙂

• If you ever discover a secret second phone, there’s trouble. You must establish where it came from – in the UK look up County Lines. If you’re reading this though, it probably won’t be that.

• This is the negative stuff. A lot of it might never happen to your child. If you are lucky enough to have a super-open and trusting relationship with your child, giving them a phone won’t be much of a problem. At first just let them ring and maybe use texting or Whatsapp, and nothing else. See how they go. Good luck!

Blackbird

Two and a half years ago my little son died. He was four and three quarters. We were under the impression that he had about another ten years, but fairly suddenly he seriously deteriorated over a two-week period and then died.

*

He had a blackbird. When we moved into this house it was July and the blackbird had a nest in next door’s hedge. Every day it came, this daddy blackbird, into our garden looking for food for its three chicks, who were already nearly the same size as him. They couldn’t fly but they followed him down by sort of falling and sailing onto the grass, and pottered about whilst he brought them worms. My son was a great nature-lover and was fascinated by the little family. He used to sit at the glass back door observing them several times each day. He was an unusual child who, because he couldn’t run around with other children (he couldn’t walk properly), was usually to be found by my side talking about various aspects of life. So he never asked me where the mother was. There were three chicks and a father and that was the family set-up, which he simply accepted.

Many cats lived in the houses around ours (and inside ours) and we worried about the chicks. My son would go outside to protect them if he saw seagulls or other large birds sniffing around them overhead. He was sad to briefly frighten the blackbirds but content that in scaring away the other birds too, he may have saved the chicks from an unspecified danger.

The chicks grew fatter and their feathers started to change colour. My mum told my son that blackbirds like eating sultanas and he wanted to test this theory, so he sprinkled a handful of sultanas just outside our back door, on the patio bit. The father first and then the chicks ventured up to the door and pecked them up greedily. My son was overjoyed. Every day he asked me for a few sultanas and threw them outside with his beautiful, perfect little hands, then sat down inside to wait for the birds. They came every day; the father first, calling then to the chicks to come and eat up their juicy little treats. As it was summer, we were eating our meals at the outside table. Immediately behind my son’s chair was the sultana arena and if we forgot to put the fruit out during the day, we would scatter them as we sat down to our evening meal. To my son’s eternal delight the chicks, who knew little danger, wandered over one day and started pecking them up whilst my son pecked up his dinner. To see him trying to contain his excitement in silence whilst aglow with his love of nature was a sight to behold. The father bird wasn’t initially keen on his babies being so close to us, but soon joined them when he spied what they were eating. Thereafter, every day at dinnertime my son would sprinkle the sultanas on the ground, ever closer to his chair, and eat his dinner whilst watching the birds eat theirs. Pure joy for him.

When the chicks learned to fly, we cheered.

The following spring we awaited the return of the father blackbird and hoped for more chicks. One day we saw what we thought must be the father, hopping around right next to the back door looking for his sultanas. My son threw some out and after the father’s initial scare, he flew down and gobbled them up. My son resumed his daily scattering and told interested parties that he had a blackbird.

Although we observed the father’s visits daily, no chicks hatched that year. My little nature-lover was disappointed. I never saw the mother and I’m not sure if she had already died by this time. Blackbirds mate for life, and although if one partner dies the other sometimes takes a new mate in order to procreate, no female or chicks ever appeared. Perhaps the little male hopping around our garden was grieving his mate, or perhaps he didn’t understand how or where she had gone.

My son fed the daddy bird his treats all summer until he disappeared for the winter. Just after the blackbird left our lives, my little son did too.

In the spring the bird came back and I told him about his friend having died. I gave him his sultanas some days, when I saw him or when I remembered, and I always told him that they were from my son. I fed him throughout that spring and summer, and I sat very still alone in the garden sometimes and watched him hop around me pulling up a worm here and there, eating his sultanas and nicking the strawberries, and I chatted to him about how much I missed my boy and I wondered if he missed his chicks. But then, his chicks weren’t dead; they had only flown the nest. He never answered me, but he was made of star dust and he waited while I cried.

The next spring – last year – he didn’t return. Blackbirds have a lifespan of only three or four years. He spent portions of his life entertaining my son and indulging his love of all nature – for a plump, sticky fee, of course. He is undoubtedly dead now, and that fact makes me disproportionately sad. I wanted him to live forever in my garden, pecking up sultanas with his yellow beak and cocking his black little head to one side and looking at me with his bright eyes and reminding me of my perfect boy.

The birth of Begu

I am writing this post in the hope that, aside from it potentially amusing some of my friends, someone may read it and then have an inkling of one version of what the hell they could expect whilst giving birth. I had no shred of an idea of my role (I’m exaggerating, before you start pfffting), despite a ten-week course from an NCT ‘instructor’ on childbirth which we shall discuss later (and she’s not gunna look good), and I was vexed that I as an adult woman in the western world did not know enough about what to expect. At high school in Britain in the 80s sex was still a dirty word – we had one sex ed lesson ever, which involved the very embarrassed male Science teacher attempting to show us with a long pointy stick the whereabouts of the sexual organs on a big poster tacked to the blackboard. We were boys and girls together in the class; the louder boys were busy shouting out crude questions carefully designed to make the teacher blush harder than he already was, and the girls were either cringing themselves or, in some cases, were so much more knowledgeable than the teacher seemed that the lesson was rendered pointless. That lesson was the extent of our official education on sex – education on relationships did not then exist, and childbirth was presented as a thing that other people did, not teenagers (except for the handful of girls that mysteriously disappeared halfway through Year 11, reappearing later on the high street with a pram). It being the 80s, I was given a book by Muv on periods, and therein lay my second small morsel of information about the workings of the female body. As previously discussed, my twenties were largely spent travelling the world or partying (I know, poor me), neither of which are activities known to magically induce knowledge of childbirth. I spent my thirties in Tanzania, and my friends in Britain selfishly chose this decade in which to give birth, thereby making me miss out on the whole experience of watching other people do it (not literally). Hence my dilemma: I was 40, and about to bring a baby into existence without having a bloody clue how to do so. It has always irked me that no one talks about this particular, mammoth event which is going to feature in a lot of people’s lives, and that that’s why women are afraid when the time comes. We are afraid of the unknown, but there’s no need for it to be completely unknown! Experience is the best teacher of course, but fore-warned is fore-armed as well. The only information freely available was the following, gathered over the few months before Begu was due, followed by my thoughts on each ‘fact’.

1. The woman will know what to do when the time comes (in her friggin’ dreams).
2. The baby will come out of the woman’s vagina (will it fuck).
3. No medical interventions exist or have ever been necessary in any woman’s birth before, so you almost certainly won’t need any help (you lying bastards).
4. Upon being easily born, the baby will latch on to the mother’s milk-laden breasts and drink its heart out (for real – this bullshit made me cry for a whole year after the birth).

I can’t be bothered with the rest but you get the idea. Here then is the story of Begu’s birth – stop reading now if you are squeamish.

Babies are supposed to be born at around forty weeks (in the UK anyway) unless there is a problem and they need to be evicted early. Despite being large and fully grown, Begu did not want to come out. Because I was a week overdue and I was 40, I was strongly encouraged to be induced. I did not understand the implications of this, and along with the fact that the midwife actually stuffed it up rather spectacularly, I regret it happening. I did not feel like I had much choice at the time though and so booked in, earlier than I would have liked because to wait another few days would have meant being in hospital over Christmas, which I did not consider fair on my monster who was then eight. I presented at the hospital at 3pm on a Friday as instructed. This Friday was part of our scheming – we’d chosen it as it was Jake’s last day teaching before the Christmas holidays. Had Begu been born before this day, Jake’s paternity leave would have started and ended that same day, thanks to Norfolk County Council not allowing teachers’ paternity leave to be split either side of a school holiday, the twats. I had actually gone gently into labour naturally by the time I checked in, but when I told the midwife in charge she ignored that fact. (Interruption needed: I LOVE THE NHS! I love the NHS and am grateful for what we have in this country. Get it? This midwife though, was horrible to me throughout my stay in hospital for no apparent reason.) She had booked me in for an induction and I was bloody well going to have it.

The junior midwife inserted a pessary in me, which would have been alright except for how far up it needs to go, and then explained that there are two types; one to gently induce labour in someone who shows little sign of starting naturally, and one to hurriedly induce fast contractions in someone whose waters had broken and who needed to get a move on, to avoid infection. I was a perfect candidate for the gentle, slow one. She gave me the other one by mistake. Within 45 minutes my entire torso was being wracked by frequent, violent contractions that I had been expecting more like six hours in. Jake attached the TENS machine (get one) and I tried not to punch people who came too close. The pain I was feeling though didn’t seem as bad as the pain on the junior midwife’s face when she realised her mistake and had to grass herself up to her senior, who furiously invited her to step into the office and then shut the door so we couldn’t hear the bollocking. On emerging she removed the pessary (but did not apologise, strangely) and the contractions calmed down a bit. I decided that this was the absolute premium moment to wander around the hospital with a machine attached to my back giving me electric shocks, looking for the canteen so I could buy a hot chocolate. Your brain gets a bit mashed, you know?

Hot drink in hand, Jake and I traversed the canteen and right in the middle of it I felt another contraction start. I dumped the cup on a table, bent over at a right angle, leaned my forearms on the table, dropped my head and shut out the world for a minute. You just have to keep breathing slowly and deeply and, if you’re a masochist, counting the seconds. It was a long contraction and when I straightened up after, the population of the canteen had been freeze-framed. Staff and customers had stopped walking and stood, trays in mid-air, watching me and holding their breath. A mother with her two daughters held a fork halfway to her mouth. Conversations had been paused whilst all eyes were on me. One man looked ready to spring into action, although I’m not sure what he thought he was going to do. I let out a breath and they all followed suit. Normal canteen activities resumed. It was quite sweet seeing that in a time of need, forty people had my back.

The pain was actually perfectly bearable with the TENS machine but this early labour went on for about eight hours. The junior midwife had given me a second pessary. Jake had not left my side at all so far, but the second he left the ward to go to the toilet my waters broke. This was supposed to happen first, and was bizarre – a bucketful of fluid poured out of me. None of this film crap where an eggcup-full plops daintily out; it kept flowing for a good half a minute. Jake came back from the bathroom (presumably a different one than that small one which I had redecorated with projectile vomit and various other bodily fluids immediately after the wrong pessary. My body seemed to explode from every orifice. Consequently Jake threw away whatever I had been wearing and we had to barricade the door shut until the cleaners could come) to find me weakly calling his name because I’d just let out a small river. A second clean-up operation commenced.

Around midnight the senior midwife examined the inside of me. Her junior had already done it once, and although she had tried to be gentle, there’s no getting around the fact that someone’s hand going up you as far as your cervix is going to cause some horrible pain. The senior made no such attempt to be careful or gentle, and from where I was she looked a bit like those vets who have to… oh never mind. She made me howl in pain and she seemed unsatisfied with whatever she discovered and grumped off without saying anything. After she’d pickaxed my cervix the contractions became a lot more painful, so I ditched the machine and asked for gas and air. This wondrous concoction had been ingested by me before, in less sanitary surroundings (at a music festival, out of a balloon) and I was looking forward to seeing what the correct ratio of components would be like as opposed to whatever the hell it was that time in a field. Breathing in and out of the tube every time a contraction started, which was every two minutes, I passed the bulk of the night. At one point, laying on my side, I opened my eyes during a particularly ferocious contraction to see Jake dozing in the chair. Here I was, sucking like mad on the tube of relief and trying to stop everything from my navel to my spine falling off, and Jake was having a nice little snooze. I thought ‘You bastard’ at him as hard as I could through my eyes, but he didn’t wake up. [I have just shown him this paragraph and he said “well, it was an exhausting night.” FML.]

One of the midwives had brought me an exercise ball in an attempt to get me off the bed, and after all night in a small space I thought I’d give it a go. I sat on it as shown, holding on to the bed for balance, and rolled around on it a bit. This felt totally hideous and I have no idea what it is supposed to achieve. I told the ball to fuck off (audibly) and walrussed back onto the bed. The junior midwife examined me again to see if my cervix had dilated enough for the latter stages of labour to begin soon. Sufficient dilation would be ten centimetres. She could see I was very tired after my four thousand contractions since the day before, and in an encouraging tone she said ‘Oh, well done! You’re two centimetres!’

‘Oh you are fucking kidding me,’ says I. She wasn’t. She removed what was left of the second pessary and regrouped with her colleagues to discuss how to sort me out. They packed me off to a labour room, a private room with one labour midwife, rather than the ward where ten of you are at the same stage. I wasn’t really ready but they tend to know what they’re doing, pessaries aside, so off I popped. From this point on my memory is hazy, thanks in equal parts to hours of gas and air and having been awake and in labour for fifteen hours so far, but I have Jake’s testimony to rely on – it turns out he did manage to stay awake for some parts.

The labour midwife suggested a Caesarean section, as the dilation was going nowhere, but I insisted I could carry on for a few more hours if I could have an epidural. The pain was getting to be too great and I was exhausted – no sleep, no food, no rest, not enough hydration, and bloody knackering pains in my actual womb lasting one minute, every other minute all night long. I apparently signed consent forms – can’t remember that – and was given an epidural which numbed everything from the waist down. The benefit of this was that although I could feel the contractions, they barely hurt anymore. In between each one, I kept falling asleep for a minute or two, then the next contraction would wake me. The disadvantage was that now that my lower body had been numbed, the contractions calmed down and came less frequently, which meant that the latter stages of labour, where the baby enters the birth canal, had been delayed. My head thought this was great and kept dozing. The rest of my body however considered this a terrible turn of events and wanted the baby out.

As for the baby, his massive head had become firmly wedged in my pelvis, so there was no way he could come out vaginally. He had spent hours nudging further and further into my pelvis and now was well and truly stuck. There followed another hour or so of me snoozing in between contractions which by now were wearing me out completely; unbeknownst to me, Jake and the labour midwife couldn’t take their eyes off the screen showing Begu’s heart rate. After the epidural more or less stopped the contractions, I’d been given an injection of oxytocin to restart them. Now every time I had a contraction, Begu’s heart rate dropped to ever more dangerous levels, and was taking longer and longer to re-stabilise. He hardly had time to recover each time before another contraction sent him into foetal distress. Poor thing – upside down, head rammed into bone, heart rate dancing all over the place; no wonder babies come out crying. By now I was off my head and had no idea of the heart issue, and so felt only vague surprise when two doctors appeared by my bedside, already in blue scrubs, smiling and suggesting I have a Caesarean now. I declined and said I could still manage, then noticed that one of the doctors was wringing her hands. ‘Get on the operating table or the baby will die’ is what I took from whatever she said next. I assented after all, as after all this I quite liked the idea of having a baby alive at the end of it, and within a few minutes they had me on the table and an anaesthetist was tickling me with his pen to establish where the numbness ended, which was immediately under my breasts.

After a few snips through my abdomen I could feel the doctors rummaging around inside me. It didn’t hurt of course, and it felt weird, but after a certain stage anything goes, so I just lay there looking forward to meeting my baby. After they did the washing up in me for a while I heard a sucking noise, a pop, which was them finally grappling Begu’s head back out of my pelvis. He was passed to the labour midwife who showed him to Jake. I could not see him yet and I asked Jake whether it was a boy or a girl (the idea of forcibly assigning a gender to someone without their input seems ridiculous now, in light of everything we know about gender, but that’s what happened). Jake, who knew I was desperate for Begu to be a girl, stammered over the fact that he was in fact a large boy, with enormous purple testicles. We did not know that babies’ genitals are swollen and red or purple when they are born, because of the hormones raging through the mother’s body being passed along the umbilical cord into the baby. It’s perfectly normal – another thing no one tells you – and it subsides after a day or two.

After a quick weight check (9.2lb) and whatever other stuff the midwife measures at birth, she wrapped Begu in a blanket and gave him to Jake, who just stared at him in disbelief that everyone in the room was still alive, although some had big holes in them, and that he was now the father of two people. I was flat out and being stitched back together and too covered in wires and tubes and hospital-type items to be able to hold Begu, but Jake held him down near my face and I touched my baby boy, my baby that I had made with my body, using only the magic of nature.

The pregnancy (rest of)

The rest of the pregnancy passed without incident… in my dreams! What actually happened was that I tried to maintain some semblance of normality inside my body whilst trying to achieve things that still seemed impossible on the outside of myself. The trouble was, I couldn’t remember what normality felt like. Two weeks before we were due to leave Tanzania, when I was about fifteen weeks pregnant and supposed not to be stressed, Monster still didn’t have a visa to enter the UK, but we had to vacate our house and my job shortly (and therefore the country) for the new intake of teachers. Farv had come to collect us because of that thing when you’re stuck. When I was a teenager I used to ring him sometimes at 1am (from a payphone of course) and say ‘I’ve broken down.’ Him, never one for small talk and not least in the middle of the night:

‘Where are you?’

‘A47.’

‘I’m coming.’

Only this time I’d said ‘Tanzania. It’s 6000 miles. You won’t need the towrope.’

Farv flew to Dar to pick up Monster’s visa while I was busy puking all over my classroom, and the last obstacle to leaving Tz fell into place when he returned triumphant. Leaving my home of eight years suddenly became an imminent reality, plus I had to figure out how to have a baby. I still had moving countries to contend with, but hey, who wants an easy life? All would be well because I had my dependable boyfriend by my side.

Ahem.

A few months previous to our departure Jake had planned an exciting trip backpacking around Ethiopia with his good friend S, who lives in Australia. S would fly to Addis Ababa on the date that we all left Tz, and Jake would meet him there and travel around for three weeks before flying home to the UK to join Monster and me. Four seconds after he’d paid for the flights to Addis, we found out I was pregnant. ‘Oh well,’ said I, ‘bye bye Ethiopia! You can go another time.’ ‘Ha ha,’ laughed Jake, as he arranged with S where to meet in Addis, and not even covertly. I strongly suggested with no small glint in my eye that he couldn’t go. I needed him, mostly to carry the luggage to England. I would not be carrying multiple bags and an eight-year-old and two cats across the continent of Africa which is quite big and then all the way up most of Europe and then all the way home from Gatwick airport whilst being very pregnant and travel sick and hungry and sweaty and tearful, I informed him. He shamelessly replied that it was a good job I had Farv to do all that. The impertinence! I would have slapped him, if it was the 1800s, and if he wasn’t a kickboxer.

On the day I left Tanzania then, all by myself (with Farv and Monster), Jake buggered off to Ethiopia to meet lovely S (it’s not your fault S, it’s JAKE’S FAULT entirely) and had a bloody marvellous time exploring that beautiful country whilst I went to the village I grew up in to be fattened up by Muv. If you love someone, let them go. No it wasn’t that at all, I just wasn’t physically able to prevent him from going because of my ever-increasing girth getting in the way. In the end it turned out to be brilliantly in my favour, because a) it’s a good story that garners sympathy for me and makes him look bad, and 2) I never let him forget the time he dumped me whilst pregnant to move our lives across the world while he went on holiday, so it’s pretty much his turn to make the hot chocolate every single evening for the rest of his life, for example. And Farv carried the bags anyway.

Having arrived in the UK and not having anything much to do except notify the relevant authorities of my son’s presence in the country (you all do this when you arrive in a country right?), I sat down for the first time since 1986. Muv used the opportunity to bake everything in the immediate vicinity, and my fat tum grew and grew until I was really enormous. Begu took full advantage of my gradually lowering stress levels and was growing at a rate inversely proportional to the amount of time I spent awake each day. At this point I was about seventeen weeks and I thought I’d mosey along to the doctor, to say hello and see if anyone there knew how to have a baby. I rang the midwife centre and had a conversation which amused me no end and absolutely did not amuse the midwife.

‘Hi, I’m pregnant and need to be registered in your system please.’

‘How many weeks are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘You should already be in our system then. Who’s your doctor?’

‘I haven’t got one yet.’

‘Where was your twelve week scan done?’

‘I haven’t had an official one.’

‘Um… how can this be?’

‘I’ve been living abroad.’

‘Oh! Just bring your foreign medical notes down here then and we’ll get you registered.’

‘I haven’t got any medical notes. I haven’t got anything.’

‘What medical care have you had so far, exactly?’

‘None as yet.’

‘What do you mean? Where have you been?’

‘Tanzania.’

‘Ah. Well come on down and we’ll sort you out.’

‘Okay. Also I’m 40.’

‘Oh… I see. Well hurry on over and I’ll see you today.’

‘Also I had typhoid at ten weeks.’

‘GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!’

I did as I was told for once and drove straight there, wishing that all the women in Tanzania could have access to the kind of healthcare I knew I would receive from now on, and marvelling at the thought that many of those Tz mamas survive and manage childbirth without any professional assistance at all.

The medical staff in the UK were most concerned that it was too late to test for Down’s Syndrome, and didn’t seem to be listening when I repeatedly said that if my baby had Down’s, then I would be bringing up a baby with Down’s. I would not be aborting my precious, much-longed-for baby largely because he or she wouldn’t look quite right to other people. It wasn’t really the staff’s fault though – apparently more than 90% of people in the UK still abort a pregnancy if the baby shows definite signs of Down’s Syndrome (http://archive.wolfson.qmul.ac.uk/ndscr/reports/NDSCRreport09.pdf).

So I settled down and relaxed for the rest of my pregnancy… nope, still no! I scoured the city for a house that I could rent with cats in tow, found one, received Jake in the UK after his unauthorised holiday, rented the house, moved into it, got Monster a school place, argued with the LEA because it wasn’t the school I wanted, had an appeal hearing, lost that, started him at the school next door to our new house, didn’t think the school was the best fit, moved him to another school, and finally, finally, sat down on the settee to let my baby finish growing. I spent the last few wintry weeks of the pregnancy laying on the settee doing a big fat glorious nothing, with my favourite little cat Archie asleep on the bump and a blanket over the top of all of us. Archie watched with interest, head cocked, as Begu pushed my stomach out with his hands and kicked me in the ribs several times a day, and when he settled down under the taut skin, she went back to sleep on top of him, like a kuku keeping her egg warm. (To this day she knows that Begu was that bump and is his small furry guardian. If he is crying and I have not gone to him, she either comes to fetch me or goes to him herself, laying her paw on his face or his arm. He is doing his best to return the favour now that she is dying. In the morning before we go out he places his special blanket next to her and tells her that it will look after her until we get back. He gives her bits of ham from his plate and has started kissing her goodnight.) She slept on the Begu bump for the next few weeks, until I was so large that I couldn’t get up without assistance, couldn’t bend down to pick something up and couldn’t walk down the street without older women gasping and covering their mouths with their hands at the sight of my enormobelly parading in front of me with a will of its own.

With the due date approaching, the conundrum remained. It was lovely to have the support of my little, gingery feline settee-mate, but I wasn’t sure how helpful she’d be if I went into labour. It was all very well imagining that she’d meow ‘push, push,’ but if an interesting sparrow chirped in the garden then I’d be done for. I felt that perhaps I needed more human guidance now that I was nearing giving birth. People to whom I expressed concern over not knowing how to have a baby reminded me that I was already a mother and had done this all before. What?! All my friends had clearly lost their minds. Monster came to me at the age of three, so how on earth was I supposed to magically know what to do with a newborn? And how was it even going to get out of me in the first place? I mean, I knew how it was coming out but what was I supposed to do while that was happening? The only person that would tell me anything truthful about labour and birth was my brilliant friend Aisling, who repeated the advice that her mother gave her when she was about to give birth for the first time: at the moment you think you are going to die, the baby will be born. It wasn’t an image I relished, to be honest, but I was grateful for some truth and clarity among all the comments that were based on me just miraculously knowing what to do when the time came. And now that I mention it, universe, you do love playing tricks on me! The one thing I knew – that babies come out of vaginas – never actually happened, in the end. But that is, quite literally, another story. (Wait a week though, and it’ll probably end up on here. You’re welcome.)

Post script: Since I wrote this last week, my best ever little cat Archie has died. In Tanzania she was almost always my only evening company during those years when I couldn’t go out because my freshly-acquired monster was in bed and there were power cuts and my closest friends had all left the country simultaneously just before I’d become a parent. Whenever she heard me crying she would come from wherever she was to curl up on my lap or shoulder and purr me into a happier place. After ten years with my brilliant little best buddy living with me on two continents, she died this weekend of FIV and FeLV, with which she had lived all her life unbeknownst to me until recently. She was beautiful and perfect until the end, when she was put to sleep peacefully in my arms. She’d been purring on my shoulder five minutes previously, giving me comfort for as long as she was able.

I might get an image of her face tattooed on my forehead.

Bringing up Begu (The pregnancy)

I miss writing the blog. There, I’ve said it. Luckily for me, the blog still exists somewhere in cyberspace, and unluckily for you, I think I’ll start writing it again. I have removed all the posts about my monster and as The Farce is over the blog shall henceforth be about… um… well anything I like really. But mostly about the subject which, in the absence of a government to scrap with, now takes up most of my waking day and large chunks of my waking night as well: bringing up Begu. I promise to at least attempt levity and that there will be no bits that make you cry this time around, probably, but there won’t be an impressive, hard-won finale either, unless you count the bit where Begu almost dies of sugar and then doesn’t. Because of baby brain (it’s a real thing!) I can’t really remember how to write properly so I don’t know how this will turn out. If it’s crap, just don’t read it, but if you see me just pretend you did. I’m so tired that I probably won’t recognise you anyway even if we are life-long friends, so you’ll get away with it easily.

So. Towards the very end of The Farce, whilst I was still in Tanzania, something happened to my insides: a pregnancy (then came many small-minded comments about the apparently astonishing existence of my reproductive ability.) Unlike everyone else I was not very surprised by this pregnancy and when I saw the little pink line appear on the stick I simply thought ‘ah, there it is,’ which couldn’t have been more different than how I realised I was going to parent my monster. Jake, on the other hand, went pale when I showed him the stick and looked like he was about to fall over. His mouth spoke that he was pleased and his eyes showed a feeling not unlike terror. His actual words were ‘Wow! Oh, shit. What have we done?’ To have some confirmation of the pregnancy I thought I’d better pop to the doctor, because of the rudimentary test I had used at home which had cost 20p and came in a brown envelope. I presented myself to said doctor and he gave me the same 20p test. Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

With the pregnancy came a white-knuckle ride of hormones and emotions that I’d heard about but naively thought myself immune to – hysterical crying fits over nothing at all and a physical exhaustion to match the mental exertion of winning The Farce (I won, did you know?). The misleadingly-named morning sickness actually comes at any time of the day but in the early days it decided to play its hand daily at 7.30am, which was helpfully the exact time I was trying to leave the house to get a small boy to school and myself to work on time. After a while, fed up with vomiting at the front door and in my car and with being late for work, I enlisted my friend Massi The Chemistry Teacher to register my Year 9s each morning and hang out with them until I appeared, pale and smelling slightly like last week’s yoghurt, at my classroom door. When I explained why this was necessary, he beamed and hugged me and expressed great pleasure. He and his wife and children had been instrumental in my monster’s welcome to the compound and the boys remain among Monster’s favourite friends, and Massi’s pleasure was genuine. He was one of the first people I told about being pregnant, and as he loved a bit of subterfuge he was happy to mysteriously take my class every morning whilst casually refusing to tell anyone why.

Several food-related incidents occurred during these first few weeks, exacerbated by me being completely and utterly unreasonable. A different person might be embarrassed and I did think about blocking them out of my memory, but I thought what I’d do instead is write about them on the internet so that a stranger somewhere might laugh slightly for one second. Sigh. There was the dirty chicken incident, which much to Jake’s chagrin continued for several weeks. The only thing I would eat for dinner was chicken burgers from Kuku Poa. All other food made me feel sick (oh, the irony), I couldn’t go near the kitchen and by dinnertime every day I was useless and flat out on the settee trying not to puke again. I couldn’t possibly drive to Kuku Poa to pick up burgers. Jake had no driving licence and did not want to cross town at rush hour anyway. He tried to tempt me with various tasty meal options that he would lovingly craft in the kitchen and which often resulted in me not even being able to look at them without vomiting, but eventually he gave up and went to Kuku Poa pretty much every day. We spent a small fortune on chicken burgers (sorry chickens) and he ended up with a piki piki guy who started hanging around outside our front gate from about 5pm because he knew that sooner or later Jake would come out looking for a ride across town. My monster thought it was brilliant eating junk food every day and would shout as soon as Jake came home ‘Mama feels sick again! Hooray!’

The cheese and onion crisp incident is frequently aired these days at dinner parties (and if you believe that we ever have dinner parties anymore, you’ve obviously never spent any time with both my children at the same time) and is a source of much amusement, but at the time it was traumatising for me, and I know Jake still bears the mental scars of that day, the poor lamb. I had written an exhaustive shopping list and demanded that he go to U-Bend to fetch every single thing I needed immediately. He walked to the shop in the hot sun, bought all the items on the list, carried it all outside, hopped on the back of a piki piki and then had to hold the bags of shopping out on either side of him like when he used to pretend he was Tom Cruise in Top Gun*. Then he put it all away in the kitchen cupboards in the exact spots preferred and dictated by yours truly. I made a polite request of him to bring a packet of cheese and onion crisps to my camp (the settee). He made the ridiculous and unacceptable statement that he HAD NOT BOUGHT ANY. I, gasping with shock at his insolence, asked the reason for this treachery, and he dared to inform me that I had not written them on the list. Undone with disbelief, I cried ‘But you should have known!’ and promptly burst into very loud and sincere tears which lasted rather a long and perhaps unnecessary time. Some believe that I only stopped crying after he had returned to the shop and bought cheese and onion crisps, but that’s just hearsay.

Snacks became a theme in my pregnancy with Begu. Jake would fill my schoolbag each morning with about seventeen little pots of different foodstuffs because if I stopped eating even for twenty minutes I would start to feel so nauseous that I could no longer guarantee the safety of my students. Fortunately there was a sink at one end of my classroom and the kids learned to ignore me as I alternated directing their creative writing with chucking up in the corner. The little pots looked pretty and colourful lined up on my desk and later, when they knew I was pregnant, some of my Year 9s would from time to time add treats to the line-up without mentioning it, and I would delight in finding, amongst all the carrot sticks and humous, something dreadfully unhealthy and delicious.

The day I told my form group that I was having a baby, they reacted in three ways. Half of them gasped in surprise and were chuffed and exclaimed ‘Oh Miss! Our first 9R baby!’ Half of them didn’t give a shit – they were fourteen, after all. And one, my lovely wing ‘man’ (girl), yelled to the others ‘I told you!’ How teenagers just know stuff about their teachers has always been, and remains, beyond me. A few of them decided that the baby would have to be named after themselves, and harassed me towards that end until the day I left Tanzania.

After the period where my life was based solely on snacks calmed down, I thought it was all a bit too easy and simple, so to keep things interesting I got typhoid. It was crap. The drugs that kick typhoid out of your body tend to be very strong and therefore life-threatening to small foetuses, so I had to have a weaker drug which was not as powerful at getting rid of the illness. I had typhoid for three weeks then, during the first trimester, and we held our breath as unborn Begu faced his first dangerous experience. He showed us a taste of his forthcoming tenacity though and lived through it.

Relieved beyond measure, I realised that I didn’t even know if Begu was a person, singular, or multiple people. Perhaps I’d better have a little scan, I thought, and establish how many people were in me. Except it’s not as simple as that in Mwanza, so after making enquiries within the migrant worker community we procured an appointment with a doctor friend of a friend who assured us that she could scan my abdomen and do some counting. I laid on the bed at around twelve weeks and she got out her scanner – a mobile laptop-type thing the size of a small suitcase. She plugged it in and let it warm up before it would work (a bit like one of Farv’s half-cars) and smeared the sticky stuff on me. She had prepared me so well for the fact that this might not work that when the fuzzy little picture came into some focus I just stared and stared at the baby that I’d created with my body. After so many years fighting to get my relationship with my monster made legal and consequently not being allowed to try to get pregnant as well, I had suddenly made a child and could now see it on the battered old telly thing right in front of me. I looked at Jake, but he was equally speechless at the enormity of the situation. The fuzzy creature had been touching the tip of its nose, but now it raised its arm in greeting, held it aloft for a few seconds, then turned its back on us, rolled over and went to sleep. Trying to describe the feeling in retrospect of seeing that first glimpse of my Begu is making tears fill my eyes, so now I can’t see the screen properly and I don’t know what I’m typing ckd sjbfb lAHGCJNjhjfkbz. But suffice to say that, subsequent reproductive heartbreak aside, having the monster in my life for good and having the baby I watched snoozing that day with me as well makes me feel like one of the luckiest people on this earth. No doubt I’ll sprain my ankle tomorrow to redress the balance.

*Jake has just read this and informed me that he does not understand the Top Gun reference because he’s too young.

Faces of Forever Angels

Here’s a little deviation from our story, so that I can bring you stories of other people for a change. I probably talk about myself too much on this blog anyway.

In Mwanza then, there is a baby home like no other, called Forever Angels, and it is so much more than an orphanage. (This is not where Monster used to live, by the way.)

Most orphanages in Tanzania look after children, to varying degrees. Some don’t even do that, but let’s not nitpick. Forever Angels does the following good stuff, among other things:
• Looks after children aged 0-5 (this is their official purpose – what follows is just extra)
• Teaches the children in their on-site classroom (designed and built themselves)
• Hosts volunteers, to get extra hands-on attention for the children
• Encourages any relatives of the children to visit regularly, preferably with a view to eventually taking them home (often with continuing support)
• Gives jobs to said relatives to facilitate financial stability
• Develops training programs specific to individual staff members’ needs
• Builds on-site homes for long-term staff
• Provides micro-finance schemes for extremely poor parents in the local community to avoid them having to give up their children for lack of food
• Encourages adoption of their children within the Tanzanian and international community, and works with Social Welfare to ensure this continues to be an option for as many as possible of the children who have no one
• Takes in children that are neither abandoned nor orphaned but are facing other challenges; for example children with albinism whose parents want them to live without the fear of being murdered for their body parts, which are believed to bring good luck.

So many lives have been impacted by Forever Angels it is actually just ridiculous. The place is a force to be reckoned with. Babies who arrive literally at death’s door (through destitution, malnutrition, neglect, or just ignorance of childcare) are transformed time and time again from skeletal, ill, floppy little creatures that no one thinks will survive the week to chubby, bouncy, smiling babies who look like they’re happy to be alive at last. I have seen the staff at Forever Angels create this magic myself; sit up all night holding a tiny, scrawny thing and keeping it warm and giving it affection, feeding it every hour, for days on end, until the baby resembles more and more the human being it has always had the right to be.

Volunteers meaning to spend a few weeks or months there often end up staying on, sometimes for years, dedicating a large part of their lives to the little community and on occasion even residing permanently in Tanzania and helping to ensure the long term sustainability of the project. Even visiting Forever Angels once for whatever reason shows a person the new lease of life given to the children there.

The outreach families that FA work with slowly but surely become less reliant on the project, as they start to provide for their families themselves through the finance schemes and care for their children through the childcare education programs.

The staff of Forever Angels have bought land, built houses, been highly trained in their jobs, sent their kids to good schools… and they all lived happily ever after? Well… not everyone, which is why we need to help. FA work within a perpetual cycle of children being abandoned or orphaned. Their milk formula bill alone is £1000 a month. The founder once told me that her aim was that one day FA wouldn’t need to exist anymore – a wonderful day that will be, but it’s a very long way off yet.

Their end-of-year fundraiser this December “celebrates the profound impact that the Forever Angels Baby Home has had on the lives of those it has touched. It is a charity whose life-changing reach goes beyond the children whose mission it is to nurture.” In the nine years since its inception the Baby Home has cared for around 250 vulnerable children, some for years at a time; but this month they are focusing on the countless other individuals and families who have either contributed to the life-saving work or have been on the receiving end of that effort. Throughout December, you can read on their sites stories of success and compassion, a different one every couple of days. My favourite is that of Lilian, who came to FA as a teenager looking for work – and now runs the place.

This time of year is a time for giving, for thinking of others. Read the stories and have your heart warmed, but please do not rest there. If you are unable to donate any money, then for the love of humanity please share this post or the fundraising pages of Forever Angels Baby Home in the hope that others will donate something to this, one of the worthiest causes I have ever witnessed.

Santa told me he’ll bring you a present if you donate AND share the pages.

http://www.foreverangelsusa.org/thestories

http://www.foreverangels.org

https://www.crowdrise.com/facesofforeverangels/fundraiser/foreverangelsusa

 

Exploding monkeys & lies about lava

Guatemala, 2001 or thereabouts

A Welsh punk with cerise hair told me years ago about Tikal, the national park just north of a town called Flores. She advised that if I ever visited it, I should climb to the top of Temple number four, but did not explain why. Happily, I discovered the reason years later for myself. Guatemala is one of those countries that one falls quickly and inexplicably in love with. Perhaps the company, the timing or the traveller’s state of mind play a role, or perhaps the place is just bloody brilliant. Since that trip I have thought often of the colours in the streets there, and have claimed it as one of my favourite countries, not least because one of its towns is named Chichicastenango.

In preparation for the trip I attempted to teach my boyfriend Jon some rudimentary Spanish, but unfortunately he was a (deliberately) unwilling student. Rousing fragments of semi-lucid communication from the depths of my Spanish GCSE, I tried to force upon him at least a simple gracias, but when the mood takes him Jon can be as stubborn as… well – me. Had I not bothered, he no doubt would have been fluent by the time we arrived in Central America, and in fact he claims these days that his Spanish far exceeds mine, the git. Time shall tell (I would drag him to Spain purely to prove him wrong).

Various events had already occurred in the south of the country, where frijoles are served with every meal, where I was offered a bar job within twenty minutes of walking into a pub in Antigua, and where I chose not to visit any of the many orphanages (which with hindsight was blatantly a good idea!). Allow me to digress from the explosive matter at hand by first relating a sub-story about Volcan Pacayo, an active volcano on the outskirts of Amatitlan. The surface of the volcano consisted entirely of small shards of volcanic rock, which had the effect of it looking and feeling like it was covered with black snow. Wearing trainers, we struggled to trudge up the steep side as every footstep sunk a few inches into the debris. After three hours we reached the top, jubilant and excited – all ready for me to make a total fool of myself by approaching the handsome Scandinavian type that I’d shared smiles with all the way up, because I was utterly convinced he was someone I knew, someone that had been on the kibbutz with me fifteen years previously. I swore to Jon that it was him, and Jon, having never met or even seen a picture of my old mate Hasse but knowing me well, swore that it wasn’t. It wasn’t, obviously, and Jon always laughed about that, although I fail to see anything so amusing about approaching the wrong Swede at the top of a live volcano.

Perched on the rim, after venturing as near as we dared to the slippery edge and craning our necks to perhaps catch a glimpse of molten magma, someone asked the guide if anyone had ever fallen into the volcano. ‘What? No, no… why would they fall in? There used to be a fence, but… er… no, definitely no one has ever fallen into this volcano… definitely… uh… not.’ He cast a few furtive glances around us and suggested that now might be a good time to return to ground level.

The foot-sucking, deep snow of the surface made getting off the volcano even more difficult than the ascent. Jon, an avid skier, quickly discovered that the easiest method was to use one’s feet as skis, and a second later he was gone, whooshing smoothly down the side of the volcano at high speed and leaving me to wonder how the fuck I was going to get down off the blasted thing. I tried his skiing trick, but I am more or less allergic to skiing and most things sporty, so I promptly fell over and sat there looking down at him waving at me. The wide smile on his face turned to slight panic as he realised he had left me up a volcano.

A German man, after laughing heartily at my pathetic attempts to not be stuck at the top of the friggin’ thing, swished over like they do in Bond films, offered me his arm and said ‘Ve go, ja?’

‘Ja!’ said I. I linked my arm through his and we swooshed gracefully together, from side to side, like Torvill and Dean. All we needed was a bit of Ravel’s Bolero. We reached the bottom and I felt exhilarated. (On our return to London, a colleague dampened the buzz by telling me he’d looked down and seen bubbling magma when he’d stood on that very rim. I’ve never worked out whether he was having me on or not.)

Walking back towards the town from Volcan Pacayo, the guide pointed back at the volcano and gasped in horror, pointing at it and shouting ‘Look! Look! Now it is erupting!’ Jon and I squinted at the volcano which was now a fair way behind us, couldn’t see anything resembling an eruption, and rooted around for the binoculars. Some of the other people in the group were freaking out, but no could actually see what the guide was referring to. ‘Oh my god! Are you sure?’ the Americans among us repeatedly asked him, only to be met with a vehement ‘Yes! Look, look, the lava is rolling down the side!’ British and European people must just be more cynical, for none of those even batted an eyelid at the imaginary lava flow. Jon and I nudged each other and decided to join in the subterfuge. ‘Oh wow, I see the lava!’ we simpered as we gazed intently through the binoculars at the nebulous, dark grey slopes of the cold volcano. The guide, confused for a second at us ‘seeing’ it, realised our game and regained his composure, reassuring everyone that we were far enough away from the volcano not to have to run. We passed the binoculars around and a small number of the group saw what they wanted to see – molten, fiery lava flooding down the side of the volcano we had just stepped off an hour beforehand. One particular woman caught our fancy by loudly proclaiming that she could indeed see the erupting lava, and stating how lucky we were not to have been burned up. ‘Yes! Yes! I can! I can see it!’ (As we hiked on, moving along the gullible, mesmerised woman and her friends with some difficulty, Jon coined the phrase ‘Why lie ‘bout lava?’ which has remained in both our lives in a childish yet irresistible way, and remains in usage to this day in countries as far afield as New Zealand.)

The dismal Spanish lessons continued as we travelled around the country. I continued trying to get Jon to thank people in their language and he continued to accidentally say ‘cerveza’ instead of ‘thank you’, and ‘frijoles’ instead of ‘good morning’. At one point we crossed a crazy border into Belize, a definitive line between two peoples, cultures and languages. On one side, every person is indigenous Central American, speaks Spanish or a local dialect and dresses in brightly coloured woven fabrics. Not fifty yards away, everyone is Afro-Caribbean, speaks English, wears jeans and has that laidback Caribbean vibe about them. The stark contrast was so strange and defined that I even looked back across the border to check that my mind wasn’t playing tricks.

Anyway: monkeys. Tikal national park is a sprawling and beautiful… um… national park, and after a few hours wandering we sought out Tikal Temple IV. A Mayan structure built almost 2500 years ago stood regally in front of us, the tallest (old) structure in the ‘new’ world, soaring into the sky and daring us to climb it. Pyramidal, it held a giant staircase on the front which rose at a 45 degree angle and seemed to go on indefinitely. Warily starting to climb, we could not look to either side as the steps were so narrow and closely-set and we feared losing our grip. We were already ascending on all fours because each step was too narrow to even hold a whole foot. Halfway up I wanted to look behind me but I couldn’t because of that thing where you want to throw yourself off tall buildings or into the path of oncoming vehicles just because you know you mustn’t. At the top of Tikal Temple IV there is a small platform and onto it we briefly flopped before turning to face the world from 65 metres up in the air.

What I saw took my breath away. We were standing in the sky, looking down over the top of the rainforest. The canopy was partly shrouded in the mist which hung in swathes and veils like a colourless Aurora. Trees fought for light, towering above each other and offering their upturned leaves to the provider. A dozen vivid greens constituted a solid mass of pulsating life within which lived 300 different species, some of whom were out to play as we stood gaping. Mexican black howler monkeys leaped and raced between the trees, chasing and shrieking. Parrots, macaws and toucans glided impressively, effortlessly, above them, swooping and screaming. They looked like the multi-coloured streamers that trail behind gymnasts, never remaining in one place long enough for you to gaze your fill. All I could see for miles in every direction was Earth in pure form, untouched and unspoilt by humanity (oh, er, except the massive manmade temple I was standing on). The volume of noise was astounding, and the vastness of it all rendered me speechless, as only Mother Nature can do.

Photographs were an insult to the beauty of that fragile jungle. I did take some, but they look utterly inadequate compared to the picture stamped on my mind. Nothing could convey the purity and complexity of the forest and its plethora of creatures. Further attempts to describe it would be futile, unless Joseph Conrad were here, which would be quite difficult due to him being rather dead.

Ambling back through the park towards the gate in the contented silence that comes with being awed by the majesty of nature, we sat down under a tree, seeking shade. Having stayed so long in the sky, we found ourselves observing the merest beginnings of sunset in the park and the departure of the aggressive heat of the afternoon. Evidently other beings had been hiding from the high temperatures too and as we rested we heard the chattering of spider monkeys waking up from their afternoon siesta.

In front of us was a gently swaying palm tree. Suddenly and without noise or fuss, a spider monkey flew upwards from the centre of its branches, fell gracefully off to the side, and made good his escape across the tops of the neighbouring palm trees. Blinking rapidly, we stared at each other to check that each of us had not imagined it, then glued our eyes to the tree in case the monkey had not chosen to take his nap alone. Sure enough, after a second another monkey burst directly upwards out of the flat top of the tree, arced perfectly in the air, and ran off to join his friend. Hardly daring to breathe, we watched with pure glee as the palm tree spewed out the rest of the springing monkeys like a furry fountain. They appeared to be being fired out of some sort of cannon-like contraption within the centre of the branches; one by one they were blasted up into the air and after cascading along rainbow-shaped paths in various directions they dispersed, scampering and giggling. Two or three mothers burst upwards, trailing babies by the paw, and one adult was at the head of a line of two or three little babies of differing sizes, all holding hands. I laughed and laughed with joy at our unbelievable luck, and I smile even now when I think of it. The tree probably spent only about a minute exploding the monkeys into the air, a group of around twenty, but the sight of it will remain with me for time immemorial.

The love I feel for our damaged world is unfortunately sometimes tempered by people’s behaviour, but it’s also sometimes bolstered by the things I see and experience. I intend to travel the world for as long as I am physically able (financially, more like), and will hopefully gather new stories about exploding stuff. The bad news for you is that I might write about them on this blog.

On the flight out of the country, the Guatemalan stewardess asked Jon how his trip had been. He answered her in Spanish: ‘Si, con guacamole’.