Old hag

 

 

Today's visit to the dentist proofed (beyond reasonable doubt) that my face these days bears an ever more striking ressemblance to a tea cosy. A disturbing notion made even more frightening by the fact that I hadn't really noticed it until this morning.


My daughter needs to see the dentist as her baby teeth are extremely reluctant to give way to her grown up teeth. The latter are only managing to push half of the said baby teeth out. Literally. Leaving the 10yo with a few half broken teeth that are putting up a really good fight to escape eviction. Whereas my daughter is very wishy-washy when it comes to brushing her teeth at the best of times, her severally unhappy bleeding gums do not make it any better at the moment. 
We are very pressed for time as usual. A piece of toast eaten standing up in the kitchen is our take on a classic family breakfast this morning. And a cup of tea. I can't function properly without at least one cup of tea, so I choose to brew one over blow drying my freshly washed hair. Which is not so bad if you take the car, but we are cycling as there is absolutely no place to park near the dentist. In order to save myself from pneumonia, I decide to wear a wooly hat. Not a nice trendy one as do not own a nice trendy hat, but a rather heavy, mid brown,  knitted affair procuced no doubt by a factory in Bangladesh.
Although my daughter is at the age to start commenting on my appearance;  she only raises an eyebrow when she sees me coming out of the house with the wooly hat not quite covering all of my dripping wet hair and not the slightest bit of mascara. The fact that she isn't very talkative before ten am probably saves me from all kinds of nasty remarks.
I feel less fortunate when I discover that our new Dutch dentist is an attractive, slim, perfectly groomed, blond, young woman at least fifteen year my junior. She takes one look at my unadorned face and  frumpy hat, another look at my daughter's sorry teeth and starts a rather long monologue about looking after one's teeth (which is probably meant as a metaphor for my whole appearance) and one's children's teeth with a little more vigilance. Appearantly it isn't my daughter's fault at all that her teeth are in poor condition. I should have brushed her teeth myself! Not until she is twelve can she my daughter be trusted to brush her teeth without my supervision. Are you kidding me?
I don't think she'll let me hold her toothbrush and there are far more pressing issues to fight over, like wearing a spaghetti strap top to school in midwinter, or putting on a fresh pair of knickers every day. 
So I don't think I will go as far as actually cleaning the 10yo's teeth, but I might give her the odd peptalk while she is brushing. Or set the alarm, withold her pocket money every time she fails to brush twice a day, stick a detailed picture of rotting teeth on the bathroom mirror, or all of the above.
As for myself, I vow to take more care of my appearance. At least when I  am going to see my son's 25yo new orthodontist, our very young new gp, or the physiotherapist that I have been  referred to, who only communicates via What's app. When I go to see him next week about my knee, I might even have to go as far as shaving my legs. In November!

Oh to still believe

One of the best bits of our new life is the fact that my 10yo daughter, like all Dutch primary school children, gets the Wednesday afternoons off. Every single one of them. This leaves us ample time for a leisurely lunch and some ice skating lessons at the famous Amsterdam ice rink.

It's her second lesson today. Just like last week, my girl is very excited to put on her ski trousers as I guess, they remind her of Switzerland. There, for about three months every winter, she would more or less live in her 'snow pants'.
It makes me happy to see her so buoyed up at the prospect of another skating lesson, as the transition from her beloved international school in Zug, to a small Dutch primary school has proofed to be quite hard for her. So much so in fact, that my daughter at the moment point blank refuses to read any Dutch books, or watch any Dutch programmes on the telly. Instead, she totally lives for 'Strictly Come Dancing', 'Junior Bake Off' and 'Operation Ouch!'.
Anyway, she adores the idea of going to the outdoor ice rink every week. Together with her half Dutch, half German 8yo cousin and a number of other children she is being taught the basics of ice skating. The best bit, according to the girls, is that they now know 'how to fall properly', something they enthusiastically demonstrate at every opportunity. The flipside being that they make me practise tumbling down as well. But whereas the girls quickly scramble to their feet, it takes me ages to get my skates firmly planted on the ice and my head sticking in the air again.
Fortunately, after my second fall, it is time for their lesson, so I glide around in relative peace for a while. It's an interesting sensation to be back on skates after eighteen or so years.
In our courting days Mr. S and I, both wearing black,  long track, ice speed skates, and looking much more streamlined than we do now, would easily skate forty odd kilometres together. But by the time we got married and both started work, a period of frost seldom seemed to coincide with time off work, so skating quickly became something we would get back into if we ever got more time.
Instead we had two babies within the space of sixteen months and, besides when we had to go to work,  we were hardly making it out of the house. By the time we got out on the other side of the nappy tunnel once more, we moved to England, then to Italy and later to Switzerland. And although Switzerland had plenty of ice rinks, they were all geared towards figure skating or ice hockey matches and besides we loved skiing too much to go skating more than once in a blue moon.
The minute though that I put my skates on and set foot on the ice, I feel great. So great in fact, that after only a few rounds, I decide that I am going to risk a left turn whereby you cross your right skate over your left a number of times. I manage to put my right foot down, but can't seem to remember what my left foot is supposed to do at this point. Again I land face first on the ice, but since all my limbs seem still to be in working order, I crack on. I haven't had such uncomplicated fun in a long time.
When my daughter comes to join me after her lesson, she can't wait to show me all her tricks. Within the short space of two lessons she has learned how to skate backwards, jump on her skates, break -  a useful skill that I haven't quite mastered yet -and jump up onto the soft boarding alongside the rink. I manage to avoid to have to try any of those things by taking tons of pictures of my stunt girl.
Just as we are leaving the ice to get some hot chocolates, Saint Nicolas flanked by three black Peters - all on skates-  turn up. I am gobsmacked but the gathered Dutch children seem to take it completely for granted that Saint Nicolas gets into a sleigh so that  his helpers can pull him round the ice rink. My 10yo daughter on the other hand, is over the moon. For the first time in her life Saint Nicholas isn't just turning up once a year between two and three in some village hall. Instead she meets him constantly, at the supermarket, the swimming pool, the cinema and now the ice rink.
She doesn't really believe anymore, although she says she does about six times a day. She can be very stubborn. But I must admit that she has a point, because wouldn't life be so much nicer if we could al still believe in Saint Nicholas , Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny?
Ten minutes or so later, her face stuffed with cinnamon biscuits and a sleigh pulling session under her belt and my lovely girl seems to be completely in tune with the 'Dutchness' inside her. For the time being skating seems to take centre stage, alpine dreams fast becoming a thing of the past. And judging by her glowing, happy face, she is almost ready to wear  wooden shoes to school, grow tulips for a living and paint some windmills.

Spoiled

In the middle of  a long and rather demanding week, there are few things more stressful for Mr. S and myself than trying to book a holiday together. Still, that is just what we did.

Ever since we left Switzerland we have been dreaming about a proper ski holiday. We were not going to deny ourselves a week of frolicking in the snow. But utterly spoiled as we are after five years of being able to effortlessly commute to the nearest slopes every weekend, we felt spending two full days in the car to only find ourselves endlessly queuing for lifts to just go down overcrowded pistes, was simply beneath us. Hence we didn't book a hotel, didn't decide where we wanted to go, nor when our dreamed up holiday should take place. Simply because taking action would mean accepting the fact that we are no longer living in Switzerland, are no longer expats so can't take our children out of school a day or so before they officially break up to make traveling a bit less stressful.
We told the children - who by the way are dying to go skiing - that we might skip a winter and tried telling ourselves that going on a very expensive winter holiday would only eat into our savings and therefore was not a very grown up thing to do. Unfortunately, to no avail.
So we toyed with some ideas for a while, ranging from swopping houses with expat friends still living in Switzerland, or renting a shoebox sized appartment in France, to booking a trip to Norway to 'get away from it all'. But we never once turned on the computer to actually see what is available. Until this week that is.
It all starts with me going for a coffee with one of my new friends. She also recently moved from Switzerland to the Netherlands and is very busy booking a family ski holiday. It is getting more and more difficult to find a hotel she tells me, as the Dutch February 'spring break', tends to be the exact week  when the whole of Europe heads for the mountains. Oh dear. I haven't even started looking.
I know Mr. S will be no help as he is a firm believer of the mantra:  'keeping all options open for as long as is humanly possible'. And I must admit that for him this works beautifully. Mr. S has this unshakeble belief that he will always find a hotel and he normally does, just as he always finds a parking spot close to the entrance of wherever he goes. I,  on the other hand,  always end up parking a least ten minutes walking from where I need to be, but that is a different story altogether.
Anyway, as soon as I get  home I turn on the i-pad to frantically scour the internet. I spend hours looking at hotels, appartments and B&B's close to the slopes in Austria, Italy and France. Getting nowhere of course. My total lack of focus on a specific country, let alone a ski area results in nothing but confusion. And an absolute certainty that a ski holiday is outragingly expensive, especially if you leave booking it till the last minute.
I am just about getting ready to throw in the towel when I stumble upon a little hotel in our favourite Italian ski resort that we have stayed in once before, when every other hotel in the area was fully booked. Because it is rather far from the ski lifts it isn't costing an absolute fortune. And believe it or not it still has one last room unoccupied in our designated week.
Throwing all rationality out of the window, I nearly book it straight away. It is only with my finger hovering over the send button, that I decide that may be Mr. S. deserves to have a say in the matter as well. But as it turns out that evening we are both absolutely knackered and a bit grumpy, so - in order to save our marriage - it is best if we don't talk about an expensive ski holiday.
Early next morning, just after I dropped my daughter off at school, I send Mr. S. a text with the ominous words: 'Ready to book'. Within a second I receive a reply. 'Call you in a minute', which - credit where credit's due - he does.
It's not long before we are both online checking the Italian tourist board website. Whereas it is normally utterly detrimental to our relationship to look at a computer together - we both want to be in control of the keyboard (I know, it's rather sad, isn't it) - each having our own computer (and phone!) saves the day.  As he can now see for himself that actually most hotels are fully booked (even the one that I managed to find yesterday) makes Mr. S. more sympathetic to the idea that booking a bit earlier, in general gives you just a tat more choice. Something that I no doubt can use to my advantage in the future. 
Eventually, after a lengthy session on the phone and a few more hours spend on our computers at opposite ends of the living room, we manage to secure a room in Sporthotel Platz with a very cosy, wood clad dining room where chef Theo, next in line to take over the Platz' family hotel, according to the website cooks robust, yet elegant food. And ( I am not making this up)  once a week jumps on the table with his accordion whereupon the assembled guests and the extended Platz family dance until the sun comes up. It all sounds too good to be true.
So, we have gracefully resigned ourselves to the fact that come February we will be joining the queue of Dutch cars crawling towards the mountains. Now the only thing we need to come to terms with is the fact that we can't reach Florence, Venice, the Alsace, the Matterhorn, Wales, the Yorkshire Dales,  the Lake District, or Milan whenever we fancy a nice day out. Because by golly, are we spoiled.

Triangle

Drawing (and story) by Naomi Hattaway

Some days being back in my home country mystifies me. Behaviours, or unspoken rules, that after living abroad for eight years strike me as really weird are in a Dutch context of course perfectly normal. I am the one that needs to adapt, or am I?

Just this morning while I was contemplating how lovely it is to be able to take my 10yo daughter to school on my bike, I almost bumped into an au pair from the Philippines trying to steady a heavy carier trycicle with three blond children aboard. Poor thing. Whereas I at least have long legs and a past rich of cycling expeditions, head first into gale force winds with rain slashing in my face, she has not.
Is it so much more natural, or normal to see an American au pair in a big four wheel drive Volvo collecting a couple of kids from the international school in switzerland, or children being picked up by a private chauffeur every day from our school in Italy? Not really no. Still the image of this tiny Filipina struggling to keep her monster bike afloat, strikes me as really weird.
Just as weird really to find myself severely overdressed at my neighbour's fortieth birthday party. She had send out handwritten invitations, hired a caterer and erected a party tent in the garden. So it wasn't an informal, bring your own booze type of get together and yet at least half of the guests were wearing jeans and a top.
In the Netherlands it is considered perfectly allright to wear jeans, trainers and the latest knitwear wherever you go, be it a party,  the theatre, a restaurant, or a graduation ceremony. Ten years ago I would probably have thought nothing of it, but after living in England where everyone wears something sparkly and festive to go out and Italy where you wouldn't be seen dead going into town wearing flipflops, or out to dinner wearing the same clothes you had on all day, I feel it is much nicer if everyone takes the effort to put on something special before going to a party.
My English friends will smile when I confess that I do struggle with the bluntness of my Dutch countrymen. Although my English mates have always found me cringingly direct, Dutch people can be forthright to the point of being rude. Over the past couple of days waitresses and shopassistants have told my 10yo daughter off in what I perceived as a very unfriendly manner. Yes, she was touching some things in shops that she perhaps shouldn't have, picking wax of a candle in a cafe and hiding under a clothes rack just for the fun of it, but before I even got the chance to tell her to stop, someone beat me to it. And not in a gentle way with a smile on their face, no, more in an oldfashioned headmistress kind of manner.  I didn't like it and have decided to take at least some of my business elsewhere.
Instead of being one hundred percent Dutch as most of the people I meet these days, I have become part English (I love their politeness, eagerness to queue and - dare I say it- their over the top Christmases) part Italian (I love the fact that they all love my children and always make me feel like
the guest of honour in their cafe's and restaurants) and part Swiss (sometimes it is nice if everyone just obbeys the rules. I for one really enjoy spotless clean swimming pools and dog poo free pavements).
A friend of mine send me a lovely story the other day in which a circle from circle country gets on a plane to go live in square society for a few years. On moving back this little circle dicovers that although he hasn't become a square, he certainly isn't a circle anymore. Instead he has changed into a triangle, without quite realising it.
So that's what I am: a triangle and proud of it. I even found some lovely other triangles to hang out with. Joking about our inabillity, at times, as square pegs to fit into round holes, really makes my day. As does fantasising about a little lady moving back home to the Philippines one day taking with her a Dutch carrier tricycle and telling everyone around her exactly what she thinks of them.


How do you feel as an expat, or repat? Have you become a triangle yet? And what made you realise this? Go on, just spill the beans...