Month: August 2014

Day 62

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Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Swimming with the children. Bus trip to Amalfi.

I have travelled in matatus in Kenya, local buses in Tanzania and Zim (which, at the time, most whites regarded as a fairly reliable way to commit suicide) and rode (many times) in Harari’s notorious ETs (emergency taxis). And I have of course, many, many times, traversed the Hill. For South Islanders, no further specification is required. For the benefit of others, I am, of course referring to the Takaka Hill, gateway to Golden Bay, which I am now told is a ‘spiritual centre’ but which I knew more as the type of place where 13 year old girls occasionally boarded the school bus too stoned to speak (and no, I don’t mean me). Long before the road was fixed up and smoothed out and tamed to its current, fairly-civilised form, I was driven over it by a boy-racer with a death wish (no, not Nick), by a Newman’s bus driver who casually delivered newspapers as he drove (rolling them up and heaving them out the window as he wrestled the enormous bus around the hairpin bends) and have driven it myself in mid-winter on black ice, in a mini with erratic steering, in mid-summer in an unfamiliar sports car in a state of shock and grief… But I can safely say that I have never experienced a more hair-raising journey than today’s bus trip to Amalfi. It started off well enough – we zipped through Minori and Marmorata, hardly killing anybody. It was just the other side of Marmorata that we met a stream of traffic coming towards us, lead by an enormous bus, identical to ours. There was a shouted exchange between drivers, but with no way to pass and nowhere to turn around, something had to give. So we passed through Marmorata again – backwards and rather more slowly. We eventually reached a part of the road where, if our driver pressed our bus right up against the cliff, it was just possible for the other bus, and the cars following it, to edge past us along the very edge of the sheer drop. The waiting was obviously hard on our driver’s nerves though, because, before the stream of traffic coming towards us had dried up, he suddenly started moving forward, with the result that we quickly got stuck again. This time however he was not going to be the one who backed down, and I feared for the lives of the two women in the car and the girl on the scooter, who had to somehow manoeuvre around us. Even the locals looked a little alarmed.

A very ornate church in Amalfi.
A very ornate church in Amalfi.

20140813 Ceramics on the Amalfi Coast

When I see the garish ceramics on sale here (often at very high prices) I begin to understand why visitors to NZ who make it as far as Brightwater, tend to fall into Royce McGlashan’s arms and buy up the shop.

 

Day 61

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Housekeeping, who have been conspicuous by their absence since our arrival, showed up without warning this morning, so I took the kids to the pool to get them out of the cleaners’ way. The day was hot by the time they left, so I was grateful to do Level 2 Chi Kung in my wet swim suit as a way of keeping cool. Microcosmic orbit. Spent the afternoon reading about, and watching clips of, Robin Williams, while Nick took the children back to the pool. Took Kate and Dash out to a restaurant for dinner, then brought treats home for Nick. I had never thought much of Italian cakes/desserts before, but here they really are fab.

On our way back from Herculaneum on Sunday, I remarked on the huge bright moon, but Nick insisted that it just looked the same as usual. So I was smugly pleased to read all the coverage of the ‘supermoon’ today! There will apparently be another one on the 9th of September, so hopefully we will get a clear night at home to set up the telescope.

Day 60

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A quiet day. Everyone slept in until 8-ish, then Nick walked the mountain route to Minori and back for exercise, while I did Chi Kung. We were both pretty hot and sweaty by the end of our endeavours so were happy to spend ages in the pool with the kids. It is amazing how much progress Katie and Dash have made swimming every day. The pool closes at 1330 (presumably so that the staff can have a siesta or maybe just lunch), so back to the room where the kids watched their tablet computer for a bit and Nick and I had naps. It’s a hard life! Katie and Dash really wanted to eat out tonight so we are doing so in shifts – Nick is currently out at a restaurant with K & D while I mind Jack. When Nick gets home I might go out, though if he has remembered to bring beer, I will probably just have Parma ham and bread and a nice cold beer!

I have mentioned before that the kids love hearing stories from when they were tiny. Well Nick reminded me of one that I had completely forgotten. When Jack was around two years old, he attended a pre-prep (posh nursery) called Ravenstone House. We had chosen Ravenstone (in spite of the fact that it was ruinously expensive) partly because of the small class sizes, but mostly because the staff seemed cheerful, unlike the staff at the other, much cheaper, local nursery where the staff looked like their feet hurt and their husbands beat them. Each class of 8 children was housed in a self-contained miniature classroom, with French doors out onto a central garden (actually a deconsecrated graveyard – Jack learned to ride a trike on paths created from the fallen headstones of the long-departed). In hot or muggy weather, the staff would open the French doors for ventilation but close child-proof gates to stop their little charges escaping willy nilly into the garden. So far so good. Now Jack was a late developer in terms of gross motor skills, and at 2 and a bit, had only just progressed from bottom shuffling to tottering around holding onto the furniture, but all 7 of his little classmates were confident walkers. Childproof locks, however, held no challenge for him, and the staff (miraculously still smiling) reported that several times a day Jack would shuffle over to the gate, pull himself up on it, undo the childproof catch and hold the gate open while all his little mates escaped.

Day 59

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Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death and, in the normal run of things, would be the occasion of my annual trip to church. However, although, having been brought up a Presbyterian, I can pretty much bluff my way through a CofE service, a Catholic service in Italian felt like a bridge too far – I just wasn’t sufficiently confident of not messing up in a way that would offend the locals.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Egg and anchovies on toast for breakfast – yum. Herculaneum! Not as mind-blowing as Pompeii but smaller, almost empty, and much more manageable with the children. We had timed our visit for late afternoon/evening which helped, but it was still so hot that sweat was trickling down our faces like tears. Arrived home about 9pm absolutely starving, so it was good that there was large quantity of risotto leftover from last night which I quickly fashioned into (very) rough and ready arancini which we ate with a bit of salad and (in my case) a large glass of prosecco. Yesterday I was really cursing my decision to make risotto. At home I always make the Ligurian version, which is baked in the oven like a rice pudding, but here there is no lidded oven dish so I made it on the stove top – I had completely forgotten what a pain it is to do that 20 minutes of constant stirring! And worse in an unsuitable pot with only a pasta spoon to stir with! But hey, it really filled a gap when we were all tired and hungry tonight so it was worth it in the end.

Day 58

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One of the griefs of living with autism is that it is so terrifyingly easy to lose things – aspects of family life – and generally impossible to get them back. Jack loves films and, until an incident a few years back, this included watching films at the cinema. Our local cinemas did special ‘kid’s club’ showings at reduced prices and Nick took the three children almost every week. I used the uninterrupted chunk of time to fold laundry while listening to Radio 4, soeveryone was happy. Then one week, there was a trailer, for a light-hearted comedy called ‘Night at the Museum’. And the thing is, even though the film is a comedy, the trailer was scary… so, in spite of all encouragement, Jack hasn’t darkened the door of a cinema since. Then a couple of months after we moved to Blackheath, Nick tried to get Jack off the train at Lewisham, where there is a huge gap between the train and the platform, rather than going through to Blackheath, where it is only a few inches. And just like that we lost trains. Yesterday we lost eating in restaurants as a family. Jack has never been that patient with the bit where you are sitting in the restaurant but no food as arrived – and at one point I knew how to say ‘please bring hot chips quickly’ in several different languages – but yesterday it became clear (I won’t go into the painful details) that Jack can no longer tolerate restaurants at all. 🙁 

Jack woke me at 4:30 a.m. chatting to himself on the balcony. Fortunately Jack and I are the only light sleepers in the family, so Nick and the two younger ones slept on oblivious. By 0530 I had given up on getting back to sleep and was out on the beach with the camera by 6 a.m. hoping to photograph the sunrise. Unfortunately it turns out that the sun neither rises nor sets in Maiori – it comes coyly up behind one set of cliffs and goes demurely down behind the other. The light was quite nice so I took some pics which might be ok – if so I’ll post them later. Back to the room for Level 2 Chi Kung and the microcosmic orbit. Took the bus to Minori, the next little town along the coast. Possibly the most expensive bus trip in the world: Euro 2.50 for a journey of 1km – took about 3 minutes. I could of course easily have walked – except that the twisty mountain roads have no footpaths, so one has to walk on the side of the (very narrow) road, and hope that the crazy drivers don’t run you down. Had a look around the town, my progress largely dictated by the need to a) find shade and b) avoid getting run over. And yes I really do mean in that order – today was hot, hot, hot! Wandered around a brilliantly preserved 2000 year old villa, had an amazing cake at Sal de Riso (http://www.salderiso.it/it/le_mie_creazioni/la_pasticceria) then home for a nap before taking Dash and Katie swimming in the sea in the early evening.

Day 57

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Thinking of my old friend Nick Evans today when I made soft-boiled egg and anchovy on toast for breakfast – so yummy. And so stuffed with yummy breakfast that it was a couple of hours before I felt like doing Chi Kung (I normally do it BEFORE eating anything). Fortunately (?) there was a couple of hours worth of dish washing, tidying and organising of children needing to be done so I made myself useful – though at a very relaxed pace as it was even hotter today. Level 2 Chi Kung (hands definitely on floor – fingers though, rather than palms). Lunch at the restaurant with the fabulous gelato: Parma ham and perfectly ripe melon – a dish I could happily eat every day. Too hot to eat much, though (sadly for waistline) just the right temperature for gelato – mint choc – utterly, indescribably wonderful. Took Katie swimming in the hotel pool – I would have preferred the sea but she had already been to the beach with Nick while I did Chi Kung and she was, for some reason, determined that I should ‘try’ the pool. Parents will no doubt recognise the boredom of supervising young children in swimming pools for long periods. I entertained myself by carrying out the only aqua-aerobics exercise I can recall from a single class with Susan Laborde and some very toned-looking septuagenarian French ladies in Salies, many, many years ago – a manoeuvre involving walking backwards in the water with flat feet and clenched cheeks. I recall that, the day after the class, I ached in places in which I hadn’t previously been aware that there were muscles. Watch this space…

Local mozzarella and tomatoes with a glass of prosecco for supper, followed by a lemoncello baba (like a rum baba but with … you get the picture) Nick had brought home from a famous bakery. Nice long walk in the evening.

Day 56

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Fully into the holiday spirit now. Took Dash and Katie for a swim first thing – the beach was, if not deserted, then certainly much less crowded. By the time we left around 1030 it was packed. Most of the other bathers seem to be Italian. At one point, a man bumped into Katie, patted her on the head and then looked around to check for a parent. I wasn’t particularly close by – I was in the water with Dash, she was playing in the sand – there were at least 20 adults closer, so I was slightly surprised when he spotted me immediately. Then I looked around and realised that Kate, Dash and I were the only three people on the beach with pale skin and blond-ish hair! When I think that, of my children’s great grandmothers, one was part-Maori and another Anglo-Indian, it is astonishing how very white they are. Those Viking genes have obviously run roughshod over the rest.

Level 2 Chi Kung – and today my hands did actually touch the ground – a significant achievement given that I have unusually short arms and very long legs! Nick said that he glanced into the room at one point and was slightly startled to see that my bottom was the highest point of my body! Microcosmic orbit. I can report that Italian chi tastes the same as Greek chi and London chi (a surprise- I would have expected more Parmesan) but looks different: beautiful dark blue. Hey Robyn Banks, are you still keeping up the level 2 practice? I would be interested to know if anyone else, on getting to the parts where ones’ hands come close together but don’t quite touch, hear’s Harold Ramis yelling ‘DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS’. Or is that just me?

A nice wander around Maiori in the (relative!) cool of the evening, a glass of prosecco and some take away pizza.

Day 55

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Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Jade egg practice.

After a full-on day yesterday, we were aiming for a cruisy day today with Nick and I (separately) taking longish naps, while the children remained worrying lively throughout. The sticky heat of high humidity is not as appealing to me as the dry heat of Crete but Maiori is lovely, the sea is warm and our apartment is very clean and reasonably well equipped.

After essential shopping (milk, butter, juice etc) Nick took the children to the hotel pool in the middle of the day while I had a nap and, in the late afternoon, I took them to the beach while he had a nap. At the risk of sounding like Richard Bolstad, who appeared to be pleasantly surprised that it was easy to obtain decent espresso in ROME :-), I can report that, on the way back from the beach, the children and I ate the kind of gelato of which dreams are made!

I managed to concoct a pasta-based supper in the miniature (and very minimally equipped) kitchen and can report that the accompanying lemoncello is much much more palatable than raki.20140805 Maiori - sunset clouds 20140805 Maiori 2 20140805 Maiori 3 20140805 Miaori 1

Day 54

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Maddy starts as she means to go on by bouncing on the trampoline before work! Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Took a moment to think about Charlie, my parents’ beloved companion animal, who took his last trip to the vet while I was in Crete, and feel grateful to Marg Matheson who has looked after Charlie since Dad died 6 years ago. As Ann Eade said, ‘sometimes we have no choice but to watch the people we love suffer when they would rather go, but with our beloved pets, we have a choice’. I won’t say RIP Charlie, as, dogs having nothing to atone for, I expect he has already trotted off to his next incarnation.

Tidying, organising, feeding children, clearing up. Bye Sherlock (piteous whining from dog, lumps in throats of departing humans). Taxi to the arse of the world. Katie (who gets motion sickness) managed to survive the journey before throwing up just outside the terminal building. Bag drop, security, waiting, boarding, flying, landing. Yes! Safely on the ground and no one has vomited on the plane. Experience moment of intense gratitude. Strangled cry from Jack who is beginning to vomit – which sets Katie off and she starts throwing up all over the aisle of the plane. Meanwhile Dash wants to discuss the various meanings of the word ‘aspect’! Get everyone off plane, herded onto almost full bus for very short trip to terminal building. Expecting bus to leave promptly but no, rather than have the bus make two 60 sec trips, they keep everyone on the bus until the whole plane load of passengers has been crammed on (and people are beginning to say: ‘Oh my God, what is that smell – that’s disgusting’.) Arrive at terminal building – feeling appropriately terminal – and discover no toilets before passport control. Passport control. Toilets – swab down all three children (Dash hasn’t vomited but has become the victim of a major spill of fruit smoothie) and dress in fresh clothes. Baggage claim. Wait for shuttle bus to rental car office. Get car. Beautiful, but very twisty, drive along the Almalfi Coast. Big half moon. Much vomiting. At least, unlike the last time we brought the kids to Italy, this time we aren’t staying with bad-tempered nuns.

Installed in hotel, 3 children tolerably clean, tucked up in bed asleep. Will collapse now, I think.

Day 53

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Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit. Got a pedicure. Jade egg practice.

I woke up smiling this morning, after dreaming that I was sitting at my desk doing Connirae Andreas’ new Wholeness Process and experiencing total boundless bliss.

I am taking this as a sign that the unconscious mind is finally (finally!) happy with the way the conscious mind is running things. So, all I had to do was … leave my job, get loads of exercise, spend a week in Crete, and do Chi Kung (until my tendons ache) and Jade Egg every day. Simple really …

Bought sandals for Jack, track shoes for Dash and a small half-price toaster for travel – it’s a tough universe out there and Jack needs to know where his next slice of toast and marmite is coming from. It was fortunate that I had brought 30 jars of the black stuff back from NZ prior to the earthquake so we had sufficient to last through marmageddon. Wandered home with the kids through more brilliant sunshine, and did a bit more packing before the beautiful Madalina arrived just in time for family movie. Maddy will be house and dog sitting while we are away – a real win-win as she is living in a shared flat with no garden at the moment and is looking forward to having a whole house and garden to herself – and she has wanted a dog since childhood and never had one. Sherlock liked her immediately and I’m sure he will be much more at ease in his own home than boarding. Family movie tonight was Frozen (again). I wasn’t expecting to like, much less approve of, Frozen – after all it is a Disney film about princesses – but I have to admit to being grudgingly impressed. The imperilled Princess Anna is told that she can be saved only by an act of true love – and assumes, as does the audience, that this means a snog from the greasy Prince Hans. But, betrayed by Hans, Anna saves HERSELF by an act of heroism, not in aid of some undeserving guy (a la The Little Mermaid) but to defend her sister. Whatever Disney paid for Pixar, they got a bargain – and Frozen has John Lasseter’s fingerprints all over it.