Potties are not impotent

At least that's what I thought Adriana said in her fake little English accent....

Actually it was quite funny; we were in our usual rush trying to get from Ukie school in Holland Park to a birthday party for one of Stefanie's friends in Winchmore Hill; going along teh North Circular, and when Adriana saw that we were passing our normal exit at Henly's Corner to go home, she started whining that she was tired and wanted to go home.

I tried to explain to her that we had to drop Stefanie off first at this party, so that she wouldn't be late and that's when she came up with the gem above: "But parties are not important! Playing at home is more important!", dropping her r's all the way through.

I laughed out loud and explained: "We'll see just how important parties are when it's your birthday and Mama decides to cancel it, shall we?"

I don't think she realized the connection, because her next question was:
"Mama, could I have my birthday at Clown Town?"

I could have continued on with the "important" comment again, but I didn't want to risk a fresh attack of tears...she's only 5 and her sense of humour's definitely not fully developed to handle this kind of ribbing.

Quiz Night at school

I usually don't enjoy quiz nights here in England, because I know nothing of football, cricket or rugby (nor do I have a burning desire to) and there is a large gap in my general knowledge of English history and geography. (Although that is improving with everyone of my children's homework assignments that I have to help with.)
But I felt obliged to attend last night, as we are committed to the school's activities and this was a fundraising event.

Answer I was proud of:
Giving a good guess on something I knew barely anything about: the film called The Great Escape. It's one of those films that your spouse will insist is a classic, but I view as just another war movie, so I wasn't really paying attention to the film's ending which described how many soldiers actually escaped in the end. Something was telling me three for a reason and I was right! (Unfortunately, I deferred to the men at the table and they got it wrong.)

Answer I knew I should have insisted on:
The question was Sago vs. Sarko, what is it? The French Presidential elections, of course. But Orest insisted I put "prime ministerial" instead and we lost the point. Aaarrggghh!

Answers where I was no help at all:
British sports, of course. And two of the music questions really stumped me, but to be fair I'm not a fan of boy groups (Take That) and I don't know all the words to Eleanor Rigby. (Question was "Who picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been?")

Answers on the tip of my tongue:
Who takes the silk? Of course I should have known that since I was at Lincoln's Inn a week ago where they told us that this phrase describes a lawyer being called to the bar. (Luckily someone else at our table knew that one and we got the point.) And the other one was the only tube stop with 6 consonants in a row...which I managed to get after racking my brains: Knightsbridge!

Overall we came 7th out of 12 tables, so not complete morons, but could use a brain brush-up.

Cool shot of Orest heli-skiing

Did I mention that after dropping the kids home from their weeklong ski trip on Saturday, that he turned around and left the following night for another ski trip?

This time it was heli-skiing with business colleagues for 2 days, and as you can see from the photo, it was magnificent. (He's the one at the right bottom of the photo - kicking up powder.)

(Personally, I think he gets too much skiing and then complains that it's still not enough.)

The best laid schemes

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
--Robbie Burns
(Translation: The best laid schemes of Mice and Men, oft go awry,And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!)

Unbelievable! Here I was, alone at home for a week with no kids or husband and how many blog entries did I manage? A measly two entries! Pathetic.
Now how did I manage to get a week to myself sans my usual motherly/wifely responsibilities, you ask? And no, we're not on our way to divorce, with seperate vacations and all that. It's just that having left everything til the last minute, I managed to find someone for Orest to ski with, but it was my friend Lisa's huband on his own with 3 kids. (Lisa doesn't ski, so this has been a long-standing tradition in their house for Dad to go with the girls on his own.)
So I thought, "What am I doing being the only woman on a self-service holiday with 6 kids and 2 men...am I crazy?" So I inisisted that Orest would be better off without me and that I'd be happy to stay home on my own.
I was worried about the standard of care that the girls would receive under the Laissez-faire attitude of their Dad when it comes to things like: nutrition, clothing and general care, but in the end I traded those worries for a week of relaxation and a compromise of bringing them home alive, if not well.
So, how did Orest do? He had a lot to contend with, such as the flight landing after the rental car agency had shut and waiting for a shuttle bus at midnight which never arrived; Adriana couldn't control her bladder on the slopes one day; and Adriana wanting to eat nothing but fries for the entire week ("Cuz everthing else is yucky!" so she said.). So he was rather pleased with his performance and I was just extatic that they were home with nothing more than a sore or two on their faces (Adriana scab under the eye from a pole injury; Larysa scabbed over lip from chapping and Stefanie with a major zit scab on her chin - although it could have been mistaken for a pole injury as well).

Grammy watching

They showed the Grammies here last night (we always get everything a day late here - including the Daily Show), here are some quick comments:

The Police-----Wow! What a blast from the past. I remember being at the CNE in '82 during the Police picnic and trying to slip my way past security, because I didn't have a ticket. It was a no-go, so I had to stand beyond the bandshell, about a mile away, and I listened to them play the same song they played last night: "Roxanne". You certainly knew then that they would have the staying power in music that some of the other bands of the era didn't. (Just look at the line-up of openers at the picnic: The Spoons, A Flock Of Seagulls, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, The English Beat, The Talking Heads... Other than David Byrne, has any one heard from these people in the last 10 years?

Doesn't Sting look fabulous? I have it on good authority that he's had no work done, but yet he's got the face and body of a fit 35-year old. I should look so good when I hit 55!

And although I'm not a fan of country music, congrats to the Dixie Chicks for standing their ground when they got slammed for dissing George Bush. Coming away with 4 Grammies, it was a clear message that people should be allowed to have their opinions whether they're musicians or not.

Lincoln's Inn

I recently joined the Canadian Women's Club here in London just to see what they had on offer and signed up for my first event to go and see Lincoln's Inn. It's called an inn, but actually I would consider it to be more of a private club for lawyers.
Our guide was very informative, but despite his detailed explanation on the differences between them, I still don't understand why the English have the delineation between barristers and solicitors.
In any case, the grounds were impressive, with some parts of it dating back to it's inception in 1422. With a Great Hall, Library, Chapel and offices and flats, it was like a mini-campus for law students and their alumni. I could go through the tour with you, but like everything here in London, I'd be hard-pressed to describe Lincoln's Inn with any other adjectives than: "grand", "beautiful", "historic" or "steeped in tradition".

So instead, I will regale you with the little trivial bits that I picked up instead. It seems that Cherie and Tony first met here at the Inn, while they were waiting for a scholarship interview, and thus the bench that you can see in outside the door of the room we are in (behind the gentleman in the trenchcoat) is called the "Blair bench". (You may have to enlarge the photo to see it.)

On our way to the Chapel, we were told that this little building is the smallest 'listed' building in England. First used by the Coachmen to direct horse traffic, it fell into disuse with the introduction of the new main gates and automobile use. They then tried to pawn it off on the grounds gardener, who insisted that she didn't want to work in a "fishbowl". When she came back from maternity leave, it suggested for use as a creche. (I think that was a joke - ha, ha.)

This photo is the "undercroft" of the chapel, where several members of the Inn have been buried into the floor. It was also used by the poor, who would leave their children behind to be looked after by the Inn, and eventually trained in clerkship or service. These children were all given the surname "Lincoln", which makes me wonder about Abraham Lincoln's antecedents?

One last one is an example of 'graffiti in art'. The coat of arms in the photo belongs to William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of England in the 18th century. The artist who made the this stained glass version of his coat of arms, did not like his propensity for capital punishment and scrawled "Gallows Billy" into one of the yellow dots of the shield. Whether it was too difficult or expensive to remove, for some reason the Chapel left it as is.

There are other stories to do with the chapel, and John Donne, its most famous preacher, who wrote about the famous Cadiz bell atop the chapel: "...and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." (From which Hemingway wrote his famous novel: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'.

We were also told that this is a great area for filming, because of the Inn's enclosed historic site is perfect for creating movie sets without disrupting local traffic. I will have to see "Miss Potter" with Renee Zellwegger, to check out if I recognise the buildings in scenes where she visits her publisher.

London comes to a frosty standstill...almost.

Wow, what a sight this morning! Stefanie woke us at 5:45 am to see how much snow had fallen (She was really keen not to go to school) and so far it was 2 inches of the lovely stuff. (This is the back garden view from our kitchen.)

By 7:50 am, Stefanie was in a tizzy of confusion over whether to go to school or not (the website saying the school would be open regardless/her friends ringing to say they were staying home), so I told Stefanie that as a Canadian, she was morally obligated to show these English that a little bit of snow wouldn't stop her from leading her life as normal.

She was not pleased, to say the least. (That may have explained the last-ditch phone call from the bus stop saying "my shoes are soaked, I fell over so I'm cold, there's no one on the roads and the bus is no where in sight!")

Larysa and Adriana lucked out however, their school closed for the day. (I think this decision was based on the last snowfall when the teachers who did show up were stranded with children whose parents were stuck somewhere en route and had to remain until 9pm until they were collected.)

I did end up brushing off the car and warming it up to drive Orest to the tube station (even though he did have his galoshes on - they hadn't seen the light of day since we moved here, so they were a bit stiff) and took advantage of the clear main roads and my 4-wheel drive Jeep to run up to Stefanie's school just to make sure she had made it and that they hadn't shut it down.

Poor thing, she'll miss all the fun, Larysa and Adriana with our neighbours have built a fort in front of Anna's house across the street and are eating snacks in as we speak. And I think it's meant to melt by this afternoon, too!

The Captain and Mr. Noodle

We went to see Anthony & Cleopatra by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on Saturday night with a crowd from the HWC. We first went for dinner with the 10 of us and it was fun because we've all known each other for at least a year, and as everyone knows; in expat terms you multiply it by a factor of 10. So it was like being with friends from college or something.

I'd forgotten the intensiveness of the play itself and after 3 hours, came out of there exhausted from having to concentrate not only on the Shakespearean language, but on the plot itself. As you might be able to tell from the photo, that's Patrick Stewart in the role of Anthony, and he was provided a surprisingly good performance. I say 'surprisingly' because I've known Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise and I thought it would be difficult for me to adjust to him in another character. The "Make it so, Number 1"' and "Engage!" from Star Trek has a certain association of personality that I thought would be difficult to forget when seeing him on stage in a toga and hair(!).

I've been caught out like this before when we went to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the spring. Kathleen Turner was fabulous in the lead role (the one played in the movie by Elizabeth Taylor), but the guy playing her husband George, is better known to most parents of small children as Mr. Noodle of Elmo's World fame. I really struggled to contain my smiles as Mr. Noodle was getting serious on stage and almost laughed out loud when he swore.

I think it's difficult to disassociate certain actors from memorable roles, but I asked myself why was it so hard for Mr. Noodle, but not Kathleen Turner. After all, she's had some pretty unforgettable performances in the Romancing the Stone series, and Body Heat. But I think it's to do with recurring roles in a television show that cements the character's idiosyncrasies for me that makes it almost impossible to see them as anything other.

Sorry, Mr. Noodle....