Visits

We've had a few visitors this month. First, Jo, Tony, Aidan and Alannah drove all the way from Leicester to spend the day with us. You may remember them from our recent trip to the Midlands. Teagan, their other daughter, couldn't come, though since the weather was quite dismal this was probably a wise move on her behalf.

Here we are at the beach huts, shivering to death. Fathers paternally clutching babies (to keep warm).
.
A rare family photo - trying to put a brave face on it.

Jo, my great old flatmate. Not enough time to natter enough, but there it is.

Misha, who had a brief respite from ensuring Alastair didn't run into the cold North Sea, as he is prone to do at the moment.
Then back home to warm up, get fed and relaxed before they were off into the night. Baby Alannah was such a handful - slept, smiled, fed, gurgled, slept.

Then a few days later equally lovely guests arrived - both ex-colleagues and good friends from the Commission days in Prague. Roman, now living in Vienna took an Easyjet to Stansted (from Prague) for a whirlwind tour of East Anglia. And Barbara drove over from Cambridge for the day, though John couldn't join us this time, unfortunately. Their visits coincided with the boys' new school schedules so there was a bit of rushing in and out, picking up and dropping off, but we managed to catch up over a leisurely lunch with no kids somehow.

I suppose Barbara and Roman haven't seen one another for about 4 years. Who knows, their paths may have crossed again this week as B&J are in Prague and Vienna. Praps they'll bump into Roman on a tram on his way home....

Half-term

Gone are the days when a Monday could have been a Friday and a Sunday a Thursday, for all it mattered. Now we are firmly rooted to the school calendar, but I still don't know what day it is. We have school days, days when Misha's working, days when he's not, Alastair's Portage day and Gregor's gymnastics day. And then it's holidays. This half-term Allie (my niece) happened to be playing a hockey tournament in at the local high school in Lowestoft, so we went along to watch her then she came back to ours to stay for a few days.

She's the orange goalie with a hook on her arm hiding behind her teammates while a short corner is being taken. But then she comes out to face this rather tall opponent and made a few grand saves, it has to be said. Rather her than me. Though with all that clobber on I suppose she's a bit better protected than the goalies when I used to play - in the days before health and safety became a career.

Gregor, who in this blog transfers his obsession from bees to knights, was very interested in Allie's helmet at the end of the match.

A day or two later we headed to Ipswich to do a number of things. We stayed a couple of nights at Sue's house (Allie's mum, my eldest sister) to ease the schedule. First off, I'd got tickets for the theatre. We watched a refreshing dance/physical theatre piece for littluns called "Muttnik the first dog in space", which the boys enjoyed and followed without much help. Here we are outside the theatre. I used to work here as an usherette 20 years ago and where I spent every Sunday afternoon for 2 years doing all sorts of shows from Thornton Wilder to Lorca in the Wolsey Youth Theatre.

We picnicked in Christchurch park before our next rendezvous. Alastair discovered a new-found zest for the playthings and was quite upset when we had to leave.

The reason being a bee exhibition, of all things. You see Gregor has an ongoing reward chart and (during the peak of his bee obsession in February) the reward he chose (for 15 ticks) was to meet a beekeeper. Well, it just so happened that one was visiting Ipswich for two days.....

....so he put on the beekeepers protective clothing, looked at the bees, listened to how they get smoked out to eat more honey and then fall asleep, rolled a candle from the beeswax,

and that was that. In the museum shop he spotted a sword and shield, so I bought him that since his next reward (which was already due) was a knight's costume, and the transition was seamless.

Outside Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich - a 16th century house, much altered in later years, and today housing some nice permanent exhibitions, including art by Gainsborough and Constable and Lowestoft porcelain.

That afternoon we went to Lavenham, a quaint Suffolk town with beautifully preserved Tudor buildings, to pick up some vintage Ladybird books I'd bought off Ebay - my new hobby.

Snow

I tell you, it's all go here. What with tidal surges and threats of great floods (which came to nothing), an earthquake which measured 5.2 and really did shake the house and wake me up, you'd think we couldn't take any more. Well, last month we had two glorious days of snow. I feel the need to belatedly document this - not for the benefit of my many friends and family who get it up to their eyeballs for weeks on end - but for us, who live in flat, lowlands, by the sea and thought it was a thing of the past. We thought we'd make the most of it, which was just as well because it was gone by the following day.

Here's a magnified view of the hotel Victoria from Gregor's window. You can even see a ship sailing in the distance.

We headed to the beach to see how it looked.

No, we didn't build this. People far more industrious generously left it for us to play on.

But we still wanted to roll our own. Normally the sand looks so clean and pristine when you come on to the beach, but compared to the settled snow that morning it seemed quite the reverse - muddy and dirty. Before he got all cold and wet and tried to walk home, Alastair took great delight in rolling his first snowman.

And Gregor wanted to get rolled up into it.

But we just plonked it at the water's edge instead.

And made a real one in the front garden.

It would have been my mum's birthday today and I came across a snowy picture of her back garden in Grundisburgh, where we stayed before moving to Lowestoft.

Alastair's progress

We started back at school this week, though things have changed slightly. Last term Misha and I met with Alastair's teacher and the SENCO - special needs coordinator (all schools have them nowadays) to ask that Alastair be moved to the mornings. He had been getting very tired by three sessions of afternoon school and our morning routine was becoming a bit too sedate for fear of tiring him out completely. As a result, we weren't going for walks or to the beach or our little zoo park as much (and I was starting to feel like a caged animal). They understood, apart from anything else, that he needs to walk more to build up an appetite so he can eat more and grow faster. Anyway, they obliged and this term he goes in for three mornings and Gregor continues with every afternoon.

Inadvertently, we've also managed to split the boys up. Far from being a bad thing, most people agree it's good for them both. Gregor was having a difficult time letting Alastair get on with his teacher and couldn't really leave them alone, being both protective and dominating, which wasn't helping anyone. Now he's free to make his own friends and seems to have accumulated a couple who like making models as he does. For me and Misha it means we don't yet get to have time without the kids during the day, but at least we can enjoy them individually rather than always having to be arbiter and grand protector to ensure that there's equality and that both their interests are met despite their differing needs. It's quite liberating in fact and I love having them separately.

Here is Alastair last month at his physio session with Annie at the Newberry Centre in Gorleston.

Climbing onto and off a step this high is still not so easy for him, but he's making great progress. We still get supplied with special Piedro boots from the centre and next week we'll get a new pair.

It is generally understood that children don't walk and speak at the same time and this remains the case for Alastair too despite his global development delay. This is why I believe that we'll see much more progress with speech once he can confidently go up and down stairs and look where he walks. His speech is coming on. We have laminated phonics cards and are working on "b, k, t, m, s, l, and f". L and F are really hard for him and a lot depends on his association with the sound. I am figuring out that he needs to own and enjoy the sound himself, so "t" is better as "toys park" and "tractor" than the "tennis" picture on the card, "k/c" is best as "cookie", which he can say already!

We are going through a formal Statement process at the moment. This is a collection of reports from all the relevant therapists and services to indicate his needs once he starts reception class in January next year. The idea is that it won't give us recommendations as to which school may be best, ie current school vs special school, but will prescribe the type and amount of additional support he'll need in the upcoming years.

Saturday night....Sunday morning...

Just thought I'd get a few party shots - of James and all his girls - to illustrate the way the night went....

Above is Fei and Francesca, below with friend of Ellie and Ellie (read left to right).

Then Nadiya went for a new look whilst Adam whisked Fei back from James' grasp.

But the girls soon fell under the spell of Scottish Stuart.

And after that there was some Truro action and cabs back to the cabins and a slightly later night than the one previous, but still respectable, for me at least.
The morning after Francesca and I hit the beach to comb and explore and came across a fast incoming tide and mussels clinging onto the exposed rocks.

We gathered a few, and were even asked by passers by what we were doing. Thinking they were environmental inspectors (guilty consciences, obviously) we asked if we were allowed to pick them, to which the guy said "I don't know, I just wondered what they were"!

Anyway, we managed to gather quite a dinner's worth and transported them back to the eco-cabins for cleaning. Didn't manage to eat them though as I was off to the airport to catch my flight before the storm hit Cornwall and cancelled a few after me, I suspect.

But a lovely weekend and a welcome break.

Chantek, Truro

James. Even after all these years, he never fails to surprise me. Once, in the vestibule of hlavni nadrazi, I asked him, sheepishly, if he had his passport. Of course not. So he taxis madly back to Nusle at high speed and is back with a grin
and an extra something
he needs next day.
Another time he missed a flight so got the next plane to Botswana instead;
the only thing flying that Christmas Eve, he said.
I felt that girl wasn't good for him. He moved in.

He doesn't just talk, he does.
He is like the comforting hum of a fridge with an eccentric looking button which is not for ice.
His head is so full of dreams and he churns out ideas and plans, with pictures and places and people who fit
together
somehow,
and it's all justified by logic and coincidence and a little bit of science.

So when he told me he was packing in the day job and getting an alarm clock,
moving to Cornwall to oversee the complete building works refurbishment and then recruit for and run his own two-storey Asian fusion restaurant in the heart of Cornwall's capital with a cathedral,
I almost asked him for a job.
So it was great when we all ate there on his birthday. I had the Pollock.

Rob preparing for a self-portrait.

Dishes being delivered. Adam enjoying his.

The system.

Cooking up the next batch of orders.

Food coming out at quite a pace.

All hands on deck, and at the end waiting patiently is

Marek, from Hradec Kralove, amazed when suddenly everyone started speaking Czech!

Cornwall - James' 40th

Last month I went to Cornwall for James' 40th. James is an old friend who I first met in Prague when we were teaching English at the jazykova skola in Budejovicka, Praha 4. Over the years we and a load of others cooked and partied, played football and non-stopped a lot and shared quite a few riotous adventures, as befitted those times. I think it was James who tried (and almost managed) to live in all Prague's (then) 11 districts, sometimes not by choice. Most recently he's been living a slightly more settled and sedate life running a restaurant in Truro, though soon he's taking a bit of a sabbatical in the Czech Republic and going to run a pub in Havlickuv Brod!

Anyway, here's a bit of what we got up to for his birthday. It was a great weekend and about 15 friends gathered in Porthtowan on the south coast to be de-luxedly put up in state of the art eco cabins with mod cons and hot tubs. All we had to do was entertain ourselves...

.....so Rob got the party going by impressing Francesca and James with his oyster cracking skills.
And soon there was a lot of shucking and slurping going on. For some reason I haven't taken one picture of the hot tub, and for that oversight I apologise! For anyone who knows James, he loves a party and the fridge was full of great things to cook up which is exactly what we did. Thereafter there was a lot of dancing and music and merriment. I was completely boring and took myself off to bed at a really sensible hour.

The next morning there was just a slim core of us up and breakfasted and ready to hit the coast for a bit of a ramble. Ian was up for it, despite having had about 2 hours sleep, and even then he had to move cabins and sleep on someone's floor because of Dan's loud snoring.
Dan, another Prague veteran, as is Ian, was willing to be persuaded of the benefits of an 8-mile walk, and at this point looking down at the rocks below, proudly declared that he felt quite good.
And didn't we look the part - hill walkers or what?!

We continued on, sustained by water, hot Bovril, chocolate, and hard-boiled eggs (thanks to Francesca's girl guide good sense) and we trudged and chattered along a well worn and increasingly blustery path (48 hours before huge storms hit the Cornish coast). In the distance are abandoned tin mines which dot the hilly landscape all around and serve as a constant reminder of Cornwall's important geological past.

Francesca was happy to walk to Newquay but with the weather starting to turn we sort of mutiniedly agreed to take a short-cut and head inland. Gleefully finding a road, we half-heartedly tried hitching but soon realised that for the locals you are as conspicuous as dog-pee in the snow, and they do not stop nor slow down for you. Ho hum, we didn't mind and made our way back to a sleeping cabin, smugger than ever.