End of a long week

I'm not feeling so well tonight, but hope to be back on track soon.

Passion nuts

I don't have much voice left, mainly because the Boy borrowed his own weight in Thomas the Tank Engine stories from the library yesterday and we've been steadily ploughing through them today. Meanwhile the Girl has been getting on with her own reading.

The weather forecaster this morning suggested a possiblity of rain, without explaining that what he really meant was likelihood of drowning, if you didn't get electrocuted by lightning first. It hasn't been like that all day mind you, I mean we're not in England.

It was good meeting other parents at the school picnic yesterday. Everyone we spoke to was very welcoming and encouraging, and they all possessed that easygoing American confidence which is somehow infectious so that you come away feeling rather easygoing and confident yourself. This way of interacting is already having an effect on the children. The Boy from the start has cheerfully been giving high fives to waiters who greet him with 'What's up, li'l guy?', but even the sometimes reticent Girl has been happily chatting with new people.

Oh, but it's a passionate nation, too. We are informally assembling a growing collection of comestibles produced by passionate manufacturers. Whatever you produce - apple juice/yoghurt/grated cheese... - it is de rigeur to declare your passion for it on the packaging. Even the well-known brand of painkiller that I'm about to take for my sore throat is, according to an interminable TV ad, produced by people passionate about making ibuprofen. How reassuring! I feel slightly better already.

Keeps 'em outta trouble

Another fine day in Albany, with the usual even mixture of minor frustrations and satisfactions. For some reason the local hole-in-the-wall won't give me any money, which severely limited my grocery budget this morning. On the other hand we spent a happy forty minutes in a secondhand bookshop called Tea and Tattered Pages. It not only had a good range of titles, but also two white kittens. The children can't wait to visit again and torment the kittens some more.

After lunch we managed a first step towards local integration by acquiring library tickets. I asked the librarian how many books we could take out at a time and she look surprised and said 'As many as you like.' Wow! The potential for losing any number of books under beds and sofas and having to pay a fortune in fines is now infinite!

I wouldn't be able to get to any of these places - shops, libraries etc - without the help of my new best friend, the SatNav. Maybe you already have one of these, but I'd not experienced one before, and given my navigational ineptitude (I once took 2 hours to drive from Watford to Muswell Hill in clear traffic, a journey which should take 20 minutes) I can see that it was definitely invented with people like me in mind. Key in your destination and away you go, guided by mysterious satellite technology and a synthesized female voice. Nine out of ten times you'll get there without a hitch.

The problem is, our SatNav gal is a bit flakey and sometimes gets in a muddle. She has real trouble with crossroads, and will send you off on complete wild goose chases, immediately insinuating that it was all your fault (and I swear it's not just me, she does it to the Man as well). There's a particular bend in a road when she consistently instructs you to turn right into a church compound instead of going straight on (maybe she has an agenda?). And in Downtown Albany she is so flumoxed by all the one-way streets that she ends up throwing her non-existent hands in the air and huffing synthetically 'Don't ask me! How should I know!? Hang on, I'll just turn the map round...'

Not really. But she might as well.

She did her best to get us lost on the way to a welcome picnic this evening at the children's new school. We did get there eventually, enjoyed a fabulous bring-and-share supper (the best food I've had since being here), met the teachers and left feeling very excited about the start of term next Thursday.

In a state on the Interstate

I've just come back from my first attempt at driving on an Interstate (motorway). At night. I'm a bit stressed out. But at least we're all home in one piece, even if we did do one or two unscheduled detours.

Earlier in the bright sunshiny day I took the children on a little trip out to Altamont, about a half-hour drive away along less intimidating roads. It's one of those picture perfect New England villages - white wooden church, people sitting on their porches knitting. The sort of place adjectives like 'charming' and 'delightful' were invented for. We had a snack at the Hungerford Stores, which is the cafe Linton could have had if we'd all clubbed together last year and bought Sweet Talk News. Lovely. There was a speciality wool shop (I'm not much of a knitter, but I like a nice ball of wool). There was even a train station, alas disused (the Boy was disappointed) but about to be turned into a Library (the Girl approved). Sorry there are no photos - our camera has broken.

To continue the motoring theme, sort of, we spent the rest of the day at home driving each other crazy. Even the kids are looking forward to school starting next week.

I have a bit of a cold, probably picked up at the Thomas show. The price we pay for air-conditioning is eternal snuffling (not to mention global warming).

Crimewatch UK

Yesterday at the theatre I picked up a flyer for an event in Massachusetts next month: the annual Eastern States Exposition, aka the Big E. It sounds a cracking affair, a 17-day festival of fun featuring such marvels as the Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust Championship, the chance to enter or vote for your favourite bridal couple, deep fried cheesecake and, I kid you not, a classic milk delivery truck sculpted from 600lbs of pure butter. Linton Flower Festival steering committee, eat your hearts out! Check out www.thebige.com for more.

I've had several reports from Linton friends about a drugs raid in Kingfisher Walk. What with that, the graffiti epidemic and rumours of a thriving village brothel I'm thinking, phew - left that hotbed of vice just in time! Thank goodness I've moved my family to a country where crime is unknown!

A quiet day. The Man went back to work, friends came to play. The Girl and Boy held their own Sports Day in the garden this evening, with an obstacle course made out of rubbish. Deprive kids of their million and one toys for long enough and eventually their own imaginations will kick in.

Appointment at the Palace

A special treat for the Boy today - 'Thomas the Tank Engine Live! on Stage'.

No, not a concept that would have occurred to me either, but there you go.

It was being staged at the very splendid and sumptious Palace Theatre in Downtown Albany. There, beneath a ceilingful of cherubs, were more little boys in Thomas T-shirts than I have ever before seen gathered in one place either side of the Atlantic.

Now, I'll make a confession here: I'm highly susceptible to musical theatre. Let's just say that I have been known to cry during the soppy bits in pantomimes. But even with this self-knowledge I was dismayed to find myself bursting into tears the moment cheeky little Thomas appeared on stage to the strains of that rather annoying theme tune. Who knows what that was about? I'd rather not speculate.

Anyway, I soon recovered - though frankly the wafer-thin plot was enough to make anyone weep. The Boy thoroughly enjoyed it, and didn't seem to mind that Sir Topham Hatt (he's never called the Fat Controller here, I guess that would be stoutist) was neither convincingly overweight nor bald. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Boy's really best bit was the intermission popcorn, but no matter! It was a Red Letter Day and now Albany will always have a special place in his heart.

Hot and bothered

We made an interesting discovery today: no matter how far along a mountain trail you force your children to walk in searing heat, they will still be bouncing off the furniture and driving you crazy by the end of the day if you just give them a swig of day-glo fizzy orange (product name deleted by the Man for fear of litigation). There's a lesson in this, and to be sure we have learnt it. And if there is a weary slapdashness about this blog entry then you know why.

The temperature hit the mid-nineties, and it was humid too. The sort of heat that makes you want to do everything in slow motion, if you have to do anything at all. We decided to head for them thar hills for some cooling mountain breezes.



We took the Indian Ladder Trail in the Thatcher State Park, on the look out for "Tory Cave". Not all some peculiar homage to Maggie - the Thatcher in question is John Boyd Thatcher, and the Tory was a British spy who hid out in the cave back in 1777.


We didn't in the end find any Tories, but came across a few amphibians which was quite satisfactory. There were fine views and impressive cliffs.

Got home in time to enjoy a fairly spectacular storm from the comfort of our own sitting room - a darn site less alarming than flying through one as we did last week.

All going swimmingly

This morning a huge bouquet of flowers arrived. For a moment we wondered if it was from a secret admirer responding to that fetching photo of me in the last blog entry... In fact it was a generous house-warming gift from family members - thank you J,D,A&R.

We spent five hours or more today at an outdoor swimming complex in the local Town Park, guests of our British (oh, let's face it, only) friends here. The water was very cold, but no matter because the sun was shining and the ambient temperature was way up in the eighties. It was a great day out.

We lunched at the cafe, where the so-called 'vegetarian' Girl seized yet another opportunity to extend her research on US hotdogs. Today's was her sixth and, she declares, best. Also on offer was a dish that made our All-American cupcakes look positively wholesome and nutritious. It's called something like Cheezee Frize and was invented by someone who thought there wasn't quite enough calorific content in just chips. Basically you take a serving of chips (fries) and drown them in melted cheese. The cheese is bright orange - think Sainsbury's plastic carrier bag. In fact, think Sainsbury's plastic carrier bag melted on top of a pile of chips and there you have both the colour and texture in one. The flavour, too, I don't doubt. Mmmm.


You'll all be relieved to know (I certainly am) that our downstairs loo is no longer blocked. Well done, Man...

Here by popular demand is a photo of the back of our house.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Caught sight of myself in a mirror today and realised that even after as little as a week the American diet isn't doing me any favours...

We spent much of the day at CMOST, the small but perfectly formed Children's Museum of Science and Technology, where there are a load of fun and fascinating exhibits. Among other things we got to play with electrical circuits, examine snakes, crabs and turtles, pretend to row a dugout canoe, visit a planetarium and stick our hands inside a tornado. There were also some bendy mirrors.




Probably the best exhibit is the one where you catch planets. The planets come bouncing down the screen, and if you can get a shadow on either side of one of them it stops for a moment and a little factoid appears next to it. Apart from anything else it's great exercise as you have to leap and stretch and generally throw yourself at the wall. Very enjoyable.

There was even the opportunity to make simulated TV weather announcements (or, if you happened to be the Boy, jig up and down in front of the camera with your tongue out looking like a right banana).

You calling me common?

The UK and US are, as everyone knows, divided by a common language. We mainly use the same words, but often mean something different. This is old news to the Girl. She had an American exchange teacher for 2 weeks in 2005 and therefore knows all there is to know about sweets being 'candy' and trousers being (tee-hee) 'pants'.

But for the Boy it's a whole new area of study. He comes sidling up:

Boy: Mu-um?
Albaniana: Ye-es.
Boy: What's 'chair' in American?
A: That'd be 'chair'.
Boy: What's 'table' in American?
A: 'Table'.
Boy: What's 'ceiling' in American?

And so on and on and on (what's 'wind-up artist' in American?) until you can stand no more and hurl him over the back of the sofa ('couch').

The children of our British friends, who've been here about 6 months, already sound like little Americans. The Girl and Boy will start school here soon - how long before the Boy is asking "Mommy, what's 'chair' in English?"

Watch this space.

Coming a Crocker

Didn't sleep so well last night. No doubt due to guilt and anxiety over possibly ill-judged remarks in my last blog entry. I was having a recurring nightmare that we'd returned to Linton and everyone was shunning us and there was a notice pinned to the charred front door of our still-smouldering home saying 'Go back to your big swanky American house and your fancy American friends...'

Though in fact half the fancy Americans were actually Canadians.

It's a funny thing, writing a blog. Is is a letter home? A record of events? Or a personal diary? If it's a diary, why am I leaving it lying around on a metaphorical park bench for anyone to pick up and read? And because I'm publishing more-or-less on the spot I might say something ill-considered which I can't take back. Then again, that risk is part of the fun. But will Chuck get into trouble because we've told the world he hasn't read all the bank forms? (Probably not, and anyway Chuck's not his real name.)

I daresay I worry too much. Also the Man tends to hover in the background suggesting improvements, to which I reply with increasing snappishness, 'Get your own blog!' And that could be fun, too, couldn't it - you could watch, from both sides, the slow disintegration of a marriage due to literary differences.

Not really.

Back to Albany. The toilet's still blocked, but the broken dryer has been replaced. The bath/shower in the family bathroom doesn't appear to be attached to any water supply.


We made a trip (my first behind the wheel) to the nearby Five Rivers Nature Reserve and took a stroll around one of the trails there. It was a lovely and not too demanding 40-minute walk along a lakeside path. The Girl eagerly skipped ahead, trying to accumulate a million points by spotting things on a list provided by the Study Centre so that she could claim to be a Top-notch Spotter. Our enjoyment was only marred by an incessant whining noise that followed us round the entire trail and sounded rather like a Boy complaining that he hated nature and why weren't there any trains thank you very much? He wasn't even distracted by the sight of a real live chipmunk.

Never mind. We got him home and he ate solidly for about 3 hours, miniwheats mostly, and cheered up considerably.


Our All American experience of the day was making Betty Crocker just-add-an-egg cupcakes. I dread to think what the judging panel of the Linton Garden Show Baked Goods Section would make of them, but we're a bit lacking in baking utensils at the moment. Still I find them strangely alluring, in a repellent kind of way. Wouldn't eat one if you paid me, mind you.

Hubble bubble, toilet trouble

So, Sunday we got up very (very) early and created a blog. Then we went shopping for some electrical items (electricity is different here) and also tried to find the correct sort of plunger for unblocking a toilet, but because we were in K-Mart (sort of a sub-Woolworths) we failed in this quest. We have one blocked toilet that won't flush, and one which every now and then just won't stop flushing. Always invigorating to have a little domestic challenge to deal with. Apparently American toilets are prone to this kind of problem. Also the dryer has broken.


In the afternoon we gate-crashed a barbecue party in Henry Hudson Park. At least, we were invited along unofficially by the Man's colleague. We were made to feel very welcome by the members of the Babysitting Cooperative (our hosts), and enjoyed the riverside setting and sharing lively conversation and large quantities of chips (crisps). For the children it was pure joy, running free and being with other kids after several days cooped up with only their parents for company.

Among the people we met were a local politician (of course Democrat - this is New York State), an entomologist and a writer involved with the local health-food cooperative. I'd always secretly known that Linton doesn't have a monopoly on interesting and amusing people, but it was heartening to have solid evidence of this so soon into our adventure. Sorry then, Linton friends. Missed ya for a few minutes there, but now we're fine. Cheerio!

I don't mean that.

I'd also known that we'd find the scale of things different here. I mean, our Linton house is not small, yet already looking back it seems positively pokey. When I get up in the morning here I have to pack a small rucksack with essentials before setting off on the long trek to the bedroom door: not only is the distance daunting, but there's an ever-present danger of opening the wrong door altogether and ending up in one of the innumerable closets which in themselves are large enough to comfortably house a small family. And as for the fridge...

Dear me, what we have to suffer.

Monday, up early again. I went downstairs at 5am to read Mark Haddon's 'A Spot of Bother'. A good read - but then I came to Chapter 60 and had to have a little lie down on the carpet because I Don't Do Blood.

This afternoon we visited our British friends (the Man's colleague and family), and after a cup of tea abandoned the children there and went off to do some necessary chores. This included opening a bank account. At one point during this process we were handed a form to sign. The Man, who is a stickler for this sort of thing, read the baffling tax form through and realised that strictly speaking he would be perjuring himself if he signed it. You see, we are currently in a state of limbo - no longer residents of the UK, but since we do not have social security numbers we do not officially exist in the US either. This causes all kinds of confusion. Anyway, Chuck, the bank's representative had clearly never actually read the form in question himself, so we all sat in companionable silence for a while, reading and re-reading the form and wondering what to do next. After about five minutes of this Chuck quietly took the form back, flipped it over and tucked it away. I have a feeling that American life might be filled with scarily important looking documents that actually don't mean much at all.

A surreal moment at the park yesterday: the other kids had all left, so the Girl was playing with a couple of imaginary friends - Heather, a trouble maker only too well known to me, and Annie who apparently is a calming influence. The Girl explained 'I don't usually talk to Annie. But sometimes I pretend that I'm HER imaginary friend, and then her parents tell her off for talking to someone who isn't there.'

Queue for a song

Though in fact a song was just about the only thing we didn't have to queue for. Heathrow passport control, security, and more security, boarding. Disembarcation, Newark immigration. The children were amazingly stoical, although at passport control in Newark the little Boy kept sinking to the ground weeping silent tears of exhaustion and regretting ever having left Linton (it was 3 in the morning BST).

We missed our onward flight to Albany. This was actually quite a relief for me as I'd been close to throwing up during our bumpy descent into the US (not helped by the Girl cheerfully exclaiming 'I like all this swaying! Isn't the swaying fun!' etc etc) and couldn't really face jumping straight onto another plane. Instead Virgin put us up in a nice hotel, we swam in the morning and ate a good breakfast (there's no breakfast like an American breakfast), and made a brief trip into New York City (and I'll skate over the hours spent in the Kafkaesque hell that is Newark Liberty Airport, trying to reconfirm our flight and doing a bit more queueing).

Finally, only 24 hours late, we boarded the small plane to our new home city (only after we'd ALL been specially selected for frisking. I suppose there really are people who would pack their 5 year old with explosives before flying, but I hate to dwell on the thought). The Boy was already asleep in the departure lounge, and the Girl soon was too, which was perhaps just as well since we flew through storms most of the way and bounced around like peas on a drum. Next day the Boy greeted me with 'So we didn't catch another plane after all' - he'd blissfully missed the entire journey.

A friend met us at Albany 'International' (occasional flights to Montreal) Airport, and took us to our temporary new house, showed us how to operate the garage doors and mentioned casually that his wife had left us a few provisions - actually enough food to last us through a siege, even taking the fusspot Boy's dietary requirements into account. For which, heartfelt thanks.

And so our first full day as Albanians began, and was mostly spent getting lost in the echoey acres of the rented house, which is only part furnished to make room for a 1000 cu ft of rubbish which for some reason we are shipping over from the UK and should arrive in about 6 weeks, if it doesn't get impounded by US Customs looking for foot-and-mouth-carrying soil deposits on garden furniture. By the way, the container, here shown obstructing a well-known Linton bus stop, is in fact less than half full.

The sun is shining, the trees are leafy. People are friendly. So far so good.