They Dont Like It Up 'Em

'They dont like it up' Em' is dead! Long live 'redwheelbarrow'!

2010-08-27T13:17:00.001-07:00

As the more observant among you will have noticed, I haven't posted on here for some time now.

If you would like to know why - check this out

And if you want to carrying on following my mad exploits, then check me out from now on at www.redwheelbarrow.co.uk

Thank you, hope to see you over there!

Private Frazier/Sarah/Tempest xx

Be afraid, very afraid...

2010-02-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

Week 14 in the USA:

FEAR!

Did I scare you? No? Not even a little bit? Oh well...try this:

I tell you, I'm using this as justification for never, ever using a treadmill. Still not scared? Try this:

Note to self, don't invite someone called AJ to next house party...

Honestly, I thought the UK had fear-inducement down to a fine art - but the media and marketing bods there have got nothing on the US of A.

And if you add adverts like this, commonplace on prime time telly, to news reports that use language like "house invasion" (translation: burglary) and people not just being "murdered" but them being "slain" often with the additional "in cold blood" (is anyone actually killed in warm blood?) then you can understand why so many people over here cling on to their right to bear arms (but I won't open that can of worms today).

Check out this news report, I'm currently living in the "Kidnapping Capital of America" (watch out for the closing sentence for that final little twist of the terror inducement knife):

Now I know I'm a cynic and that I live in one of the more affluent areas of Phoenix but I can't say I feel any more scared living here than I did in cosy old Shropshire. Admittedly this might be because the British media and prospective parliamentary candidates have hiked up the fear factor over there too so I've become a tad immune to it (trust me as a journalist by trade, I've seen first hand just how delighted fellow journos get at the slightest whiff of a murder or burglary, it's one of the main reasons I decided to get out).

But interestingly enough, I'm not the only one NOT succumbing to the fear.

I've been fascinated to see how much more 'freedom' children seem to be given here. Something that seems to have almost disappeared in the UK, children playing out on the streets, is a common sight in Phoenix, not only in the suburbs but when you drive through the older, less affluent downtown areas.

Children don't seem to be told so much what they can't do, but the emphasis is far more on what they can. I've been very surprised to see that parents I've met here are perfectly happy for their children to take themselves off to play in the local parks (which are incredibly plentiful and wonderfully equipped).

I will admit that I've always been over-protective of my kids, but I think it's a very British things generally - we remind ourselves of cases like James Bulger and Milly Dowler (though the fact that we remember names could indicate the comparative rarity of such incidents) and the fear kicks in and affects our decisions.

So, despite the American media and advertising executives trying their hardest to paralyse the nation with fear, I'm very pleased to stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and say "la, la, la, not listening" (probably just before I fall flat on my face and hurt myself) and embrace the example of fellow parents I've met in letting go so my children can grow (and if that isn't a title of a parenting book yet, I'm sure it soon will be).

Stormy weather....but here comes the sun

2010-02-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

Week 13 in the USA:

You might have noticed a big gap there between blog posts. Those of you who know me, know that I have cyclothymia. Sometimes I'm up, a 'normal' functioning human being. Sometimes I'm hyper, mega-creative, pinging from one idea to another, talking a million miles an hour. And sometimes I'm down - the black brooding storm clouds arrive, they descend on me smothering hope, leaving me paralysed, freezing me in time where minutes drift into hours, days, weeks.....where I don't have the energy to fight, to cope, to be.

Christmas always triggers a bit of a down.

I know it's coming and I try to prepare so that it won't hit me so hard (and so that everyone else won't have to pick up so many pieces) but the best laid plans crumble at the first hint of darkness. Sometimes I come out of it by mid January....I can't 'snap out of it' but after years and years of this I do now know that this is a cycle, this is cyclothymia and no matter how pointless, worthless, paralysed, frozen, inadequate, useless (and many associated swear words I beat myself up with) I feel, one day I will come out the other side of the mountain, I will suddenly be able to see the light that's been evading me and it's at this point I'll suddenly discover that choice is back - I can choose how I want to spend that day, and the next, whether I want to give in to the lows or whether I want to crawl back into the land of the living, to spend the time until the next down trying to be happy.

So that's where Christmas and January went. Though I'm certain many of you who know me had already guessed that. My lifetime companions, my storm clouds paid a visit along with REAL storms here in Phoenix - I can't say I ever expected there to be a state of emergency here with tornado watches, blizzard and flood warnings, that wasn't the weather I signed up to!

But do you know what, the clouds are clearing, in my head and outside the house and albeit as per usual I've had to start my 'new year' in February, I've got a feeling that 2010 is going to be a good year and I'm choosing to live again and see what it throws my way.

Ps. If you've ever felt totally without hope, then this letter from Stephen Fry to Crystal Nunn is probably one of the best, most eloquent, most understanding things ever written about depression (including cyclothymia and bi-polar) and everyone in the world should read it to get a better understanding that It Will Be Sunny One Day.

A lack of holes...

2009-12-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

Week 6 in the USA:

Our house has a distinct lack of holes. And just like the Grinch it's been puzzling my puzzler till my puzzler was sore (yes, I know that's a terrible misquote, sorry Dr Seuss).

On a minor level, there's a distinct lack of holes in the walls for me to stick hooks or nails in for all of our pictures. As we're renting, the number of 'alterations' we can make to the place without them being noticed is severely limited. For some reason, the previous occupiers haven't left us with many possibilities to hang our 'art' (2 hooks in a bathroom and another 8 foot up the wall in the front room) nor have they left any holes where they once banged in their own nails.

I find it quite odd but it's fixable - I shall be trying to tap in some picture hooks with minimal damage over the next week (although I don't have a great track record of leaving walls in tact, I'm not the most accurate of people when armed with a hammer. Walls fear the very mention of my name...)

We're also missing a letterbox. That's sounds wrong... that sounds like it's gone awol, or perhaps was pinched by the crafty letterbox thief. No, our front door is actually totally solid. It's never had a letterbox. I know this is a concept I should be able to get my head around - I've seen enough movies where Americans walk to the end of their drive to empty their mailboxes and lower the little flags on them but I'd never thought about them not actually having a hole in their front doors too.

Much to my dismay, we don't have a mailbox with an adjustable flag (we don't have a white picket fence either! Yes I know, it's just not on!) So how do we get our post I hear you Brits cry? (whilst you Americans ask yourselves 'what's a letterbox?) well, I'll tell you. We've got these:

Just around the corner from our house, we've got mailboxes. Having my post delivered to my door and finding out the local news (gossip) from the village postie is yet another luxury I now realise I took for granted back home (the other big one being school buses that stopped outside our door).

So, everyday we pop round the corner to the mailboxes with a key that came with the house and we open our box and check what we've got, just like Melchett will now demonstrate for us:

And yes, all the Brits are probably wondering, like I did, "what happens if you get parcels too big for that tiny box?" Well, you'll see at the bottom of the boxes, there are larger ones and some have keys in the doors. If you get a parcel, the mail man (or is it mail person? I might stick with postie) pops it in one of these larger boxes and then pops the key for the big box inside your usual smaller box. And when you've used said key to retrieve your parcel, you leave the key in the bigger box's door. Genius!

I'm not totally sure what happens with really big parcels yet, but the local mail office is less than a mile away, so I'm presuming I'll have to go there to collect them or at least find out the procedure. There's a dress-form coming my way (Father Christmas put it in the post) in the near future, so I'll find out then. Everso exciting... just like the drive-through post boxes outside the mail office! Little things make me happy.

So anyway, to recap - no holes in walls, no hole in the front door, but both of these can be or have remedies - not having a hole in the roof with less than 4 days till Father Christmas needing to gain entry however is a bigger issue!

I've never had this problem before, not in 41 years. I've always lived in a house with a chimney! Beautiful and spacious though our current house is, it has no chimney for Father Christmas to descend, and therefore the added niggle, no mantelpiece from which to hang the family stockings.

Being a resourceful woman, I immediately thought "it's ok, I'll leave a note out in the front garden telling him he can slip through the letterbox"... until I remembered we don't have one! You can obviously see the predicament this leaves us in. Should we hide a key to the front door somewhere or even worse is Father Christmas going to have to resort to doing a reverse Shawshank Redemption? (Eeewww it doesn't even bear thinking about...)

(And don't even mention Eugene Tooms...)

So, answers on a postcard please... actually strike that, reverse it - the last posting date for Christmas is long gone - please pop any brilliant ideas how Father Christmas can gain entry to our distinctly un-ho-ho-holey house in the comments box below, for my sake and for the sake of me not scarring my children for life when they ask me how the big fella managed to get in with all our presents! Answers like presents will be most gratefully received.

And as they say over here - "Happy Holidays!".

School: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

2009-12-11T13:57:00.002-07:00

Week 5 in the USA:

So the girls are now both happily ensconced in their respective schools - Goth Child at the local Junior High and Melchett at the local Elementary. But it's not all been plain sailing.

Goth Child seems to be doing ok. She has four compulsory subjects every day - Social Studies (which is American History), Language Arts (translation: English Lang. & Lit.), Math (translation: Maths, sorry couldn’t resist) and Science.

She also two 'electives' that take turns on alternate days. These are subjects she chose from a large selection that included marching band, physical education and career lab technology. She chose Spanish (well, in honesty she had no option, it's the only foreign language they offer and if we return to England for her GCSE's she has to do at least one) and Art.

Despite starting a new language 5 months behind everyone else she seems to be doing remarkably well (there do seem to be some transferable elements from having previously done French and German) and is getting B's.

This is one of the things I’m having to get used to about American schooling, they do seem to be very pass or fail orientated ... ‘trying one's best’ doesn't seem to cut the mustard here (and I can't wait to see what they make of that phrase!). The intensity of what's expected has also been quite a shock to the system. I can't believe the amount and complexity of the homeworks both the girls are expected to complete. It takes Melchett about an hour each night to complete hers that includes a required minimum of 20 minutes reading out loud. Goth Child rarely finishes hers within an hour and a half.

And the pass or fail culture gave us a surprise last week. After Melchett had been at school for just 4 days, I was asked to attend an ‘intervention conference’ (the name is enough to scare any child, or parent for that matter). Despite having seen the difficulty of the homeworks she had to complete, I was still surprised to be told that 'M' was "failing 2nd grade" and would have to be moved back into 1st grade.

'M' has always had difficulty getting to grips with reading, but has made huge leaps since summer (I would say because she moved up to a far superior teacher in England). She also only just made it into her academic year. If I'd just crossed my legs 6 days longer, she'd have been a September baby instead of being the youngest in 3rd year in England (which thought automatically made her 2nd grade over here).

But still hearing that she'd been really struggling, able to read comprehension pieces but in their opinion too slowly and afterwards she couldn't recall enough to answer comprehension questions, it was a surprise. She'd been tested and had 'failed' 2nd grade requirements (yes, sorry that word is inverted commas because I don't like that a primary school child can be so labelled. I was told I was no good at maths at the age of 10 and it has affected me most of my life).

But hang on, the American school year finishes in June and restarts mid-August! I have no idea whether this is right (I can't seem to find a definitive answer on the internet) but what if her late August birthday actually means she should be in 1st grade anyway? Did we make a mistake in thinking she was a 2nd grader? Did the school make a mistake in not querying it?

Well none of this matters now, the good news is that despite telling me the F word, the teachers have been absolutely excellent and very tactful with her. She was moved to 1st grade quickly and quietly, selling the benefits of how she'll now be the oldest, won't have to worry about not being able to do the work and that she can help the little ones. She loves this. She’s always been the classroom swot (I say this with greatest affection and admiration) wanting to help.

She still has the same amount of daily homework and it still stretches her, but she can now do it by herself and the huge thing for me, doesn't now get upset and call herself useless (yes, it’s a real stab to the heart seeing your child having inherited or even worse, possibly copying your own low self-esteem). And she’s seems to have made lots more friends far quicker in this class. Perhaps it’s less intimidating being the new big kid than the new little kid having to introduce yourself to other existing ‘gangs’ in the playground.

So we’ll see. And the funniest thing is I haven’t even started thinking about how I’m going to use my allowance as part of the relocation package to take a course or courses (the fact that I’ve given up all my home benefits and the right to work for the next 2 years on this visa when I decided to accompany the husband to the USA means that I get a few thousand dollars to improve myself - not that I need it, I’m a good girl I am…. and the water in Majorca don’t taste like what it oughta!)

Let's start at the very beginning...

2009-11-30T18:00:00.001-07:00

Week 4 in the USA:

One of the most annoying things moving here is the gradual realisation that no matter how grown-up or accomplished you felt you were in the UK... this ain't Kansas anymore Toto! (Yes, I know that's because it's actually Arizona, I was trying to make a point about us being fish out of water...floundering to cope).

There you are feeling all in control, able to tackle anything life sends your way but just a pop across the pond and suddenly you're the new kid, wet behind the ears, waiting for the inevitable moment when everyone in the room turns to look you up and down and exclaim "you ain't be from round these 'ere parts, be ye?" (sorry, I don't why I suddenly went all pirate on you there, they don't ALL speak like Long John Silver here in Phoenix).

You can see it sometimes when you're in shops. The shop assistants hear the English accent and suddenly they start talking to you slower, using hand actions and pointing just in case being English, you haven't seen one of these new-fangled things like a self-service checkout and might worry that it will steal your soul.

It doesn't help that the Brits and Americans can't use the same words when naming things, so when I ask for something I know the name of, I actually don't over here. Some Best Buy assistants looked at me as if I was from another planet when I asked if they had internet radios. With much explanation and various hand gestures we did eventually get to "ohh, you mean a digital audio player". Hmmm. And you stand there feeling a complete idiot because silly you, you didn't know that's what they're called! Everyone knows they're called digital audio players! (don't you?)

The past 3 weeks seem to have been a non-stop learning experience. From working out what things are called here so you can ask for them, to learning a different highway code (being able to turn right despite the traffic lights being red, the differences between different 'Stop' signs, who goes when after stopping at them etc etc), to finding out that your clean and healthy credit record suddenly means absolutely nothing.

The latter has been a horrible discovery. We need a car loan and if we'd known how impossible it would be to get this, we'd have taken one out in the UK before we left. But now we're here, and no UK banks, building societies etc will lend us money because we don't live in the UK (despite us still being British citizens, still owning and paying a mortgage on a house there). And no US banks etc will lend us money because our credit rating in the UK means nothing here. We are aliens. We have to start anew. We have nothing to prove we can be trusted.

The same is true with trying to get a cell 'phone (translation: mobile 'phone). My UK mobile is still working but understandably costing a fortune to use. So I need a US cell 'phone. But because I've only just arrived in the country, I have no credit rating. So to get any kind of cell 'phone I have to pay a 'security' of $400 (about £250).

Even if pay this though (and I was prepared to - I need a cell 'phone in case the girls' schools call me and I'm out), I can't actually have a 'phone because they take proof of address from US driving licences and I haven't taken my American driving tests yet, so haven't got my licence. I am an alien, a new kid and like so many things over here, I have to start back at the very beginning... re-learning to drive and the American highway code so I can hopefully take my tests soon and get a licence and then get a cell 'phone. It's just going to take time. You'll just have to watch this space to see if I ever get to the elusive 'there' on all these things.

PS. And to rub it in, the youngest's school newsletter today extolled the virtue of persistence and how we should strive to demonstrate persistence to our children. "Persistence. It is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other a matter of time". I think I'm being the perfect, though grumpy, role model on this one!

I'm still standing....and even driving.....a bit

2009-11-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Day 14 in the USA:

It feels like an absolute age since I last blogged, but looking back it's less than a week....so what do I need to tell you? Where did we get to?

Everything goes by in such a whirl at the moment, we seem to be constantly busy filling in forms, visiting places, having inductions, plus I have to admit I got quite down at the end of last week - everything just hit me - the tiredness, the foreigness of everything, our UK bank making huge mistakes (losing over £7,000 of our money), our US bank not knowing how to arrange a car-loan for ex-pats, not having any transportation during the daytime. Wham! It all ganged up together and punched me square in the face.

However, I am now officially acclimated and I have a new friend - ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you, the one and only Hartley Pipkin:

She's the red one, not the one in the Green Day t-shirt, in case you got confused.

Hartley's a Chrysler PT Cruiser and they seem to be pretty cheap over here. Some say that's because they're small cars and Americans don't seem to like small cars. Other cruel people (the husband included) say it's because they're very uncool. I prefer to think it's because they're small cars and am clinging onto the fact that a certain 7 year old thinks Hartley is very cool AND that I drive like a professional. I did consider asking "a professional what?" but resisted for fear of finding out she meant professional kitten juggler rather than being a half-decent driver.

So yes, as you can tell I have managed to brave it out onto the American roads, driving on the right side of the road even though it's the wrong side of the road. So far I've only had the husband or children shout once "NO! OTHER SIDE!!" as I was turning right on a crossroads and tried to get to the left instead of the right side of the road...

And I'm doing ok....provided anywhere I need to get to involves right turns only. Turning left is something I'm building up to! 22 years of thinking and driving the other way around is proving rather difficult to get out of my system.

Luckily for me everywhere I've needed to get to so far is on a grid system, so with a little bit of cunning and checking out Googlemaps before I set off anywhere I can get to places by turning right a lot and going around the block.....or rather the blocks.

I love how most strip malls (think of out of town shopping centres in the UK, that have a DIY superstore, a supermarket and a couple of other shops either in a long row or perhaps an L-shape bordering a huge car park.....well they have these at most corners of the major road crossroads or cross sections here) and I love that they have entrances/exits onto the main road in front of them PLUS entrances/exits at the sides of the carparks...onto slightly quieter roads.

So if I don't want to go around the block to get back home, I can brave a left turn on one of the quieter roads rather than at the main entrance/exit across 3 lanes of fast on-coming traffic from the left and once I reach the middle of the road (I'll tell you another day about what they playfully name 'suicide lanes') 3 lanes of fast on-coming traffic from the right.

Anyway, for a complete nervous wreck, I'm doing pretty well so far. Next step I need to start turning left properly, because rather inconveniently the Americans have built some shops and places I want to get to on the left-hand side just to spite me. Then who knows....one day I may even try a freeway!

To sleep, perchance to dream

2009-11-18T09:42:00.002-07:00

Day 9 in the USA:

This has to be a quickie today as my acclimatization agent arrives in less than two hours to acclimate me haha. (Pronounced: a-klam-ate).

No, I'm not joking, it's really true. The girls and I are going to be driven around Chandler and allegedly shown the best places to shop....however, I plan to sidetrack our acclimatization and actually find out where the nearest libraries and adult education courses are held. I'll tell you how it goes tomorrow.

Anyway, sleep...

...and jet-lag.

I have to say over the past week and a half I've become even more impressed with the husband than I was already. How he's coped the past few years with the incredible problems of sleep and jet-lag coming to the US 6-8 times a year I have no idea. And he's had to work, have meetings and be part of conferences whilst being dead on his feet!

I must have gone through all this before when I came to America for 3 weeks in 1985, but I don't remember it... plus I was a youthful 17 years old then. Perhaps I just coped better?

The first couple of days were particularly hard for all of us. We left Shropshire on Monday 9th at 9am. We drove to Heathrow, got on a plane to Phoenix after lots of standing in queues and delays at about 4pm. The flight was ten and a half hours and was finished off with delays getting a hire car, and trying to find a hotel that was only a week old so the road it was on didn't even appear on the GPS (translation: Sat Nav). So when we hit our beds, our bodies thought we'd stayed up all night and that it was 5am.

Trying to catch up on lost sleep is bad enough, but when you're trying to tell your body it's morning when it thinks it's mid-afternoon after 40 years of working to a different 'day-time'....wow, that's been hard.

I expected us all to be hungry in line with British timings, what I didn't expect was how set my head would be set in the Greenwich Meantime. Still a week and a half later I can't sleep any longer than 6.30am here (1.30pm at home). I don't need an alarm clock, I'm just waking up at basically the same time every day. And I'm having great difficulty in the mornings. I'm convinced I've wasted most of the day and that it's late afternoon, when really the day has just begun and is stretched out with possibility before me.

I hit an absolute wall last Thursday, at about 2pm our time (9pm in my head and in the UK) sitting on a stool in an 'In and Out Burger'. My brain imploded and I seemed to lose a total ability to speak. The husband asked me something and I remember just sitting there wanting to answer but honestly not knowing how to. It was the weirdest of sensations.

Luckily things get better every day

And the children seem to be bouncing into the new time zone far better than we could have imagined. True, there's been an awful lot of rattiness and weepiness from them, but that's been just as much about being home-sick and missing friends as actual jet-lag.

I think my main problem is that, as all of you who know me well, I WANT IT NOW! :) I do have the terrible habit of being the most impatient person in the world. The sensible part of me is telling "you've only been there a week and a half, give it time" (yes, and my best mate is telling me that too, before you shout at me) but there's a whole exciting world out there that needs exploring, and it's a tad frustrating not being able to plunge right into it because I'm so shattered.

But I've got to remember where I've come from. Two years ago I couldn't get out of bed because I was so depressed. I didn't leave the house in weeks because I was scared to have to talk to people and couldn't cope with the thought of having to park in a carpark, let alone be amongst crowds in shops.

The very thought of having to go 'out' would keep me awake for nights and cripple me with stomach cramps. And now I'm out of my safe-place home, in a new home, thousands of miles from anything I know, waiting to dive in and discover life.......I'm even going to go and sit in a car with a woman I've never met before and make conversation and be acclimatized.......how cool is that?! I'd say that's definite progress :)

Things I Never Expected...

2009-11-16T13:44:00.005-07:00

Day 7 in the USA:

Life lessons from two teenagers on the telly

Well it's a given that I never expected JEdward STILL to be contenders on X factor...

...I was convinced the terrible twosome would have left by the time we boarded our plane at Heathrow last week. Yet on they carry, an upstoppable force of nature (well for now). Luckily I can keep up with their unfaltering, unflinching knack to just take everything as it comes on Youtube.

I have to admit when I first saw them I didn't warm to them at all. They seemed arrogant and over-bearing. But over the weeks they've grown on me. They seem quite self-aware, to actually have an understanding that this is their 15 minutes of fame and they're making the very most of their moment, and just having fun! I actually find them quite inspirational....but in my defence I am very, very jet-lagged :) and I'll be telling you more about that tomorrow.

A tale of the unexpected

Anyway, enough of my guilty-trashy-telly-secrets, another thing I never expected was the change coming to America could make to the eldest, Goth Child.

One of the things we've been doing every day is going for a walk to our nearest park. It's less than 5 minutes walk away and isn't that exciting, it's just a large semi-green field that's clearly been popped into our estate for dog-walkers and joggers. But it's the only thing we can easily walk to, so it's been pretty useful to get the kids out of the house once a day.

The amazing thing for any of you who've met Goth Child, is that she doesn't have to be dragged kicking and screaming from her darkened room for a walk!

Even more astounding is that she and the youngest, Melchett, have started their own 'training regime' on the walk. They run, they jump, they do warm-up and cool-down stretches....I'm really not sure what's going on, but I'm not knocking it. I don't recall seeing Goth Child this excited about being active in years. The Arizona air must affect near-teenager molecules or something. We'll see how long it lasts...

Kentucky Fried...Everythings

As we'd subjected the kids to another big shopping trip (poor things, but we do need to buy things to cook with and sleep in), we let them chose somewhere to eat out as a treat.

Goth Child chose Kentucky Fried Chicken but unlike McDonalds, In & Out Burger, Fat Burger (yes, really....and yes it does EXACTLY what it say on the tin), Wendys, Jack in a Box and other fast-food outlets, a KFC took quite a while to find. But find one we did.

I have a feeling we're going to have to go back again too - I've never been a great fan of KFC in the UK, but the range that they do here came as quite a surprise. Not only do they do all the things you'd expect, they also do burgers, chilli cheese hotdogs, mashed potato WITH gravy....and yesterday I had a chicken pie....with a puff pastry lid and full of yummy chicken and vegetables!

None of the above may appear very unexpected to you, but if you've lived in the middle of nowhere for nearly 20 years and are impressed by two lads from Ireland who can't sing and can barely dance, trust me....it's pretty mind blowing.

Right then, I'm off to tackle my next 'adventure' and shall be following in the ways of the great John and Edward...taking each day as it comes, making the most of my moments and having a whole bag of fun.

Not a trifling matter...

2009-11-14T18:01:00.001-07:00

Day 5 in the USA:

One of life's greatest joys is custard. No, seriously.

In the last week we've been trying out various 'supermarkets', actually to be honest, we've been trying out various Walmarts. But I think we've now found the supermarket that's going to become our 'local' - a Safeway, about a mile and a half away from us.

Not that there's anything wrong with Walmarts. We've bought loads of our household 'necessities' in them - kettle, toaster, tvs, bedding and crockery etc.

And it's not that the Safeway is posher, or that it has a Starbucks inside it...though both of these are true, it's that it has a speciality section titled "British/Irish Food". So now we can get our PG Tips, Heinz tomato soup, Pataks curry sauces, Robinsons orange squash (thought 'Goth Child's* very perturbed that it's the one with Barley water) and even......Birds custard!

I think we might have been a little over-excited about the latter by the bemused looks on nearby shoppers' faces as the crazy English family exclaimed "Custard! They have custard!!"

So I think we're going to be ok.

But part of Operation American Adventure is to totally immerse ourselves in Phoenician life, and that includes eating what the Americans eat....well, it would be rude not too.

I am absolutely gob-smacked at the range of 'foods' available here. The children are very excited about trying out all the tastes and textures. I haven't managed to slip into our cart (translation: shopping trolley) any baconnaise or sausages on sticks wrapped in blueberry-flavoured pancakes yet, but I'm determined that it has to be done.

The other thing that amazes me is the number of places to eat out. The same 'strip mall' (translation: row of shops usually based on a corner of a block & a block = a square mile of land, mostly filled with residential housing in Chandler) that has our Safeway in it also includes a Baskin Robbins ice-cream parlour, a take-away pizza shop, 2 burger restaurants and 2 Italian restaurants. And that's quite a small strip-mall. The husband already has on his to-do list getting a take-out from a Panda Express, that's about 2 miles from us. I've got a feeling that eating noodles from a cardboard carton with chopsticks could make it's way into my life's greatest joy's list...

...though it obviously will never knock custard off it's pedestal, that would be silly...and ever so messy.

*I've been instructed by the eldest that she'd rather be referred to as 'Goth Child' in future blog posts.

Two nations divided by a common language

2009-11-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

Day 4 in the USA:

I had a stupid idea that I wouldn't have trouble with the language here in Phoenix - I was wrong.

I was convinced that because the Americans and I both speak English and because I grew up watching Happy Days, Bewitched, Friends and a whole host of American movies, I'd have no problem - nope, wrong again.

I expected to get some funny looks because of my best newsreader's accent, but that would be about all - not a chance.

One of my many language-related adventures this week is my discovery that they don't have 'duvets' in Phoenix* (or as I like to say "they don't do duvets"). After a while on the internet and trapsing the aisles of Walmart, Target, Ikea, what I found out is that instead Phoenicians sleep under quilts or more commonly, comforters. A comforter IS a duvet. You can get a comforters that are white, filled with feathers or a synthetic equivalent. You can get them in different warmth ratings (I haven't spotted any with tog ratings....yet).

You can also buy comforters that aren't white - they come in a cover, sometimes removable, sometimes not. These covers come in various materials, colours and patterns. And to keep these types of comforters from regularly needing washing, the Americans have a flat sheet between them and their comforters at night.

But if you buy a white duvet.....I mean comforter, you can also buy separate covers to put them in. Which is exactly what I wanted. So I went to Ikea and bought myself a duvet cover......that they call in Phoenix (wait for it) 'duvet covers'. Yes, I couldn't get my head round that one either. They have 'duvet covers' but they don't do duvets. One might think that they'd either have 'comforter covers' for their comforters, or that they'd have 'duvets' to fit inside their duvet covers....but no, that would be to simple.

And this seems to be the way of it so far. Simple would far too easy when it comes to using a common English language. I don't know whether it's the Brit fault or the American, but somewhere along the line, we decided to use different words for things, just for the sake of it. Shopping trolleys are 'carts', single beds are 'twin beds', double beds are 'full beds', biscuits are 'crackers' because over here a 'biscuit' is a scone!

The funniest thing is that even when we've been using the few words that are common to 'UK English' and 'US English' - we've still had difficulty being understood. The most obvious of these was in McDonalds on Tuesday. The eldest wanted a bottle of water with her meal, so the husband asked for 'water'.

The word 'water' was said repeatedly by the husband and the lady on the till. It was said slowly, enquiringly, quizzically etc. Then a supervisor was called across and the whole family slowly said ..."wa-ter".

Luckily, once the supervisor had pointed to nearly everything in their fridge they did finally grasp that what we actually wanted was 'water'..... silly English people who obviously couldn't speak the language. We still have know idea why we couldn't be understood. To our ears we were saying it not terribly differently to them.......from now on we're sticking coke.....wish us luck!