Friday, March 29, 2013

Our first Easter in the Bakery

Thanks to Jane for the pics

The Bakery has been really busy over the past few weeks but especially yesterday -we made over 150 dozen Hot Cross Buns and just baked and baked and baked. It is a very satisfying feeling knowing that we are becoming part of peoples lives here and part of their special celebrations. The Bakery is a happy place. Although it can get unbearably hot, it has heart and there is something about it that is almost 'nurturing'.

It really is what we had dreamed about.

Happy Easter everyone. We are at home catching up on doing nothing and avoiding the piles of washing and general mayham that is our home. I'm also catching up on writing and reading and now that we've dealt with all the serious issues like homeschooling and leaving corporate life, it's time to have more fun with this blog!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

School

My Island Boys


We did not move more than half way around the world to a tiny island backwater to replicate our suburban life back in Johannesburg, although it does feel like it most days. We sit in traffic jams, moan about crappy supermarkets and trudge around endless 'after school activities'.  On weekends, we squeeze in the beach but we could be living in Wimbledon or Greenwich or [name any middle class suburb anywhere in the world] albeit with a great view.

Our main reason to move back to the islands was to give the boys the same carefree life that their father had experienced when he grew up here. Yesterday the boys went on their own to the beach for a few hours. They fish in our local village on their own, ride their bikes around here and have some wonderful adventures like island treasure hunts. They don't get to hang out in malls because we don't have any and they couldn't care less about brands they wear unless it's Gill.  That seems to matter for sailing. They know who Katy Perry is. They consider Waitrose Cod Fish Fingers a massive treat. They look everything up on YouTube.

The reason why Tylers' family left the island over thirty years ago was the lack of a high school. All kids from the age of 8 went back to England to boarding school. This started to change about 15 years ago when an international school was established on the island and it was one of the main reasons we could move back. The school offers the International Baccalaureate programme something we'd not heard of before, but which is well regarded. It has to be the very antitheses of the boy's old school which was a traditional preparatory school, but they have had some wonderful teachers and have made lots of good friends. The standard of education has generally been good and the classroom resources are in line with other private schools. There is, of course, a cost to this. In our case a brutal $4000 every month.

What we have never got used to however, is the wishy-washy politically-correct non-culture of the school, with its scant sense of community or context,  the reason given that the student body is supposedly transient and 'international'.  The kids don't, for example, sing the national anthem (or even know what it is) or celebrate any national holidays like Commonwealth Day.There are also no school sports just an afternoon 'Clubs Programme', which is priced to make a profit, despite the number of parent volunteers. We therefore pay to sing in the choir or be in the school soccer team. The school and its rather vacuous  'internationalism' feels like an island on an island with no real connection or accountability to anything, anyone or anywhere. It's not for us. School is the whole 'shabang'. The whole school ethos thing.  It's not only about smartboards or howmany doctorates the teachers have.

Plus we havn't had much fun since we've arrived here over 2 years ago since all we've done is work our *$$ off to pay for our neo-suburban lifestyle. On a beautiful tropical paradise of an island.

How ridiculous is that?

So we've decided we need to make the most of Here and Now. Focus on the kids. Have some fun. After much research we've decided to homeschool William (7) and Georgie (10) for a few years, whilst James stays on to finish Grade 7 (the margin for error with him is less!) after which they will all have to go off to boarding school off-island.  There is therefore a safety net - the children will not become uneducated island savages Lord-of-the-Flies-Style. 

We're going to combine the UK National Curriculum with Learner-Led education. We're investing in iPads and we're joining Surf School (mum too). We're going to learn to dance and we may take up another musical instrument such as steel pan or electric guitar. We're going to play tennis and go scuba diving. We are going to consult marine biologists and bug experts and learn how to cook West Indian food. We're going to attend concerts at the Miami Philharmonic (now that we can afford to do this) and travel to Cuba to learn about socialism. We will also learn how to spell properly.

It's as scary as hell, but no more so than our current lives of living on the financial edge or suffering the ghastly Kingstown Twang (the nasal 'transatlantic' accent the kids pick up at school which sounds like nails screeching on blackboards) both of which do my head in.

I was going to write a treatise on how mainstream and successful homeschooling has become, and I may still - but we're not trying to justify ourselves here. We just think it's a good idea for our family and if it doesn't work out, there are plenty of options out there.

If nothing else, it will make for interesting blogs.

The past week has been a good one: The bakery van finally arrived on Friday and it did our first wholesale delivery on Saturday. I started with a personal trainer on Friday and subsequently still can't walk and we've already baked about 100 dozen Hot Cross Buns.  The kids are now on EASTER holidays and we have a busy week ahead of us.



Thursday, March 14, 2013

Requiem

Ernst & Young 2010

Since Easter is a good time for requiems, I have my own personal one tomorrow. After 25 years, I'm finally leaving corporate life. I'm scaling right down to 'part time consultant' which is about as out-the-door as one could get. My new day job will be Chief Biscuit Icer for the family business.

I do look like a complete prat in the pic above but I think this would be an honest reflection of how most people would remember me, as opposed to the glam London one I've desperately been trying to find. Pursed lips. Teensy bit fearsome and very driven (a euphemism really for 'not suffering fools' very easily). My re-occurring bi-annual performance review stressed that despite my unusual and desirable Meier's Briggs profile (I was one of those weird ENJK types. Big Thinker/Perfectionist for detail) I was not a poker player and on one occasion my reviewer said "Julia, you are just too much noise". `None of this ever stopped me, however.

After graduation from the University of Cape Town, my maiden job was in the Economic Development Unit of the Cape Town City Council. I got to use the first fax machine in Cape Town which sat outside the Mayors Office (a highly sought after task) and be part of the land parcel negotiations for the future Cape Town Waterfront. From early 1989 I worked in London. My first project was the result of a helicopter ride by the scrap metal merchants (Don and Frank) who had sold out their land on Canary Wharf for re-development as London Docklands. They, unsurprisingly, thought that property development was a good lark and optioned most of North Kent in order to speculate on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. My job (along with half the City's legal profession) was to try and sort out the subsequent mess.

This project half-killed me and I took some time out afterwards to train as a landscape designer at the RB Kew to find some balance in life. "Finding Balance" has been a fairly consistent theme of mine for the past quarter century. I worked in some fascinating places like Longleat where the Marquis of Bath wanted to build a new Stonehenge and I even ran a little design company doing flowers and gardens. One garden I did was for Lord Kilmarnock who was in a ménage a trois with his wife and Kingsley Amis. Lady K used to greet me in the morning in her dressing gown, blurry mascara & ciggie and then offer me a sherry at about 9:30am to "warm me up". Martin Amis used to come round for tea and I would lurk behind the wisteria, perving.

After this, I tackled an economic & environmental strategy for Stratford. What we slaved over for years, was achieved by locating the Olympic Stadium and Village there last year, but it was a good excuse at the time to run around the East End and go to the dog races.  It also got me the Big Job running the "single largest urban regeneration project in Europe". Although the perks included hanging out with the DJ's from Kiss 100 FM, that job almost killed me.

As a result, I fled into corporate life and the City. I joined KPMG as a management consultant which was a sexy job in the Nineties but doesn't exist anymore, thanks to Enron. I shopped in Bond Street at Josephs (sob) worked like a dog and clubbed the night away. They were good years.  I travelled extensively and didn't really slow down even when the boys were born. 

My second big attempt at 'finding balance resulted in my leaving KPMG and joining Ernst & Young, so a failed one. My travelling increased to such an extent that the children when asked what their Mummy did, said "she goes in airplanes to meetings" which was pretty accurate, really.

I spent more time than anyone should in places like Lagos, swore by Vitamin B12 injections to keep me going and was distracted most of the time. I must have filled in a million timesheets, added grey hairs dealing with impossible clients and deadlines and survived an unhealthy amount of office politics.  I both loved it and hated it all at the same time. I could and should write a short treatise on the changing role of woman in the workplace, but I was working so damn hard, I never really noticed. I also have a 7 year old next to me at the moment  trying to put his Beaver costume together for his school assembly piece tomorrow morning, so my famous concentration is currently shot.

So on my third and final attempt at "Finding Balance" I've moved us to the Caribbean, set up a bakery and we're going to homeschool the kids. This will probably make the past quarter century look like a complete breeze, but it's good to be moving on. I suspect I'll never be balanced.

Clearly not enough poker.






Monday, March 11, 2013

Crafting with children

William dies some eggs. The bunny bag is destined for the bakery shop, with a boy version and a 'big girl' version too. It's hot cross bun time again.
The rabbit is from Pinterest, Mommy's favourite craft (no mess)

We've had another long weekend of blissful relaxation.  I suppose we should all be outdoors riding our bikes or something, but we're all too tired for anything that energetic so we 'craft' instead (when we're not doing the washing up or fixing things, that is).

I do find crafting with children quite traumatic, though. I've never felt guilty about working or anything like that, but I must admit to feeling vaguely rubbish about how impatient I get with them when we start making things. I always set out to be 'nice mummy' but am usually reduced to a frothing lunatic within minutes, hissing all kinds of dreadful things which I hope the children wont remember or understand.

Firstly we can never find anything: "Where are the scissors?" must be one of the more dreaded questions in the English language, followed closely by "where is the sellotape?" No matter how many times we sort everything out into boxes with large signs saying CRAFT on them. To make matters worse, my carefully tucked away back-ups have usually been plundered as well. No scissors. No UHU stic.  This drives me completely insane: "Make your own bloody Easter eggs" I throw over my shoulder as I stomp off to go back onto Facebook.

The children rally however and art supplies start emerging from the Lego Box and the sock drawer and I'm lured back by three sweetly smiling little boys, all eager to create. A mess. No sooner have we set everything up, they start knocking everything over, usually destroying the half-finished masterpieces, cue for much anguished wailing and frantic mopping. Even worse if one boy knocks over someone elses masterpiece, which is then cue for much squabbling and occasional violence. Which requires refereeing and mopping up and having to start all over again. I usually need a drink by then, regardless of the fact that it's still two o' clock in the afternoon.

They also never read the instructions ("oh look, we should have put the vinegar in before we added the oil, now it's probably not going to work") so we often end up bitterly disappointed that our stuff never looks like the pictures. There is nothing more depressing than bad craft and we seem to have a lot of it.

I've undoubtedly created a rod for my own back though.  Georgie immediately googles Martha Stewart if he needs to find something out and William drags the Readers Digest Jewellery Course into our bed in the morning, when we'd rather have Roald Dahl ("Mommy can we make the triple-spiral fancy earrings today please?" No). The children seem to get a manic gleam in their eyes the minute the word 'craft' is mentioned and I immediately regret that we didn't suggest that they played in their fort instead.

I wouldn't have it any other way of course, but it's not the most relaxing way to spend an afternoon. I'm sure it will all be replaced by surfing and video games soon, which means I will then probably feel guilty for not enjoying it more now. Whatever.

Until then we need to put more newspaper down. Oh yes, it's an island. We don't have newspapers. Argghhhh.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Rituals

We got out all the Easter decorations today. The boys, William especially, have been asking me to do this since about 3 days after Christmas. They really love the familiarity of getting everything out of the boxes and seeing the same old things which invariably seem tattier and are missing more ears, year after year.

Now they're nagging to start on the egg decorating. They've already asked twice today. Tyler was going to blow the eggs he was using for our breakfast scrambled egg, but then decided he had better things to do with his bank holiday.

Anyway, seems like we need to brush up on some Easter crafts quickly as the Easter Bunny is not travelling this year like it has done in the past two Easters, which may cause an egg crisis.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Here


Late Saturday Lunch: Easy Tuna White Bean salad (mostly out of tins!)with local tomatoes & lots of garlicky dressing and crusty Ciabatta.

As Spring is a time of renewal, I'm hoping it is mine too. I've struggled for the last couple of months to summon the energy needed to do the bare basics, let alone be creative or disciplined or even nice. I'm not sure if I've had a bad case of 'Rock Fever' or if it's just hormones, but it's been real enough. Anyway I can feel my mood starting to lift, so things are on the up.

Central to this, I suspect, is that I'm slowly coming to terms with the Virgin Islands being our home. Living here is not one long Tropical Island Paradise Experience, you'll be shocked to know. That's called a holiday. In fact its a hardscrabble kind of place to live, with a fluid culture and community. It's also difficult to work out what 'here' actually is:  The children go to an international school which is culturally neutral - an island within an island. The expat culture can be a bit 'when-we'. Much of the predominant popular culture is depressingly aspirant 'Ghetto' including the fake accents. There are more 'Down Islanders' (about 15,000) than local Tolans (5,000) and this is a backwater so a lot of human flotsam and jetsam washes up on the shores. None of this is easy for a suburban English girl like me.

To try and understand 'here' I've started to read a lot of local history and autobiographies. I'm helping with some building preservation work and we're sourcing local suppliers and skills for the bakery. It's all helping to give me a sense of connection. I'm trying to find some acceptance and grace in it all (including giving up booze for Lent!) and it feels like it is starting to work.

Also helping is a bit of time out: It's a lovely long weekend, so lots of resting, reading and long lunches in our beautiful Carrot Bay eyrie. The bakery is thriving and we have plans which we can now put in place as I'm officially going to be full-time CBI (Chief Biscuit Icer) soon.  It's also back to writing and the blog.  The baby books. The aprons. The landscape projects. The sketchbook. The column. The social committee. The sailing year. Easter. Mangoes. Orchids. etc etc etc.

I think I have energy for it all again.