Interview at Big School

Today my six year old is going for her interview for ‘big school’. She knows the school from picking up her brother, she knows the teacher who is the mother of two of his friends, so her experience will be completely different from his interview two years ago. For him our little Waldorf school seemed a huge place teeming with large kids, after his tiny kindergarten. The teacher seemed stern and alarming and when he found out that he was expected to be alone in the room without me for his interview he dissolved into sobs and clung to me, completely unable to recover his equilibrium.

We rescheduled with another teacher and I was allowed to sit in on his interview. He did fine, taking each task very seriously and concentrating, as if his life depended on it. He was asked to do a drawing and reproduced in huge detail a picture that he had seen on the wall in the Class 4 room the previous week at the aborted interview. Even through his emotional outpouring he had been taking in detail of what the big children did, remembered and reproduced what he thought was expected of big school children! I remember him being asked to climb on a table ( a test of coordination, I guess), the teacher casually said “ OK now you can hop down”. With a frown of concentration he balanced himself on one leg and hopped off the table, landing rather clumsily...this whole big school thing may be mystifying but he was going to do it! The teacher had only wanted him to jump down but you have to be exact with your words around my son.

My daughter is showing a few signs of anxiety: the other night she said she dreamt she did a drawing for the teacher but it wasn’t very good; this morning she looked sideways at me and wondered if she would feel shy with the teacher. I won’t be able to go in with her, as I’ll have youngest with me and Ryan our employee’s son is also having his interview, so I’ll be outside with them. I think she’ll be fine though. The second child gets the benefit of their older sibling forging a way through the wilderness of unexplored life and has a slightly easier time following in their tracks. They do have the constant urge to catch up though, always slightly behind, so it all balances out in the end..

This milestone brings home how quickly the children are growing. My daughter is now the big girl in kindergarten, helping the teacher, knowing all the routines. Youngest is still holding back though, hanging on as long as she can to being the baby still at home and not quite ready to take that huge step back into school.

Fluff’s Story

Once upon a time as a kitten, Fluff had a proper boy’s name. He was christened Freddy. Very soon though he succumbed to the nickname, something to do with his wonderfully fluffy tail and general all-round soft purriness. He was our first animal in the days before the children arrived, when we were subconsciously trying out for parenthood, so with a lot of attention lavished on him, he soon showed his remarkable personality. He was a true 'boy', uncomplicated and loving but a thug too and he loved eating banana and broccoli. One month later we felt sorry for him being an only cat and got him a sibling, a black cat who we called Horatia. She poor thing got landed with the nickname 'Horror'. Fluff was not impressed by her arrival and for a few days used to leap on top of her, squashing her flat. After a while they decided to call a truce and cuddle up together.

In those days we lived in our photographic studio in London. It was in a semi-industrial yard surrounded on three sides by railway tracks. Fluff became Urban Cat, padding over the rooftops at night, socialising with the photographers and models using the studio by day. Our lives became more domesticated once the children arrived and eventually we moved in to a house. We worried about moving the cats from the studio – they were studio cats with an important role to play in the rodent department and we also knew we’d be moving to South Africa sooner or later. Would they make the transition to rural farm cat in Africa, coming up against snakes and worst of all farm dogs (they were both terrified of dogs)? Maybe it would be kinder to leave them at the studio where they were at home, where they had grown up?

Eventually, reassured by the vet that cats are adaptable animals, we decided that they were too much part of our family to leave behind. They moved to our suburban house and two years later, joined us on our great move to Africa. Friends, or shall I say acquaintances, thought we were barmy paying good money to transport two furry creatures all that way, when we could have got new ones on arrival....

The plans were laid. We would fly out first, travel to visit family for a month, then the friend who was staying on in our London house would despatch the cats to join us. Paperwork was completed, the house packed up, children bundled up and we flew into our future.

Two months later we heard that our cats had been booked on a flight. Then that they were on the way. We were full of anxiety for them. How frightening it must be to be bundled in a box, surrounded by strangers, strange noises and smells. Had we done the right thing?

The next morning we had a phone call from the airline. Apologetically the representative relayed the news. “Your one cat has arrived, but the other escaped at Heathrow...”

Escaped! How could he possibly escape, which cat was it, what was happening to him? Horrible visions of our baby wandering loose in a terrifying environment trying to find his way home..we should have left him at the studio after all.

We were reassured that he was contained in a warehouse in Terminal 4, that he couldn’t get out and would be caught soon. The airline personally escorted the cat that had arrived, who turned out to be Horry. So Fluff was the escapee!

For three days, our personal airline representative called us twice a day to let us know that there was no news yet. We appreciated her calls, better having her call than not, but we were getting desperate.

On the fourth day she had good news for us. He was found! At Terminal 1. At least 13km over runways, among aeroplanes taking off, taxiing and landing, our Fluff had trekked, in completely the wrong direction for home, but perhaps all those radio waves confused his internal homing device. He was bruised, paws worn raw, airfuel burns on his belly and scratches, but he was alive! He spent the weekend at the vets' and then another month with our friend to recuperate before being flown out to us. He was escorted out to our farm, personally by our stalwart rep, who was not too scared to phone even with no news. We expected a sad, shivering wreck, but as soon as his cage door was opened, out he came, tail up, purring!

Since then he has taken on his new environment with aplomb. There is not a dog who will mess with Fluff. They cringe if he approaches. He takes unkind advantage of this by lying in wait on a kitchen chair and swiping at their noses when they pass too close. One of the border collies is obsessive about him, she is desperate to chase him and quivers as she points at him. He stares her out and if he gets bored of the staring match will charge her, sending her whimpering down the hill. He knows who’s boss!

Inner Voice

Embrace the unexpected

Explore the side roads that meander away from the wide main road

Listen to the suggestions the universe whispers in your ear

Deviate from your plan and discover a better one.

Detail of a decorative ceramic plate by Rodney Blumenfeld

Berries and Muffins

Kansas Rose asked for my mulberry muffin recipe...well there's no secret. I just use a blueberry muffin recipe and substitute the mulberries. Our mulberries are really sweet when fully ripe and result in muffins with delectably jammy, sweet berries in the middle, reminiscent of Summer Pudding. With tart fruit they would still be good though, just a different taste sensation. Here is the recipe that I use, but if you have a favourite muffin recipe just use that, Jenny.

Blueberry muffins
125ml Nutty Wheat flour (75g)
250ml cake flour (140g)
15ml baking powder
200ml castor sugar (170g)
3ml salt
1 egg
125ml milk
100ml oil
425g can blueberries, well drained (I've tried various berries - usually about 1 cup of raw berries)

1. Sift dry ingredients together and add bran left behind in sieve
2. Whisk egg, milk and oil together and mix into dry ingredients. Mix until flour is moistened; batter should still be lumpy. Add berries, being careful not to overmix.
3. Spoon into greased muffin tins, filling each two-thirds full. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200degrees Centigrade for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.
4. Serve hot with butter.

Nutty Wheat is a South Aftrican brand of white flour mixed with bran. If you don't have the equivalent, use 1/4 cup bran and a total of 1 1/4 cups plain white flour instead.

I'm being summoned to join the family now, so can't get onto the merits of Summer Pudding and 101 wonderful ways of using mulberries, as I am tempted to do...NaBloPoMo is going to get me in trouble for spending too much time in front of the computer, I can see!

Five Pieces of my Day

Today ordinarily I would have reckoned I was too busy to post, but with NaBloPoMo looking over my shoulder I must write something, so it will be a snippets from my day kind of a post:

The weekly shop in our local town, where with my parents visiting and generously wielding their credit card, I did a huge shop to restock my sadly depleted larder. This was followed by making it home with just enough time to unpack the shopping, swig a hurried cup of Rooibos tea and drag youngest straight back out to take my son’s class for the last lesson of the morning. She could have had a nice time at home with Granny and Grandpa but at the moment requires surgical intervention to be parted from my side.

Taking a free drawing class at my son’s school to enable his teacher to do a Eurythmy session with my daughter’s kindergarten class. (Eurythmy is the movement to music that they do in Waldorf schools). Usually I have to do nothing more strenuous than hand out paper, admire drawings and ensure they clear up at the end of the morning but today there was high excitement, as it was their class cake sale afterwards. Two children got into a fierce fight, so with my four year old clinging to my leg, I had to assume a severe teacherly demeanour and seperate them, and again and again before physically escorting one of them to the office to have his scratches anointed. It was the intensity of the anger that was so alarming, like dogs that just won’t let go of each other. Half of the class ignored the whole thing but a few got even more excited and were dancing around on the fringes egging everyone on. By the end of class they had cooled down and apologised.

Home to an afternoon of more baking. We’re going to a farewell braai for our German students tonight and I am making the puddings: pavlova with strawberries, apple tarts, chocolate pudding. Also just iced the birthday cake for Tina who cleans for us, which we’ll be having in a minute.

Listening to my daughters play as I bake: an elaborate phone conversation organising their birthday parties with instructions on how to get to the party location - Cair Paravel, for some reason the electronic ring of the toy phone and the Narnian allusion struck me as wonderfully incongruous.

Our October summer has regressed back into rain and chill, so a we lit a log fire to warm up my father this afternoon. Our friend hosting the braai gave up on the braai idea and cooked boullibaisse instead which was wonderful. The kids stayed up late, we feasted on the puddings and have just got home in time to post my blog today rather than tomorrow.

Theology in the morning

It’s a damp overcast morning. Without the bright spokes of sunshine tickling their eyelids my children have slept in for once. Youngest is the first to wake as I go in to their room after my shower. Sleepily she lies against me.

“God isn’t a person, he’s a spirit” are her first words of the morning.
“Mmm” I say, my brain not in gear for any more thought out response.
“He was here before houses. Before there were people. Before dinosaurs.”
“Mmm”
“He’s just ONE spirit, not one..two..three”as she points around the room.
I’m keeping quiet now, what could I possibly add..
“He’s everywhere but he lives up there.”

My brain now reeling as I try to take in this most concise summing up of complex theological issues, I allow myself to wonder if my child is a genius. But then having got to the bottom of this subject to her satisfaction she moves on to complaining that her new pink sandals have already got dirty and in fact are too tight after all, so I know that she is actually a very normal four year old exploring the relevant issues in her life.

Invitation to a Straw Bale House

Come and have tea at our house today. If you drive along the dirt road you’ll recognise it at once. It’s the one that looks like a Chinese pagoda, gently sloping, wide tin roof, sheltering thick uneven walls, plastered with a warm red clay. A friendly house with walls of straw bales.

We get visitors quite often ringing up out of the blue to come and look at our straw bale house. Sometimes, as we start the conducted tour one more time, we wonder silently to ourselves whether we should be charging an entrance fee, or selling souvenirs and home-made fudge at the door. Here in South Africa using straw bales to build with is a new innovation, greeted with amazement and polite enquiries about fire-risk, planning permission and the like. Gradually more people are getting interested and drag their architects along to our house to see how it works in practice.

“Yes” we say, “it is amazingly cool in summer and warm in winter, as long as you keep doors and windows closed, there can be as much as 10 degrees C difference between outside and in.”

One of the best things for me though is that our new house immediately had the atmosphere of an old house, that solid sense of having sheltered the family for years and absorbed its history into its walls. Its thick walls give you a feeling of being protected from the outside world and a quality of stillness. The house has its own persona. It keeps us cosy and warm and also firmly tied to its apron strings. It is hard to leave and always welcoming to come back to.

Its generous rooms expect us to offer hospitality to all comers. Our seasonal festivals are ever growing and our house seems to expand to accommodate all our friends, family and acquaintances, over forty people at our last one including the children. The house likes children too, they feel safe here, free to charge around on bikes and scooters, spread toys all around the playroom in the centre of the house, climb through the windows, even deal out knocks to the walls.

If a chunk of the clay plaster comes off to reveal straw underneath, when someone charges against it with their sword, we can just mix it up again with some water and slap it back on. When this occasionally happens the straw shows itself to be still golden and sweet smelling, after four years as a wall.

The whole experience of building and living in a straw house has been a positive one, I can't imagine ever moving away from it, we'd have to take it with us somehow! One thing we did have to do though was add a line into the tale of the three little pigs: "the first little pig built a house of straw, but he didn't make proper foundations, tie down the bales or plaster it, so it wasn't strong enough..."

So do come and visit, I’ve been baking mulberry muffins, with the berries from my new young tree just outside, which has been prolific, though it was only planted just over a year ago. I won’t charge an entrance fee really, just bring your stories to share.