On the buses

Being as I've been away a while, I'll get straight on with today's beef.
I sat opposite a very well turned out, forty-something professional lady on the train to Leeds yesterday.  She smiled politely at me and I formed an immediate opinion that she looked like a nice genteel individual.

Right until the moment she drank the dregs of her coffee, stood up and got off the train, leaving her disposable coffee cup, well, un-disposed, right there on the table!  Why do people think they have a God-given right to leave litter, let someone else come along and sit with their used coffee cup in front of them and leave someone else to clear it away.
It is just me?
Probably.

Sorry, withdewrespect has been on a short holiday, coupled with a nasty chest infection and followed by, oh what's that thing I do again.....?  Oh, that's right, work!
Also, Easter left me with far too much chocolate around the house so I've been on such a sugar high I couldn't string a sentence together.  Well, OK, the kids were left with so many eggs that I hid six in a kitchen cupboard and have been steadily munching through them ever since.  Whenever a child sneaks up and asks me what I'm eating, I smile sweetly and reply, 'an apple, do you want one'?

My holiday was to Portugal, as you know, once my country of residence.  I returned with a friend who was also travelling with children to visit their father.  Going towards the EU or Nothing to Declare exit choices on arrival at Porto Airport, my friend joked there should be a separate exit for International Divorcees.  It would be a busy exit I can tell you!!  And among those using it would be non-other than JK Rowling (and not a lot of people know that!).

On this trip we hired a car and ended up re-mortgaging both our houses thanks to the 'hidden extras' ( well, thanks to Groupon and affordablecarhire.com, NOT!)
Back in the days before I owned a car and the fantastic Metro do Porto was just a twinkle in a Transport Minister's eye, I was a regular on city's bus routes.
There was never a dull moment on the buses in the mid 90s I can tell you. Getting to empty seats was like a rampage scene from Jurrasic Park, jabbing elbows, right hooks and swinging handbags were commonplace in pursuit of an uncomfortable, wet and dirty blob of orange moulded plastic.  Put it this way, seats were as rare as a smile in a Portuguese Post Office (JK knows what I'm talking about!).

It was a daily adventure, often more farcical than Sid James' trousers falling down or Barbara Windsor making a boob of herself.
One day, my newly-purchased Nokia house brick rang.  I delved into my bag (as did everyone else!).  One minute, I'm just a face in the crowd.  I say, 'hello?', and I'm the daughter of Beelzebub!!!
Like a Wild West saloon when the baddie walks in, there's a deathly silence, everybody stares.

'Oh, hi mum, you OK.....yes I'm fine, just on the bus......'

Mothers gather up their babes in arms, children point, old ladies stare, men shuffle away.  Lock up your daughters, there's an alien on the bus!
I'm the one they stare at!!!  Opposite me a lady has two puppies in her shopping bag, behind me two women have set up a cottage industry, crocheting table cloths.  (Is this some form of tax evasion, crocheting on a moving bus, like duty free on an airplane?).  The man next to me retches, gargles and sends an expertly formed green globule of phlegm hurtling over my head and through the open window.
All this, everyone ignored.  I say 'hello' and you'd have thought I'd stripped naked, pulled out a pair of maracas and started singing Viva Espana.

I hasten to add that I am firmly in favour of 'when in Rome' and worked tirelessly to learn the lingua.  Even when I spoke near word-perfect Portuguese, I still had a noticeable (OK, dodgy) accent and grew to love the intrigued stares on the buses.  Or maybe I just bought a car....memory doesn't serve me well.

The Portuguese language is notoriously difficult to master.  Like all Latin languages, it's feminine this and masculine that, with no rhyme or reason, and there's more past and future tenses than you can shake a stick at.  And, perhaps much like English (sun / son), there are many similar sounding words with completely different meanings.
I once walked into a shop with a runny nose and asked for a packet of bed sheets.  (lencos = tissues / lencois = bed sheets)

 (PS: I love Portugal and its people really and I was always, and still am, made to feel at home in the land and like one of the family among its people.  The Portuguese are wonderful; every home should have one, mine does!!!!)

Toss an Escudo or make a run for it

Being a hen in Portugal must be pretty darn hard work.

The average inhabitant of the country seems to consume at least four eggs a day; that’s a whole lot of laying.

You’re about to tuck into your roast beef and lo and behold a fried egg is sat on top of it, as they do alongside most meat dishes.  Boiled eggs accompany many a fish dish and there’s none of your fancy slicing or mashing with mayo; it’s just boiled and shelled. I always approach my chocolate mousse with some trepidation, and a pinch of salt, just in case.

Returning to Portugal again (you may recall I lived there for a number of years and returned to the UK in 2006) is real culinary trip down memory lane.

I remember the first time I met my intended’s (now ex's) parents; I spent an entire day smiling for England and eating twice my own body weight.  My facial muscles ached for days and the whole chicken (and several eggs) in my belly took its toll I can tell you.

Meeting the prospective in-laws is an ordeal at the best of times.  The ‘best of times’ for me would have simply being able to speak their language, or them speaking mine.

There I am at the dinner table with the whole family, nodding, grinning and feigning an expression of complete comprehension as they put the world to rights in, as far as I was concerned, gobbledygook.

I had been tipped off that Portuguese women like people to enjoy their food.  So, unable to contribute conversationally, I ate, and ate, and ate (and nodded and smiled).

Suddenly, there was a lull in the incomprehensible jabber and all eyes were on me.  Oh no, what’s wrong?  Have I got egg on my chin, parsley in my teeth, sprouted another head or, even worse, has someone asked me a question?

I reckon have a 50/50 chance with the simple response 'sim' or 'nao'.  

Should I toss an Escudo or make a run for it? 

Now, thus far, my very basic understanding of the language armed me with ‘your house is lovely’ (tem uma casa bonita), ‘pleased to meet you’ (muito prazer) and ‘I’d like a ham and cheese toastie please’ (quero uma tosta mista por favor).  In those days, I wasn’t quite ready to share my views on the European Monetary Union.

What a relief it was then when my fiancé translated that his mother had simply asked; ‘why was I at university when I was so old, was I marrying her son to gain Portuguese nationality and would I like another chicken leg?’

I nodded, shoved in another potato and smiled.

We'll be BFF!!!! (until the kids arrive)

It's a tricky subject to broach but thought-provoking non-the-less and something I've been pondering over.

Last week, this very topic was echoed in a conversation I overheard while ear-wigging in the playground (as you do).

Can friends who are parents remain 'really' close friends with friends who aren't?
Oooo, controversial!!!  And I can hear you all thinking of fine examples to immediately dispel this theory (and my non-parent friends thinking, charming!!!).
Bear with me.
What I'm getting at, both from the point of view of parents AND non-parents, is that although staying close in a friendship after the arrival of children might not be impossible, it certainly isn't easy.

The conversation I overheard at school was about a group of forty-something-year-old girl friends who had been trying, for many years, to plan a short trip away together, just the girls!
It had never happened; running the home, the demands of kids, taxi duties and sheer exhaustion, had always got in the way.....until one day.
On that day, the ladies decided to still go away, but.......take the kids with them.  Eureka!!! Suddenly it was do-able and the trip was planned within hours!

I'm not just coming at this from the 'parent' perspective and bemoaning my own lack of time and opportunity to meet up with non-parent friends, without the kids around.  I ashamedly admit sometimes struggling to understand why my friends can't just drop everything to meet me when I have an hours gap between football training and street dance class.  How mean!!!

In reality, how wrong I am.   For one, I selfishly forget that my friends without kids have a much wider circle of friends, more diverse hobbies and busier social lives.  More importantly, they all work a hell of a lot more hours than I do, in very stressful and demanding jobs, and therefore their spare time is also a rare and precious commodity.

In some ways, FaceBook has provided us with a new level of relationship, filling the gap between BFF (Best Friends Forever) and FOF (Fallen Out Forever); where we can maintain contact through regularly sharing family / social / work and hobby news and photographs.  We can stay in touch with all our busy friends without actually having to stay in touch, if you see what I mean. (Yes, that's right, I've gone soft on FB)

I guess it's just practical that my social timetable as a mum fits in better with friends who are mums, making meet-ups more logistically manageable.  The kids are, of course, usually around but at least they can play together while we chat.  We just accept that during such mum-to-mum conversations we never actually finish sentences; there's bound to be an interruption from some small person needing a bottom wiped, or in my son's case, something urgently needing sellotaping (two non-linked examples, I hasten to clarify).

Likewise, before I had the boys, in meet-ups with already-burdened friends, I recall being frustrated at such seemingly trivial interruptions from their snotty kids.  I simply didn't understand why bum wiping was more important than discussing my boyfriend trauma or hairstyle dilemma (those things being of equal importance at the time).

I guess it's all about compromise and finding the middle ground where mums understand the varied stresses and strains of everyday life without kids and, in return, our friends understand that since we've given birth to the darn things we're apparently morally and legally-bound to give them priority with regard to that most precious of commodities; time.

At the end of the day, all friendships that survive childbirth or any life-changing event are surely worth working at in real time, and not just through a FaceBook post (see, I'm not totally convinced).  Meet-ups may be less frequent but non-the-less special and worth making time for.

PS: I've gone all serious and pensive again so I'll throw in another one of my pet hates, courtesy of 'motorway management' and specifically the signs warning drivers that there are pedestrians in the road.

Rather than having to repeat these signs for miles and miles to hundreds, nay thousands, of drivers, why not just have one sign directed at the pedestrians saying: GET OFF THE ROAD YOU FOOLS!?

Friends.

Happy days, when sentences were never finished!!!

See you soon, face-to-face, or on FaceBook.