The Magic Man

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When I was growing up, during the summer months, we would be host-families for European students. As a family with four children in it, it was an easy income for my mum and, as we couldn't afford to go abroad, a great experience to meet teenagers from Italy, Spain, France, Romania, Germany, Holland, Norway, and sometimes Japan too! At one point we nick-named ourselves United Nations!

After a few years, we progressed to hosting the teachers on these trips and one year we had a gentle, German giant come to stay with us. He was actually training to be a high-school teacher and this was good experience for him. Now he was at the time, only a few years older than me and a real laugh so I will admit to temporarily developing a small crush on him. This quickly dissipated when he lived with us for his gap year overseas as part of his studies. Nothing can put you off a man quicker than living with him.

The summer after he stayed with us for a year, he returned to stay with us for the usual three weeks of the summer and it coincided with my birthday. We had a barbecue to celebrate with my friends and he did what he does best: MAGIC!

This was well over 10 years ago and, although mum stopped having foreign students soon after, we have remained in contact. Every Summer he returns to now lead the trips with his students and even though they stay over 50 miles away, he always comes and has a meal with the entire family. From the first time he stayed with us, he has seen our family grow to include two husbands and three little ones. He has settled down and got married a few years ago.

His magic has developed, he now does shows for children and is really good at it. Last year, my nephew was captivated by his magic, and has spent the entire year declaring that if something is broken we must call 'The Magic Man' to fix it!

Last Monday, The Magic Man visited for the evening again. This year to my mum and dad's new house. With him on the coach he had brought three suitcases: one for his clothes, two of his magic tricks. He treated us to a brilliant magic show which lasted an hour! In the end, I had to stop him as I had no more space on the Flip Cam! As usual, he had us all captivated, and while I know how he does a few of the tricks because he has either shown me or practised them with me, there were some that are a complete mystery to all of us!

Unfortunately, this may well be the last year that we see him for a few years. Happily for him and his wife, they are having their first child and he probably won't do the trips again for some time. We may be able to visit him in Germany in the future, but for the meantime we'll have to stick with e-mails, texts and Facebook! It's lovely to see how we have grown up together and created our own families now.

I'd like to leave you with an extract of the magic show so you can appreciate The Magic Man.

Flashback Friday: Musical Prodigy

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It's coming up to The Boy's birthday and today, with my little boy feeling poorly and needing a lot of cuddles, I've come over all reflective of when he was a tiddler.

Every Monday during term-time we go to Monkey Music. He adores it, loves the group leader and gets quite a lot out of it; which is just as well because neither of us are musical. I've got a piano in the dining room and yet it sits there unplayed, just waiting. It's waiting for The Boy to play it and it's very patient.

I bought the piano from the school that I work in six years ago; it was the old infants piano that was used when I went to that school. They were having a reoganisation of the pianos in the school, and that one was destined for either the tip or to be bought by the piano-tuner and reconditioned. Mwha ha ha, I got in there first! My old headteacher sold it to me £100 which I consider a real bargain. We spent the best part of a week sanding it down in the evenings, teachers are terrible creatures for leaving coffee-mug rings.

I didn't start this post with the intent of waffling on about my piano, bear with me; I've gone off on a tangent.

Oh yes, so when I was feeling nostalgic earlier about my little baby I found this video. It was taken around about this time last year and the change in The Boy since then is immense.

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Flashback Friday: The Enormous Bramble

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The past two days have seen me revisiting my old haunts in Reading, our home between 2001 and 2004. This was the place that hubby and I set up our first marital abode and I embarked into the world of teaching for the first time. My final year in my first school was a difficult one; the class had many social and emotional problems and were a real challenge, but I adored them!

We had a difficult first term which often saw me coming home and sobbing on hubby that I wasn't strong enough to win them over or 'break' their toughened exteriors, and my health did suffer with the amount of stress that I suffered in that year, but by the Summer term I had won them over. To quote one little angel (she really was!) who knocked on the staffroom door one lunchtime "I know we should have spoken to the dinner ladies, but they just shout at us. At least you listen first!"

That term to ease the flash-points I set up a gardening club to tackle the conservation area and reduce the incidents with the other children. We met once or twice a week and they adored getting to grips with the overgrown mess. It was a little metaphorical, but by the end of the year I had tamed them in the same way they had tamed the brambles.

So here they are working together as a team, and having a damn good laugh at the same time.

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FlashBack Friday: Picture Window

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Time passes so quickly; what seemed like only a year or so again suddenly turns out to be six years ago!

It's been quite cold today and when it's like this it makes me want to get away from it all. Three years ago, we'd have booked a European city weekend break and popped off to somewhere warmer and slightly less monotone in colour. Nowadays, that's not so easy with a nearly two year old to consider. On top of the financial aspect, there's the point that I've always maintained that I won't take a young child on a plane; it's a personal thing. So we have made a decision to spend our holidays for the forseeable future in Britain, holidays will happen via a car.

Six years ago, we decided to break from our traditional haunts of Prague and Barcelona and try out Budapest.

We landed at the airport and caught the bus into town, something that we'd done every time in Prague with no problem. Slightly different kettle of fish in Budapest. We had to then catch a train in from the bus station to the centre of the city, struggled up the stairs and almost died straight away from carbon monoxide poisoning from the pollution. On the map, out hotel was a short walk. In reality it took us an hour. With a suitcase. And the temperature decided to rise steeply.

We'd decided on a romantic hotel on Margarite Island in the middle of the Danube. We couldn't catch a taxi to the hotel because no taxis are allowed on the island, so even once we'd got to the right bridge, we then had to walk more than a mile up to our hotel and by then we wanted to go home already. We checked into the hotel, eventually, and went and collapsed in out very expensive hotel room. Which had red ants crawling up the walls.

That night we went in search of a meal in the city centre. This was no mean feat as I am vegetarian and this is goulash country. Finally we found a hotel which had a nice restaurance attached. We ordered some soup to start which turned out to be quite frankly the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted bar none. It was a gazpacho soup and the best way I can describe it is an alcoholic cold condensed milk. Neither of us ate it, instead we gorged ourselves on bread rolls.

The next day we managed to stock up at breakfast time and find a McDonald's for lunch. I had fries because they didn't do veggie burgers. In the afternoon we hired a golf cart, I was a little concerned handing over my passport as a deposit but hey-ho, and drove around Margarite Island. We ended up driving down a path alongside the Danube, and suddenly noticed that the path was tapering in and we were running out of available driving area. This is where hubby executed a 23-point turn alongside a rushing River Danube trying to avoid the joggers and not fall in to a river which is certainly not blue!

All in all, we had a rubbish time in Budapest and I went home starving. This photograph looks wistful and picturesque but belies the fact that there's also bugger-all to do there. Not a place I'd personally recommend.

But at least now we can laugh about the tip-top soup!

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Flashback Friday: First Family Day Out

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This week I've been feeling a little nostalgic about The Boy and when he was a little tiny-weenie scrumpy-bum baby. Ok, a tiny little bit broody too. It's all Jenny's fault over at Mummy Mishaps for having a scrummy little baby boy mid-week!

This weekend sees the return of that annual celebration of Mothers' Day. Over time it's become separated from its original meaning and turned a little schmaltzy and, well, Hallmark. At the modern core of it, it's a celebration of mothers everywhere. In the 16th century, Mothering Sunday saw people return to their mother church for a service, later times saw the day being used for domestic servants to visit their mothers and families.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll be celebrating it. We'll be going out for a lovely family afternoon, and everyone shall enjoy themselves, because it is my day!

So, after much waffling, I shall wander back onto the main point of this post: Family Days Out.

I am flashing back to my first FDO with my two boys. The day before my 32nd birthday, we went to Bristol Balloon Fiesta after I remembered how fantabulous a time I had with my own parents as an early teen. Unfortunately commericalism sneaked in during that 15-20 years period; along with the loud noises, flashing lights and drunken teenagers. Oh, and there weren't any balloons.

However, we had a fab time because we were together and enjoying our little family. We left early and on the way home we stopped in my favourite pub/restaurant for a lovely meal. The Boy had some rather admiring glances and I had some pitying ones (I was knackered!).

Flat-out after a tiring day of not seeing hot-air balloons.

I vowed then that we would have an afternoon together every weekend, sometimes we manage, sometimes we don't. It's got to be a deliberate decision to throw the washing over your shoulder, cram the chicken breasts/quorn escalopes back in the freezer, ignore the lint-ridden carpet, and shove off down to the beach/farm park/adventure playground.

This is one weekend when we will make the effort though, come rain or shine!

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Flashback Friday: Climbing

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As I'm sure is the case with many of you, we use the 'My Pictures' slideshow as the screensaver on our laptop; seeing photographs and little videos of The Boy at various stages of development and in numerous poses really makes my day. It reminds me how tiny he once was, all the escapades that he's got into, and how funny he is.

The photograph that I've chosen as this week's Flashback Friday popped up on the screen a few days ago and reminded me of the first time I was filled with that first sense of 'I need to babyproof the house!'

The day I discovered that we needed a stairgate!

This was taken about a year ago, The Boy was crawling over the place and thinking about cruising. This was the very first time that he had pulled himself up against anything though, so I whipped my phone out when he was on his way upwards, took a photo and rescued him before he decided to investigate the stairs even further. I popped him into the playpen, sent the MMS to my hubby and phoned my dad. Half an hour later, there was a knock at the door and my father was stood on the door-step with his toolbox. The stairgate was up before The Boy had a chance to try again!

Not quite sure what I'm going to do now, as he's recently worked out how to open it!

I loved those dungarees (another reason for choosing the photo).

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This was put together for the Flashback Friday linky over at CafeBebe. Please pop over and view the other entries.

Flashback Friday: Family Tree

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When my parents got married, my father planted a cherry tree to commemorate the event. As I was born the same year, I always thought of it as my tree.

Look at the poor little thing so spindly and weak.

My brothers and sister and I spent a great deal of time as children playing in the garden. It was our playground, our pirate ship, our stage, our fantasyland. The tree witnessed all of these squeals of joy and tears of frustration. It was used to tie me to, with my waist-length pigtails, whilst my youngest brother went in for tea! The fairies lived in that tree, you know the tooth-fairy and the ones that helped Santa at Christmas when he flew out of Castell Coch to deliver the presents. (I'm from Cardiff, that's what youngsters are told about the Fairy Castle).

Thirty years after it was first planted, this is what my tree had grown up into. I don't have a full height photograph, quite frankly the tree had grown too large! However, to gauge its growth, in the top photograph the bottom two stories of the block of flats can be seen. In this photo, the dark grey line in the background is the top of the three stories.

Last year, my parents moved out of my childhood home for a smaller, more manageable property. It absolutely broke my heart. I was the last person out of the house on the day that they left. I wandered from room to room; trying to imprint  the  smells into my brain, summoning a wealth of memories and being flooded with emotions. I stood in my bedroom infront of the french windows looking out at the view that had been mine for my formative teenage years. The cherry tree always had the most prominent part of that view, guarding and protecting the infants exploring the world beneath its boughs. Leaving the house, and my tree, behind that day was an absolute wrench like no other.

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Please pop over to the host's blog to view the other posts for this week's Flashback Friday.

Flashback Friday – 'Honeymoon Shadows'

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This week's flashback goes back nine years to our honeymoon.

We were married one weekend mid-term in the Winter, I had the Friday afternoon off school and had to go back to work on the Monday. We therefore didn't have time for a honeymoon after the wedding and had to wait until the Christmas holidays before a few days away. And where better for a short honeymoon than Paris, the city of love?

Pah! We had a rubbish time. It was absolutely freezing, the two hotels that we stayed in were supposed to be 3 or 4 stars, but it's a different system over there so actually they were 2 stars. One of them was so bad that the toilet was falling apart and when I put my hand on the bedroom wall, the paint flaked off onto my palm. I had food poisoning and we had to leave early.

However, we had fun exploring the sites of Paris and we were young and in love. I'm pretty sure our memory of it is worse than it actually way. One of the places we went to was La Grande Arche de La Défense, it was quite bizarre to see this square archway in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, this was one of my arty, black and white shots; an obligatory theme of photos when in Paris. It reminds me that actually we had fun!

This post was put together as part of CafeBebe's carnival of flashbacks.

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