Holiday diary - or why I will never dream of a white Christmas again

December 17
Last day at work before the Christmas holidays. Just as I leave the office I see fat white flakes falling from the sky. Although it’s all very Christmassy and lovely, I am gripped with worry. The dear old UK does not cope well with snow, and we have an afternoon flight to catch from Gatwick tomorrow.

By the time I get off the train I know we are in trouble. I step out into a blizzard. There is about ten centimeters of snow on the ground already and its coming down so fast I can’t see. It’s impossible to drive the car, the summer tires are slipping all over the road. I am forced to abandon the car in the car park and walk home, ice darts whipping into my face. I can barely keep my eyes open and the road has disappeared under the snow.

December 18
At six am, the wind and snow have stopped, but the road is covered in 20 cm of snow. My husband wonders whether he should go get the car, but decides it will never make it up our hill. There is a chance that the main roads will be clear, however, from where I have left the car. So we begin the first leg of our 1000 km journey home for Christmas on foot.

My husband makes two trips to take the luggage to the car, then we pack the children in the pram and push them through the snow. Prams are not made for this, it is like pushing a wheelchair through the Sahara desert.

The motorways are clear, but we can’t get to them. Dozens of incompetent drivers have skidded all over the road and we are caught in miles of tailbacks leading to the motorway slip road. We turn back and abandon the car in the car park again.

We catch a train going to Gatwick by the skin of our teeth. My husband jumps on board with the two luggage bags, sweating and swearing. At this point I am still laughing, if a little hysterically.

The train gets stuck in the snow. The toddler, who is due a nap, goes ballistic. We’ve already eaten all the snacks. We are now stuck, and accompanied by enraged screaming. Those passengers who can, move away from us.

Eventually, the train pulls into Gatwick. We check in and are told the plane is leaving on time. But it doesn’t. Four hours later, there is still no information from the guy at the so-called information desk. We have made a little camp on the floor, near the big Christmas tree in the departure lounge. The children amuse themselves by trying to remove all the baubles. There is a near riot at the information desk. Two policemen are called and stand nearby, looking ominous.
Finally, we board the plane, and then sit on it for another hour while the plane is de-iced. The toddler fortunately conks out and sleeps on my lap. Easyjet offers us all a free soft drink and snack as compensation. It is the best thing to happen to us all day. It’s been one of those days when our expectations have been getting smaller and smaller. We are now just hoping to arrive with roughly the right number of children.

We land at half past midnight, and wait for our bags. One does not arrive. It takes another hour to fill in the forms about this. The children are wired. We arrive at my parents’ house at 2 am. The toddler is inconsolable and has to sleep between us in the bed. I am suddenly reminded that we will be sharing a bedroom with both children during this holiday. Sex is not going to be on the cards.

December 19
We wake up and survey the damage. The lost bag contains my husband and the toddler’s clothes and the Christmas presents. We put his sweat-soaked items from the previous day in the washing machine, and try to find him something from my dad’s wardrobe. My dad is about 50 kilos heavier and ten centimeters shorter than my husband, so this is a challenge.

We finally find a rugby shirt that is a little too small for my dad. It is still voluminous on my husband, flapping around him like a flag on a flagpole. Nevertheless, he wears this to the Christmas party that afternoon.

Fortunately my mum has bought some clothes for the kids so the toddler has things to wear. No problem there.

I call about the bag. It is in Marrakech, but the baggage handling people promise it will soon be on its way to us soon.

The three year old’s body clock has been messed up by the previous day's travel. She can’t sleep and ends up in bed between us. Clearly sex is not going to be on the cards.

December 20
Get up, put husbands socks and pants through washing machine again. Hope the bag will arrive soon. Visit relatives. My husband still in the rugby shirt.

Call about the bag. Its arrived in Gatwick but has yet to make it onto a flight to us. The local baggage people don’t know why. I ask them for a number for Gatwick baggage handlers so I can check directly. This is not possible, apparently.

I call several people until I get the number for the head of the airport. I call him at home, on his mobile. At 11 pm. He is not very happy about this. I tell him I am sorry but that if I had had better service from the baggage people, I would not have had to disturb him. He sounds like he wants to bite my head off, and I am really pleased there is now someone as annoyed as I am about the bag situation.

The toddler cries in the night. It might be teeth, but the MediSed, which is the only thing that helps with his teething pain, is in the bag sitting in Gatwick. He ends up in bed between us again. Sex is unthinkable. Even if the children weren’t between us, we’d be too tired anyway.

December 21
This morning when I ring about the bag, I don’t even need to give them my reference number. They know who I am and the give me the number of Gatwick baggage handlers straight away. Last night's call to the station chief has had some effect.

The Gatwick baggage handlers offer no explanation for their failure to get the bag on the plane. There has been more snow in the UK. Things are not hopeful.

Wash pants and socks again. Husband gives the rugby top a rest and is back into his travel clothes. When the shops open we buy toiletries and more pants and socks. Try not to panic about the presents. There are still a few days to Christmas.

My prescription eczema cream is in the Gatwick bag and the dry winter air is causing a major flare-up. The children sleep through the night this time but, feeling like the Elephant Man, sex is unthinkable.

December 22
Wash pants and socks again. No news on the bag. The Gatwick baggage handlers can’t be reached. I ring the number again and again.

Finally someone picks up. I launch into the reference number and the description of the bag only to be interrupted by the man on the other end of the line.

“…I am really sorry but I am not going to be able to help you. I am actually a passenger. I have been standing here for half an hour waiting for someone from the baggage service to turn up. I only picked up the phone because I thought it would be someone who could tell me what is going on. “

“You are a passenger too? With a lost bag? And there isn’t anyone there?”

“No”

I commiserate and hang up. Clearly things are not going well at the airport. The bag, unsurprisingly, is not on the evening flight from Gatwick.

We play in the snow with the kids. It’s a nice day. Just trying not to think about the presents in the bag.

In the evening, I feel shivery and achy. Go to bed right after dinner and sleep fitfully. Wake up in the night with the roof of my mouth and tongue so dry you could rub them together and make fire. Stumble downstairs for a drink and find my brother and his girlfriend in the kitchen baking a gingerbread house at 2 am. They ask me if the gingerbread seems a little soft. I poke it and tell them to put it back in the oven for a bit. It’s like a strange dream sequence. Expect to see husband turning into a giant hamster, turning cartwheels wearing the rugby shirt.

The toddler cries in the night again and we think longingly of the MediSed in the bag in Gatwick. Finally, he falls asleep, sideways, between us.. Between the toddler, the fever, the eczema and the memory of the rugby shirt, clearly, there is no sex.

December 23
The day begins hopefully. I feel less shivery and someone answers the phone at Gatwick baggage handlers. It is a real customer service person called Jenny and she says that our bag is scheduled to fly out that night. Hurrah.

Play in the snow again. Visit grandparents. Feel optimistic. The eczema is retreating a little. Getting used to washing the pants and socks daily, and even beginning to tolerate the rugby shirt.

Then, crushing disappointment. I call Gatwick baggage handlers to see if the bag has left with the evening flight.

“Who told you that it was going tonight?” asks an unfriendly male voice on the other end of the line. “There is no record here that it has gone.” I burst into tears. There is now no hope that the presents will arrive in time for Christmas Eve.

I go online to send a message of bitterness and hate to Easyjet, then see a message from a very good friend saying that she is getting divorced. This puts things into perspective. I suddenly feel very lucky. Both children are in the bed between us tonight but my husband is still there.


December 24
Where I come from, Christmas officially begins at midday, when the declaration of “Christmas Peace” is read out by an official on the steps of the town hall of the old capital city. It is a custom harking back to the Middle Ages, and is nowadays televised across the nation. At this point the shops shut and everyone settles into holiday mode.

For the working mother, of course, Christmas actually begins many months before this, in about July, when the first Christmas presents are bought and stashed away in the back of a cupboard.

I've undergone complex negotiations with my boss for months over time off at Christmas. We've paid a small fortune for the tickets back home.

In October I start making a calendar from family photos, a annual Christmas present for all the close relatives. It takes several evenings to pull it all together, print it and bind it. More evenings in December go into wrapping presents. I sat one evening, when my husband was on a rare night out, curling ribbon and cutting up last year’s Christmas cards into pretty tags, late into the night. And now all those elaborately fashioned packages are sitting in some baggage storage centre in Gatwick.

Despite my intentions to keep things in perspective, I wake up on the morning of Christmas Eve feeling rage and despair. As a child it was always the most magical morning of the year to wake up on, full of anticipation and excitement. How things change over the years.

Things are not helped by the toddler’s early morning crying. He is now refusing to sleep in his own bed at all. If we were home we could do some controlled crying but here, the house is packed and the walls are thin, so he gets his own way and snuggles next to us. I am so tired and frustrated that for about five minutes, I feel pure hatred towards the toddler. Then it passes. I love the smell of him, the feel of his baby-soft limbs next to me, his breathing. I don’t hate him. In fact, I love holding him. But I am really really tired.

Christmas Eve actually turns out very nice. The children are excited, the dinner is delicious, we laugh a lot. Everyone else has bought so many presents for the kids that the lack of ours is not noticeable. In fact, the toddler is quite overwhelmed by it all, and doesn’t quite understand that these are his things. He’s more keen on just passing the parcels around than opening them. Its an old-fashioned, happy, warm Christmas.

December 25
Christmas Day is also relaxed and we spend most of it in our pajamas. We play in the snow with the kids, they play with their toys, we eat left-over Christmas ham and chocolates.

At 9pm, the bag is finally delivered to the house, 11 hours before we are due to begin our journey back home.

We do Christmas all over again with the newly-arrived presents. Then we pack everything up in the bag again.

December 26
Wake up at 6.30 and see flurries of snow coming down, almost obscuring the windows. Not again. As we set off for the airport, the car barely makes it out of the driveway, which is clogging up with snow. We are heartily sick of the stuff by now.

We make it to the airport all right – thanks to winter tires and a much more organized snow-plow service where I come from. Even the flight leaves on time. We arrive back at Gatwick and all the luggage arrives back with us. It feels like a minor miracle.

When we come out of the terminal, it pouring with - RAIN. For probably the first time in my life, this makes me quite happy.

Another one bites the dust

Last weekend our old NCT group met up for dinner at the local pub. It was the first time we'd all met up in the evening, without the children, since spring 2006, when said children were still just increasingly uncomfortable lumps wedged between stomach and bladder.

I was nervous. It was the first time we'd had anyone other than a blood relative baby-sit. I'd managed to get the kids to bed a half hour early, bought biscuits and crisps for the neighbour’s daughter who was sitting for us, reminded husband that we were going out that evening - he had marked it down as the following evening - and we were off. The feeling of freedom was exhilarating. Three hours adult time - an incredible luxury.

The conversation and wine flowed – the wine more moderately than in the past - but sufficiently. The steaks were perfect.

But here was the bombshell: My friend H, mother of two, partner in her own business, is planning to resign and devote herself to motherhood. This comes just after another friend, C, decided to take a 6 month sabbatical, from which she may well not return.

This will leave me as the sole working mother in our NCT group. Another of the mums is going back to two days a week in January, but still, the overall retreat from work is dramatic. Out of the five of us, we will collectively be working six days a week. That is compared with 25 days a week that we would have contributed before children. If that is not a brain drain, I don't know what is.

H and C who are giving up work are actually pretty angry about it all. Giving up work will ease the complicated juggling of their lives, but they are unhappy they have been driven to this decision.

"I feel a sense of rage that I have been put in this situation," said H.

She's been locking herself into the car by herself recently to scream. For the sake of her children, marriage, sanity, giving up work is the best choice. But having to let go of the business she has built is galling too.

And then, I am hearing all those justifications start creeping in to their conversation. C tells me, earnestly, that "its really important for children to have time with their mothers. They need the stable parental influence. We'd have less badly behaved children if parents were more involved."

I understand her reasons for giving up work, and I agree with what she is trying to do. But these justifications worry me. I hope they will not become more fodder in the entrenched warfare between the stay-at-home and working mums.

I point out that badly behaved kids can also come from families with stay at home mums. And if you believe the Daily Mail, the very worst kids come from the families where neither parent works at all.

When you give up your hard-earned career, your pension security, a big part of who you are, its natural to justify it by telling yourself that the thing you are going on to do is much more important. And raising children is hugely, monumentally important. But I hope it doesn’t become a rebuke on those of us who still cling to our jobs – especially those women who don’t have much choice.

Instead we should be focusing our rage on the establishment that has driven us to this. The insane workloads, the unhelpful partners, and the complex, historical expectations that still weigh heavy on mothers.

The etiquette of sick children

Sick children are a good way of finding out how much your friends like you.

We all know the scenario: you haven't seen your old university mates for ages. After months of discussion, somewhere in between mother-in-law's visit, Saturday morning swim club, a lunch obligation with husband's work colleagues, you have finally found a weekend that everyone is free. Hurrah. The date has been in the diary for months. Finally the day arrives and...

...one of the children wakes up covered in what could be (but can't definitively be identified as) chickenpox. Or swine flu. Or another lurgy. What do you do?

As a parent of the possibly pox-ridden child you are honour-bound to inform your friends. But how they react will say a lot about your friendship.

A good friend showed up at my doorstep a few weeks ago, just as I had returned from a doctor's appointment confirming that the spots on the baby's tummy were almost certainly chickenpox. Opening the door a tiny crack, I explained that we were contagious. I was trying not to even breathe too much in her direction. But after only the tiniest of hesitations, she decided to come in anyway. Her daughter would get chickenpox sooner or later anyway, she shrugged. She was prepared to take the risk. And we had a lovely afternoon.

It wasn't just that it made me feel our friendship mattered, it was also refreshing to see someone willing to chance things a little. We've become so overprotective these days, with all the soft rubber surfaces in the playgrounds, the meticulous accident report forms at nursery for so much as a hangnail, the incessant vetting of everyone who comes into contact with children. Its getting tiresome, obsessive, a little delusional. However much we do, we cannot protect our children from absolutely everything - nor is it healthy to. Protect them from every single germ and their under-employed immune system will simply attack itself, giving the child asthma or some allergy or intolerance instead.

The trouble with the ill-child etiquette thing is that it is prone to abuse. I've used it as a social get-out clause myself. Last summer we were due to meet some old friends with a new baby. Plans for the meeting, had, however, turned somewhat convoluted. What had started off as a simple plan for lunch had turned into picnic extravaganza in a hard-to-reach location. We feeling a little lazy. The day was hot, too hot to really want to contemplate travelling down to London in the car. So when the toddler woke up with a tickly throat, we did something slightly naughty.

We told ourselves we were letting them decide. "She's not badly ill, so we are happy to still come down. But we though we should let you know, you know, with the baby and all that..," I waffled over the phone. But really, I knew that, being anxious new parents and with swine-flu hysteria still in the air, they were going to ask us to stay away.

Ironically, the same weekend other friends called to see if we could meet up. They also have a baby and we explained again about the sore throat. They decided to brave it. Not for them to imagine swine-flu in the smallest sniffle, and by the time they had motored up to ours the sore throat had more or less disappeared. We had a marvelous time, and felt somehow closer to them afterwards. Either they really enjoy our company or they are pretty relaxed parents. Either way, I like them for it.