These early days

November 2020

The feeling of warm air enveloping my skin in the night time as you step into a new world is one of my earliest travel memories, together with the wafts of aviation fuel laced with something exotic. For 7.5 hours I'd had what felt like the sought after room of my own. A small capsule within myself of non-interruption as the Pea and Rashimi were absorbed by the novelty of a flight to somewhere new. With films and food on tap, and a vibrant, intense sunset above the clouds to gaze at for a few minutes before dark.

J was there to meet us and was almost knocked flat by the exuberance and velocity of two small humans running into his arms in the carpeted welcome zone.

How I wished the Lozenge had been in that tangle too, and just as I was thinking of him, my telephone rang and it was the Lozenge himself sounding fine and perky, not even jealous. Just excited for us about having arrived in a place that would soon be his home too. After re-assembling all the 16 bags and releasing a panting, wagging Debbie onto the warm concrete for a scurry about and a very long wee in front of a group of Bangladeshi airport staff, we drove to our new home, gazing at the lit up buildings flying by - those outskirts between airport and home that are always the first impression, but places we'll probably never visit.

It was about 3am by the time we got into bed. And the first day was a blurry fog of bare feet on cool marble floors and opening multiple cupboard doors to find a cup or a bowl. J had unpacked every box and arranged the whole house bar pictures, as well as all the food shopping and finding a Sri Lankan helper called Nalani who greeted us like her long lost family. 'Madam, your children they sweetie, and your doggie sweetie, Madam. And Sir James he been sad without you all, Madam. And he been so busy taking out all from the boxes. He is a kind Sir,' she sang as she swept around clearing up around us. I had an internal chuckle about Sir James and am getting used to being called Madam again. After we tried and failed to get St Grace to call us by our real names in Jordan, we have since given up on that campaign. 

She's an active, smiling, strong ball of energy, with a flower tattooed on her neck and an infectious laugh.10 years older than me with a much older husband and children and grandchildren back in Sri Lanka. There's a good aura in the house already. 

Rashimi's room is painted a dusty petrol blue. It's a handsome room with a big window and he sets about making himself at home. He arranged his bows and arrows and books and lego, puts a Harry Potter wand on his desk and then started taping photographs onto his bathroom door of family, his friends, adventures and previous homes. This is his fifth home, and sixth if you include 'our plan B' as the Lozenge calls it - ie. Scotland, which he has considered home for the past 8 months. After a two hour burst of nesting, Rashimi slumped onto the bed. 'This is not a real home,' he sobbed. 'It's not The Steading. There's no stuff to fiddle with and it feels unloved. I don't think this will ever feel like home.' The photographs started dropping off the bathroom door as the warm air heated the sticky tape. Outside his window is our rectangular garden with trampoline, some bougainvillea bushes and patchy grass. There's a bright red hibiscus bush like the one outside the window in the Bethlehem hospital where the Pea was born. 

I remembered settling into all our other houses, as I looked at Rashimi's long legs on the bed - almost not a Rashimi any longer, yet allowed to be one in a strict family circle. I sat beside him, realising the older the child, the more they notice and so perhaps the longer to settle. 'It's a bit like friendships and planting seeds,' I consoled. 'A house also needs time to grow into a home.' Just take it a day at a time and you never know, one day it might feel so. I feel the absence of his brother for him. Settling into a new house is automatic with a companion. Manual when you're alone.

Meanwhile the Pea was happy in her new cool white boudoir acting out some rather dramatic sounding role plays with her Sylvanian hedgehogs and squirrels who have moved back into her Georgian dolls house from Gran Gran that she hasn't seen since March. It seems that moving house and country when you're 5 rather than 9 is a less complicated affair.

J came back from work early, and we four bicycled out of our gate towards the beach. The Pea looks like Miss Marple on a bike. Very upright and stately, but with dangerous wobbling whenever there's a hurdle or a car. So it was more time consuming reaching the beach than I'd imagined. We're two blocks back from the sea which looks out towards the Gulf of Oman and across the water is Iran. We're an inch on the map above the Tropic of Cancer. The evening sky was a pastel wash of mauve and orange and bluee. Green parakeets screeched between date palms above and people were walking along the paved corniche as the beaches are still out of bounds because of Covid. J, P and H dashed into the lapping waves. It was impossible not to. 

They were soon sandy and drenched. Darkness hit suddenly and after some languid moments in lapping waves, Ham drove straight into a concrete bollard on his way home hurting his already-brown shin, and the Pea became a cross, sandy ball of fury as swiftly as night had just fallen, and cycled home in bare feet. I peddled slowly on, with the Pea's sandy Crocs dangling in my hand.

The first days meandered along. There was no school the first week, so Ham and Pea connected with their new school online. The system will be one week in school and one week at home alternately until at least the end of the Easter term. I try and cheer myself up with the notion that the variety might keep things fresh. But the Pea is not interested in learning from a screen. They are both longing for classmates. It's been 8 months without any.

We had to call the Lozenge at midnight (8pm his time) and his matron picked up the phone. 'He's so lovely and he's settled in fast,' she said. I wonder if it's easier to settle when it's your own decision to go somewhere.  Since it was not Rashimi's decision to move to Oman, maybe he feels like he has less agency with his situation. 

Nalani is a comforting non-family presence in our days. 'Hello madam! Sweetie outside,' she sings when she sees me. I'm not sure which of the Sweeties she's referring to, but I'm glad she calls them Sweetie. Any extra love towards your children (and dog) is a reinforcement like an extra layer of shell. It strengthens you when you're far from home, when outsiders love your children too.

It was our wedding anniversary on day 2. 14 years of adventures and our sixth house. We raided the fancy dress box, and J nipped to the booze shop with his liquor license. There's something called a sin tax which makes every sip a careful one. A bottle of non-decent wine is about 20 quid. But at least now I've worked out that everyone is talking about the sin tax not syntax, which had got me into some confusing conversations initally. A lot of people we meet explain how life is not how it was before. But since we never knew it before perhaps we won't notice. 

There was a loud sound of whirring and scraping coming from Rashimi's bedroom and he emerged with an old tile he found on the hot, flat roof of our house which he'd engraved with his stone engraver: ‘JL, LL, HL, LL, PL, NF .heart. Happy Anneversary.'

‘What is Nalani’s surname?’ he'd asked. She is already part of our family in his eyes. Like the two au pairs from Brittany before her, who featured in every family drawing.

That evening Rashimi struggled to sleep. He sat with us for our anniversary dinner eating nuts and drinking milk. I went to look for candles and found them on the shelf in the store cupboard. They were all bent into a broad curve, stuck together and spooning each other after weeks in a roasting container in the port back in May. 

Everywhere there are familiar things - like faces of friends. Debbie sleeps outside Nalani's door in the cool shaft of air conditioning that emanates from the gap at the bottom. 'I am very hot madam, always hot. I don't like hot so I keep on the AC, okay?'  Debbie is also allowed into the sanctuary of Nalani's room.  As I left the store cupboard I saw her caramel furry form curled up on the red mock-leopard bedspread watching American Idol surrounded by pots with trailing leaves ('good luck plant') and joss stick smoke. I wondered if Rashimi should be in there too. It looked both cool and cosy.

I woke early with the call to prayer at 5am and lay still, focusing on it. I realised I felt in some ways more familiar with this sound, than I did with an English church bell in South Northants. It was a calming thing to listen to. And even nicer not have to get out of bed and onto my rug on my knees. I wondered what thoughts and feelings are interlacing Rashimi's dreams, and also at what time he had eventually slept. Half of me was asking what just happened - we'd suddenly landed somewhere near the bottom of a sandy peninsula with only 2 of our 3 children, a hot dog with a white house and a white car on a white street. The men in their crisp white dish dashes and embroidered hats, and ladies in black abayas gliding and wafting down the corniche were in some ways a calm and relaxing sight, but there was also a creeping sensation that maybe nothing would happen ever again. 

In some ways the pace here makes South Northants look like the fast lane. Yet at the same time, it has never felt more of a privilege to arrive in a new place with time to explore. I take it less for granted. I consider it even more of a conscious choice. Responsibility, even. To make the most of it. As Leslie the 96-year-old Tintin translator said when I asked if she had any regrets: ‘I made the most of every opportunity that came my way, my dear.’

By 6am I decided it was better to go and discover where we were with a sniffing, scampering Debbie outside than lying in bed wondering where we were. 
 
The air was cool and silken in the early morning. Our street is languid and wide with frangipani and bougainvillea trees, and a beautiful thickly branched, twisting plant called a desert rose, which often flanks people's doorways. The verges are lush and there are no people to be seen most mornings in our street. I don't know when you do meet the owners of the enormous, shining Ram and Hummer trucks with wheels as tall as the Pea which are parked outside the gateways, but whenever our paths cross, people are smiling beneath their mask and say hello. 

We're in the area with many embassies. Our house is flanked by the Uzbek Embassy, Senegal a bit further up the street and Bangladesh around the corner. Fortunately we're with the small fry as it feels more residential than ambassadorial. The buildings are all a cool white, walled with more white with some stained glass here and there, and all the lattice work is different - mostly geometric, giving a uniformed but not homogenous look. There are delicate patterns and shapes which change from building to building as snowflakes differ from each other. Some wooden carved balconies and latticed windows remind me of Afghanistan. There's an abundance of plants and trees growing out of coloured pots both inside and outside of people's walled dwellings. As I wandered towards the beach a guinea fowl strutted from one of the more opulent looking houses.

All along the road are red, white and green lights which could have been mistaken for Christmas had it not been for the National Day 50 year banners and posters emblazoned around the city of Muscat. 50 years ago the country became Oman under the rule of Sultan Qaboos who died earlier this year. And it's amazing to think that all of the infrastructure in our area, and probably most beyond it, has existed for only a little longer than Jamie and I. So either the buildings are new, or we are old, or perhaps both.The early days are the raw days, the strange days. 

Your nerves are nearer the surface and the responsibility of it all can be overwhelming at times. Bringing only part of our family to half way down the world, only to realise we could sit in a white house for three years home schooling and go back home again none the wiser, is a bit of a dread. I miss previous adventures and houses and friends. The buzz of Jerusalem, the politics the brain-soul challenge of it.  I miss the Jordanians and Syrians we befriended, filmed and worked with there. The Glammy and St Grace and the children when they were smaller. The inimitable Afghan colleagues in Kabul, the friends from each and every place now scattered everywhere. Not to mention our home friends and family. As I walked I wondered where all the life will emerge from here. The friends and the knowledge, the fruitfulness of the adventure. At the beginning in a time of Covid, it's easy to doubt that green shoots will grow again in our lives and our relationships.

That morning I sat at the piano during a rare interval where no one was saying 'Mummy' and needing help with their online class, I sate at the piano and picked up the Lozenge's Cat Stevens book. I realised we still hadn't managed to play anything together on piano and guitar as we'd planned, and now he wasn't here. I started playing Wild World. The tears plopped, though I managed to laugh below the tears thinking that I sounded like Richard Clayderman in a deserted shopping mall - the notes echoing in the carpet-free marbled interior. We were a table with only three legs without the whole family here. My inclination to throw myself into anything was diminished, even taking a photograph felt incomplete. The online schoolers looked up, downed tools and before long I had four hot sticky arms reaching around me. Pea's only just joine around my middle. We were all feeling it. Their consolation meant everything. 

Later that day Nalani sashayed in wearing a long skirt having had her brows done in bold italic. Like a brightly coloured genie, she came bearing gifts - cocktail glasses with a kink in the stem for J and I as an anniversary present, and flip flops for the children. Hello Kitty in pink for the Pea which went down like candy floss at breakfast time. 

J came home and we went to the fish market which was full of every size and hue of fish from a sardine to a shark, and a local fruit section with herbs and spices, local melons and some vintage-looking lines of Vimto.  

We went to a beautiful exhibition of painting and collage by a Portuguese-British artist who was drawn by the beauty of the coastline, shells and fish and struck by the sadness of the rubbish on all the beaches. The result was a wonderful pastiche of colour coordinated rubbish, and in the opposite room the same but all with biodegradable versions of the same, from fishing nets to beach mats. It seems there is maybe a kind of ‘village’ in the city, and the exhibition was housed in one of the oldest buildings, with balconies all the way up like houses you see in Morocco or Spain. 

We visited our boat, Ibra 3 which we bought off some people who were leaving. It's in a scruffy marina in one of the coves around the corner from the centre port area, Muttrah. On our way there we found some delicious falafel in an empty restaurant which reminded us of previous Arabian homes and the ice began to melt in our spirits. People were smiling and friendly and happy to chat. It's lovely to stumble about in Arabic again.

The following day we thought the Pea and Rashimi deserved a swimming pool, so we headed to a nearby hotel which has a familiar vibe of the 1980's. You could almost imagine that Elton John had had something to do with the design. Let's just say there are pineapples, and there's a grand piano that looks like a combination between a sex toy and a sports car. Its anachronistic interior makes it feel more authentic and less sleek. We felt at home quite fast, and the Pea the Rashimi spent all morning gliding around the lazy river with various inflatable objects. The Pea found four Lebanese sisters of around her age and crucially a bit older, who could swim, and Rashimi made friends with an Iraqi boy his age called Ayham. We also met a Syrian man with his son, Fares who fled Syria 9 years ago when the war began, which was the time when we were just about to embark on this Arab World adventure ourselves. The water under the bridge in Syria since then is almost too much to consider.

J and I lay watching the Pea and Rashimi leaping about into the water with their new Arab playmates and felt like things were opening up in our new land. I reminded myself of the jellyfish mode to go with the flow, even if it's slow. Letting time keep its own time. Maybe no wonder that all websites in Oman end with dot OM.

Pweeeeesht. The air and the rush dissipated and everything suddenly felt quite zen.

A small Highland clearance

August-November 2020

Watching Dad packing up his big VW truck with our 16 bags brought a bit of a lump to my throat. He and Mum had offered to drive me, Rashimi and the Pea all the way from Blair Atholl to Heathrow. 8 months after I had pinged back to the homestead with husband, children and pets; stacks of camera equipment and an enormous iMac; clothes for every season. I shared an office with my brother for the first time ever, and a house with my parents for the longest continuous time since I went off to school at 9. 

Each morning I'd stepped into the kitchen and had a cursory glance at their faces - just to check they hadn’t completely had it with their noisy squatters. But each morning there were bright smiles, porridge bubbling, radio 3 tinkling, the day beginning once again. When the history of 2020 comes to be written….it deserves an album all of its own.

I’m officially known as a ‘boomerang’: a grown up child who goes back to live with their parents for lockdown. The Lozenge put it his way: ‘‘Grandma, I feel Iike I’ve got to know you not just as a Grandma but as a person over this time in your house.’

 And the children wryly pointed out: ‘Mummy in this house you’re an adult and also you’re a child at the same time.’ As a Mum of three, there is no more comfortable place to be than one where you can be both adult and child at once. And I got into a status that I’ve been struggling to put into words, until I read someone else’s.

The writer Cal Flyn:  ‘After months of mute acceptance as our autonomy and freedom have been curtailed, our life plans stripped away, our life plans directed by greater forces, I have never flet more at the mercy of the currents. Like a jellyfish, I often feel that I’ve been floating blindly through the crisis. One can only keep on keeping on, beating on, against the current, and hoping not to be swept against the rocks.’

I will never use the U word (unprecedented) myself. Its overuse in the media has made my ears trip up on it every time I hear it. But the surreal and surprising months spent in the highlands surrounded by my siblings, parents and neices and nephews has been for us a surprise offering that will stay with us for the rest of time. 9 cousins weaving in and out of each others’ daily reality, and all the bits of rope and tapestry that come from this weaving is already looking strong and multicoloured. And without being able to make decisions, our grip and control on life was somewhat loosened which is maybe good for us all.

Covid lockdown enabled me to revisit my roots, a surprising journey that we never inteded to make. And with it the Covid-decisions which possibly 11 billion of us have made - some smaller, some larger - which we wouldn’t have made at all had it not been for this u…(no, I can’t write it) pandemic. 

A little way into the summer holidays, J and I noticed the Lozenge was not quite himself. Nothing to put our finger on exactly, just a general aura that maybe only a child's parents would notice. I’d read many accounts of lockdown and school closures being hardest on boys from 9 or so up. His online school had gone so well. He’d run up to his computer every morning, shut himself in, and emerged for lunch with not a complaint. But things were slipping and we knew it.  And when we heard that the school in Oman wasn’t going to open it was an even more sudden slump, seen physically in the level of the Lozenge's shoulders, and it was at that point that we arrived at the junction of a Covid-decision ourselves.

On a little recce to visit a friendly and characterful school in East Scotland, we checked in to a small hotel with children and Debbie the dog - the hotel chosen by the fact that Debbie could share the childrens’ bedroom. The Lozenge had decided for himself, aged 11, that he wanted to try out boarding school rather than face yet more days behind a computer on his own. Over a sticky breakfast buffet the Lozenge explained the idea of his own adventure to me: ‘An adventure isn’t necessarily an achievement. It’s just something you’re pushing yourself to do - to go over your limits. It’s not something you always truly want to do, but it’s rather that you need to do it. So Mummy, I like being abroad becuase it feels like an adventure, but it’s safe because you’re there. And in our own country it’s safe but it would also be an adventure for me to board. And I like feeling both things. I need to have an adventure and feel safe and this way I get both.’
While our hearts strained to imagine months in a row without him in the same house, after more than a decade of this boy, we were also excited for him. We’d been feeling that our collective toolkits had been lacking recently. He is inherently independent by nature. We saw this as we waved him off aged 3, on tiny yellow bus with a butterfly on the side to cross Amman to his nursery school, with no one on the bus that he knew, strapped in by a stern looking lady in a headscarf. But he gave barely a backward glance every morning - just a happy little wave.
‘And you know you might have to fly on your own, sometimes?’ I added. 

‘Yeah, I’m fine with that,’ he said. ‘I’ll probably lose my ticket once, and lose my money once in a slot machine trying to buy a fizzy drink. But I’ll only make those mistakes once, I’m sure.’
But in family life, each of our threads are inextricably linked, and Hamish’s crumpled face said everything our own hearts had been telling us. Rashimi was not ready for a decision like the Lozenge. But the flipside for him was: ‘What will life be like without Laurie?’  I know he’ll still be in the world, but who will rag with me?’’ ‘There’s the Pea,’ we reassured. ‘Yes, but that’s not the same.’

J flew off to begin his job in Oman in late August - another pang of an absence. We wondered to each other: ‘What on earth are we doing? But after going round in conversational circles over a couple of drinks, we kept coming back to the fact there was nothing we would or could rather be doing. So that had to be a sign of something. The Lozenge skipped up the steps to his new school waving behind him, ‘Bye Mummy!’ And I was comforted by the presence of Rashimi and the Pea in the backseat, looking interestedly out of the window at the beginning of their elder sibling’s adventure.  Roots and wings they say you should give your children. I didn’t expect to see those wings so soon, and I’m not sure where the roots are exactly, but at least they are in us as a family - even if we're not static.

We hung back at the Steading for a couple of months, schooling with Mum and Dad as constant support cast, cousins next door and sister and brother within last minute dashing distance, again, for the first time since I was small. The eldest one, always spreading my wings, yet I've never been so grateful for these people. These bricks. My substitute home at a time when we were completely homeless. And as the Lozenge calls it: 'Our constant plan B'. 

October 28th, half term over, a crystal clear autumn evening, the moon building up to a full one. We swept over the sandy hillocks to North Berwick, the Lozenge being DJ with his hand on the music control. A bagpiped Highland Cathedral blaring with us all singing in a different key, and the Lozenge tapping out the new rhythm he’d learned in his pipe band drumming classes. We had fish and chips on a damp, dark beach wall with a wonderful friend and her children (a friend who I worked with in Kabul, no less…who has just settled there) I squeezed the Lozenge goodbye hoping he didn't feel the leaving was different this time as we were about to leave him here and fly to Oman in a few days time. Rashimi and P joined hands around his circumference and leant into their tall brother. 'You're our deposit you know,' I said. 'What do you mean?' 'Well, a deposit is something precious and valuable you leave behind in a shop or a car-hire place as a guarantee that you will come back.' He smirked - maybe his choices will end up affecting ours in this itinerant existence we've chosen. And the Lozenge went tumbling back into his own adventure which he has chosen for himself. As we prepared for ours.

So we arrived at LHR T2 in trademark piddling rain of the damp, misty, wetting kind .The drops that immediately permeate a woollen scarf, incongruously on its way to Oman. The residue sitting in glistening baubles under my chin, we scurried around finding trolleys for the 16 bags, including Debbie the dog - who required an entire trolley of her own in her cage. She was delivered by an amazing company in Colchester called Fetchapet to the sliding doors of the terminal, after all the relevant injections and vet checks. Mum and Dad were not able to come into Heathrow so we had a clunky, damp-hugged farewell by the safety barriers. The only good bit about this goodbye was the fact it was quick, and we were headed in J's direction after 2 months without him.

I thanked Mum for all her help and for being my eternal support and second version of myself in relation to mothering. ‘Darling don’t forget that I am also a beneficiary.’ I realise that her memories of me being 4 years old are probably quite clear. ‘Do you remember taking a big gulp of the sea loch and being so surprised it was salty?’ I didn’t. But I see Petra racing around in her own little life adventure and realise that when she’s my age, I’ll be 85 and I will remember this little girl as clearly as Mum remembers me, provided I still have life and marbles.

A Persian lady from Oman Air spent 1.5 hours with me, sorting out all our bags, knocking figures off the excess price, and being sweet and patient with the children and the dog. Pea and Rashimi went sprinting up and down the wrong way on every travellator they found. One of J's newly married colleagues and his wife were on same rather empty flight as us. I advised them to give us a wide berth which they sensibly did, I noticed. I think I would have given myself a wide berth too...It felt like a different era to the one when J and I were wandering through airport corridors on our own, en route to Afghanistan.
 
The Pea and Rashimi got settled straight away in their seats, ripped open their headphones and plugged into a film. I've been hermetically sealed to these two for the past 8 months - our schooling and eating and playing and almost sleeping laced together again as if they were still babies. I looked down at the grey snaking Thames under a blanket of fog. Here we were leaving the Lozenge and all our family on this chunk of enormous potential in a sea of change. I couldn't let my mind wander to when we would all meet. The certainty has been taken out of all planning to the point that we've stopped it. We took off and I spoke in my head: “Hang in there Britain. We are little but we can still be strong if we stick together and are kind to one another.” It felt almost disloyal leaving the country at a time like this. But then I remembered the words: One can only keep keeping on, beating against the current…avoiding the rocks if we can.’

An eerie in the Highlands

March-April 2020

We wake up on the first mornings to an impossibly beautiful view - a warm yellow sun, carpets of yellow daffodils, and dusk falls like this. 

We look and we sigh, and then we remember. The dark tentacles curl in  - reminding us that all is not as it seems. Nature is doing what it normally does, but we are not. An our thoughts flit for a moment from the reassurance of a Scottish glen, to the screaming sirens of New York and well-meaning volunteers assembling a makeshift hospital in Central Park. ('Central Park?!' the Lozenge said. So it won’t be a park anymore?'), and now London and poor, beautiful Italy - whose people show us how to live like no other - and now, how to die. And although we know we all will, at some stage, none of us are ready for the notion of hundreds and thousands around the world dying alone, as the doctors in intensive care are warning us. 'With this disease, you die alone.'

On day one, we see Grandma waving at us from the other side of our window, but we can't let her in and we can't  go out to see her. The Lozenge spontaneously bursts into tears - like a prison visiting experience when they have the glass in between their hands. We explain it how everyone else is explaining it, though none of us really knows or understands the truth. 'To see her in real life in a year, 5 years, 10 years is better than for these two weeks,' we say. As so many parents are saying to their children around the world as we're warned to protect the over 70s by not seeing them. 'There may be worse things than just those same old nits that you’re carrying in that thatch of hair,' we add. He squeezes out a laugh.

But it is the most extraordinary feeling to be surround by my family, yet not able to meet them. We creep around trying to avoid each other as seeing each other but not being able to hang out, is almost worse than not meeting at all. 

The first weekend, before J leaves for London for two weeks, we go on a hike up the hill to remember the first anniversary of Sam Younger's death. He lived for a little while near us in Jerusalem and was one of those mid-generation links between us and the children who are so dear and so important. A free spirit, beginning the exciting bit of his life journey post-school. We walk to the nearest snow patch. The Pea legs are still quite short but with some cajoling she makes it.  Debbie the dog gets heather chaffing on her tummy. The boys make a big S on the snow out of pine cones and call into the cold air, over the hills and the heather: ‘We will never forget you Sam.’

 

The creative crate is cracked into almost immediately, which we've salvaged from the haul going to Oman thinking that our delay could be months (and we were right). Hamish starts on the lino cutting and splices into his own hand rather than the lino every five minutes. There is more plaster than hand after a while. The Lozenge asks: 'What's for lunch?' about 1 hour after breakfast. But from the lino we have a version of our new view and it feels nice to be able to start filling up the 'new farm house' as Petra is calling it, with evidence of human life. There will be a lot more where that comes from I think as I assemble a collection of stags' teeth, pebbles hewn by the river, and a sheep jaw beside it.

By lunchtime the Lozenge says ‘Alhamdullillah. I’ve been waiting for this moment

since breakfast.’ The Lozenge thinks he’s Garfield. 'More lasagna,' he shrieks with laughter. Garfield turns out to be a benign presence all through lockdown. 

We’re already getting into the swing in our eerie in the highlands - although probably only because it's holiday time and we can do what we like with our days. But down below the village feels a different kind of eery. The streets are as deserted as those in London. The lady in the shop looks afraid and takes a step back behind her screen when we enter. We realise to other people we are newcomers from the South and might be carrying a virus. We wander past the Bank of Scotland building where I used to go with Mum and she would let me scribble all over a blank cheque from a stack on the counter - the pen attached to the slab. In this village there was once a post office, a fishing tackle shop, a butcher and a bank. None of those now, but instead there's an Israeli baker doing a roaring trade with bread flour and loaves delivered to the door. I feel very suddenly connected to this place again - in a deeper way than during our fleeting holiday visits. I feel the sense of adventure in showing the children the things we used to do at their age. We have time and we have no plans. We can explore everywhere.

Jamie leaves for London to help out in his office which is piecing together a new working reality as every other institution. His pictures of the deserted streets are poignantly beautiful. I feel uneasy with him in a different place - the news talking more and more about younger people being struck down with the virus. I'm cast back to that feeling of our 18 months when J was working in Baghdad, though the children are now a bit older. But there's no school, no St Grace, and now two ginger pets who are luckily devoted to each other and immune from this particular virus.

Every day we have an out of doors mission which lasts 3-4 hours. For most minutes of each of these hours I’m thankful for this eternity of space around us - there are no barricades, no fences we can’t climb. We are totally and utterly free - albeit for being refugees within our own lives. But then so are most people on the planet. Ours is only stranger because we are between homes. But we’re good at making ourselves at home - and here we are in ‘the new farm’ and it is swiftly looking like all our other homes with toys and bits of cardboard and tape, an odd sock, a dog lead tied from the bottom of the banister to a teddy bear.

I write a vague list of adventures there at our finger tips both inside and outside of the house, and each day we have at least one thing left over that we didn’t manage to fit in, and is pushed to tomorrow. I did a course once where we had writing exercises in constraint and freedom. So writing with constraint is for example, where you have describe everything in one small room, and as many ideas that spring from that room. And freedom you have all the freedom your head can give you. And there are always more ideas in the constraint. Strangely, by being constrained for those two weeks, the choices are richer, more real, juicier. And none of them involve getting in the car as there's nowhere to go.

For a couple of days I fight to keep my corner - getting up at 5am to work, and trying to work when the smaller fry have gone to bed. But that lasts about one morning. I have momentary despair wondering where the entire framework of my life has gone. The only continuities are the people and the pets, but J is not here either. All my work is canned.   (I was offered a remote job helping the WHO make films with their Iran team, but that was withdrawn as Covid got much worse and poor team were in a bad way. And then some work with Al Jazeera was also cancelled because they had budget cuts). I start to feel like Mr Small and all his unfortunate jobs that don't work out, so in the end I drop my own ball, and change my life back into that of a child for the 2 weeks I'm alone with them in lock down. 

When you're with children you have a much better time, and so do they, if you get down with the children. Like when you film pigeons, you have to get down with the pigeons - they look much more interesting that way, than from above.  On their level the world comes to life in a totally new way. A bit like riding a horse, you can totally succumb to its power whilst still nudging it in a direction you want. Well, that's the idea anyway.

I eat what they eat at the times they eat, I skip or run I don’t walk. I shout and laugh and tell stupid jokes, I jump over streams and get my feet wet, I make my own pickaxes with them from flint and stick and binder twine, and when I am about to turn adult again, or they do something annoying and I feel some anger rising, I recite one of the following to them: 'Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, so Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t Fuzzy was he?’ Or ‘Algi met a bear, the bear met Algi, the bear grew bulgy, the bulge was Algi.’ And then I’m turned back again - into my small self - the one I can’t really remember. But she’s still in there somewhere.

April Fool’s day doesn't go quite so well. Every door way is taped up with traps, a towel lands on my head every time I climb the stairs, the Lozenge gives me a high 5 with his hand covered in soap, I have salt in my cereal…and I never have time or energy to plan my revenge. 

And I also have to keep writing things down. I feel our children’s childhoods are suddenly like water through our fingers. Beautiful, indescribable yet tangible, and suddenly - gone. And because we're moving house and country all the time, I don't have anywhere to store things. I get momentarily fanatical about a little painting or poem here and there, and then I can't remember which box I put it in. So perhaps writing things down is the solace I need - and the stuff of our lives to show the smalls when they get older and start to blame us for this itinerant life we subjected them to.

One morning, we try to do the Joe Wicks work out but Lozenge says he doesn't like being told what to do from someone on the TV, the Pea comes down in a sucker tight leotard 'with thparkleth', and joins in for a bit with me, but I land awkwardly on one knee while trying to avoid a lego figure and limp for the rest of the week. Rashimi whips out his new camera and takes pictures of my bottom in different poses. And we end the session with everyone on top of me while I do the plank. I don’t think Joe Wicks is going to be a regular lock down feature in our household. 

One of the best bits about being in lock-down with three children and two pets, is the philosophical conversations which take your mind away from pandemic panic. ‘You see that field, Mummy?’ ‘Which field?’ (There's a choice of about 6 in sight). ‘That big one. Do you think there are as many blades of grass in that field as there are people in the world?’ 

Lozenge: ‘Probably at least 7 billion, and now there are more people than that in the world now, aren’t there?’ 

Me: ‘There’s only one way to find out…one…two…three…’ one way to while away a lock down day.

We have a family joke which is that whenever the subject of how babies are made comes into question, J suddenly goes a bit quiet and I'm left on my own doing the talking. So fortunately, unfortunately into the ‘now’ packing (of our 3 categories: ‘now’, ‘stash in Dad’s shed’ and ‘Oman') slipped ‘What’s the big secret?’ which is a book about our bodies and what they do, which the Pea plucks out every bedtime to be read to her. I laugh as think how thrilled J would be not to be here at this point.  But she is completely fascinated and runs around shrieking ‘Mummy! My testicles!’ or ‘You have a scrrrrrotum, and I don’t!' to the Lozenge and Rashimi. ‘What’s a scrotum?’ asks the Lozenge.  And then Rashimi pushes me for the full explanation of how to make a baby and when I give it, the Lozenge says, ‘Oh gross, when I am an adventurer (which is what I want to be, by the way Mummy) and I have children they are never going to know how they came into the world. And I think anyway I will be a British Bachelor.’

Petra is scholastically applying herself to school chores in the early days (she soon gives up all notion of it and becomes feral exploring the fields alone with Daisy her cousin and Debbie the dog). She sits, breathing heavily, doing her hand writing, which is all curly and cursive with little tails each side:

Dad
Him
But
Rashimi says: 'Petra, ‘but’ has two t’s.
'Oh, okay.'
Another curly t onto butt.
'So what does but mean?'
But like butt cheek!

But they are also thoughtful. One night I choose to have dinner after them, and Rashimi asks: ‘Mummy, are you going to have a lonely dinner?’

We go on many expeditions. Climbing is Rashimi’s favourite, and he’s fashioned two pick axes out of slate and stick and binder twine to help him scale a mud wall. The Lozenge gets pissed off as he finds climbing harder. And then we come home and they’re knitting and Rashimi says: ‘Oh I give up because Laurie’s much better than me.’ and then I have to cajole one or the other into keeping going and not giving up and not looking over their shoulder, but to compete with their self, not their brother.  Just before I go to bed I do a quick line of Rashimi’s knitting so he feels he’s making progress. Like the elves and the shoemaker. Some elf.

Rashimi has not been interested in his school reading so I get him to read to the Pea at night, plucking away the 'Isn't it Amazing' book and planting some Mr Men and Little Miss books into his hand while I pour myself a strong drink even though I tried to promise that I would not drink while J was away. ‘Early one morning Little Miss Magic awoke in Abracadabra Cottage, which is where she lived….’ his sister's head on his shoulder breathing very heavily onto his cheek. Yes, there are moments that need to be recorded.

For these two weeks, it is very bizarre to be living right next door to all of my family, and not able to see them. We have to keep busy in order to forget we aren't allowed to see them. And it's strange because the children get it very quickly, and seem to understand. We all wonder what it will be like to hug everyone again. We say we will never take it for granted.

We also watch a lot of films. Kes, Shawshank Redemption and also The Breadwinner -  the Irish animation about a little Afghan girl Parwana who disguises herself as a boy and rescues her father from Pul e Charki jail. They are fascinated, but the boys keep asking questions about the Taliban just before bed…and I wonder about my decision to watch this film.

We walk all the way to Loch Moraig and they make dens while I peel bark off a silver birch tree  while sitting on a soft piece of moss. They make a town hall and a black smith shop. We are accompanied by 2 swans, curlews, gulls, and a tiny lost lamb with black face and four black legs. Beeeeee! (Mum) Baaauauuuaa! Beeeeeeeieee (Mum) Baaaauaaa. We manage to reunite them.

We spend most of an afternoon crossing a fallen log over a river, rock climbing with home made picks from slate and wood and binder twine, and we make fires and skim stones. If it wasn't so weird it really would be truly wonderful.

I have ideas of all sorts of things I could be making within my own life from things to write, and things to film and other things - but the ideas bubble up and evaporate from the surface into nothing. My smaller companions choose what we want to do. It's wholesome, and we all do it together so I try not to berate the shrinkage of my own life. But it's hard, I have to admit. I have got so used to my freedom to work and be a Mum and the energy of that variety. By night I'm out cold by 10pm. I keep trying to wake up at 5 and do some work, but I lie there listening to the bad news on the radio unable to move. I'm not certain it's a good way to start the day, but I don't want to not know.

My room of my own has resorted to a small canvas bag with Virginia Woolf's book name printed on it. But my companions seem as happy they could be in this strange new reality, even without their friends around, and even without a bizarre separation from their family surrounding them. 

Moving when the world has stopped

MARCH 27th 2020

There is something cathartic about going through all our stuff and separating it into 3 categories: stuff for lockdown months, stuff for Oman, things to store. I sling the final load of washing between two old apple trees and feel thankful for the surprising happiness we found in this house. A house of firsts. First washing line, first veggie patch, first feline - an orange cat called Monkey, sent our way by our wonderful neighbour, Alison, when she heard St Grace was leaving us in May 2018. He has a handsome marmalade face with palest of green eyes. ‘Would this fill the space?’ I asked myself. I wasn't sure a cat could ever replace a nanny like St Grace. And the fact that St Grace believed in karma and hated cats, meant that essentially she was being replaced by a cat - which she found hilarious and did her famous belly-quivering laugh.  And then our first dog (also orange) a few months later; and our first proper school run through fields along winding roads. The silhouettes of enormous oaks on the skyline, and podcasts and conversations, and little schooly worries and gripes all aired in the metallic bubble that is the family car.

The country is in full lockdown as we plan to move ourselves. I find comfort in being surrounded by the orange pets and a 10, 8 and 4 year old and J in our confinement. 

I feel a shiver when I think of children and women who are now locked in with their aggressors. For the children whose only escape is school - and whose only healthy meal is from school. And I feel nervous about J going to London to work which he'll have to do when we get to Scotland. Why is it better when someone is in sight? Even if you’re not a nurse and you couldn’t help them if they fell ill anyway. 

In the languid zone just before sleep, where more delicate thoughts are aired, Rashimi asks me: ‘Mummy what happens when the world ends? It’s just, I’m okay if we all suddenly go dead. But what I don’t like is the idea of the suffering.’

I go to give blood. There is no one much on the road. People are jogging and walking dogs - all at appropriate distances. J was worried about me going, and Rashimi calls after me: ‘Don’t give all yer blood Mummeeeee!’ ‘Just 1 pint!’ I call back. Daddy’ll show you how much that is in the measuring jug if you ask him.'

The nurse was brusque. ‘We have plenty of blood. I don’t know why they were giving the call out for more. We have plenty.’ I thought that was rude, and felt like withdrawing my arm. Did she know what I’d left behind? Either way they got my blood and I expect someone will use it. I get home and have a moment with the Lozenge. I explain J is going to have to work away from us for a while, and then isolate afterwards. A total of 6 weeks. Just like one of those blocks of time he spent in Baghdad. 

‘Why does he have to go?’

‘Because he works for the government. It’s called a ‘service’ which means you serve other people. And you’re paid for it, but it’s not a private company. It’s a public thing.'
 
The Lozenge says:’Screw the government.' Then looks a bit embarrassed.

'So you gave your pint of blood, and Daddy is giving his 6 weeks to the government, so what are we giving?'

Everyday feelings are changing. The world’s situation is a contrast to the bright, crisp weather. After only one week of home schooling from three different computers: 'Mummy! Mummy!' from all different floors with separate technological or numerical situations, many of which I can't answer immediately and need to do more research to answer. My phone is a constant hum of questions to Google. Wherever I step, there's a small orange dog under my feet, and Monkey the cat is on a constant cycle of hot bedding, until there are no beds left in the house. You never know where you'll find him next - on a pile of fresh laundry or in an open suitcase.

The children close the lid on their time capsules: plastic boxes with treasures inside that they will not be taking to Oman, and will discover in however many years time as a testimony to these earlier days.

Against all odds, we move out of Dagnall Farm on Friday 27th March. Pickfords close the doors of their trucks. It's their last job, and they are all wondering what will come next. None of them have jobs to go onto as they're all freelance. One of them was talking about trying to do deliveries for pharmaceuticals companies. None of them look terribly excited about the prospect of being at home with their wives and children. 

We have so many bags and pieces of equipment to take with us to Scotland that we have to arrange a separate hire car from Avis. I try my luck online, and unexpectedly get a confirmation of my order. On Friday - the country 3 days into lock down, we all drive into Milton Keynes towards the Avis office, and we are expecting the place to be shut. But as we turn the corner I see some little puffs of smoke from outside their reception area. Two blonde ladies are having a fag outside. 'Oh, we've been expecting you all day. You're our only customer so you can have any vehicle you like.'
'We'll need the biggest you have,' I said as I explained the pets and suitcases and our strange situation of moving when the rest of the world had ground to a halt. 
'Oh bless, ya,' they puffed over a generous 2 metre fenced off zone. I feel so grateful for them being there. And for still being smokers. There's something comforting about their throwback Englishness. Neither of them look like they own a yoga mat, and you'd definitely want them there in a crisis (with their fags).
The journey begins. J does an origami-like pack of the cars where every bulging suitcase of clothes, computers, toys, cat cage, dog bed, camera equipment - is all fitted like a Jenga stack.

Then the children do the family tradition of house-kissing when we leave a place we have loved. Which so far is pretty much everywhere.

The boys and pets go ahead, with the Pea and I behind in the enormous white Avis hire car shaped like an iceberg adrift - which almost how we felt. The Pea in her child seat in the front  - legs sticking straight out in front of her, telling jokes. ‘Why did the cow cross the woad Mummy? Because he wanted to get to the moooovies.’ She chats non stop, we listen to music, she eats her picnic tea, and passes out, head lolling backwards by 7pm until we arrive at 11pm.
There is almost nothing on the long road to the deep North. Just lorries in a loose cubic metal chain, restocking supermarkets for panicking shoppers. We wind our way north, the countryside changing. Through the treeless hills of Cumbria. And all of Britain in their houses, with the lights on. Every face you exchange a glance with,  you know they know it too. You know they’re thinking it. Our exchanges have changed. There’s kindess there, there’s support. (‘You’re only allowed 2 bread items I’m afraid,’ Oh - of course.) 
We stop once for some fuel and that's it. Monkey the cat miaows his way for 7 hours - even after a couple of tranquillisers. 
We reach Scotland. It's a wild re-route, and it may not be Oman, but in some ways feels like one of the biggest adventures we've had. The route ahead is completely uncertain. Completely unplanned.

A foreign land

MARCH 24th, 2020

Everyone will have their lockdown story, just as they have their Princess Diana story, and their 9/11 story. We will all remember where we were when we heard, saw, or when it happened.
For J and I, it's 5am on Tuesday March 24th. Exactly 8 months ago. 'Pickfords are never going to come and pack up your house now we're in lockdown,' the little monkey voice in my head tells me. That nagging tone that wakes you up at weird hours, that you want to flick away. But a couple of hours later the phone rings, 'The van will be there in an hour.' It will probably be the first and last time we move to not-quite-sure where. 

''Ave you 'eard we's in lockdown,' says Keith the handy man who is coming to fill the holes in the walls after we take our pictures down. 'Well, I shouldn't be coming, but I will anyway. Got to get you on your way, 'aven't we.'

I've started to feel an itch to write this blog again because lockdown feels like we've arrived in a foreign land. And not being an illustrator or a journal-er, it's a way of trying to make sense of what is going on around us, like brush strokes on a canvas. And also because we are all cut off from each other - we are all living in our separate lands. There is a sense of connection to others when you write to them. 

Sitting around our kitchen table having one of our last breakfasts at Dagnall Farm, the Lozenge chooses ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles on Spotify. The sunlight winking through a wafting curtain, the news pauses on its cycle of what feels extraordinary. Yet now already becoming ordinary. Yesterday - I think. I have nostalgia for yesterday. Nostalgia for 1 week ago. Everything looks different. Whenever I’ve been in dicey places, I’ve wondered if I was kidnapped, what I would I most miss about life. I would miss the small things - my child’s warm breath on my face, walking down the stairs in the morning to make a cup of tea, the phone ringing and seeing it's J calling. And it’s the same now.  Meeting a friend for a quick cup of coffee, looking up a play or a film and booking tickets. 

We cancel a nerf gun farewell party with all the boys' friends, and I ask the lady in the Co-op if she'll allow me 6 packets of Jammy Dodgers for their replacement leaving party in their class rooms. '3 Jammy Dodgers and then you'll have to get something else like Custard Creams,' she says. 

The Pea wanders past us in the kitchen, with one of her dollies wrapped life-threateningly in a shawl. ‘She is hot, Mummy. Dolly has the Cowona Viruth.’ The Pea's school teacher was crying as we all left. ‘This could be it for the year - this year of little children that I’ve taught for the first time - I won’t see again now,’ she sniffed, wiping her eyes and looking out onto the playground. Red jumper-ed small creatures squeaking with excitement and swinging on bars and running up climbing frames. 

For us it's even stranger because we're meant to be moving house, moving country. But already, Oman seems like a distant dream. We still think we might get there on April 15th, but nothing is certain. The certainty that we have all been accustomed to in our planning, seems like an apparition. Something unreal. And as we start to organise our house, I think to myself that we’ve never packed up to nowhere before. We don't know where the enormous lorry load of stuff would be headed. Or how long in the UK we need to pack for.

J and I laugh because one lot will be headed back to Blair Atholl, as will we, while we wait to see when the passage to Oman is open. We were living in Blair Atholl for 3 months, 2 years ago after we got back from Jerusalem. And J and I met in Blair Atholl. Being the oldest in the family and the one with more of a tendency to spread my wings, I have often ironically ended up back here when trying to go on an adventure. And Blair Atholl was certainly the very last place I’d expected to meet my future husband. It's an anchor which keeps pulling me back. A place where everything muddled in my mind gains perspective again, surrounded by family and the habits and rhythms of my own childhood.

We start a tentative routine: every day, Petra’s devoted schoolteacher records herself reading a story for her pupils which the P and I watch before bed and remember the love with which dear Mrs Watson tended the youngest pupils in the school. 

The Pea comes back from her final day at school with drawings of J and I. ‘The happy couple’ 

The Lozenge and Rashimi are working through bulging back packs of schoolwork, and lessons begin online. ‘How are you finding home schooling and me being your teacher?’ I joke to Rashimi. ‘You’re a really bad teacher’ he says. Through my laughter I say, ‘Well it’s very lucky for the world that I’m not a teacher, then.’ He nods enthusiastically in agreement. The boys' computer has come down with a suspicious virus. ‘Maybe it's got Covid-19 too’ says Rashimi. I find talking to the IT man in Milton Keynes before dropping the computer on his doorstep near his closed front door, a comforting thing, the tones of our voices are different from how they would have been a couple of weeks ago - more caring perhaps, and less rushed. We ask after each other and how we're finding this new normal. Of supermarket orders 2 weeks in advance, and meeting friends through a screen.

In the sunshine we run out with a ball, or go for a jog with Debbie the dog, our feet rustling through the new lurid-green grass, making discoveries which are more exciting than before - a patch of bright pink rhubarb, clumps of mint already coming up from the earth, and the sage and thyme from last year already revitalised. 

For most of my life I’ve loathed ‘home economics’ - seeing them like a downhill slope towards housewifery in my school days - and for that reason I always struggled with too much time on a sewing machine or doing washing. I now look at our washing line flapping with sail-sized white sheets with a feeling of deep contentment. And I dust down the sewing machine and make two dog beds to go into the shipment for Debbie with some old duvets covered with two bits of cloth from Mali that I’ve been hanging onto for decades. The washing machine plays Shubert’s ‘The Trout’ when it finished a cycle, which it now plays about 5 times a day in its little tinny voice and I I think this will be a soundtrack of this time in the English countryside.

The children are around all day, all evening. When they aren't calling for IT help with online school, they have questions after questions. Mummy: ‘What happens if you lose your eyelids? Can you still sleep?’ So then we talk in depth about the purpose of eyelids and how your eyes would not survive for very long without them.

Gweno, our lovely French Manny au pair departs reluctantly back to France - his mother’s instructions sounding ever more urgent down the phone until he feels he has no choice and takes one of the last trains home. 'Votre premier minister est completement FOU. Imbecile!' These are the last words I hear his Mum shriek to me down the phone. The rapport Gweno and the Pea built - a 19 year old french guy and a 4 year old British girl, was a very sweet thing to witness. ‘Gweno - I will miss you. Merci' the Pea writes in her new cursive writing taught painstakingly by Mrs Watson. I remembered the moment when we had some friends over, and I peeped into P's room where Gweno was reading her 'Mr Bump' in a thick French accent, her head on his shoulder.  

Everywhere I go, putting cushions and duvets into Lakeland hoover vacuum bags, or whipping a frozen morsel from the empty freezer to cook, Debbie the dog is right there, between me and what I want to do - looking at me. 

Rashimi announced yesterday ‘I am a vegetarian’ and I hadn’t taken much notice. But as I was foraging for a frozen pheasant dad left in our freezer to cook for lunch, he told me again. ‘But Mummy, you know we’re having pheasant for lunch. Well, I’m a vegetarian.’ I laid the pheasant in a tray and said, ‘Look Rasheem, I know you have every right to become one, and I have no problem at all with that - in fact I think we should all be almost veggie if we can, it’s just that there isn’t an enormous choice in the supermarket right now, and sometimes we might need to eat meat at a meal, particularly as we're trying to eat our way through the freezer. Is there any way you could postpone your vegetarianism until after the Corona crisis?’ He nodded.

But in the midst of global chaos it's the small things that initially give solace. Watching J paint the Pea's nails painstakingly neatly. Going for a run and having a bath and trying to keep the educational show on the road. Blossom on the trees and washing on the line. It’s all how it might look if we knew that this was about to be it. We drink in the juice of it.

I have been filming Leslie, a wonderful 96 year old in the village who translated all the Tintin books into English, and was also a secretary at the Nuremberg Trials and I’m not going to be able to finish the filming with her for fear of spreading something. She said to me: ‘I expect to go to sleep one night, and wake up to find a cross painted on my door and all will have passed over.’ When I asked if she needed anything she said: ‘Well my weekly trip to Budgeons is normally a bit of  a non-event, but Budgeons will be looking even more Russian than ever. So I think I'm fine at home, dear.'

As I stretch a big white duvet cover along the line so it will dry un-crumpled and go into a Pickford's box, I feel two cold little hands and some breath on my leg…:’Are we coming back to this land, Mummy?’ the Pea asks. I love how she calls it a land. It sounds more dreamy and romantic than the word country. 

‘Well, we will always be from here, so it will always be our land, but we’re going to use it as a springboard for adventures until we don’t want to do that anymore.’ 

She seems to buy that and carries on busying with the small plastic wheelbarrow which she has rescued from the toy recycling pile. ‘My wheeeeelbaroooooow!!’ she squealed protectively, and whipped it out of the bag. It has busied with the Lozenge, then Rashimi and now the Pea - from Camden to Amman to Jerusalem, to Dagnall Farm...seems like it will also be scooping up sand in Oman, if we ever make it.