Football commentary

We are not a sports-loving family. We don't go out to play or watch team games of any sort, and although the kids occasionally watch (American) football on TV they don't really have much clue about it. So they don't have much experience watching sports on TV. As it was a rainy day, I turned the television on this afternoon so we could watch at least part of the World Cup game between England and the US because DD had asked at lunch "What's the World Cup for and when's it happening?" The commentary was hilarious, but we did have to alternate between watching the game and playing games on the wii because DS really wasn't interested in the game.

DD: What time is it in England now? (Umm - 5 hours ahead of here, but the game's not happening there - it's in South Africa.) Why is it happening in South Africa? (Because that's where FIFA decided to have the World Cup this year.) What's FIFA? (The organization that organizes the World Cup.) Why are they playing soccer at this time of year? (Because this is when FIFA decided the World Cup would be.)

DS: What team is the guy in the yellow shirt on? (That would be the referee.)

DD: The guy in the yellow shirt seems to be on the England team. (Again, that would be the referee, and he wasn't on England's side!)

DS: Who's the guy in the orange shirt? (One of the goalies.)

DD: Why isn't the goalie staying in the goal?

DS: Why did they move the goal? (They changed the camera angle!)

DS: I think his chest is broken. Someone else is going to have to take his place. (He's probably just fine - they usually are.)

DS: I hope the England player gets another yellow card or a red one, then America will win.

DD: Why aren't there any girls playing? (They have their own teams.) Because the boys think they're better than girls?

DS: This is boring! (Repeated loudly every five minutes.)

DD: There's more tomorrow? I thought it was just today! Does it go on for days? (Yes, and no we won't be watching much more of it - probably just the highlights on the news!)

DH: What, they don't play until there's a winner?

DD: England would've won if Mia Hamm had been on their team!

The World Cup

This cartoon is by Dave Walker and is used with permission.

Chocolate delivery system

I wrote this post back in February and apparently I forgot to hit 'Post'!

I recently recommended that Kelly, in her search for the best cookies ever, try this recipe for chocolate cookies with chunks of Maya Gold chocolate in them. I hadn't actually tried the recipe myself, but it looked yummy. Kelly took the bait, made the cookies and wrote a wonderfully detailed post about the making of the cookies. She concluded that, good as they are, the Rolo cookie recipe we got from In the Left Lane is still better.

So I decided I should do my own comparison. I'd made the Rolo cookies for DS to take to school for his birthday and had THREE adults want the recipe, so you know they are good. DH had given me some Green & Black's Maya Gold for Valentine's Day but on looking more closely at the recipe I realized that one 3.5 ounce bar wasn't going to go very far when the recipe called for a POUND of chocolate! That's $12.50 worth of Maya Gold, when it's on sale. $15 when it's not. I was thinking these had better be some freakingly awesome cookies!



I decided I had to try them anyway. Kelly had warned that the dough got hard to mix at the end, and boy was she right! Getting the last of the flour incorporated took a lot of effort - and then I still had to mix in the chocolate chunks. I'd decided to go with four bars of the Maya gold and it turned out to be plenty. I wasn't sure that I had the right kind of chili powder so I only added 1/8 of a teaspoon.



For all the effort, they were worth it! The kids love them. I love them too, but can actually eat just one at a time. (I really didn't believe Kelly when she said one at a time was enough!) The kids were eating them for a treat this morning when we were out and someone walking by commented on how good the cookies smelled! And although the recipe said "makes 24 cookies", I made up the whole batch and got not 24 but 44 perfectly sized cookies. Again, I should have listened when Kelly said she put half the dough in the freezer, or perhaps the sheer quantity of ingredients should have clued me in!

Our conclusion - yes, they were great, but for 'everyday' cookies we liked the Rolo cookies better!

Definitely not British!

I had to renew DD's British passport last week. When we went to get her photo taken they asked in the store if this was going to be her first passport. We both hesitated for a moment, and then we agreed that, no this was not going to be her first passport but her sixth. You'd have thought we had six heads the way they looked at us! They are, however, quite used in that particular store to people of various nationalities wanting photos for passports, and they didn't quite believe me when I said I just wanted "passport photos, just like for an American passport." They seemed convinced that the photos must need to be different in some way. When I renewed both of DS's passports we had one set of photos taken and I used the same photos for both passports, so I really don't think there are different requirements! (Though if you apply for a British passport in the UK, the background for your photo has to be cream or light grey, but when applying from overseas it can be white.)

The passport application still has that section where you have to find someone other than a working-class person who's known you for at least two years and get them to sign the application to vouch that you are who you say you are:



At least you don't have to find someone British to do it, or I'd be in trouble! I asked a neighbor if she'd be willing to do it. We chatted briefly about the luxury of having two passports and the implications for future employment possibilities. I commented that simply having British passports doesn't really make my kids British, and she responded that she doesn't think of me as being British either. A few years ago I'd have been quite taken aback by that. The reality is that for some time now, the US is where I've lived the longest, and I'm actually more surprised when someone comments on my accent and asks me where I'm from. My answer to that is usually , "Well, I've lived right here for most of my life . . ." which really throws them for a loop!

Later, chatting with DD we were talking about the fact that should anything ever 'happen' to DH and I, she and her brother would probably go and live with my sister in the UK. She was OK with that and said she knows that's why we keep her British passport current, but then asked, "But what if there's World War 3? Britain and America would be on opposite sides so we wouldn't be able to get there!" I started to say something about the US and Britain usually being on the same side in a war, and then I remembered what she's been studying in history class this month! She grinned when she realized what I'd forgotten, and then followed it up with "Britain should never have fought the Americans. They wanted to be free and Britain should have let them be free." No, despite the passport, she's definitely not British!

Where in the USA is . . .

Massachusetrts?



More to the point, where in Massachusetts is Massachusetrts? You see, unlike in the UK, where we put the name of the county followed by a postcode that includes the abbreviation for the county (Cheshire, CH . . .), here in the US, there is no need to write the name of the state out in full. Assuming the zip code is correct (checks on Google, yes it is), the beer label should read "Ashland, MA 01721".

Actually, I am sure there are many, many, Americans, even in Massachusetts, who could not spell Massachusetts if their life depended on it. So I really shouldn't expect someone in the UK, where it is extremely unlikely to be included in the spell-checker, to get it right!

Remote control for kids

Available from Think Geek. If only they worked!

Spring pollen

I remember my dad and brother getting really bad hayfever when I was a kid but I don't remember ever seeing as much pollen in the UK as I have done here. I specifically remember the first time I saw clouds of pollen blowing off some pine trees, the first spring that I was living in the US, and I know I hadn't seen anything like it before because the memory has stuck with me. After so many years here, it still surprises me when I go out in the morning and find the ground is yellow with pollen.

Things I've learned about gardening

When I first arrived in the US as a graduate student I didn't think about gardening in the USA. It never occurred to me that I was going to stay long enough to have a garden here. I spent my very first Christmas in the US with the family of one of my undergraduate students in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her aunt and uncle had spent the previous Christmas in the UK as their daughter was studying abroad there. My conversations with them were the first that I'd had with Americans in the US who'd spent much time in the UK. I remember very specifically that they commented "And the grass stays green all winter in England." Having not yet lived through an entire winter in the US, I thought they were a little strange. Isn't that what grass does - stay green? Nope, not here. It goes brown in the winter, and then again in the summer if it doesn't get vast amounts of water!

My first garden in the United States was a rooftop one. Sounds posh, like I had a penthouse or something, but sadly not so. I was working at a boarding school, and the fire escape that led out through my apartment went out onto a flat porch roof, about 4 stories up. It wasn't quite as private as it felt, but it was my little oasis. As soon as I moved in I decided I wanted to have a garden. I bought a lot of large plastic pots and saucers, and lugged tons of bags of pebbles (for the bottom of the pots) and potting soil up to the roof. I did check first with the maintenance department if it was OK to put several hundred extra pounds of weight on the roof and they okayed it.

I learned very quickly that the wide, flattish, bowl-like, pots needed to be watered too often. Ditto the smaller pots. Once a day watering just didn't cut it in the summer heat, and twice a day became too much like work, given that I did also have to work. The best ones were the largest ones I'd been able to find, and which were just about too heavy for me to move once they were full. Second discovery - ignore what the planting guidelines said in terms of spacing. When you put plants in a pot, you want to cram as many in as possible. Over-stuffed pots look far more impressive than sparsely planted ones. This also helps ensure that you don't have to do any weeding!

Pots that have water reservoirs underneath are wonderful. We have four out on the front porch right now. Two have peas planted in them, one has lettuce, and the other has flowers. No tomatoes this year. I ignored all the warnings about the tomato blight last year and planted tomatoes anyway. I don't think we got to eat a single one. The plants were prolific, but every single tomato went rotten well before it was ready to be picked. Don't think your garden will be immune from local diseases and bugs just because you love it and look after it!

Since we've had a real garden and not just one in containers, I've learned a few more things.

• The landscaping put in by the builder was intended to look good for the first 4 or 5 years. After that, most of what was put in grows too big for its location. We have some beautiful shrubs and trees that we will probably have to cut down because they were planted too close to the house or each other.
  
• Deer eat tulips as though they're candy. It's worth paying attention to which plants at the garden center are labelled "deer-resistant."
• Rabbits will eat all kinds of things, but they especially seem to love liatris shoots.
• Pay attention to the hardiness zones for plants. Buy plants that are guaranteed hardy for your area, unless you want them to die over the winter. Some plants that are too sensitive for New England winters can be grown here if you dig them up and move them into the house every winter, but that's too much work as far as I'm concerned. (See the exception below.)
  
• If you really like it, and it's not hardy in New England, it might be worth buying anyway because the south-facing flower bed at the front of the house is in a hardiness zone all of its own and stuff often survives there that you wouldn't expect. Last year we had dozens of wallflowers that had self-seeded there from the annuals I had planted the year before, and this year we had some pansies that survived the winter (only to get nibbled back to the ground by the rabbits!)
• Sometimes plants will survive multiple winters and then succumb unpredictably. Too bad. Plants are only temporary! Buy more!
• Sometimes it is worth digging plants up for the winter. I've overwintered geraniums in the basement for the last 2 winters, and it really wasn't difficult at all. Dig them out of the pot, wrap them in newspaper, put them in the basement and forget about them till March. The survival rate would be higher if I remembered to spray them with water occasionally over the winter, but that would mean remembering to do so and I have a hard enough time remembering to bring them out of storage in March in time to get them started growing again for the summer.
• If the 'soil' in your garden is mostly sand, you will need a sprinkler system for anything to grow.
• There is actually a point to the strip of mulch between the woods behind the house and the lawn, beyond separating the cultivated lawn from the wild plants in the woods - apparently it also helps reduce the number of ticks we might otherwise find in the lawn. Supposedly, they don't survive the trek from the woods across the strip of mulch to the lawn. Given that ticks can carry Lyme disease, anything that reduces our potential exposure to them is a good thing.
• No matter how many plants I think I need, and how much money I spend each year, I never have enough. Clearly this garden is going to be a very long-term project!
  

Another sign of spring

I've never actually eaten fiddleheads - fern sprouts. The season for them is very short - only three weeks or so. They do have them in the supermarket, but I've been told they're much better fresh. Fiddleheads aren't just any old ferns though and, just like with mushrooms, if you don't know what you're doing and pick the wrong kind you can make yourself sick. (Oh, and in case you're wondering - I don't think putting them on pizza is a common way to eat fiddleheads!)

All About Springtime

Karen tagged me what feels like weeks ago for a meme about springtime that originated here. I've finally got around to it, mostly because it involved asking DS (age 7) some questions, so he really did half the work on this post!

1. How does the world change in the Spring?

Well, 'cos in the spring there are like plants and in the winter there’s like nothing.

2. Lots of babies are born in the spring. Where do you think baby animals are born?

Wherever they live. Wherever their mother or father chooses. (The look on his face implied he thought this was a stupid question!)

3. What did mummy do before you were born?

I don’t know. You went to England before I came! (He's referring to the the fact that when I was 7 months pregnant with him I went to England for 3 weeks.)

4. Spring is a good time to play outside. If you and mummy could spend a whole day playing outside, doing anything you want, what would it be?

Badmitten. Badminton.(The Easter bunny just brought him badminton equipment.)

5. Did you know we moved the clocks forward? Why do you think we do this?

No. Don’t know. (At this point he clearly thought the questioning had gone on far too long and all he wanted to do was get back to the wii!)

6. How long is it until summer?

I don’t know. Like, a few months. (Final effort - he knew I wanted him to say more than "I don't know", so he tried to come up with something!)

Hmm - I'd never noticed before how often he says 'like'!

Visiting Michelle

My latest post is over here, at Michelle's blog, A Mid-Atlantic English. Go read that post and then come back!

In many ways, Michelle's my counterpart in the UK. She's been over there about as long as I've been over here, and we often seem to have similar opinions, issues and interests. (Before I ever visited her blog, I would sometimes refer to my accent as 'mid-Atlantic' - not entirely English, not entirely American. Of course that confused Americans who think mid-Atlantic refers to somewhere on the east coast of the US. Anyway, I was glad when I saw her blog to see that someone else describes their English the same way!) We're both having a bit of a think about gardening right now. Well, it's that time of year isn't it?

When I wrote my post, I didn't have any photos to send her of my wonderfully boring 'garden' as nothing is really growing yet. Here's what the perennial border looked like last week:

This flower bed contains hostas, daylilies and daisies, but as you can see, there's little sign of anything yet.

After a couple of days of 90˚F weather, there are finally some real signs of spring around:

This is a star magnolia. We have another magnolia but it's not due to bloom for another month. My parents bought us a gift certificate to the local garden center when they visited almost three years ago, and it took us until last September before DH and I could finally agree on exactly what kind of magnolias to buy, and more importantly where they would be planted so they wouldn't make his job of mowing the lawn more difficult (!)

Las Malvinas

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at university in the UK, I dated an Argentinian for a short time. I remember him asking me about the Malvinas, which at the time I knew nothing about. He commented that was about what he expected. The Malvinas are also known as the Falkland Islands - and the British went to war in 1982, about a year after I had that conversation with Jorge, to keep the islands British rather than Argentinean. I was living in France at the time the war started, studying at a university there.

It's hard to believe nowadays, but there was just a single incoming phone in the hall of residence where I lived! I had given my parents the phone number in case of an emergency, but never expected to hear from them. So I was amazed one day when someone knocked on my door and told me I had a phone call. It was my mother calling to let me know that a friend of mine in the British Navy, someone I'd known since I was eleven years old, my first ever boyfriend, had been killed on his ship, the HMS Coventry, in the Falklands.

In those pre-internet days, and living in a place that had no TV, I hadn't really been keeping up with the news, so although I obviously knew the war was happening, I didn't really know that much about it. It was short as wars go, lasting only 74 days. I knew that sovereignty was the issue, but was gobsmacked to read this report on the BBC website today that reveals how incredibly easily the war could have been avoided. I have no doubt that many other conflicts over the centuries could have been avoided, but were entered into because they were seen as being politically advantageous.

My response to Jorge back in 1981 about the Malvinas , was that it seemed to me that it would make more sense in many ways for the islands to be allied with Argentina - BUT the islanders would have to see an advantage in becoming Argentinian. At the time, Argentina's human rights record was appalling, and had I been a Falkland Islander at the time, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have anything to do with Argentina! If governments are correct in their belief that their system is wonderful, then surely their mere example will encourage others to join them. Unfortunately, all it takes is a single powerful person to pervert the course of democracy and all is ruined. Some claim that the Falklands War was a war that neither government wanted, but both the dictator Galtieri in Argentina and Maggie Thatcher in the UK certainly gained from it.

I like to think that if Ian had not died in the Falklands we would still be in touch, probably on Facebook by now, but sadly he's long gone. Rest in peace Ian.

Expectations

When I was in primary (elementary) school I had school dinner (lunch) every day. My mum counted on us having a good meal, to the point where our evening meal at home until I was at secondary school (6th grade) was a sandwich and a bag of crisps. I think we probably did have pretty good lunches, though I remember not liking the liver very much. I actually liked the flavour and the texture, but I didn't like the 'rubber bands' you had to cut out of it. I remember getting told off by the dinner ladies for 'playing' with our food when we stirred the dollop of jam into the semolina to make the semolina pink. I liked semolina, but we never had it at home. We sometimes had pink custard too, which I'd forgotten about completely until another blogger mentioned it recently.

School lunches definitely weren't so good once we got to secondary school. I remember being served battered and deep-fried spam fritters and loving them. I actually added more salt! One day I was at the very end of the line and they had literally run out of food. My lunch that day was white rice and chips. That was the day I discovered that plain white rice could be made more interesting with the addition of malt vinegar. By the time I was in the 6th form I was too lazy to walk to the other side of the school to get my lunch so I stopped having school lunches. In fact I think I stopped eating much of anything for lunch because I was too lazy to make a lunch to bring to school with me. I survived on coffee and Lipton's Cup-a-Soup because we had a water heater in the 6th form common room and everyone had their own jar of instant coffee and CoffeeMate. I had coffee when I arrived at school, one at mid-morning break, one at lunch after my Cup-a-Soup, and another if I had a study hall in the afternoon. A cup of tea when I got home from school, and a coffee after dinner, and it's a miracle I ever slept!

After I moved on to university, they changed to a cafeteria system at school so that instead of paying a set price for a (supposedly) balanced meal, kids could choose what they wanted. I have no doubt chips outsold everything else.

I was pleased when I heard of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve school meals in the UK, though I don't know how successful it was. Certainly, there were stories in the press of parents circumventing his plan for no junk food by delivering fish'n'chips to their poor children who couldn't stomach the thought of a healthy meal.

Jamie has now made a new series for American TV about food – how families eat, what kids get at school and why, like the UK, the diet of processed food and snacks is causing so many health and obesity problems. I choose to send my kids to school with a lunch from home, as I have not been impressed with the lunch menus. The series was filmed in Huntington, West Virginia and from what I've seen, the school lunches there seem very similar to school lunches here, several states away. I've watched the first two hours of the series and I have to say some of it seems to be a setup. One of the 'lunch ladies' (who seems confused by that title) seems convinced that nothing he does will succeed. Given that the entire series has probably been filmed already, I am guessing that she eventually will see the light and become one of his greatest supporters.

The first meal Jamie served was in competition with the 'regular' school meal, and of course most of the kids chose the meal they were familiar with. The next meal, all the kids were served Jamie's menu. The administrators complained that Jamie had not provided nutritional analyses of the meals, and had not provided two starches 'as required'. Why was he not told in advance his meals had to meet certain nutritional requirements? Well, it does make for more dramatic television . . .

He was 'allowed' to serve a third meal, which initially was no more successful than the first two. Part of the problem was that in order to eat his food, the kids needed a knife and fork. Why is that a problem you ask? American public schools (at least none that I've been in) do not provide knives for their students to use. Well, I can see their point - they use plastic cutlery, and a plastic knife is usually pretty useless. I did lunch duty in one school for two years, and there was one meal (some kind of meat patty served with gravy) that the kids really needed a knife for. Most kids would pick the patty up with the fork and then nibble around the patty, never taking it off the fork. Practical, but hardly good table manners. There were two of us on lunch duty and every time this meal was served, we would go into the kitchen and ask for real knives, and then would go around the room asking the kids if they wanted us to cut their lunch up for them.

Eventually, we managed to persuade the woman running the kitchen that for that one meal in the menu cycle the kids could be trusted with plastic knives. Yes, I said trusted. Her reasoning for not providing knives was the kids couldn't be trusted. Excuse me? Like they couldn't poke each other's eyes out equally effectively (if not more so) with a plastic fork? Actually, I think she was following policy set by higher ups, as she's really a very reasonable lady. Once the kids were given the plastic knives, I realized we had another problem. Most of the kids (and I kid you not) DID NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEM! Now instead of going round the room cutting the kids' meals up for them, I had to go around the room teaching them how to use their knife and fork effectively.

Therefore, I was well aware before Jamie's new show that American kids as old as 10 years old may not actually know how to use a knife and fork. In the UK, on the other hand, I remember my mother saying that when she taught the reception class the parents were told that when their child started school at age 4 or 5 they needed to be able to use a knife and fork by themselves because the staff did not have time to help them. So I also understand why Jamie expected the kids in the US to be able to use a knife and fork, and his reaction when he found they couldn't. What completely threw me for a loop was the oppositional lunch lady's reaction when he said that in the UK kids as young as 4 and 5 are expected to be able to (and can) use a knife and fork. She said, in all seriousness, "Can you document that?" She honestly did not expect kids to be able to use a knife and fork!

Jamie asked if some of the kids could be made to stay at the lunch tables for a little longer and he started going around showing the kids how to use a knife and fork. The principal then started doing the same thing. Lo and behold, once the kids were EXPECTED to eat, and TAUGHT how to use a knife and fork so that they could eat the food, many more of them ate up and did in fact enjoy the food.

If we don’t expect our kids to be able to use a knife and fork, then they will never learn. If we don’t set expectations for our kids, they will have nothing to rise to. And quite frankly, I don’t think learning to use a knife and fork is a very high expectation, even for a kindergartner! Or is the US-UK cultural divide greater than I thought?



(Oh, and go read Expat Mum's post on this topic if you haven't already!)

Pysanky

Our family traditions regarding Easter when I was growing up were simple - lamb for lunch and a large chocolate Easter egg each. One year for breakfast on Easter Sunday, my mother gave us eggs that looked like real eggs, but in fact they were made of some kind of hard candy with chocolate yolks. She gave them to us in egg cups as though they were soft-boiled. We spotted immediately that there was something 'not right' about them as they were cold. She tried to blame that on us having taken too long to get downstairs for breakfast. I think she finally had to tell us that they were a joke when we started banging them on the table - they were VERY hard! Those were the longest lasting Easter eggs we ever got - it took us weeks to lick our way through to the chocolate yolks! (We did get regular chocolate eggs that year too - I'm sure those disappeared very quickly!)

DH's family likes to decorate real hens' eggs, which usually means simply dipping them in some kind of dye to color them. This year, DS and I had the chance to take a class in creating pysanky - Ukranian Easter eggs. I wasn't sure if DS would have the dexterity to do a good job, but I needn't have worried. The teacher knew what she was doing when she said "first grade and up" and he was quite capable of handling the class, open flames and all! He realized immediately that the traditional pysanky were beyond his skills and simply created his own style. After some complaints as we got started, he really enjoyed himself. He not only asked if we can take the class again next year, but wanted to go out right away and buy the tools so that we can teach his sister next weekend.

We'd been warned to wear old clothes as the dye we used is a permanent one. I hadn't realized that the eggs we would be using would be regular, raw, eggs. I'd assumed they would have to be hard-boiled or blown, but apparently it is actually easier to work with raw eggs. In the end, although we both ended up with multi-colored hands, I was the one who dropped a couple of eggs, not DS, and neither of us ruined our clothes.




I think we've just found ourselves a new tradition :-)

Blame it on Mommy

DS came home from school today and tore his bed apart. Not literally - one of his classmates told him that the leprechauns left gold coins under his pillow last night, so DS figured he must have some too. DH explained to him that the leprechauns don't visit our house "Because Mommy's English." Why blame it on me? It's not like DH is Irish either! (Some of his ancestors did come to the US from Ireland - but they were French Huguenots who stopped off in Ireland for just a couple of generations in the late 17th century on their way to America.) Still, they do say "Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!" Except Mommy apparently :-)

The wearing of the green

Last weekend we went to visit friends for a St. Patrick's Day party. This is not a 'holiday' I have ever really celebrated before - though I did go to the St. Patrick's Day parade in South Boston the year that I was dating a bloke who grew up there. True to stereotype, there was much drinking involved before, during, and after the parade - to the point where I was the one who drove us home at the end of the day even though he had promised he would stay sober.

Americans love to decorate for the holidays and even people who have no ties to Ireland at all will often decorate their house for St. Patrick's Day. Our friends however, are of Irish descent so we were not surprised to find the house well and truly decorated. Many Americans don't realize that St Patrick's Day has long been a much bigger deal in the US than in Ireland itself. It was only in the 1990's that it began to be celebrated in Ireland the way it is here with parades and so on because the Irish realized it was a great tourist attraction. St Patrick's Day was of course originally a religious holiday and up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17th!

At our friends' house, there was a holiday wreath of leprechauns on the front door, and an Irish flag on the front of the house:


As we entered the house, everyone was given a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" necklace to wear:


I realized I had probably committed a major social faux-pas as I had neglected to wear anything green. Our host was wearing an Ireland rugby shirt - very appropriate as Ireland won on Saturday - and his children had really dressed for the occasion:



There were shamrocks and leprechauns all over the place:




There were even holiday-themed craft projects for the children to complete. There were green beads and safety pins to make brooches, and stickers to decorate these shamrock shapes. It might be difficult to see in this photo, but that's a pot of gold at the end of each rainbow.


The beer menu included Guinness and Harp, and there was Jamieson's Irish Whisky on hand too. Just about every stereotypically 'Irish' item you could think of for St Patrick's Day - with the exception (thankfully) of green beer! I'm looking forward to celebrating St Patrick's Day again next year!

Planning a trip to the UK

It's been too long since we were last in the UK and it's time to start thinking about another trip there. We used to go a lot more often, but now that we have four plane tickets to buy, it's got significantly more expensive. Still, by planning ahead, there are some ways we can save money.

Direct flights from the east coast of the US are more expensive than a flight with one or more change of planes. For example, we flew IcelandAir via Reykjavik the last time we flew to the UK. You have to weigh the hidden costs of a 'cheaper' flight though. When you're travelling with kids or have a limited amount of vacation time, it's not just a question of money. Is it worth it to spend significantly longer en route? Spending several hours in the middle of the night in an airport that was basically shut down for the night was not particularly entertaining. Nor was it fun to have a three year old screaming for the first several hundred miles because his sister had promised him his own seat-back TV that never materialized because we were on a 'short-haul' flight with TVs that dropped down from the ceiling of the plane. Next time we're paying the extra and flying direct!

In the past, we've had the good fortune to have a family member working for a car rental company in the UK, so we've been able to hire a car at a staff discount. Not so now, but I discovered that if you book a car at the same time as you book your flight with British Airways it is significantly cheaper than booking it separately. I think a manual Vectra for 15 days, including unlimited mileage and all the optional insurance works out at under $300. If you sign up for the BA frequent flyer program you can add a second driver at no charge, which is another savings. (Not that DH ever drives in the UK, but it would be nice to know that he was insured to do so if he had to for some reason.)

Given that we're visiting family when we go to the UK, we are able to save money by staying with them for at least part of the time. On our last few trips, we've made a point of spending a few nights in hotels to visit parts of the country where we don't happen to have any relatives. The first time we did it was for the sheer delight of spending only $9 a night TOTAL for a family of four! The Travelodge chain was having a "Fiver Frenzy" sale - rooms available for five pounds a night! I admit it was close to ten years ago and we've never hit a sale quite that good again, but their regular rates are excellent if you book ahead. The rooms are basic. There are no toiletries provided. (Towels are though.) Breakfast is not included, but there's instant coffee and tea bags in the room along with a kettle, and your room key gets you a discount at the restaurant next door for breakfast. WiFi is available for a fee. Given that we're not there to do anything other than sleep in the hotel room, it suits our purpose fine. If Travelodge is not your style, try checking out vouchercodes.co.uk's voucher codes for hotels.com.

We like to visit pubs when we're in the UK. There are so many though, and it's really easy to pick a bad one, so we rely on the latest edition of the Good Pub Guide. I have too many American friends who have never heard of it and ended up having a bad pub experience and thinking that all pubs in the UK serve naff food. If you're only there for a few days on vacation you don't want to waste your money on a bad meal! Nowadays, we look not just for pubs that have good beer and good food, but also that are child-friendly.

On our last trip we used the Good Pub Guide to find The Mole and Chicken in Buckinghamshire. There was a similarly highly recommended pub not very far away, but the Guide warned us that it was NOT child-friendly. At The Mole and Chicken we had an outstanding evening, and the children had as good a meal as we did. This time we may not even have to buy the Guide if we plan well as it is now online! In fact, the last time I checked, the 2010 guide is not available in the US yet, so we'll be doing our planning using the website! I may buy DH the book for his birthday though as he does like just browsing through it, and it could come in handy if our carefully made plans fall apart once we're in the UK!

If you're going to visit historic sites, don't forget to work out whether it's worth buying a pass rather than single tickets. There's the London Pass for 55 sites in London, CADW has passes for Welsh sites and the British Heritage Pass covers over 500 sites, some of them National Trust sites. The National Trust has both short-term passes and an annual membership that covers over 300 historic sites. Depending on which sites you want to visit, the National Trust annual membership may actually be a better deal than the British Heritage Pass for a limited number of days! An even better deal for Americans is to plan ahead and join the Royal Oak Foundation which is for American members of the National Trust. A family membership is just US$90, as opposed to the 82 pounds it would cost for National Trust membership - and it's 100% deductible as a charitable donation on your US tax return! Oh - and if you have a membership to a local science museum in the US it is often valid at other museums including a few in the UK.

You can also check sites like VoucherCodes.co.uk to find their latest money saving voucher codes and offers, including Hotels.com Discount Codes and Expedia Voucher Codes. While the site is not necessarily geared towards international tourists visiting the UK, there might be some useful offers there. I've seen printable coupons for meal deals at a Covent Garden restaurant for example. If we were going to such a touristy location where the prices are inevitably going to be high, I'd definitely rather have a coupon in hand! I'll be looking to see if they have coupons for some of the chain restaurants we might stop at with the kids as they seem to have a lot of BOGOF deals, which would certainly make it more affordable. (I do hate the acronym BOGOF - looks too much like 'bog off!')

There are lots of things that seem to be more expensive in the UK than in the US, but I suppose I could 'save' some money by stocking up on a few of the things that aren't, like Indian spices. I remember returning to the US in the past with a large quantity of Patak's curry sauce jars in my suitcase! If I didn't already have more than enough knitting needles, I could stock up on the highly desirable Addi needles as they are generally 1/2 to 2/3 the price in the UK that they are in the USA. Tea bags. Custard creams. What else?

Does anyone else have any suggestions for how to save money on a trip to the UK?

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My desk

This cartoon is by Dave Walker and is used with permission.

Actually, my desk doesn't look quite like this - it's not as organized as this, and one of the mugs is often not a mug but a wine glass.

Cadbury's Creme Eggs

I LOVE Cadbury's Creme Eggs and am very happy that they can be found year-round nowadays. The regular Creme Eggs are my favorite, but the orange ones (which I've never found in the US) are good too. I like Cadbury's Mini Eggs as well and am hoping that the recent takeover of Cadbury's doesn't mean a change in recipe for either of them. It shouldn't, seeing as both are already produced in the USA under licence from Cadbury's, but you never know.

My favorite Cadbury's Creme Egg ads were the ones where every year the shopkeeper bought more eggs than the previous year, and each year a kid turned up with a bigger and bigger bag to buy all of them at once.

Here's a new one: Goo Got Talent




I think I like the older ads better . . .

Don't drink the water!

Where in the world would you see a notice like this?



Yes, it is in the United States. In the 'restroom' of the customer services department at a large restaurant chain! I suppose it is a good thing that whoever decided the sign needed to be posted didn't also need to warn people not to use the toilets/urinals for handwashing, but seriously - who on earth in such an environment needs to be told not to drink the toilet water?!!!!