Monday

Today was an hour earlier all day. Odd.
Slower house progress as all but two of last week's turbo-charged builders have gone off to Valencia or somewhere. The two remaining built the gable ends before it started raining and the sun set in the middle of the afternoon.
More pictures soon.
This evening I cooked indian food with boys from a youth club in Hawick, a job through You Can Cook. A great bunch of young teenagers with real interest, energy and good knowledge of food. 
Drove home through a blizzard of wet leaves.

Digest

House plans now lodged with the planning office at Borders Council. The long wait begins.

Went to see Rapture Theatre's rendition of Hamlet on Friday night, set in modern day Glasgow at the infamous Elsinore Corporation. Superbly done despite the potentially cheesy setting. Hamlet was played vulnerable, unpredictable, emotional. The whole production was tight, sparse, pacy. The ghost scene was successfully played for laughs, unlikely as it sounds, and the gravedigger was ironic and self-referencing. A good show, and right on our doorstep at the Eastgate Theatre.

Our rehearsals for Myriad race on, with only two left before the performance. I have a soundtrack to put together before next Monday, consisting mostly of explosions, electronic beeps and clicks, accelerating spaceships and menacing ambiences of one sort or another. What's not to enjoy ?

Macbeth rehearsals have also kicked off quietly with a workshop for some of the principal Weirds. This Thursday is a textual analysis of Act 1 Scene 3 and some playing around with movement and voice.

I'm reading The End Of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas at the moment; part novel, part thought experiment - an interesting mish-mash. A friend lent me The Road by Cormac McCarthy but I might have to wait til the weather's more uplifting before subjecting myself to that

Went food shopping and noticed my momentary discomfort at taking a Sainsbury's reusable shopping bag into Tesco. What's that all about ?  Actually Sainsbury's promotional slogan for their reusable shopping bags "Take An Old Bag Shopping" almost deserves switching, but the prices don't.

New Year's Eve

Night, and the blue moon full; half the world in the new year and half of us still in the old. Snow tumbling softly through the street light outside, settling in a coarse white patina. Candles, food and wine, a company of friends gathering here from nearabouts bringing music and sweets.

A year ago we were newly returned, sitting amongst boxes and rediscovered books.

Chill

Today Simon and I were walking back from town across the bridge when a breath of freezing air descended. The sky turned that colour of grey that heralds snow, and it began to sleet. All this happened in the space of 30 seconds, like it does on those weather maps. Shoulders hunched we hurried on, and half-way up the long hill to the house we stopped and looked as a wall of snowflakes swept down the street and turned all to a whiteout.

There's now several inches of snow lying like sugar on every surface; cars turned to soft white mounds, trees drooping with heaped powder and slender icicles. I watched two squirrels bounding through the deep snow on the lawn across to the bird table, ascend opposite sides of it and chomp into the seed I'd laid there. A moment later one of them went flying off the platform and landed in the snow, kicked superbly by the other. A tussle ensued with first one then the other being booted from the food shelf. A victor emerged and the other went off to tackle the squirrel-proof peanut holder.

It's now nearly midnight and minus 10 outside, according to the car's temperature reading. Could be a white Christmas at this rate.

Rites of passage

Another day, another rite of passage. Simon and three friends all left Primary school yesterday, the entire year group surrounded by a crowd of (mostly) mothers taking photos. They had adorned their T-shirts and faces with felt pen signatures and messages, a strange looking crew of almost-adolescents ritually painted for their journey.

The mixed emotions arising from leaving their educational cradles and starting seven long weeks of summer holiday manifested mostly in wild whoops, play-fights, fierce group hugs for the cameras, sudden departures when they'd had enough or glimpsed the edge.

The boy plus his three friends became the Four Chefs for the evening, having spent the past few days gathering at different houses and cooking together. Four families met at the first house for dips and drinks, processed to our house for tacos, fajitas, chilli mince and vegetarian fillings, various sour cream dishes, champagne and other drinks. Carrying our drinks through the twilight and down the hill we enjoyed creme brulee, crusted with a blowtorch, together with more drinks and a dessert wine. At the final destination at the bottom of the hill Simon had set up his chocolate fountain (seriously) and happy kids dipped chopped fruit in hot chocolate while the adults had coffee, chocolates, fruit and ..er.. drinks.

It was a grand evening, a rite of passage for parents watching our children shaking off a few more clouds of glory and taking tentative steps on the damp earth.

Today's shopping list

Milk
lactose free milk
potatoes
tomatoes
tins toms
sugar
margarine/spread
bagels
dish cloths
cranberry drink
ham/other packed lunch fillings

My, How You've Grown

Bringing the significant changes of the past four years back to old haunts sets the challenge of reinvention. Good old T S Eliot described it in Journey Of The Magi:
"We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,"

The discomfort is in the shifted expectations I have of myself, work, other people. Before we left New Zealand I read some books about repatriation in which a common theme was one of finding a new space to occupy in an old familiar place. Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting and natural process, a confirmation of growth over stagnation, but the four-year gap has had a jarring effect on re-entry. I consciously resist the temptation to say 'my, how you've grown' to friends' children and former students who have doubled in height during our absence, though it is said to me in subtle ways.

My shifted space includes new and interesting friends, changed expectations of old friendships, more enjoyment of the countryside, daily cooking and baking, grappling with procrastination born of autonomy, a stripping back of material things. I wouldn't have predicted some of these.

I've got new shoes

Drove to Edinburgh today in thickening snow, reaching virtual white-out on Leadburn Moor. Still, got some trainers and some walking boots for a fraction of their original price thanks to the credit crunch. Edinburgh was festive in its white blanket, with rooftops fringed with frosting and streets piled with ploughed snow. I shouldn't have had that piece of lemon cake though.

Mundane I know, but this is the extent of it some days !

We rode the subway to Times Square in rush hour

Day 2 in New York so now we're locals, crossing the road against the lights, laughing at lost tourists consulting maps, strolling through Central Park and talking about the streets in numerical shorthand.

A relatively lazy day to finish our Stateside sojourn: here's the bullets.
Brunch at EJ's luncheonette (you don't know it ? A favourite with us locals) followed by a walk to the Metropolitan Art Museum and a few hours looking at art. Altogether more edifying than our visit a few years ago to the Tate Modern, which I thought might be a wind-up. A stroll through Central Park; families playing ball, kids on bikes, people sitting under trees reading, lots of dogs. Onwards to Zabar's deli and down Broadway to the subway station where we rode to Times Square (see above). Last-minute souvenirs, then to Grand Central for tea at the (fabulous and familiar to us locals) Food Concourse.

Back at our hotel in Queens it was a hot and noisy night of traffic, sirens and bursts of rap music from passing cars.

Roads paved with gold

The best view of the New England Fall was on the Massachusetts Turnpike, the main road out of Boston. It appears to cut through a forest of maple, sycamore, beech and aspen trees, all of which are 'on the turn', blazing yellow, gold and orange in the brilliant morning sun. It was breathtaking. The Mohawk Trail, a fifty mile stretch of road through equally pretty forest, had the charm of the canopy of trees over the road, and the entertainment of a bizarre gift shop at the hill summit which sold such oddities as souvenirs of San Francisco, rabbit pelts and truly terrible coffee.

Another city, another budget hotel. Yesterday we took the subway into Boston, visiting Trinity Church and walking through the Beacon Hill district experiencing the English familiarity of this most symbolic place for American Independence. Charles Street raised a smile, and gave us the chance to photograph some of the shots you see in the slideshow. The Science Museum was closing within an hour of our getting there, but we hit the gift shop and Simon enjoyed icecream chilled with liquid nitrogen. We finished up in Quincy markets, sitting at the curbside on a concrete rotunda eating excellent pizza slices and listening to a full orchestra playing in the street, surrounded by market stalls selling all manner of things. Bustling with people, the air filled with the smells of every kind of food imaginable, a clear cool night with a bright moon to finish our short visit to New England.

This is a place

The biggest mall in New England has 7000 car park spaces and several miles of corridor. That was our exercise for yesterday. We had to work off the pumpkin pie somehow, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But surely even 7000 carloads of people couldn't buy all these clothes, or eat all this fast food ? There's a bit of a retail meltdown in America, apparently, and prices are keen, but there's just not many people around in these big shopping centres, except in the queue for McDonalds which was never less than 10 long. As with the desert, the mountains and forests, I'm struck by the scale of American shopping. Our latest hotel is on a 35-mile main trunk road into Boston which is lined with palatial retail parks like giant fiefdoms facing each other across the four-lane roadway. Every one seems to have McDonalds and a Dunkin Donuts. My idea of building a fast salad empire in the US is faltering.

The pumpkin pie was delicious by the way. Clam chowder in a breadbowl, similar, and there have been some good Caesar salads though I only managed to finish one of them. Coffee, on the other hand ... don't get me started.

Falling for New England

Combine English country landscapes and that northern light, South Island colour and good kiwi architecture, Scottish dourness, pumpkins, millions more deciduous trees and a continental climate and you begin to get New England. We drove along roads lined with red and gold trees, a blizzard of spinning leaves falling around the car, the distant hillsides clothed in bronze rust patchwork. Villages and towns of wooden cube buildings sporting steeples, hipped roofs, peaked caps of cedar tiles and corrugated iron, painted in those colours marketed as 'heritage' by smart paint companies. 

There seems to be a seasonal tradition of stacking bright orange pumpkins on steps and verandas, or arranging them into figures with straw hair and arms of rakes and pitchforks, tying 7-foot high corn stalks to the porch posts, creating tableaux of ghosts and witches, cauldrons, spiders and other halloween symbols in the front gardens. At the roadside stalls sell pumpkins from roof-high stacks, plus apples and raspberries. We had some orchard apples which were crisp and sharp and delicious.

Pretty, characterful, lived-in, spacious and with a story to tell that seems to go beyond frontier. 

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Our latest home has a kitchen, so this evening we had our first home-cooked meal in a fortnight! The cry went up for Spag Bol, and good it was. We're resting up for a day or two, here in Massachusetts. Both kids are feeling ragged from travelling, and so are we. Eating out is cheap and easy in the States, but home-cooked is still best.

A visit today to the Shaker Village at Hancock, and an insight into a very different age, way of life and way of thinking. What radicals they were, these pioneers of a better alternative (and home-cooked meals), and in the teeth of often violent opposition. I'm thinking again about the lengths to which we will go to follow our own compass. A thought-provoking visit on a bright, cool Autumn day dressed in red and gold foliage.

Yosemite

Superlatives become commonplace after a while when travelling through this landscape. I did my best to see the place through Ansell Adams' eyes, helped by a local gallery of his pictures and the ubiquitous opportunity to buy associated gifts, but the scale and grandeur of the valley defied my camera. We just ooh-ed and ahh-ed along with all the other tourists.

Our night in a log (well, wooden anyway) cabin at Curry Village in Yosemite Park helped us appreciate the budget Best Western hotels we've generally been using along the way, though it was a treat to meet Ed, the golf-cart driving porter who helped us carry ALL our luggage from the car to the shed - er - cabin. We've cunningly arranged the luggage so only the overnight and valuable stuff needs to leave the car each day, but we hadn't counted on the Yosemite bears. Apparently they break into cars looking for food if so much as a handbag is left inside, so along came Ed to transport our pile of bags. He chatted away about the park, the bears, life in general and helped us feel at home.

We didn't see a bear and, despite my cruising the carpark this morning with my camera, I didn't see any cars broken into. We did see a squirrel.

Today we saw the biggest living things on Earth; giant sequoia trees. A magical afternoon walking in nature scented with wood smoke and pine, a lingering memory of sun rays slanting through the drifting smoke. The gift shop was closed; a sort of gift in itself. Speaking of records, we went from sea level to 9500 feet and back to 3000 feet over the course of yesterday, an ear-popping experience.

Tonight we are in small town America. Went to a local pizza place where I felt somewhat out of place. Sports memorabilia and insignia all over the walls, three giant screens showing three different sports channels, lots of baseball caps and beer bellies, surly service. Great pizza. Local Republican HQ prominently evident across the street. Is it just me ? After all, we're not from around here...

Lots of great chats with the kids about travelling, family, learning and education, feelings, communication, loyalty, experiences. We're learning a lot about each other.

To begin at the beginning

No such luck. Here we are already on our final night in LA and an unexpected treat was seeing the Disney fireworks display from our bedroom window. A contrast to last time (2004) standing on Main Street in Disneyland with two tired little kids, one asleep on the pavement and the other watching the fireworks with vague disinterest. Somehow just as special from the window, with the added bonus of hearing all the neighbourhood car alarms sounding off in response to the shock and awe of the explosions. Presumably it's just part of the wallpaper if you live in Anaheim.

I understood only hazily that Anaheim is not Los Angeles. This week my plan to see the Getty Museum was sunk by the sheer difficulty of getting anywhere in LA - sorry, Anaheim - without a car. As it happens I rearranged the car hire and got it today instead of tomorrow, so had my first experience of driving in the US on the Friday afternoon freeways of Anaheim as we shopped for food, cameras (!) and tried to find anything to eat that wasn't fried. I bottled out of driving 40 miles through central LA on a Friday afternoon to see the Getty. It'll still be there next time.

Oh yes - food shopping. Big portions, high cholesterol, low prices. Say n'more.