Service suspended

til further notice. TTFN

Christmas is coming

Good day today. Actually, yesterday. I've discovered online Scrabble and we're now into the small hours of Sunday December 2nd - Habibibaba's 20th birthday!

I'm doing a very enjoyable course, with sessions from 10 til 1 on Saturdays. Afterwards, I met Habibi and we went on an expotition to buy some warm clothes. Now we both have fleecy pyjamas, warm hats and scarves, and I've got beautiful blue suede gloves too.

We arranged to meet in Plaza Mayor, and found crowds of people, some very good living statues, and a Christmas market. Habibi took photos, which I hope are good enough to post. I wasn't taking my gloves off for anything!

Here, you don't just buy a little nativity scene for your home. Of course, you can do that, but the alternative is to build your own, and I can imagine that many families assemble their nativity scenes over several years, as we've added to our tree decorations, cherishing the assocations with our growing son and our friends.

In Plaza Mayor today, you could buy stables, cork bark, moss, 'rock' paper and gravel; also windmills, middle-eastern style houses, carpentry workshops, bakeries, cloth shops - even a Roman villa - potentially the whole of Bethlehem and Judaea!

Then, in additon to the Holy Family, shepherds and kings of the traditional nativity scene, there was every figure imaginable, from a Roman governor and soldiers to put in the villa, to potters, washerwomen, fishermen and blacksmiths - some of them battery-operated, and hammering, scrubbing and casting for all they were worth so that every display twitched constantly. You could also buy tiny loaves, fruit, poultry, metal pans and clay pots. Such fun!

We definitely haven't got room for a Christmas tree this year, but we're going to make some shelf space and go back to Plaza Mayor next week. And I'll use my lovely new birthday camera too.

Lightning

On August 30th, some *^%$##@ relieved me of my shoulder bag, which contained my passport, camera, mobile, purse & credit card, brand new textbooks from brand new job, complete favourite make-up kit from interview for brand new job, hairbrush. Distressing and inconvenient.

Tonight, November 30th, they came back for my laptop.

Some people really know how to spoil your day.

I'm glad there are only 29 days in February.

-2°

-2°. -2°.

-2°!

Yikes.

Post

We need to send some documents to Dubai (Still, trying to retrieve deposit from landlord....) so Habibi's been checking out post and courier services.

Public service blog here. Watch the video. Anyone we know? =D

Scrobble

This is doing the rounds again.

I've been looking for it, because it might make some of my students feel better about English spelling!

Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, maens taht it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are; the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you're a native English speaker, and particularly if Winnie the Pooh figured in your childhood, with helpful spelling lessons from Wol, you may have only a dim awareness of what a foreigner has to deal with when tackling English as a subject instead of absorbing it organically or cognitively.............. i.e. the way you (and I) did.

We started our language course almost as soon as we were born: watching, listening, imitating the faces and voices around us; notifying the world of our personal requirements and registering outcomes: Dry nappy! Full tum! Squishy warm hug! Let's try that again!!!!!

Meanwhile, everyone signed up as our language teacher, pulling out all the stops to communicate with us: watch people talking to babies, and see how close they bring their faces, how they exaggerate expressions and sounds, just to get the little one's attention and get a reaction.

If parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and favourite neighbours spoke half a dozen languages between them - well - we grew up with a working knowledge of the whole circus, and that magic 'ear for languages' that makes school language teachers sigh with delight. I've met several people who speak three or more languages fluently.

I remember a Swiss family, when I had a summer job as a waitress at Heathrow Airport, who batted the conversation back and forth in English, French and German as they discussed whether they wanted a Danish pastry or a croissant with their coffee or Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice.
(Well of course our juice was freshly squeezed... in Heathrow Airport.... in the early 80's.....). Someone else spoke 6 languages, a former colleague speaks Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, English - and there's a fifth, but I can't remember what it is.
Rudi - in international sales - spoke 12 languages. TWELVE!
They all acquired their gift of tongues through being born into bilingual or multi-lingual families, and proceeded to expand on what they had.

Buuuutttttttt..... if, by an unkind accident of fate, you didn't happen to be born at 23 Babel Towers, and were therefore denied the delights of Japanese, Croatian and Uzbek nursery rhymes with Auntie Polyglot, never had the chance to try Lingo Dancing or make a Blue Peter Thesaurus Rex glove puppet on rainy afternoons................... then you need A Course of Evening Classes to Unlock your Latent Potential, Liberate you from Linguistic Limbo ....... etc. etc. etc.

Just be grateful that the language you'll be signing up for won't be English, arguably the most complex language in the world when you take into account the wealth of synonyms and homonyms, and the extraordinary elasticity of its spelling and pronunciation rules, based as they are on successive linguistic invasions, transplants, grafts, modifications, fashions and developments. In English, the exception doesn't prove the rule - it is the rule! (More or less....)

Here's a website that takes a stab at rationalising things, with its Introduction to Absolutely Ridiculous English Spelling. Admirable.

Of course, this is American English, so the pronunciation guide doesn't quite work for British English, and isn't so hot on Strine or Saaf Efrican either. Actually, neither does the spelling guide....

Ah well, it didn't bother Wm. Shaksper, so why should it bother us?

Santa Barbara

This is the church of Santa Barbara, and I love it.



It's on Calle de Barbara de Braganza, just off Recoletos, but these are two different Barbaras.


One was a Portuguese princess, married to Fernando VI of Spain (His street continues from hers, cos he loved her!), and the other was her patron saint.









I'd only ever heard of Catherine of Braganza, Queen Consort to Charles II of England (I just looked that up: I knew the name but had no idea who she was. It turns out that as a Catholic in post-Civil War Protestant England, she could not be named Queen. And Barbara was her great-great-niece.)
After reading her Wikipedia entry, I have to feel for poor Catherine, despatched to England at the age of 24 (Today is her birthday.) to be married off to the new king, and having to cope with the language barrier, deep hostility to her religion, suspicions and accusations about her loyalty, a philandering husband, and several miscarriages. The marriage sealed a political alliance between Portugal and England, and Catherine's 'large dowry brought the port cities of Tangier and Bombay to British control.'

How remarkable that 'her quiet decorum, loyalty and genuine affection for Charles changed the public's perception of her'.

How touching (!) that Charles, though he 'continued to have children by his many mistresses, ....... insisted that she be treated with respect, and sided with her over his mistresses in those cases where he felt she was not receiving the respect she was due.' OK........... One can hardly paint Charles as a bad husband, though. These were the ways of the times, and it was, after all, a marriage of political convenience.

Notably, though, 'Throughout his reign, [Charles] firmly dismissed the idea of divorcing Catherine, even when Parliament exerted pressure on him to beget or declare a Protestant successor'.

Did she ever have any peace? No doubt, Catherine led a privileged and physically comfortable existence, but I'd say she earned it. Imagine.

S0 - Barbara - a much happier life, I would say. Asthmatic. No oil painting. (See oil painting.) But educated, gifted and loved, and free of the political and religious conflicts that dominated her great-great-aunt's existence.

As for Santa Barbara, officially & divinely sanctioned protector against lightning; and patron saint of 'artillery gunners, masons, mathematicians (I am not making this up!), miners, military engineers, stonecutters [and] anyone who works at risk of sudden and violent death: apparently, there are doubts as to whether she actually existed. No..... really? Certainly, her life story reads like the product of a drunken pub conversation between Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, Terry Gilliam and Lord Longford after a seminar on The Folk Tale Heritage of Europe and Asia Minor. It must be true.

There are two images of Saint Barbara in the Wikipedia entry. The first is a typical medieval Christian image of a saint (and it's in thePrado!). The second is a Russian icon: and this is no meditation on Christian suffering and patience; check out the determined, rosy cheeked, Christian warrior maiden. She rather resembles her namesake.

OK. Pictures of handsome church against the blue, blue sky. Yes, folks, it's 3°C here in Madrid. The sun is shining, and the air as clear, cold and sparkling as polished crystal.

Miss Havisham awaits.....









I love this angel!

Sunday in the JigZone

For me, part of the appeal of jigsaws - especially online - is the detail. As I find and place pieces, I see things that I would otherwise miss. Today, I did Van Gogh's View of Arles with Irises.


It doesn't look much like this, but as I was going along, I saw how he'd mixed green into the blue of the sky, how the lower blue/green/purple band of irises is a mass of splayed spikes, and how the red roof detail smacks you in the eye but still feels distant, back there among the dark trees.

Once I'd put the last piece in place, I saw how the pell-mell irises give way to the denser green-gold grass verge, and how the edge of the corn grows taller, throwing shadow on the shorter grass. The trees and red roof were revealed as a treelined road between this field and the next, with the outskirts of Arles beyond.

I'm sure I've seen this print umpteen times in art books and print shops; only, this is the first time I've actually seen it.

I clicked the link to Art.com for a better view. The link doesn't actually work, but the URL plus Arles took me here. Some of these prints are too familiar - but others I've never seen before, and get me past the potted biography and unexamined opinion of Van Gogh that I carry in my head, to see - the paintings.

What a treat. Art reveals Life. Jigsaw reveals Art!













Feast your eyes, then close them - on a summer field, the air thick and warm with the buzz of invisible bees and the faint caw of rooks away over there in the trees. The sun is hot on your back, the dry dirt road crunches under your feet, and when you get to Arles, you are going to sit in the cool darkness of a cafe, with a long cold drink.

Not bad for late November, when the wind's throwing itself against the windows and it's 3C outside.................. Thanks, Vincent.

It's Saturday - She's been at the Grauniad again.......

OK. There's this in the Education section:

Hard-pressed parents struggle to help with schoolwork.

Then there's Ann Karpf in the Family section:
"I read David Cameron's pronouncement that all children should be reading by the age of six - and tested to prove that they can - with dismay. Why so late? What's wrong with five, four, or even three? Get the little slackers moving, I say: early reading, early potty training, early dying. It's time to wave goodbye to the preposterous prejudice that people shouldn't be streamlined or time tabled. We're an infinitely malleable species, and tiny minds are sponges: drip phonics into them young enough and they'll swell into expert readers. Nothing controversial about this, surely? The government certainly doesn't think so because its response to Cameron was something along the lines of "we've already thought of that"."

You go, Anne! OK - I believe that a proper education is essential, and enriches us in ways that we may not appreciate until many years after we've left school. We sent our son to a nursery at 3, and we ourselves are both university educated and glad of it. I teach. Education heap big good thing in my opinion.

However, I have severe reservations about the emergence of education as a cult, through which Our Children may be Saved.

Saved from - and for - what, exactly?

Excuse me while I adjust my










I question the humanity and wisdom of putting children into 'school' at 2 (I call it school when parents send their children to nursery, and expect them to start the 'R's and be given homework).

I have serious doubts as to the educational benefits of constant testing in primary/junior schools, apart from the obvious one, of providing each child with early practice in meeting targets and handling academic pressure - useful training for secondary school courses leading to exams at 16 and 18.

I question the philosophy and psychology behind the idea that 14-16 year-olds can and should take 10 exam courses, and that 16-18 year-olds can and should do 4-6 exam courses, plus three hours homework a night.

I am also extremely sceptical about the increasingly popular notion that 'the brightest and best' (Hmm...) should pursue their university education to Masters (An MBA, that is.) or Ph.D level, in order to achieve their goals and fulfil their potential.

There is a strong whiff of a major holding operation: let's get the little ones out of the way while their parents are at work; and keep our teenagers fully occupied and 'out of trouble' for as long as possible. GNP & GCSE .v. ASBO & HMP*. Whose idea was that, then?

(*British stuff: GCSE = General Certificate of Secondary Education, taken at 16. ASBO = Anti-Social Behaviour Order. HMP = Her Majesty's.... Porridge ..... Pleasure ...... Prison)

There's a stronger whiff of acute parental anxiety that the stakes have been raised, and that if children aspire to be more than shelf stackers in the Global Village Shop, they need to be entirely goal-oriented, with a work ethic that makes God look like a slacker for resting on the Seventh Day.

Parents have parenting books, and schools have mission statements: everyone is doing their damnedest to guarantee that children develop into well-rounded adults, ready to take their place in society. It's laudable, and as a parent and a teacher I have given it my best shot. But it's getting out of hand, or so it seems to me.

Micro-management doesn't encourage independence and maturity. Relentless commitment to personal goals does not encourage social awareness, skills or confidence. Relentless academic pressure throughout the formative years may warp or annihilate spirit.

And what price family life - family feeling - when home becomes study hall and parents are cast as monitors and tutors?

So I'm with Anne Karpf on this one: Papa don't teach Forget phonics - that's for teachers. Parents, have fun with your kids.

Mimi Kirchner

The Dollmaker's Journey newsletter popped into my letterbox today. There's a link to Cloth Doll Connection. (So rag dolls are out, then? Victims of political correctness and gentrification?)

Aaaaand a link to Cloth Doll Blogs. (Still here? Good. It'll be worth it, I promise.)

And.

Mimi Kirchner's site. I haven't seen a fraction of it. And then there are all the other blogs listed above. But then again, I have got to get offline and go to sleep sometime soon. So take a look, and when you see a link to her Flickr photos.................... do yourself a favour and follow it. How else will you see her babies, ladies, and tattooed men?

Rant-ette

I've just spent about an hour on Skype with my baby brother (Yes, he's a grown man and father of twins, but I remember taking him for walks in his push chair.). It is so lovely to be able to do that.

In my last place-of-residence, (ExPat Central) the local qango telecom company robed itself in white samite, annointed its corporate forehead with the oil of righteousness, and rode fearlessly forth as self-appointed Guardian of Public Morals; fearlessly blocking Skype, Flickr, Friends Re-united, Hi-5, MySpace, and anything else which threatened its monopoly the integrity of local culture, customs and culture. I understand that capitalism and the free market are utterly amoral, and not to be spoken of in front of young children, pregnant or lactating women, forklift-truck drivers, or other persons of a sensitive disposition - but as none of the above, it irritates me when full-on corporate self-interest is presented as something I should be grateful for.

So anyway, we had a long chat such as I could never, in all conscience, have in EPC, and I loved it. Skype should advertise its beneficial potential for families scattered across the 'global village' (Say what?) - but save the white samite for the dividend party - ok guys?

Lift....... occasionally off

I've been reading Habibi's blog. I know we're married, but you know how it is.......

Anyway, now that I've stopped laughing, I just have to make sure everyone knows how to pronounce

ASCENSOR..........

Babel revisited

I have a 'beginner' student. In fact, my 'beginner' has a handful of English words, has previously worked with self-study materials, and, as a Spanish speaker, effectively knows the English alphabet, and finds many English words familiar. (This is a mixed blessing, as the Spanish actual doesn't mean actual, and you can't call a spade an espada... etc!)

There are plenty of other English learners whose languages have completely different roots, and whose systems of writing don't function, or look, like alphabets. In any country, you might expect most classes to be monolingual, whether the students are adults or children. For the teacher, this has advantages and disadvantages when it comes to speaking and listening, but has to be a plus when it comes to teaching reading and writing skills. At least it gives you a common starting point, even if it's how to hold a pen, rather than a brush!

Where do you start in a school where 30 different races speak 28 different languages?

Where you have 'so many different languages being spoken, some children may be the sole speakers of their language'? Good grief!

I am full of admiration for the staff of Drove primary school, who have developed a programme to work with the realities of a transitory immigrant population. We hear plenty about what happens where integration fails. Someone has taken a good look at the needs of a neighborhood where 'Pupils come and go as their families move to Britain, then in and out of the area as they get established in the country', and done some serious work on meeting the essential educational and social needs of a generation. Bravo.

Designs of the times?

In today's Guardian:

Running under cover

Fewer than one in five women do enough exercise, and many Muslim women are among them. But, says Peta Bee, with specially designed sportswear and single-sex classes on the rise, this could soon change.

.....Muslim societies, in general, do allow women to exercise; in fact, Islam positively encourages physical activity for both sexes. But, in some Muslim communities, female participation in sport and fitness is permitted only on the condition that women adhere to their religion's code of modesty. And for many Muslim women, outside of school PE lessons, there is little opportunity to exercise. For some women, swimming in public pools is not an option, and neither is any activity where men will be present......

Rimla Akhtar, chairwoman of the Muslim Women's Sports Foundation (MWSF), based in Harrow, says: "Religiously, there is still concern that sport is wrong but there are definite signs that this is being overturned with the younger generation." Every week, the MWSF runs two-hour training sessions in north London, which attract budding female footballers from as far afield as Leicester and Leeds. And at the East London Mosque, the Hayaa Fitness Centre holds yoga, kickboxing and other similar sessions. Zaynab Shirji, 23, who works out regularly there, says that the difficulties of finding a suitable fitness venue "mean that in the past many Muslim girls ended up doing nothing. There are still relatively few places Muslim women can get fit."

In Birmingham, the Sisters Games initiative, launched last year, provides Muslim women with single-sex sporting opportunities and exercise classes that allow them to adhere to Islamic values. Akhtar says a huge breakthrough was made when Britain became the first non-Muslim country to take part in the Muslim Women's Games, a four-yearly championship run like a mini-Olympics. Many of those who took part in the 2001 and 2004 competitions, including Akhtar, say they were inspired to take up sport by the emergence of elite Muslim women athletes from other countries. High-profile role models include Nawal el Moutawakel of Morocco and Hassiba Boulmerka of Algeria, both Muslims who have won Olympic track golds. Boulmerka was often forced to train outside her country after being criticised there for training in athletic vest and shorts.

.............................

For further evidence that a cultural shift is imminent, look to the £160bn-a-year global sportswear industry, which has started to turn its attention to the spending power of the 650 million women who practise Islam.

...........................

Meanwhile, an Australian designer, Aheda Zanetti, has come up with the so-called burqini - a two-piece bathing suit. Struggling to cope with demand for the outfit, Zanetti says it has been adopted by Australia's new Muslim women lifeguards and some swimmers with Olympic potential.

Zanetti has also developed what she calls a "hijood" - a hijab shaped like a hood. She explains: "As an active young Muslim girl I found it difficult to participate in most sports because of all the excess clothes I had to wear" ·

Stone, Bronze and Gold

This is pretty.

I like the water effect, and the deceptive simplicity of thestyle, and the way the background tiling swirls.
I've always liked the idea of mosaic floors, the artistry and attention to detail. No wonder I like jigsaw puzzles. We saw wonderful mosaics in Jordan, lovingly restored. I always assumed that the tiles were pot, glazed and fired. In Jordan we saw that they were cut stone, using all the colours of the local stone: black, beige, green, plum, pink - such variety.

They have entire mosaic floors laid out at the Museo Arqueológico de Madrid. We spent an hour and a half there on Sunday afternoon. There's a large octagonal or hexagonal one mounted on a wall. There was only time for a first look as we walked through, looking for the Etruscan exhibition, but I look forward to going back again. They have a fine collection of Roman vases and household objects that summon up an idea of daily life back then. And theatre too.

I did enjoy the Etruscan exhibition. I didn't know that they were from what is now Tuscany, only that they were 'The Etruscans' and that I liked their stonework. Habibi took photos, but I don't know how well they've come out. The funerary urns, carved stone chests, each with a reclining figures on the lid, puzzled me: each stone figure held a carved stone bowl with a lid. What did the bowl signify? I shall try to find out. The other puzzle was all the fibulas. These weren't bones, but decorative pins - brooches named for the bone they resembled? No fibulas in our concise (i.e. big) Spanish dictionary. Hmm.

Blonde stone; matt glazed pots; silver necklaces; bronze pots, and helmets, daggers and jewellery. And gold. I think gold is pretty, but I had always understood that its appeal lay as much in its incorruptibility as in any other quality. No rust, verdigris or tarnish - precious indeed! On Sunday, after an hour of fine stonework, and various metal objects in varying degrees of preservation, all handsome, many of them skilfully decorated, I came to a slim gold necklace, and a tiara fashioned like a hero's laurel, with life-size gold leaves - the bright yellow gold I associate with Asia and the Middle East, not the paler European kind. For elegance, style, artistry - almost everything, in fact - I preferred the stone and bronze. But for sheer knockout Etruscan bling - the gold was astonishing. In a time of oil lamps, braziers and flaming torches, gold must have been as desirable as diamonds today.

Gotta go. Yesterday we had hailstone and rain. Last night was unbelievably cold, compared with a week ago. Right now, it's absolutely throwing it down with rain, so thank goodness I only have to scoot between Metro stations.

HappyHappyHappy

Recent discovery: MyHappyPlanet.

No, I am not experiencing a Helly Kitty meltdown. It's a language exchange site. Perfect for someone who lives in the centre of Spain, but never seems to have opportunity or leisure to work on her Spanish!

MyHappyPlanet has elements of blogging and social networking. You choose a user name and password, fill in an unintrusive language profile, and - that's it really. It's in its Beta version, and a bit fiddly to navigate, but repays the time it takes to work out its little quirks. I signed up as a fluent English speaker wanting to learn conversational Spanish, and did a search for fluent Spanish speakers interested in improving their English. After trawling about 1o% of that particular database, I sent a smile (friend request) to several Spaniards and Latin-Americans based in Spain, and a couple of people in Latin America.

The next day, I spent several hours online, writing to those who had smiled back - basically doing a mailshot. Serious Spanish homework and - I hope - the start of a penfriend network.

It's my goal to be fluent in two years: an arbitrary goal, perhaps, but really no more than an extension of the effort we make whenever we move into a new area and set about making the transition from outsider to part of the neighborhood. One thing I learnt in Dubai is that if you operate in an English enclave, even though it's cultural rather than physical, you do not absorb the language of your host country by osmosis, and you remain an outsider.

I don't know if its possible to become fluent in another language in two years, while holding down the day job, but it's a goal that keeps me focused. For me, fluency - not just the token acquisition of a few phrases - is essential. One can get by - even in Madrid - with English and a few Spanish phrases, but I don't want to merely get by. I want to live here, read the novels and newspapers, go to the theatre and cinema, join in. And that's going to take some effort. Hence the mailshot. After this, as with Facebook, I can pop in and out as I have time. Let's just see what comes of it.

And it's fun. I had some lovely replies in Spanish and English - plus corrections of my letters. There are several communication options, including online chat and Skype, but they're not practical for me while I'm working unsocial hours. However, since several of my contacts are based here in Madrid, there is the appealing option of going for lunch or a coffee sometime, when we're ready. Once I've sifted out the axe murderers, of course!

Here's a sample (without corrections) of this week's deberes:

¡Hola!

Cómo hablar a un desconocido...........? Tenemos un objetivo común. ¡Bueno! ¡Eso es! ¿Qué tal?

¿Has habido un bueno fin de semana? Hoy hace mucho frío en Madrid. ¿Hace igual en Barcelona? He visitado Barcelona hay dos años. ¿Es una ciudad guapa, no? Tengo una amiga querida allí.

Sin embargo, hemos (yo y mi marido) venido a Madrid porque ello es el capital, y porque es mas fácil por nuestros a aprender castellano, que castellano y catalán. ¡Claro!

Es muy posible que, despues de dos años aquí, vamos trasladar cerca de Tarragona, pero ahora, nuestra prioridad es a disfrutarnos de todo que ofrece Madrid, ¡y mejorar nuestro español!

Esta tarde, hemos visitado el Museo Arqueológico. Me interesan las artes de muchas edades y civilisaciones, y el exposición de Los Etruscos es excelente - bronce, piedra, oro - yelmas, joyerias, tumbas - todas tan guapas. Un otro fin de semana, deseamos mirar la reconstrucción de las cuevas de Altamira.

Pues ¡hasta luego!

Gecko

I do like JigZone.

A Big One

I'm going to be 50 this week. Coo! Who'd have thought it? I'm chuffed to bits with myself. Here I am, back in Europe again, living happily ever after with my darling husband, while my darling son is out there making his own life - and coming to see us at Christmas (next month!) - and we're close enough to all my extended family for us all to get to know one another properly again after so many years on opposite sides of the planet. My genuine antique goblet runneth over.

Of course, there's one small wrinkle. Actually, more to the point, there are several. Just like everyone else of Advancing Years, I go merrily along, living this facinating life as I always have, and not really changing, except, one would hope, in greater wisdom, humour and compassion - absolutely darlings! - and then this woman appears, reflected in a shop window or the perspex wall of a bus shelter. She's not remarkable in any way, just a solid, rather pudding-faced middle-aged woman, like all the others I've passed in the street since I was a little girl. And it's me. How strange.

In that last year in Dubai I frequently felt a great deal older than I looked - What am I saying? When you feel like that, that's how you look too! - but these days, I look my chronological age, and feel - not younger exactly - just more...................... me. And 'me' is quite relaxed and optimistic at base, with a great deal of yabadabadoo thrown in.

They say our character shows in our face - cue comforting comments on laughter lines. But it seems to me that as gravity and biology do their work, softening some contours and nudging others into relief, so character - or perhaps, more accurately, our inner life - becomes harder to read: perhaps, as we grow older, we internalise more, and show less.

Certainly, riding on the Metro every day, I see the vivid play of thoughts and feelings on younger faces - especially children with their parents, teenagers with their friends - all eager to share, and be acknowledged - and the more closed faces of older people. Like me. Often, of course, faces are closed to preserve mental space in the physical press of a railway carriage, and the mind is elsewhere, empty, resting - or at work on some responsibility - and the closed look has as much to do with fatigue and the preservation of energy or vision as anything else.

The clues are there in the eyes, the shoulders, and the angle of the head. And in the clothes, too. Even work clothes. Little ones wear what their parents dress them in - even if they've been consulted; their parents' tastes still prevail to some extent. Teenagers often adopt peer uniform: jeans, black, the current fashion - perhaps subconsciously disguising the extraordinary surge of mental and emotional power, the overwhelming sense of 'I' that informs every waking moment as they make that transition from childhood to adult life.

By the time you're 50 - and 60 - and 70 - even if you don't have much - or any - budget for clothes, you know what you like, or what suits you; and 'suits' has a lot more to do with the mental landscape than with the more obvious physical landscape (-slide...?!). And the way you generally feel about life, and handle what comes, is there in the set of your shoulders, the curve of your spine. That's a whopping generalisation of course - completely disregarding genetics, lifestyle and health - but there's a lot of truth in it.

Anyway. We're off to the Archaeology Museum - my choice - to check out some ancient Etruscans. Like gravitating to like.....

But I can't possibly be 50 this week, because my dad is only 49¾. Has been for years.

And you can't argue with your dad, now can you?

Brief Encounter

Eh?

Big Zeds.

Habibi snores. He always has. It's the way he's built. In any position, and without a trace of alcohol in him, he snores gently, or breathes peacefully, occasionally snuffling like a newborn baby. Adorable. But with a late night glass of wine or beer inside him, he snores like a good-un, like a tractor in a field down the road. Anything more, and we get road works, a digger, a combine harvester, an ancient central heating boiler that rattles, roars and shudders with terrible force................... and intermittent silences of almost eerie intensity. Give this man spirits, and I could sell tickets.

When we stay with friends or family, they look at me with sympathy, and him with something approaching awe. Overnight camps are a real community experience.

Over the years, he has tried pillows, throat/nosedrops and snorestrips; while I have tried pillows, muttered requests, sharp commands, nudges, earplugs, cotton wool, headphones (with cotton wool), headphones (soft background music), ear-protectors (yellow ones), separate beds, separate rooms and over-the-counter sleeping pills. Also lie-ins, afternoon naps and early nights. Vitamin B compound. Deep breathing. Visualisation.

Over the years, at 3 and 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, I have considered divorce, murder and suicide. Made tea. Made sandwiches. Read. Blogged. Written miserable diary entries and farcical rhymes. Gone for walks. Cleaned out the fridge. Ironed.

I have lain next to my darling husband and trembled with cumulative fatigue, distress, self-pity, fury and loathing.

What I want to know is: how the hell does he sleep through it?

I really wish the alarm wasn't set for an hour and a half hence.

Help? Anyone?

P.S. Sorry honey.