hurricane season...

i'm totally over winter already.

it arrived with a bang and a bucketfull of water last week. with a roar and a hiss. it started with the rain- the rain, that special super penetrating rain that will even soak things claiming to be waterproof. and then we had a frost.

of course, i can't really complain, but i will.

so it's only been here a week, winter, and, well i'm over it! i'm over my lounge looking like a laundry as i' try to get clothes dried inside. i'm over the humidity. and being indoors all day - over that as well!

but, even still. i have it lucky.

my girlfriend sent me an email linking me to photos of a little town in guatemala. a town called solola, where, 5 years ago, her and i were trapped between landslides; with sporadic electricity and barely enough wine and cigarettes to see us through the emergency that was really happening outside our door. quick lessons in spanish taught us lluvia and derumba. while other lessons taught us that cigarettes and wine weren't all that was needed to survive...

but this time solola wasn't so lucky. judging from the pictures, most of the town has succumbed to the pull of sliding mud.

once again, from the comfort of my warm house, with electricity and heating i can thank my lucky stars.

xx

mama b

summer in winter

it is very confusing writing about summer while the horizontal rain pelts the windows.

it was a very confusing summer.

at the beginning of the summer pascal and tom went for a surf on tom's birthday. mid-november, the sea's temperatures haven't yet caught up with the season so surfing is a brave thing to do.

but this is what men do when they're dedicated surfers.

they made a deal, that, henceforth, the pair of them would make either of their birthdays the first and last surf of the season. pascal's birthday, being in april, was an equally brave commitment.

but april arrived and despite the earth having already tipped on its axis, nobody noticed it wasn't summer any more.

the problem with summer in april is that there are choices to be made- is it too late to consider buying a second pair of jandals?

can i make the last of the suncream last the last of the sunshine?

while march is considered an early easter, usually by an april easter we've already experienced our first frost of the season. but not this year. our first frost wouldn't come for another 2 months!

xx

mama b

Big Surprises

summer rolled on

march, usually signaling the end being nigh, was quite the opposite: summer had arrived!

and so had nannie.

some time before christmas nannie couteleau emailed me and said -i'd like to come over to visit for calix' bday, but i'd like it to be a surprise...

and so for the whole summer i was charged with a secret!

i'm hopeless at keeping secrets. i had to tell somebody! and so, i told everybody. everybody that is, except pascal and calix. then it became the job of everyone else to guard the secret!!!

one by one i told all our friends. i told all the people at calix' playcentre. i told my midwife. the woman at the supermarket knew. the cat knew.

several times i nearly let the cat out of the bag...

but swiftly managed to recover by changing the subject.

pascal's suspicions were never aroused.

nannie arrived on calix' birthday.

calix and i went to playcentre and pascal (who wasn't working that day) stayed home to cut the lawn.

granny (who is equally useless at keeping secrets) had been charged with the important role of getting nannie from the airport.

she arrived at the house

- i have something in the car for calix, can you help me bring it in? she asked pascal.

and so nannie arrived in the rara republic in time for a party with lots of chocolate cake!

with happy birthday sung in 4 languages.

and suddenly calix embarked on the business of being 2.

xx

mama b

a short hop to the beach

the summer recovered.

meals were shared in the garden, or at the beach.

nature was being generous & handing out salads left and right.

linda, originally from freiburg, a town that's about 500km from the beach, visited the beach nearly every day. we were all very happy to be so close to the sea.

until one sunday morning.

the phone rings. it's 7am and i mutter something about having a pretty good excuse...

kerry -ah, i don't know if you've heard, there's a tsunami warning; they're evacuating the peninsula.

i guess that's good enough!

in milliseconds i'm up. pascal's at work. i try to gently wake linda and give her the news: pack your bags, we're going on a bit of an adventure. we fill our bags with stuff and put it in the car. by all accounts the forecast wave won't be that big- but i wasn't about to take any chances.

-this sort of thing never happens in my town, linda says, still excited about living at the beach.

we spent the morning at granny and grandad's in town. we went to the market, which was filled with people who would normally be up to sunday business out on the peninsula.

they forecast more than one wave, but by the afternoon we'd all but given up.

round here, a 1m wave surged through the estuary at low tide. it topped walls and jetties. but it didn't do any damage.

luckily

xx

mama b

the summer of love

with broken heart and heartburn, two residents of the republic mostly moped their way through a cloudy january, not caring to notice one thing or the other...

...until the month's end, when a new visitor brought a suitcase full of sunshine with her.

the clouds lifted a little when linda arrived.

part of the local college's foreign exchange programme, linda wanted to come and stay with a vegetarian kiwi family while she was visiting from germany.

bringing with her the hope of a warm summer (and some german chocolate) she immediately healed calix' broken heart.

every morning calix would get out of bed early to 'help' linda prepare for school- handing her a specially ripened plum to put in with her sandwiches, or a red truck.

he quickly learnt that linda said danke instead of merci and it didn't take long for calix to call out tchus every morning when she left.

smitten.

and when linda's friends came to visit.... we could barely bribe him out of her bedroom with papaya or chocolate!

he wouldn't be the first french man to fall for an older woman.

good things tend to happen when love is in the air... and so the summer recovered sufficiently to bring us plenty of tomatoes,

some nude bicycle riding

and a good bunch of potatoes.

xx

mama b

coming up- more tales of tsunamis and sunshine.