My friend the Muslim Immigrant.

For the first time I'm going to try a sort of serious blog post. So, there's been a lot of stuff in the news and social media about Trump and his new immigration laws that some are calling "the Muslim ban", which has made me feel quite angry. Then yesterday in a primary school I had to report some racist Islamaphobic comments I heard.

I'm not really qualified to write a proper political article with facts and figures and quotes and stuff (I probably could if I had to but I really would find that boring). So I thought I'd tell you a true story about my friend the Muslim immigrant (that's not what I call her of course, her name is Samar).  There are so many stories about "them" in the newspapers, how "they're" taking our jobs or living off our benefits, probably both at the same time. These stories are probably untrue, but as that is difficult to prove I will just tell my story about one family that we have come to know and love since we met them just over a year ago.

Meeting

On the first day of October 2015 I'd just taken Percy, who was nearly one, to something at the children's centre. Then, as it was a nice unusually warm day, I decided to take Percy to the park on the way back. In the park I saw a Muslim lady (which is not at all unusual in that park) with her two children aged 1 and 4. For some reason I was feeling extra friendly that day or maybe just a bit bored. So I started a bit of a conversation. It's quite easy when you're a mum to talk to other strangers, you usually start with "aww how old are they?" or something. I wish it was that easy for non-parents to chat to random strangers, but for some reason that is unacceptable. 

I overheard a bit of Arabic and I do have a little bit of love for Arabs over other nationalities, from my gap year in Palestine and our more recent trip through Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. So I am probably more likely to talk to a stranger who looks Arab than a different nationality that I would know less about, is that racist? I hope not. Quite quickly in the conversation Samar said it was her first day in Liverpool. They had moved here from Egypt. She and her husband were both doctors, and her husband (Ahmed) was at the hospital trying to sort out his work while she was alone with the children. When she said that I really wanted to be as helpful as possible. It's hard enough to be new to a city without having to get used to a whole new culture while juggling work and small children. I tried to say useful information like where the Children's Centre was and what they did, where the Arabic centre was, stuff about when you're entitled to free childcare, etc. 

Samar had a lot to sort out in those first few weeks like somewhere to live, a school for her eldest, eventually she wanted to find work for herself too, but she would first have to pass english exams and become registered as a able to work here. I gave her my number and told her to call me if she needed to ask anything. I left the park not really expecting to hear from her again but I hoped I would. I later found out that she went home and told her friends back in Egypt that she talked to a "real British person".

Becoming friends

One of the first things Samar needed to get around and do anything was a pram. She phoned me to ask where she could buy one, I remember spelling out "Mothercare" so she could google it. She ended up buying a second hand one that broke the next day, and I thought I could probably help her out here. I'm in a Facebook group of mums in my church so I asked if anyone had one spare and then I arranged to take it to Samar. She was very grateful and gave me a lot of cake and hot chocolate. Over the next few weeks she phoned me with a few questions about housing and where she could buy certain things. At the same point in time Percy became very ill with pneumonia and we were in and out of hospital for most of the month. Although I barely knew Samar she offered to come and visit us and she told me she was praying for us. When we came out of hospital she offered to come round and help me cook. I told her "It's ok, when British people are tired they just get take away."

The banquet

A month or so later, when Percy was better, we were invited round to their newly rented flat for a traditional Egyptian feast. When a Brit invites you round for a meal they might spend half a hour to an hour cooking, if they're feeling generous they might also provide a pudding. Egyptian hospitality is incredible. Samar spent all morning cooking every kind of Egyptian delight. The way Arabs cook rice is like a whole new better way of life, it takes about 45 minutes and involves many stages of soaking and frying in oil and salt. I guess its not as healthy as our plain boiled rice but it tastes soooo good. I could eat it on it's own as a meal. I've just written down the recipe actually so I'm going to learn. As if all this wasn't enough, Samar also made desserts and a lasagna from scratch just in case we didn't like Egyptian food. There was so much food left over that she gave us lots to take home too. 

Awkwardness 

I'll be honest, there were a few awkward cultural differences, which I want to mention in case you feel like befriending a Muslim and want to know what to expect. None of these things were a big deal, just unexpected. So lunch is at 3pm not the normal British 12:30 or 1. This is sometimes their only meal of the day! We weren't sure if we were meant to use a certain hand for eating, so we just ignored that, hopefully we didn't cause offence. We arrived with a drink, obviously we picked a non alcoholic one, but the drink didn't get opened and in fact they didn't drink anything with the meal. In the end I asked for some water because the food was quite salty, but Dan didn't get offered any. After lunch we had tea. A standard Arab tea is no milk lots of sugar, I have since taught Samar to make tea for me the more standard British way, milk and no sugar. I've also introduced them to charity shops, wellies, blu-tac and advent calendars, non of which they have in Egypt. 

I asked to go to the loo and they didn't have toilet paper in there because that's not how they do toilet time. Luckily they do have loo roll in their house so now whenever I go round I just ask for it. Its the kind of thing thats a bit awkward the first time because you don't expect it, but after you know what to expect its fine. They pray at set times 5 times a day. Normally if we're round Ahmed will do it while we're still in the room, facing Mecca and bowing down, Samar will go into another room to do it. 

Money

The newspapers always have stories about immigrants taking "our" money, and stealing "our" services. But this is a family who do well on very little. (Ahmed doesn't get a proper doctors wage because he is still training.) If they were British they would be entitled to the free childcare that is means tested until the age of 3, but they don't get that benefit because they are Egyptian. Yes they use the NHS and schools, just like I do, but over time, especially when Samar gets her licence to practise medicine here, I'm sure they will pay a lot of tax. At moment I don't earn enough to pay tax and I am taking up NHS money with being pregnant, ic it wasn't for Dan's wage I would need some kind of handouts to survive. Samar and family are so hard working and I've never heard them complain about anything.

Brilliantness

Despite the obvious differences we have a lot in common. We are almost the same age and have been married the same amount of time. We are all interested in travelling. We have a lot of beliefs in common, I think us being christians means we have more in common than if we were atheists. For example we didn't live together before we were married. Also the Bible and the Quran have many stories in common, like muslims believe in Jesus and Moses and Abraham.

I love being friends with someone who's had a different life experience to most of my friends. It makes for good discussions, and I kind of think if I can't be friends with another mum living in my local area, who is the same age as me and super nice, then there's no hope for any cohesion between people of different faiths or nationalities. They are the some of the most generous hospitable people we know, and they only people who have ever bought a duck back from a foreign country in our honour. (a dead one for eating) 

At my 30th Birthday

Our boys at the farm

Percy says "back off Trump"

-->

The Baby Cake

Happy 2017, can't believe I've been writing a blog for 8 years now, I only started it as a way to kill time while working on the reception desk at the Bluecoat gallery. A lot has changed since then, in Jan 2009 I was living in L15 with a family that had 2 girls and a boy now I'm still living in L15 with a family that have 2 girls and a boy. But a different family in quite different circumstances after a few life changes in between like getting married, buying a house, cycling to Kuwait, having a baby, becoming homeless(ish), and becoming pregnant again. My last blog was a bit of a downer on not having a house. read it here

This blog will hopefully be more uplifting and positive about having our second baby. Just before Christmas on 21st December we had our 20 week scan. This is the one where they look for a willy... if you ask them to. With Percy we had a surprise. I've always found that a strange phrase though as everyone has a surprise, they just choose when to have the surprise. So with Percy we chose to have that surprise at birth, which was Dan's idea really. but this time I wanted to have an earlier surprise, which I enjoyed because you get to just have the gender information on it's own without all the other stuff that you have to take in at birth. e.g it's 8lbs, the placenta's coming now, it's healthy, my genitals are ruined, it has a little bit of hair, it's a boy.

So it's a boy! Another boy. I wasn't sure how people would respond because I did tell people I was hoping for a girl. But luckily everyone was still happy and excited about it.  My friend just texted me today with "congratulations on a cheaper 2nd child". I did feel like I was allowed to be a bit disappointed, but other people aren't allowed to they have to be happy, and actually I wasn't really very disappointed. For the first 5 minutes I was a bit sad about all the nice girl clothes I won't get to buy, and how my skill for french plaits will be wasted. I'm not a very girly girl so I wasn't like "oh no I can't make a princess bedroom" but I am slightly disappointed that I won't get to do typically "boy stuff" with a girl like Scalextrics. Anyway I really couldn't be disappointed with a healthy lovely baby. Especially when Percy is a boy and I love him so much.

We went shopping after and I choose some very cute boy baby grows with planets on them. (All our baby grows for Percy were neutral because we didn't know he would be a boy.) We went to the toy shop too to get a last minute Christmas present for cousin Reuben, and I decided toy wise boys have a lot more fun. It does really annoy me that every toy seems to be either for a girl or a boy. Even stupid things like this etch-a sketch type thing that we were thinking of getting for Reuben but didn't coz it only came in pink. And once when we were looking for Duplo for Percy we quite liked the house but that only came in pink. (In the end we got a Castle with a working cannon which is pretty cool.) Percy got a baby doll for christmas from my parents so he can practice big brothering. My mum searched everywhere to find a non-pink one.

We decided to make a cake to reveal the gender to our families, the cake is white or whatever on the outside and either blue or pink on the inside. I know after my rant above about gender stereotyping this is pretty hypocritical. What is gender anyway? Maybe it is more politically correct to say "our feotus has a penis" than "it's a boy" maybe that's what baby cards of the future will say. So we made the first cake at the Langston's (where we live) and took it down to Dan's parents house where we were spending Christmas. It was a lot of fun doing it people seemed genuinely excited and sort of nervous.

Cake number 1

Before

After

Yes the cake was pretty green despite having two tubes of blue food colouring in it. It's really hard to make a blue cake when cake mix is naturally yellow.

On the 27th we went to my parents where we had planned to make a new cake. My sister Sarah was there too, I thought my other sister Jo and her husband would be joining us very soon but actually they didn't arrive till very late on the 29th. So we went from chatting about the baby being a boy to then having to keep it secret until Jo arrived which my brain just couldn't manage! In a conversation about how we felt a bit sorry for Dad because he couldn't pass on the Marshall surname (because of having 3 girls) I accidentally blurted out "yeah especially coz I'm having two boys" and then I laughed a lot because after so much build up I'd ruined it.

Percy doesn't really understand about gender but he is very good on colours and the next day he was telling Aunty Sarah about the blue cake he made with mummy so he would have ruined it anyway. So we made another blue/green cake for Jo, Elisha and the extended family and I had my first go at doing facebook live for the cake cutting. It's the proper future in quite a scary way. It was kind of fun though and nice to see peoples comments so instantly.

I went slightly more gross with this second cake. it had a lovely melted marshmallow egg.

Pregnant and Homeless

This week I went for a little break from my slightly stressful normal life, to see my parents for a bit. My sister's reaction was "wow -it must be bad if THAT'S your solution"

While I was there my parents mentioned that they were struggling to write the Christmas letter this year. (If you're unaware of Christmas letters it's a middle class dying art of boasting about your family) i.e. "This year Claudia achieved 13 a* at G.C.S.E and grade 8 bassoon, she continues to volunteer as snowy owl for the brownies." Growing up, the Christmas letters we're not only a chance for my parents to boast in our achievements but also a chance to show off their technology.

"we have a photocopier!"
"look at our christmas clip art"
"we have a colour printer now"
"we have a family email address!"

Now that even old people have Facebook there is really no need for a year's worth of boasts in one letter, because Facebook has many instant boast features. My parents said they might just do a letter with photos on this year, and I wondered if they had tried to write it and it came out like this:

Sarah (22) is set to graduate from Southampton Uni with a first.
Joanne (27) began the year volunteering her medical skills in Papua New Guinea with husband Elisha. They then moved to Leeds and bought their first home together.
Hannah (30) managed to become pregnant and homeless this year.

Merry christmas.
Love Jerry and Sue.

Yeah its a bit awkward.

It's not been a great year for us. If you've no idea what happened, here's a summary of what happened before we ended up in the Langston's homeless shelter. Becoming Second Homeless and this one is about The Langson's Homeless Shelter

Since then we found a new house that we were really excited about, had an offer accepted and if the survey had gone well we would have been in just before Christmas. I don't feel like going into detail but lets just say it didn't go well, we won't be in before Christmas and we might not get in that house at all.

And all this while I am being a house. I hope that by the time I evict my tenant I will have a house.

This tweet sums up our year.

On the bright side, from an evolutionary point of view I've achieved all I need to achieve as a species. Me and Dan are two people who have now almost reproduced 2 people. Maybe my parents could put that on their Christmas letter.

Our christmas decorations

Brexit For Babies, Trump For Toddlers

Since I last wrote a scary man with an orange face has somehow become in charge of America. Judging by my facebook and twitter feeds everyone I know except for maybe 3 people think this is a disaster for the world. As with Brexit, yesterday was (in my opinion) a bad day for the world but an excellent day for twitter. If there one thing us Brits do well in times of crisis it's making up a hilarious meme.

Here are a couple of my faves:

and just to show that I'm not bias here's a pro trump meme:

There were a lot of serious make-you-think kind of one's that were good too, but this blog is not a serious make-you-think kind of blog. Although I did have some seriously depressing thoughts yesterday (more with Brexit though than this) I tend to wash over that with silly jokes. This attitude used to get me in trouble a lot, because there are times where you shouldn't make jokes, but instead of confronting these issues, I just surrounded myself with comedians who make money out of this particular character default. 

So this was my tweet yesterday:

And actually I got a load of people offering to lend me books on having a new baby and moving house, even though I just kind of said it for a joke. But funnily enough no one offered me a book on world apocalypse. And that's when I had my epiphany: there is a gap in the market for books that explain complex political issues to todllers. 

I'm quite good at explaining stuff to my 2 year old, like yesterday when filling the car with petrol and he said "what you doing?" I said "I'm giving the car some special car juice" and he got that. If only I was also an expert on political matters this would be perfect. But I thought I'll give it a go.

So here are some potential chapter titles for my new book:

world wars for whippersnappers

middle east for minors

Ireland for infants

Brexit for babies

trump for toddlers

So here's a bit of work in progress from the chapter Brexit for babies. There's stuff I need to work out, like I kind of used U.N. when I mean E.U. but I can't think of such a good metaphor for the E.U.

Once upon a time there was a street called Europe street, where lots of families lived. After school the children would all play out. One of the families was called the Britain family. The big sisters were twin girls England and Wales (England was born 10 minutes before Wales and was the bossy one). Then they had a little brother, Scotland who often disagreed with England, and the baby brother Northern Ireland, who sometimes felt closer to step-sister Ireland than the other siblings.

A very long time ago The Britain family had a big fight with the German family. Germany started it and they were very nasty, but lots of families on the street got caught up in it. That was a sad time for everyone and after that Uncles and Nans (the UN) got together to make sure this kind of silly squabbling didn't happen again. To be fair, the German family were very sorry and now they try and do nice things to make up for it, like clean the street and look after the kids who other people sometimes don't want to play with.

So, some ground rules were set for the children on the street, like play nicely and don't ride you bikes on other people's drives unless they say you can. But over time more and more families wanted to join in with the after-school street-games and more people wanted to be in the group that decides things about the street games. Because of this some of the rules got a bit more complicated and a bit more petty. Like "no ball games" was sort of a sensible if a bit dull rule, but the Britain children had a problem with it. 

"My mum and dad both say it's fine for us to play ball games on our own drive," they said to the Uncles and Nans. But the Uncles and Nans said "the street rules are no ball games whatsoever." 

"But that's silly! It's our drive we can do what we like on our drive, as long as mum and dad say so," Britain whinged. 

"We don't like your silly rules," England said provocatively. "We don't have to be part of your silly street rules." 

"You're right, you don't," said one uncle. "But if you're not part of the street rules you won't get to be part of all the lovely things we do, like ice cream van Friday."

"Hmmm." 

England didn't like to admit it, but she did secretly love ice cream van Friday, where everyone gave a bit of their pocket money to the uncles and Nans, and they made sure every kid got a 99 with a flake. 

England's mum and dad had quite good jobs, so the Britain kids got quite good pocket money and they got £1 per tooth from the tooth fairy, whereas some kids on the street only got 10p per tooth. England suspected the Uncles and Nans were taking less ice cream money off the poorer kids and they were a bit angry about this. 

"I don't know how much a 99 with a flake costs, but I suspect we could afford a double 99 with 2 flakes for what we give the Uncles and Nans."

So the Britain children got together to chat about what they should do. The twins, England and Wales, said "Lets ignore the stupid Uncles and Nans, we should just do our own thing." 

The little brother and the baby brother disagreed. 

"But we love our friends and we love ice cream van Friday. I know its a bit annoying not to play ball games but there are lots of other games we could play." The big sisters didn't listen to the little brothers, they were the oldest and the loudest. 

"We're not part of the street club anymore," they shouted down the street. 

There was a stunned silence. 

After a long pause The Uncles and Nans said "Alright if that's what you really want just leave. But no more joining in with street games, no more swapping football stickers with any of the other children and no more ice cream van Fridays."

England had a moment of doubt... It would be kind of embarrassing to change our mind now. Scotland was sad, they'd had their ups and downs with bossy old England but deep down they still wanted to be Brother and Sister, but they also wanted to be part of all the street fun. It seemed like they had to pick a side, which was all a bit unfair. 

No one wants to be eating a double 99 with a double flake on a sunny Friday, with kids that refuse to play with you.  That sort of takes away the fun.

A Big Week

A lot has happened in the week just gone, I've been sick in more glamorous locations than just my bedroom, I was sick in another country and in an aeroplane!

This week we had a mini holiday in Wales just from Tuesday to Friday with Dan's family. Dan's parents hired a 10 bed cottage for the week and Dan's 4 siblings and a few hangers on like me and Percy came along too. Since having a baby holidaying with family has changed from being 'ok if its free' to 'the best thing in the world.' Because when the adult to child ratio goes from 1 to 1 like it normally is on a work day to 10 to 2 it's brilliant. It's like actually having a holiday, I had an afternoon nap almost every day. Unlike the time we went for a just the 3 of us family holiday to Wales when percy was 7 months and teething. He was still up every few hours in the night to feed and then he decided that 4:45 am was the time we would begin our days each morning. By 10am we couldn't take anymore of playing with a baby inside, so we'd go and sit and freeze on a cold beach for a bit, wander round a few charity shops and then go home to make broccoli slime mash for Percy.

So yes, this holiday was infinitely better than that partly because Percy now sleeps though the night, eats normal food, and plays with far more interesting toys. (I really can't recommend the Duplo castle with working cannon enough.)

It was still cold beaches and no phone signal or internet, but I can cope with that when you have fun people to hang out with, and the board game risk.

a freezing cold beach

an inappropriately named restaurant

View from our cottage

Winter sunbathing

Portmeirion

The Crew

We got back on Friday to the fun task of having to do my tax return in an evening because I'd finally got my online activation code and had to do it ASAP for the mortgage man. (House news if you're interested... nothing has happened in 6 weeks because we've had a terrible mortgage lady who we've finally gibbed off for a hopefully better mortgage man)

Saturday was a crazy day...
Dan finally had his 30th birthday present, flying a plane from Speke airport. We arrived and I was feeling a little queasy. We decided not to tell them I was pregnant in case they didn't let me go in the back.

About to get on the plane.

Sefton park and the palm house

The anglican cathedral and behind it the women's hospital

Lime street and radio city tower

Aintree racecourse

I loved seeing all the views of places I knew, I was glad I could just enjoy them without having to think about flying a plane. On the descent down Dan was in control until the last 200 meters where the instructor took over. It was pretty wobbly and I realised I was going to be sick. Luckily the instructor had a sick bag on hand so I puked away in the back. I'm normally fine with wobbliness. Like I've never been car sick or sea sick but the combination of pregnancy and a windy day in a light aircraft was too much for me. I felt it was ok to say I was pregnant once we landed, they couldn't chuck me off then.

What you can't see on this is him holding my sick bag. Obviously I couldn't take the photo while holding it.

 The rest of the day was very full too. We went to 2 year old Freya's birthday party, the midwife came round and then we went to see some fireworks set off in someone's drive.

Don't worry the guy who looks like his head is being blown off is fine.

Percy had this unsure face on the whole time but since we got in the car to go home he's been chatting all about them.

 Happy November everyone!