SNOW!!!!!!!!

We woke this morning (at a very civilised 6.30am…thank you Osh!) to SNOW!! Not a huge amount by Canadian standards but oodles of the stuff by Pompey standards (where it doesn’t snow). Oisin was beside himself with excitement – as was Chloe who has seen 3 winters of the stuff. And after a hearty breakfast I kitted them out in snow gear (long johns, snow pants, fleece, jackets, hats and mittens…..trust me, getting 2 wriggling toddlers into all that is an adventure in itself) and took them out to shovel the sidewalk. An hour later we had comprehensively shovelled the sidewalk (me), unshovelled it (Osh) and built a rather fine snowman (all three of us, picture above). The aftermath of such chilly fun was that Osh and his cousin (a rather fine red-head, just like her aunt) managed, oh, a good 10 minutes of entente cordial on the sofa before the warring factions set to yet again.

This evening I took Osh for a walk after tea to get some fresh air into his lungs. The snow was still on the ground – although the sunshine and the lack of moisture in the air had rendered all the sidewalks and roads bone dry. We walked to the end of the street and then I spotted people skating in the park, so we crossed the street and I took Osh to see what skating looks like. He thought that was great fun. Many of the public parks flood the basketball courts during the winter and convert them into ice-rinks. There are two just minutes from Steph’s house: on one 2 kids were playing hockey, on the other a gaggle of families were skating and falling over in equal measure. Osh (who has no skates) and I (skates usefully at home!) then spent a happy few minutes with him pretending to be a hockey players and skittering all over the place on the ice outside the rinks. It was bitterly cold with a strong wind blowing when we walked home but there is nothing like a blast of icy air followed by a bottle of milk to send a small boy to sleep…and render his mother sleepy too!

Apologies for sideways photos above - too tired to be bothered to fart around trying to get them up the right way!

Trams, treacle and trips to the museum

Travelling abroad is a linguistic adventure. Osh is now well versed in Canada-speak: trams are streetcars, trousers are pants, buggies are strollers, nappies are diapers, biscuits are cookies, rubbish is garbage, the tube is the subway and the back-garden is the back yard. But none of this is really of any importance at all compared to the utter delight at travelling on the streetcars.

Streetcars rattle up and down Queen Street (just at the bottom of my sister’s street) and they have Oisin transfixed. Although he travelled on them when he was last here he was only 18 months old and has no memory of them. We have spent many a happy (chilly) hour on the sidewalk (pavement) watching trams (streetcars) thundering past and he loves to ride the streetcar. To add to this new found love of trams about 5 minutes from my sister’s house is the depot where the streetcars all congregate. Lots of them. All in neat rows beneath a web of cables and with the myriad tram tracks glistening in the sun. This has now become a place of pilgrimage for the young master who stands by the edge of the depot expounding at length on the whys and wherefores of tram travel. And above you can see a picture of Osh and his cousin at the tram depot.

Riding them is endlessly fascinating – he can pull the cord to stop the tram (so much more exciting and interactive that just pressing a button on a bus) and watch the turntable in the middle of the concertina trams (extra long bendy ones) twist and turn as the tram negotiates bends in the road. Even better than that, he and his cousin Chloe sit like a couple of old people nattering away to each other the entire journey and don’t leap and jump around.

On Thursday we went to Castle Park for the morning and then for pancakes for lunch. Osh has discovered the sticky delights of Canadian Pancakes with maple syrup – and wolfed down a stack of pancakes (photographic evidence of Osh taking no note of Government advice to eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day is above). They were drowning in maple syrup (Osh having battled his way into the tub of syrup before I had chance to do the stern mother thing regarding sugar in-take etc!). He’s not tried pancakes and bacon yet, nor Poutine (a Canadian delight consisting of fries, gravy and curds…..my favourite) but we’ve a number of days left for further culinary adventures.

Today’s excitement consisted of a trip to the drop-in centre for parents and babies to meet Rachelle and Mira. The drop-in is an extraordinary place – free, very well equipped with toys and games and books, packed with delightful and helpful people, free coffee and so on…..all of which goes to explain why the Canadian standard of living is so very high. Mind you, Portsmouth trounces all over Toronto in terms of accessibility of their public transport (Toronto might be very cheap and integrated but don’t try travelling on regular transport with a buggy or a wheelchair). Anyway Osh demonstrated how the British had conquered half the planet by building the most spectacularly complex wooden railway around most of the room (studiously avoiding the communal singing that was going on in the middle of the room!).

After lunch Osh and I paid another pilgrimage to the tram depot and then after tea we all went to the Royal Ontario Museum which is free on a Friday. What a great child-friendly exhibition they have there! Osh and Chloe donned goggles and went digging for dinosaur bones and then giggled and squealed at the tanks full of tarantulas and cockroaches. Where they got the cockroaches from I don’t know but they were bigger and more repulsive than any I’d ever seen and I’ve seen plenty of cockroaches on my travels. We visited the bat cave (Osh is apparently not a bat fan) and then we went to see the Moose. “Is it real Mim?” “No sweetheart”(mother rapidly avoiding an explanation of taxidermy). “Is it dead Mim?” “Well, yes and then it was stuffed” I said (colliding headlong with description of taxidermy). Behind the Moose was a wolf: “look Mim a dead dog!” shouts Osh. And just beyond them “look Mim a dead tiger too!”. The subtleties of taxidermy are lost of the Oshlet, it would appear.

All things topsy turvy

I might have been struggling with the 5 hour shift in my body clock but Oisin was wide awake and kicking at 5.30 this morning (not far off his normal wake up time) and asking if Chloe (his cousin) was awake yet. Somehow, he has tapped into a previously unknown source of energy and verve and good humour and today earned the prize for “most humour whilst dealing with jet-lag”. (Although I will award myself 2nd prize!)

It was also a day of many firsts for the wee man. First trip on a Canadian bus (the doors open and shut and how do you get wheelchairs on there?), first trip on an underground train (trip up to the Danforth for Chloe’s singing class…..as my sister pointed out we use the term ‘singing’ advisedly!), first sight of a tram (joy of joys! 6 streetcars all backed up at the intersection – heaven for Osh) and first chance to play with snow (huge pile of snow by the local ice-rink).

It was also a day of endless topsy turvy things: why are the stop lights different? Why do the pedestrian lights flash yellow? Why do they have a red flashing hand and not a red man at the intersections? Why do they drive on the other side of the road? And Why do they call buggies strollers and trams streetcars?

Other things, apparently, he was totally familiar with: he spotted the yellow school bus, he heard the sound of a GO-train and thought the Polar Express was about to come down the street, he pointed out every single no smoking sign and parking sign we went past and Thomas the Tank engine appeared on the TV.

Mother's Pride

Top tip for travelling across international borders armed with a small child who has a different surname to you and holds a different nationality passport to you: acquire a corker of a black eye the day before. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to grab the attention of security and immigration staff the world over it is the sight of a beaten-up single mother travelling with a child who she might just have snatched from the local park (how else could they explain the black eye).

As it is, the black eye was the result of Osh crashing head-long into my eye socket on Monday morning and there is nothing like heaps of attention to ensure that I’m not charged for having heavy bags, handsome young men provide me with baggage trolleys when I’m rapidly running out of arms and getting to the front of the queue.

For a child who normally does not do waiting, patience, sitting still or doing as he is told, Oisin was a joy to travel with on Tuesday. He dragged his Thomas suitcase around Heathrow like a seasoned traveller, didn’t even blink when we took off (my greatest fear was him howling as the air pressure roared through his ears), wolfed down his airline meal, slept for 2 hours and was bright eyed and bushy tailed when we landed. We played games, drew pictures, had endless conversations about what the public announcement had just said (what is she saying Mim? She telling up to put our seat’s in the upright position. What is she saying now Mim? She’s saying it all again in French Osh. Why Mim? Because the Canadians speak English and French darling. Why Mim?.....at which point a brief synopsis of Canadian colonial history and the endless linguist arguments between Quebec and the rest of the country defeated me). Above you'll see a photo of Osh taken just before we landed and then one of him atop all the luggage as Auntie Stephanie paid for the carpark at the airport in TO.

The only other memorable moment from the plane journey (and personally, I prefer uneventful plane journeys) was finding myself sitting next to a woman from Edmonton sporting a mullet (not attractive) and a fine line in racist comments directed mostly at the burgeoning Asian population of Canada…but she did trade her chocolate and ice-cream for Osh’s salad. I think we got the better end of that bargain!

He finally fell asleep (protesting all the while that he was not sleepy) at 2am our time (9pm Canada) making me a truly proud mother and endlessly grateful that 6 hours trapped in a seat with Oisin was actually a lot of fun!

Meet the Turners

So, who are these Turners that we are going to be staying with?

Well, there is Nicky. He was born in Hong Kong, lived in Europe and Kenya but has his roots in Cornwall. After a stint in the Solomon Islands he arrived in the Turks and Caicos some many years ago as the DFID appointed Director of Agriculture. After a number of years doing that job on North Caicos he moved to Grand Turk and then to Provo (maps coming along soon) where he has run a successful landscaping business for many years. Small islands being what they are, he is involved in a variety of business (ad)ventures along with the landscaping - he is a partner in a business that empties portable toilets and septic tanks (where there's muck there's brass) and he is a partner in a power company that is producing water and electricity on West Caicos - a national park and uninhabited island but soon to be home to a very exclusive, swept-up Ritz Carlton resort. Water is a very precious resource on the islands and over the coming weeks I'll tell you all about where the water comes from, how Nicky makes water and why the water in the toilet cistern looks like weak tea.....



Then, there is Daniel. Born on Grand Turk he is 15 and just delightful. He plays hockey for the national team and a local team called The Panthers, he reads voraciously (last time I was there he was ploughing through 'The Art of War' and a cheap dime-store thriller and has requested a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince this trip), he has recently taken up diving and he has an incredibly catholic taste in music: Tupac through Mozart, and all sorts inbetween.


Finally, we have Tucker and Marlowe the dogs and a handful of roosters and chickens and baby chicks. But more of them later.