Small Talk

Poppet: Mummy, if there’s a place called Hungry, you know where we’re going to move to, is there another place called Thirsty?

Pickle: You know, when Tiggy dies we could get a German Shepherd.
Poppet: Yes, and if it’s a boy we could call if Nitchy and if it’s a girl we could call it Bitchy!

Mummy: I have to tell you some bad news children; we didn’t manage to get the house with the swimming pool in Hungary.
Pickle: That’s all right, we’ll sneak into the house next door and use theirs!

Rude Awakenings

No sooner do I get back into a bit of blogging than something else comes up and I stop for another fortnight. This time it was my first reconnaissance trip to Budapest, which meant leaving my children with my parents and taking off for the weekend with my best friend. Hey, it may sound like fun but the preparation was no picnic I can tell you. My brain was so overloaded with writing out a short handbook of instructions and tips on how to cope with my kids’ various foibles, not too mention getting enough food and wine in to keep them all ticking over for 5 days, that I became about as much use as a chocolate teapot and unable to retain any information from one moment to the next. Hence the rude awakenings throughout the day. For example, I’d make a mental note to put a new toilet roll beside the loo since the Andrex Puppy had clearly been round again and cleaned us out. But it wasn’t until I settled myself on the throne a couple of hours later that I realised that I’d completely forgotten to do it. Then I’d tell Nobby that we’d have fajitas for dinner and make a mental note to buy some, but not actually remember to do it until I put the pan on that evening and wondered where the ingredients were. So when the landlord came round to badger me again for a moving date he found me incapable of speaking any French, and I had to resort the Parisian full-body shrug (which actually felt pretty good having been on the receiving end of them for four ruddy years!) The kids didn’t help by deciding to try skipping with a rope on the trampoline. I could see disaster looming as I had a flashback to the last time I was due to go away without them and Poppet broke her leg on that bouncy castle. The one good decision I made that day was making a carbonara to a recipe which required a tablespoon of white wine in the mixture… and a glassful in the chef (it really says that in the book, honest.)

So back to my little jaunt. By weird coincidence Rose’s Mum lives in down town Budapest and kindly agreed to let us stay for the weekend so we could to familiarise ourselves with my future home and seek out the essentials for living there. We took our task very seriously, conducting an extensive survey of local amenities – coffee by the Basilica, dinner al fresco beside the Danube, Long Island Iced Tea chez Fat Mo’s – and learning some local language, such as the Hungarian for ‘cheese’ which is pronounced ‘shite’. I was also introduced to a totally new level of customer service in the local restaurants. Having been used to surly waiters with a whole bag of frites on their shoulders here in Paris it was a total revelation to eat in a place that keeps a little basket of reading glasses behind the counter for those who've forgotten to bring theirs for reading the menu, like Rose’s Mum. And they do ‘doggy bags’ too in case you’ve ordered more than you can manage, plus the coffee knocks Paris into a cocked hat.

Anyway, the relocation agent brought us crashing back to reality on Monday with a whistle-stop tour of the available schools and houses for rent. The school was a no-brainer luckily. I had no problem rejecting the swanky-looking school that proudly showed me a class of 5 year olds each plugged into individual computer consoles with headphones, and a class of 7 year olds putting together a Powerpoint presentation for their parents. Call me old-fashioned but I plumped for the school that showed me a class of 6 year olds reciting a poem at the tops of their voices whilst jumping up and down behind their desks, with the teacher joining in. The houses were another matter altogether though. Things were looking pretty grim after nine viewings and none of them ticking all my boxes. Thankfully the agent pulled a corker out of the bag on the final day when Nobby was actually with me and we were all done and dusted by coffee time. Nobby has since found out that the street name where we’ll be living is the Hungarian equivalent of 'Sesame Street' in that it features on a popular kids television program. I'll have Tiggy keep a look out for large yellow birds landing in the willow tree.

I am pleased to report that Mum and Dad weren’t quite on their knees when I returned and they had worked their way through an impressive list of jobs which I had cheekily left lying about. They stayed on for a few days so I could pamper them a little bit myself to say thanks. Now I am psyching myself up to the task of sorting out all the junk we have lying around the place so we don’t transport all the way across the continent to sit and fester in another house. Given that I am the world’s worst squirrel and struggle to throw away clothes the children have grown out of or drawings they have proudly thrust at me after school this could take some time. See you another fortnight, probably!