In a Place I Now Call Home

I started this blog nearly 6.5 years ago just after we arrived in the UK. I found it therapeutic to share the details of our move on a platform where I not only had the last word, I had the first word and every word in between. And I rather liked that. Also I felt that getting it all down was my way of detangling everything. You know how it's best to have all the Christmas tree lights strewn out on the floor before you can even start with the bitch-blerry job of unravelling the little feckers? Well, writing is my version of laying the lights out before I can make sense of it all. Imbued with a sense of cautious and hopeful optimism that I won't step on the delicate (yet deceptively lethal) bulbs, crush them to pieces and bleed all over the place. But with the pragmatic belief that I'll probably shatter every last one and have to go to A&E for stitches. And then buy a new set of cocking Christmas lights like I should’ve done in the first place.

Truth is that when I started this blog I was rather lonely. Rather lost. Rather terrified. And this white page with its heartbeat cursor became my happy place. A place where I'd hide behind a wide range of humour. From dry and deadpan to self-deprecating, crude and crass to deflect my massive insecurities about myself and the permanent move that we'd made away from a home that I loved and I life that I loved more. I do a lot of life with humour. Some healthy. Some not so much. It's the ultimate defence mechanism. "Ha ha, let's all laugh while I slowly fall apart. And you'll never know, because I'm smiling and joking all the way down." It's a classic Sally-survival tactic. Not so classic though. And it's less survival and more sad. But not uncommon. And certainly not unique to me. Now, as I'm less in the emo trenches, my blog is has become a one-stop shop for all my small-minded drivel. It's a lot less funny. But that's probably healthier.

My husband recently presented me with a hardcopy version of this blog. It's a weighty tome. With some serious thud factor. Of course it is. It's filled with all the rants, revelations and affirmations of a lass trying her best to make a life in Britain. That would never be a skinny offering. It's rather tough to look back at those first pages when I know that I was struggling and how desperately I wanted to portray otherwise. Facebook was also a willing accomplice in that endeavour. There is a lot of laughter though. Genuinely funny moments that I'll remember forever. Posting my passport and the tears I shed to retrieve it, my son plopping a poo onto the street, having the peanuts I gave him for lunch wrapped up like kryptonite, locking myself outside of the house and my 15-month-old daughter inside, catching my kids’ vomit in each hand on a car ride from Valencia to Madrid, peeing on the side of a highway, reversing into a parked car and my children shrieking with delight "again, again mummy", being frogmarched by security out of a building after suspected identity fraud. There have been the best of times. And the worst of times. And through it all, this blog has been an invaluable tool in coping with the massive change and the trauma of immigration separation anxiety, which I just made up but is totally a real thing.

I've gone on a lot about how tough it is to make a life in a new country. Because it is. But human beings are an incredible species. We're made to adapt or die. And that we do. Adapt. And, well we die too. But that's hopefully much later. Speaking of hope, a few weeks ago we were invited to a ceremony to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and accept the British citizenship status that we were finally granted. We have maintained our South African citizenship and so are now a family of dual nationals. It was an emotional moment as the registrar handed us our naturalisation certificates. She spoke of the difficulty in settling into a new country, especially with a young family. To leave a familiar homeland and build a new life. She said that Britain strives to make us feel at home and is proud to welcome us. A part of me wishes that this lovely sentiment was shared when we first arrived on this island, when we really needed to hear those words. But it was good to hear it at all. The first heartfelt human engagement in this whole process. And what a process. Every visa application, every bureaucratic stamp, every trip to an embassy, every biometric test, every proof of marriage, birth, life, every cost (monetary and otherwise) has led us to this point where we're finally able to reside in a place without restrictions. And it's a great place to be. Metaphorically and otherwise.

My best friend said it best. As she's wont to do. She said "Your newly-granted citizenship status is not to be taken lightly. You have made tremendous sacrifices and overcome huge challenges to change the course of your family's path, forever." And she's right. More and more I realise that the one true and lasting privilege is freedom of choice. The freedom to choose. Where to live. Where to work. Where to travel. British nationality status allows us to offer this to our children more than we otherwise could. We've done a lot of really stupid things in our 20 years together. But we both feel that this isn't one of them.

Six and half years ago, I truly was a million miles from normal. So much so that I wrote about it. In great detail. Often. I felt like an alien in a foreign land. Today I am no longer an alien. I am a citizen of a land and a life that is less foreign, in a place I now call home. In 1820 my intrepid British ancestors set sail from England to South Africa in pursuit of new opportunities in a foreign land. This epic move changed the course of our family's destiny for generations. 199 years later, we've come full circle and it's our turn to take bold new steps in a new country. And just think - future generations of Cook/Whittal progeny - you've got this blog to look back on and see where it all began. Or the hardcover version to to use as a doorstop. It’s your choice. 

Oh happy day.

Blogging it like it is since 2013.

Decoding Cricket for Mummies

I'm all for sport. To me, sport is a great metaphor for life. It teaches us about teamwork, hard graft, winners, losers, showing up. Showing up when the weather is kak. Showing up when we're hungover. Or both. Showing up and giving it our best. Or simply just showing up. Things we have to do every day. Competitive or otherwise, I'm all for sport. Fortunately my kids are too. So much so that my son has fallen in love with the gentleman's game. It's fitting. He's a gentle chap. Cricket though seems anything but. All those helmets, pads, a wooden bat, protection for his privates, a bloody hard ball. Anyway, I'm usually banned from watching my children play sport because I stand on the sidelines and cheer (loudly) for the losing team, I remind everyone (loudly) to have fun and I warn parents (loudly) that it's not the premier league.

Recently though, I managed to sneak down to watch my son have a little bat. It's a brave thing I thought, him standing in front of a hard af ball thrown at his face by an over-eager 10-year-old wannabee-spin-bowler with little accuracy and shedloads of enthusiasm. And he's got such a pretty face. Yes there's a helmet, but shit happens. Even with a helmet. I couldn't help but wince at each ball. I closed my eyes in fact. After he was bowled out, mercifully soon for his mother's sake, less so for his, I said "well done Ol, cracker innings that was." From what I saw. Which wasn't much. He went straight to his dad and started talking about how confident he was feeling with his glance and that he'd like to start working on his hook. I was like, err what? "It's just cricket talk mum." Well my boy, challenge accepted. I decided to decode the sweet baby cheesus out of cricket talk and blow their minds. First though, I've had my mind blown. Cricket terms. My god. I thought I was strange calling my daughter by the nickname moose-alpaca-unicorn-kittykat-dinosaur-donkey-pony or moose for short. Cricket terms are way weirder. I promise.

I'll start with the dibbly-dobbly. Nope, not the term for privates of any description. Or the thing that covers the privates. This I've established is the box. It's a slow paced, not particularly good bowling style. "He was a dibby-dobbly bowler". Not high praise. Even though it sounds pretty cool. To me anyway. Try saying it. D-i-b-b-l-y d-o-b-b-l-y, I know, right.

A beamer: No, this is not the term shouted when someone's posh car is parked on the pitch. Or when a ball hits a posh car parked on the pitch. It's also known as a 'bean ball' which isn't a ball that's been left in the shed for so long that it's sprouted some dirty fuzz. They both refer to when a bowler bowls the ball at the batman's head. Which apparently is not allowed.

A duck. This one I know. It's a score of zero. I didn't know why it was called that though. I thought it may have something to do with the batsman ducking out of his duty in a sucky way. Nope, it's named duck because the zero is shaped like a duck's egg. What an intelligent deduction. A duck on the first ball is a golden duck. Two ducks in the same game by the same batter are a pair. Two golden ducks are a king pair. I think the people who thought up cricket terms were pissed when they started and got progressively more so. You'll see why.

More duck now, except not quite. Duckworth-Lewis is a really complicated way of working out which team won if a match is called off due to rain. It was devised originally by two English statisticians Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis. They've since retired, probably due to exhaustion after all the mental exertion they suffered after devising the most complicated scoring system known to man. Professor Steven Stern has inherited the method, lucky for him (not) and it's been renamed the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method. It may as well be the dibbly-dobbly method for all I understand of it. We'll leave it there. You'll thank me.

Googly. No, this isn't someone who can't spell Google. Neither is it related to the privates. Nor is it something that you can't quite believe you're seeing that's got you all googly-eyed. Nope. A googly is when a leg-spinner bowler bowls an off-spin delivery. Go figure that googly, eh.

A leg-spinner bowler. Not a bandy legged chap with an alarming arachnid-esque gait. No siree. It's a bowler with a fine set of pins who bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action that results in the ball spinning from right to left on the pitch.

A doosra. Well, now here's a doozy. Except that's not what doosra means. At all. A doosra is when an off-spinner bowler bowls a leg-spin delivery. Doosra ya get it? Good. Me neither.

An off-spinner bowler. A right-handed spin bowler who uses his fingers to spin the ball from a right-handed batsman's off side to the leg side (that is towards the right-handed batsman, or away from a left-handed batsman). This contrasts with leg spin, in which the ball spins from leg to off and which is bowled with a very different action. Holy mother of all the spins and legs in the world, anyone for a gin? I could spin the leg of a gin delivery that's for sure.

The leg side. Or the on side. This is the area to the left of a right-handed batsman (from the batsman's point of view – facing the bowler). 

Off side. The off side is a particular half of the field. From the point of view of a right-handed batsman facing the bowler, it is the right-hand side of the field, or the half of the field in front of the right-handed batsman when they assume the batting stance. 

A Nelson. This is when a score tallies 111, which you'd think would be like whoop whoop, what a score. Not so much. It's considered unlucky because legend has it that an Admiral called Horatio Nelson had only one eye, one arm and one leg. Poor bloke. So scoring a Nelson is considered unlucky. For obvious reason. 

Rabbit. Nope not a quick-witted, spring-like cricket superstar. The complete opposite in fact. The rabbit is the worst batsman on the team. Besties with the duck methinks.

Silly mid off. A close-in fielding position on the side opposite the batsman. Not to be confused with the dozens of other fielding positions, including fine leg, gully, fly slip, extra cover and cow corner. Definitely don’t confuse it with silly mid on. That’s on the other side, silly!

Yorker. Not like corker. As in something good. The bowler may think so. The batsman not so much. This is a ball that hits the pitch around the batman's feet or at the popping crease. The term is said to come from 18th or 19th century slang to "pull a Yorkshire" which means pulling a fast one.

The popping crease. This phrase makes me think of those YouTube videos where someone (usually a hairy-backed man) is having a cyst lanced by a woman in a mask wielding a scalpel and a towel. Eeeuuww. You can't help but watch through the gaps in your fingers. It's called so because under the rules of cricket in the 1700s, a batsman had to place his bat into a hole cut in the turf to score a run. The name popping hole then became popping crease. Now a popping hole, well that's a whole new tangent that I could run with, but I won't.

From popping creases, rabbits, googlys, yorkers, dibbly-dobblys, doosras, beamers and all the silly mid, leg on and off associated with the respectable game of cricket, I'm not only over, I'm out. Bowled. Stumped. Caught. Cricket can keep its crazy terms. I'll stick to sitting leg-side-ways on the field, ducking from the serious, uncorking a crisp Sancerre while I beam(er) with pride watching my helmet-ed son at the crease while he hooks and glances to his heart's content, loving every second of it all. That's all the cricket I need to understand. That's all the cricket anyone needs to understand.

PS - Just in case you give a toss (*the toss is the flipping of a coin to determine which captain will have the right to choose whether his team will bat or field at the start of the match).
A glance: is a shot played by a batsman with a vertical bat, deflecting the ball behind the square leg area of the field.
A hook: is a term used to describe a shot played at shoulder height by the batsman against any short delivery.

Our gentlemanly-boy

Being One with the Weirdo

Yeah, so it's taken me a long time. Three decades or so. To accept that I am rather a different sort. And when I say 'different' I don't mean 'let's celebrate your individuality, you're going to be a star' different. I simply mean that I am bat-shit crazy. It used to be a source of great angst and I tried to hide it, which was futile and exhausting. And now I just let it all hang out. I own it. The hipster way of saying pretty much the same thing. Also I'm nearly 40 years old ffs. It really is now or never. I've come to a place where my weirdness and I can coexist. Not always happily or in complete harmony, but we bump along together.

• I only read books, that are, like, actual books. With pages you can't zoom in on, but spines that bend. No screens. Ever. I associate screen reading with work. Reading fiction is anything but. The library, therefore, truly is my happy place. More so really than anywhere else in the world. If they sold good coffee, I'd be there every day. I'd likely move in.
• I've yet to see a single second of a single episode of Game of Throes. And I don't intend to. Ever. Medieval fantasy just ain't my vibe. 
• A few months ago I had a hernia repair procedure. I woke up in a ward with a lot of women who'd just had laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis (or other stuff I shan't share) in efforts to fall pregnant. We had to wait for the general anaesthetic to wear off and we couldn't move. So we did what women do when they're off their faces on drugs. We drank tea, ate toast and chatted up a storm. In deference to their various fertility issues, when I was asked if I had any children, I avoided the question altogether by asking a question in return. Lying by omission I think they call it. This worked very well and I was rather chuffed with myself. Until it came time for me to be discharged and instead of meeting my husband at reception which I'd specifically requested, he thought he'd form a happy-to-have-you-home committee and burst into the ward with all of our children who threw themselves at me like a pack of puppies. I offered a feeble "Oh yeah, these are my kids. I forgot about them!" before bolting as fast as a freshly-stitched abdomen would allow. It was not a good day. I still feel shame thinking about it and the scar is a searing reminder that I should never pretend I don't have kids. It always ends in pain.
• Speaking of painful. I like hot things scaldingly hot. I literally microwave my hot drinks before I drink them. And cold things freezing cold. Except sparkling water which I like at room temperature because it helps keeps the bubbles bubbly. This does not apply to alcoholic bubbles. These must be arctic cold.
• Recently on an uncharacteristic night out. At an actual pub. Not just a PTA meeting or a parents evening at school. These sadly also count as nights out in my life. I went to the bar to order and said to the bar lady, "Could I have a bottle of Prosecco please. And can it be very cold." To which she replied "Certainly. And how many glasses would you like with that?" I said "Err, just the one, please." I smiled. She smiled in complete understanding. She turned out to be an Aussie. Obvs.
• I once took the entire biscuit tin to school when I was running late for pick-up. My children expect a snack. It's the stupidest thing I started years ago and now I can't get out of it. I usually bring them a sandwich, fruit roll, Tupperware of strawberries, something. It's the first thing they say when they see me after 6 hours at school. I go: “Hello sweethearts, how was your day?” They go: “What did you bring us to eat?” I brought the biscuit tin in a moment of desperation and tried to discreetly open it so they could grab a couple and we could get on our way. But they pulled it out and brandished it for all to see. They chorused. I cringed. Not my first cringe in the school yard. Likely not my last either.
• I push my trusty old double-pram-steed to school every day despite the fact that my children are 7 and 4 and don’t need a pram. But I need it. It carries the school bags, the bike and the scooter and the helmets. I also get a childish kick out of wheeling the pram into town after I've dropped them at school. And when people worriedly enquire: “Er, where’s the baby?” I scratch my head and pretend I can't remember where I left it. And just before it gets too awks, I announce: “Just kidding. My children are at school. I brought the pram for myself. I need it to carry my wine.” Some people think it's genius. Most make a hasty retreat.
• I like to do personal gifts for the teachers for Christmas. In December I decided that making a cake was a great idea. An entire cake each. Except I couldn't just make for the three class teachers. I felt I needed to make for the teachers' assistants, the head, the deputy head and the office staff too. This meant 12 cakes. I bought 4 springform 6-inch cake tins figuring I'd do three baking sessions. Badda boom. Mmm, what cake to bake? Orange and polenta was my current favourite, so I reckoned that would be a goodie. Except I failed to realise that each cake required an entire packet of ground almonds and polenta which cost a small fortune, plus the zest of two oranges which was a bitch on the fingernails, plus a saucy syrup that I had to boil for hours and reduce. Less badda. More broken. And one teacher has a nut allergy so I needed to make that cake separately and be sure not to confuse it with the others. A simple cake offering became Cakegate 2018. Never to be repeated. Apparently the cakes were lovely which is good because I laboured longer over them than I ever did any of my children. 
• Speaking of broken. My daughter broke her arm while we were hosting a playdate with two other children. She fell out of a tree at a park. There was a lot of screaming. I went running. Only to check that the other children were ok. Not for her. She screams a lot. There was no blood. Her arm looked fine. No swelling. No visible damage. I then made her pose with her friends alongside the lake with her broken arm that we didn't know was broken. I asked her to please stop crying because she was ruining the photo. It was a full 24 hours before we realised her arm was broken because she couldn't move it and she was still bleating that it was sore. We didn't even give her pain relief because 1) we didn't have any 2) we didn't think she needed any. Yeah. Another parent fail. I succeed at parent fails. 
• I've decided that I really like to help at the school disco so that I can dance The Macarena, YMCA or pull moves from Grease with a horde of pre-teens and any teachers I can drag down with me. My son does not like it as much. He says my dancing is the cringiest he's ever seen. And he says he watches a lot of bad dancing on Youtube so he's well informed. Regardless, I will continue to attend discos with the young uns. It is the best fun. And who knew you could dance without being rat-faced? I certainly didn't. It's great exercise, makes you feel fantastic and there's no hangover. Bonus. The fact that my son doesn't want people to know I'm his mum - well, that was bound to happen eventually.
• I still think wedges are pants. I still accost any random stranger Saffas I encounter. I still overshare to any random stranger I encounter, Saffa or otherwise. I still use the word dogshow for anything not remotely related to an actual dogshow. I still dream of big South African skies and the view of 'Maritzburg as you make your way down Town Hill on the N3. I still feel 25 until I try to do a cartwheel and then not so much. Or until I look in the mirror. And then again not so much.
• A million miles from normal I am. Today. Tomorrow. Always. And you know what, I'm totally ok with that.

Cakegate 2018

Using a pram to cart the children cricket equipment. As I do.

For Love or Money

Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, they say. Well that's bollocks. Codswallop. I never dreamed it possible that I would one day write for a living. Until now. Until I started writing for a living. And it's hard. The hardest work in fact. Why? Because I care so much about doing it right. I guess so that I can continue to do it. Also, no one except perhaps Piers Morgan gets to write exactly what they want. Or possibly Ian McEwan and his ilk, although I'll bet that even he feels the pressure to produce another bestseller. Professional writers write to get paid. No matter the brief. No matter the client. It's only the unemployed writer who can afford to write what they want. And I can't afford to be unemployed.

This blog is the perfect case in point. I love to write here. I love the fact that I can, and I do, ramble on and on about everything and nothing. It's a digital diary of a life lived. I sometimes scroll back and giggle or gag, mostly gag, at the overshare from years gone by. I rarely have the time though these days to do what I love. To express myself within the relative sanctuary of this screen, knowing full well that there are only about five regulars, including my mum, who read my latest rant. I resolved today that there would not be another week that goes by where I write a whole lot of stuff for a whole lot of people, but I neglect to write something about myself, for myself. And the five people who'll read it.

So here I am. Work notwithstanding, it's been a whirlwind for us lately. We've begun the process of applying for dual citizenship. This deserves a blog post all of its own. But I will wait until we are further down the road in this journey before I share all of the details of how one acquires dual citizenship and the organs paperwork required in order to do so. For fear that what I say can and will be used against me. This exercise has been an epic undertaking in human perseverance and bureaucratic tenacity. But then everything about this journey has been epic. We've been here six years. It feels like a lifetime and yet feels like just yesterday that we sat at the Spur at the King Shaka International Airport with our family having a final drink before we boarded a flight that would take us to Heathrow and the start of our adventure, a million miles from normal.

We're older. We can see it. We can feel it. Our children are older too. Taller. With more words and less teeth. My 10-year-old can wear my blazers. And does. He's virtually my height. Lithe and pointy-featured. Confident, compassionate and kind. My daughter is tall and leggy, a tip-toeing little waif with a mega-watt smile and a constant stream of chatter. My youngest, a fearless four year old who is the age now that our eldest was when we first moved to the UK. A solid build that belies the softest, most tactile nature - a sensitive soul who shines in the light of his siblings. They're a remarkably strong and resilient trio. As all children are. But more so because they live with little extended family structure. And this is tough. I know so because it's tough for us and we're adults. Special milestones and Christmases remain heartbreakingly bittersweet and I don't foresee this getting easier to cope with. This too will not pass.

What has passed though is that I have finally acclimatised to the British weather to the degree that I now not only speak about it incessantly, like I did here, but I feel it less acutely. 10 degrees I now rate as rather mild. 14 degrees is positively balmy. This revelation may have a lot something to do with the fact that I have discovered the delights of down outwear. I'm totes down with down. Layering is so last year. This is massive progress for me. Feeling perpetually cold is not a happy place.

So back to where I started. It's sad that society deems you successful at something when you make money from it. It shouldn't be that way. But it is. Ricky Gervais said it best. He says a lot of things best in my opinion. He said "Happiness is the only success that matters and the one that your critics are the most jealous of." Of course he said that though. He can afford to. Until I can afford to say life affirming stuff that they make into memes -  I will write words for the money. And I will love this blog for the words.

Hemingway I am not. Bleed I do.

Ricky Gervais - writer, humanitarian and a lot that is right with the world

A Bluster of British Banter

So it’s happened. After 6 years of life in the UK. After moving into four different houses. Birthing our third child. Settling three children into two different schools. Settling myself into a social circle of new friends. Getting indefinite leave to remain status on the long road to citizenship. Learning to drive through the eye of a needle along narrow roads. Navigating buttock-clenching four lane traffic circles. Parking three miles from anywhere to avoid having to parallel-park. Driving a lot less. Walking a lot more. Getting used to the constant drone of living under the Heathrow flight path. Working for myself. Cleaning for all of us. Learning to survive homesickness that hits the solar plexus. Learning to survive camping. Learning to enjoy camping. After a complete transformation of lifestyle/culture/family/friends/career. After all this time. I am now someone who talks about the weather. A lot.

My European work colleagues have dubbed me “the weather girl". In my email intros, I not only make small talk. I make small talk about the weather. It’s become my weird little trademark. I look out of the window and write about the 50 shades of grey (both rubbish), that it's cloudy with a chance of meatballs or perhaps as Pooh says "it sure is rather a blustery day". When there's actual sun I bring out my jazz hands. It’s cringey. But I can’t help myself. I have become incapable of starting any sentence without: “Greetings from a gloomy Windsor” or “A sunny hello from southeast England”. I can’t remember how I used to do email intros before. I draw a blank. In the same way I don't know how I filled my time a decade ago before I had kids. I honestly couldn’t tell you.

If there was a barometer of Britishness, I guess weather banter would be pretty up there. Along with drinking two litres of tea a day, popping to the pub for a pint and listening to the Queen’s speech at Christmas. It’s a safe topic. It changes every five minutes so there’s plenty of subject matter. It’s inoffensive. It’s impersonal. It’s perfectly British in every way. I even engage in a wee weather chatter with the checkout ladies at the supermarket. “Brrr...by golly, it’s cold today. We’re in for some snow apparently.” Sometimes they run with it. And I get a little “Yeah and it’s cold in here and all.” Sometimes not. And I get a raised eyebrow, no eye contact and my groceries are scanned in record speed and I’m sure there’s mumbled nuance of “nutter” directed at my derriere.

The weather here is not just a conversation starter. It stops traffic. It closes train lines. Roads. Schools. It gets under your skin. In your bones. Obviously, I’m used to a more moderate climate down south, where unless it’s kak hot, kak cold or there’s a kak load of rain, it’s not something we spend a lot of time talking about. Weather chat is a first world privilege. Apparently the average Brit spends the equivalent of four and a half months of their life talking about the weather and it comes up in conversation three times in a typical day. An actual study was conducted. Someone took the time to research it. It's a hot topic. A hot mostly cold topic, if you will.

Oscar Wilde said: “conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” So there I go. Or perhaps I’ve already lost it? Along with the age-defying chub that apparently used to cushion my cheekbones. Who knows? All I do know for sure is that for the last couple of days I’ve been working on my couch with my coat and scarf on. The radiator is on max, but the arctic breeze that creeps up through the suspended wooden floor takes my breath away. Yesterday, I looked outside and typed: “Greetings from Windsor! Today we had 20 000 or so people visit our town. Along with the inimitable Jack Frost. He snuck in overnight on a cloud of ice, snow and slush. The bastard. I hope you’re enjoying warmer climes wherever you are and you’ve received a less frosty reception to the start of your day.” And then I made myself a cuppa. As is just as customary in these parts. Where it's currently cold. Kak cold.

Snow flaming cold 

Loved. Calm. Happy. Peaceful. Brave

Raising a child is a lot like baking a cake. You gather all the ingredients, put them together and hope for the best. Well that’s I how bake anyway. Hell, that’s how I parent. Nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes the cake rises to the occasion and sometimes it’s a complete fuck up flop. It’s never fool-proof, no two cakes ever come out the same and you never quite know how you’ve done until the cooking time is complete. You can’t open the oven door halfway through and add in the baking powder, or mix it a little more thoroughly or remove the nuts you shouldn't have added. You simply have to give it a jolly good go and wait it out. And you only ever get one chance with that cake. This is exactly how I feel about being a mother. Did I over mix it? Is it completely cooked through? Will it sink in the middle? Will my kids look back on their childhood and think ‘hell yeah, we had a good one’ or will they need to breathe into a paper bag and work through all sorts of neuroses that a therapist will tell them I was responsible for? Too much squawking, sarcasm, passive aggression and perfectionist tendencies – my arsenal of arsehole attributes that are kryptonite for my kids. Any kids, really. But mine mostly on account of them being mine. And by then it’s too late. And I’m a lush because our children are emotional train wrecks. It’s a sobering thought.

A thirteen year old South African girl who was badly hurt in a car accident on Christmas Eve got me thinking about all of this. She sustained terrible head injuries and it looked like she wouldn’t make it. She has though. She woke up. She breathes on her own. She lives. She’s got a long road to recovery ahead of her, yet every day she’s defying medical odds. It's a remarkable story.

Sitting at her bedside in the hospital, her mum recently asked her to point to a set of emotion cards that reflect how she felt at that very moment. She chose the cards: Loved. Calm. Happy. Peaceful. Brave. This is a young girl who literally has part of her skull stored in her abdomen for safe keeping because it was so badly damaged. And while she’s faced with some big obstacles, she’s still able to reflect with such positivity and gratitude. There’s no blame, anger or pity. Just those five wonderful words. That’s one extraordinary child. And those are a set of extraordinary parents.

I’d give my one clean-ish kidney for either of my children to look back on their childhood and say, "I felt loved. Calm. Happy. Peaceful. Brave.” What a gift that would be. Not just for them because they’ll be delightfully self-aware little souls ready and able to conquer all of life’s challenges, obvs. But also for us as their parents. Until then though, we try. Hard. We lovingly watch the cakes we’ve baked. We do our best. And we hope for the best. Because only time will tell how they turn out. Well, time and my daughter, she’ll tell the world. Inspired by an amazing young South African girl a continent away, I asked my daughter to choose just two words to describe how she feels about her life. She looked me straight in the eye with all of her seven years and sass, and said: “Mmmm, I feel unsure and um, weird. Why would you ask me that? How much wine have you had?" Sobering thoughts indeed.

I'm very grateful for all the cake in my life. And my children. Not in that order (well some days) but they're worth every burn in every sense of the word, every catastrophe cake-related or otherwise - and all the sass. And to that warrior young woman down south, I promise I will strive to love bigger, keep calm(er), be happier, foster more peace and be braver so that my children learn to do the same. Big-ups to not being a bad mamabaker. Big-ups to being a bad-ass mamabaker - in the making.

Me, My Sass and I

From Kiara's Mum's Blog