The Heywoods

Tailors

2008-08-31T13:48:00.005+04:30

Anyone who has been to India will be familiar with the sight of little men (always men) sitting by the side of the street with sewing machines and will have been told that if you find the right person, they will whip up exquisite garments or copy your favourite trousers in a matter of minutes for peanuts.

I have never had a great deal of success with tailors. I lack the ability to explain what I want, the patience to go back for innumerable fittings and alterations and the will to haggle. In Thailand, I never found the fabric I wanted and resorted to buying cotton in England and taking it back to Thailand to get things made.

I had, for some time, been planning to go to Nehru Place, fabric centre of Delhi, purchase some linen and have some trousers made up. The months trickled past and a trip to England approached. Jigsaw beckoned. How much easier to buy trousers there and, I reasoned, I could then get them copied in India if I needed to. The shopping spree during my two month holiday in Europe resulted in (among many, many other things) three pairs of linen trousers and a pair of designer jeans which I think are too tight. All four pair of trousers were too long and as I was keen to start wearing them, I took them to an (Indian) tailor in London. The tailor pinned the trousers and then quoted me 15 pounds a pair to take them up. I declined.

So, back in India, I went to the local tailor in Jorbagh market who operates outside the convenience store. As he had no fitting room, he didn't seem to be very useful and proved even less so when he said he didn't do hemming in any event. I wasn't quite sure why but as I didn't think undressing and trying on trousers was altogether appropriate in the middle of the street, I didn't argue.

A friend recommended a tailor in Khan Market. At 11am, I arrived to find that it hadn't opened. I stood outside for about ten minutes until someone suggested I would find the tailor at the back entrance of the shop. I went in to the hole in the wall where a tailor was sitting at his Singer cross legged on the floor and the boss was attending to a suit.

"Could you hem some trousers for me please?" I asked, not unreasonably I thought.

"No, no hemming" the boss answered.

"What do you mean you don't hem trousers, you are a tailor?" I retorted, again, not unreasonably although somewhat irascibly.

"Why are you being so rude?" said boss man.

"Why won't you hem my trousers?" I asked.

"Not enough money".

"Listen, I am a foreigner. You could tell me it costs 100 rupees per pair and I would pay it".

"I do that for my clients for free".

"Well, I am willing to pay".

"No hemming".

"But I might have three suits for you to make tomorrow. How do you know I couldn't become a valuable client?"

"Do you have three suits?"

"That's not the point. I...." I trailed off. Clearly, I was getting nowhere. The Indians, famed for their entrepreneurial vision, apparently become totally blinkered when it comes to hemming.

Having failed to get a recommendation of a tailor who would hem in the market and who was also open, I returned home defeated. I told Laxmi of my woes and she said she would pin the trousers for me and get them taken up near her house. Two days later, she returned with four pairs of trousers, perfectly tailored. Cost? 20 rupees (25p) per pair. I don't think I can begin to extract a moral here.

Road Rage

2008-08-31T13:17:00.007+04:30

I am someone for whom one of the great benefits of expat life is that I have a driver. While confident driving in London (perhaps wrongly), the thought of driving in Asia petrifies me.

In Thailand, Jamie drove at weekends once we mastered our routes and much of the stress of driving was relieved by the fact that everywhere has valet parking or huge underground carparks. The principal threat came from the corrupt traffic police who, sensing easy game, would regularly pull over foreigners and issue tickets on spurious reasons. A popular topic of conversation among expats was how much you could bargain the price of the tickets down.

In China, foreigners are not allowed to drive without obtaining a licence. This can be done the hard way by passing an excessively complicated driving test full of convoluted rules which are never actually observed; or the easy way by obtaining a fake licence or bribing an official to give you one. The insurance to drive as a foreigner, is, however, prohibitive and when we took pity on our driver and let him off at weekends, we took taxis which in Shanghai, are cheap and plentiful and whose drivers are, for the most part, very good at not fiddling the meter for foreigners. Even I mastered taxi Chinese and would happily jump into them, prompting Eliot to ask while waiting for a bus in London, why we didn't just take a taxi.

It is an often reported fact that nowhere in the world are there as many fatalities on the road as in India. It does not take more than a couple of outings on the road before you accept this as an article of faith and wonder why, in fact, the death tole is so low, especially as seatbelts are never worn and there are usually far too many people in each vehicle with several children bouncing around, unsecured in the front and back. I once saw a rickshaw taking 11 children to school (at most they are supposed to carry four people).

Jamie and I spend most of our journeys when Jamie is driving, trying to work out what the road rules are supposed to be. Nowhere is this more puzzling than when going over a roundabout. New Delhi, beautifully laid out by Edwin Lutyens, features a huge amount of roundabouts. It is probably twinned with Milton Keynes. One of our friends, frustrated by trying to do business in India has made a list of 'things India does well' to encourage him when he is feeling down. Top of the list is roundabouts. They are plentiful and always (in New Delhi at least) adorned with beautifully kept flowers and trees. Unfortunately, something the Indians do not do well is navigate them.

When do you have right of way on an Indian roundabout? Essentially, when you are in front. Do not give way, do not pass go (absolutely no chance of that if you do give way), do not collect £200. Side mirrors on vehicles seem to be there purely for decoration in much the same way as the stickers and models of gods and saints which adorn the taxis. Occasionally check your rear mirror but when push comes to shove literally, if you are a nose ahead, you are king of the road. Size no issue. Of course, there is an exception to every rule and it must be said that buses are a law unto themselves. Crammed with people, some more out than in, the buses pick up speed only when they are in danger of being passed by a larger vehicle and on corners which they take at maximum pace careless of the cyclists and rickshaws who are batted to the side like the flies the passengers are swatting.

On one extraordinary occasion, Jamie and I had taken to the road with the kids early in the morning. Delhi does not do early mornings. We were driving down a main road with no more than two other cars in sight. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the two cars started to weave violently across the road, and like a guided missile seeking out a fast moving small target, smashed into the other car and careered off the road. In an astonishing piece of good fortune he happened to find the only stretch of road in Delhi with a soft verge. Most roads are lined with concrete barriers, shops, cows and people but this time, the driver was lucky and he drew to a gentle halt in a ditch. We waited long enough to make sure everyone was alright but not long enough to find out what on earth had happened to make the driver lose control.

Yesterday we were driving home and Jamie suddenly hit the horn long and loud. I was just about to berate him for excessive use of horn when I did a double take. A rickshaw was driving straight at us going the wrong way up a dual carriageway. I have also seen a guy in a disabled cart (a cross between a bicycle and a wheelchair) going the wrong way up the road straight into oncoming traffic.

A further road hazard (more for them than for us) are the small children selling flowers or magazines or simply begging. They weave in and out of the traffic lights , sometimes performing break dancing type acrobatic routines, and mostly, manage to scamper out of the way when the lights change. I feel sure though that some of them never make it back to the kerb. Cows and stray dogs are also obstacles to be negotiated. If you are unlucky enough to encounter an elephant on a busy road, you get stuck for some time.

Everywhere you drive, there are road signs warning that "speed thrill but also kills". They are unheeded. Nowhere in the world have I had so many near misses. (and in fact, one prang ) Sharp intakes of breath accompany each swerve in front of the car by cheeky rickshaw drivers. Jamie drives along with his hand permanently on the horn in true Indian fashion on a one man mission to teach the Indians to drive. Thank goodness we have a driver.

Have the big rain

2008-08-05T08:19:00.003+04:30

When we lived in Thailand, our driver who was a giant of a man,; gentle when sober but who would return from the weekends with black eyes and reeking of alcohol, did not speak much English. Every time there was a downpour, he would trot out one of his best sentences: "have the big rain", a remark which has entered into our family phrase book.

Returning to India from a holiday in Europe during which we experienced the coldest July day recorded in Hungary since records began and the hottest day in London this summer, we are now in the full throes of the monsoon.

My first thought is how on earth did Jamie and I persuade ourselves that backpacking around India during the monsoon was a good thing to do. In the hot season, the sun was burning but the skies were blue and it cooled down a little in the evenings. Now, you break a sweat just putting your head around the door. The trip from the house to the car is a death trap as you skate your way over the flooded marble (no drain) which has suddenly turned into the Delhi equivalent of the Somerset House ice rink.

The brooding clouds grow in intensity and the oppressive humidity rises accordingly until at last, it is nearly dark and then someone upstairs lets out the plug and the water pours down . It cascades onto the rooves and through the rooves; flooding our study; flooding our staircase and flooding the upstairs living room. Every day there is a new patch of mold, a new pool of water. Every day, the laundry smells of damp because it is not quite dry. With each downpour, the internet disconnects and the oven and cooker start conducting current and giving their users nasty electric shocks. The water tanks are filling with debris and the water is coming out yellow we now have yellow towels, sheets and bedding.

What this means in practical terms is that the army of useless labourers is back. Yesterday, six men perched under the house overhang as the rain apparently prevented them from doing anything. Only the plumber appears to have been active. Somehow, he managed to turn the water supply off and forget to turn it on again so we were without water today. Other than the rain that is.

Have the Big Rain.

There's a rat in the kitchen - or - It's raining ants

2008-05-14T08:10:00.003+04:30

When Jamie and I were deliberating as to whether or not India would be a conducive place to live, Jamie reminded me how hard India could be. Well, we reasoned, we would have money this time around; we wouldn't be taking buses and rickshaws everywhere, we would have a driver; we would have AC; we would have a nice house to escape Delhi in.

"Just how hard to you think it will be on a day to day basis?" I asked. "I can handle India if I can escape from it. I can handle the odd power cut. But I can't handle finding rats and cockroaches in the kitchen every day".

We arrived in Delhi in the cool season. Beyond the unusually hardy mosquito and the odd fly, our house was blissfully insect free. In fact, Delhi was fairly insect free. As it heated up, our house, particularly the back courtyard, became infested with flies. You could see hundreds of them on the plants and sitting on the floor or crawling over the drying laundry. The air in my walk to the market was so thick with flies that I fantasied about an Australian cork hat. Hotter still and the mosquitoes came out although they are not as bad as they will be during the rainy season.

Now the temperature daily reaches 45 degrees. It is too hot for the flies and the courtyard is no longer a fly carnival. It is plainly also getting rather hot for the rats. Jamie and I were sitting watching television when a small grey rat (or possibly a mouse) shot across the living room and under the door to the hall. When there was no repetition of this the following night, I decided it must have been a one off but the day after when I was sitting alone in the house, the rat came right up to me and under the sofa I was sitting on. I ran upstairs to bed.

A day later and I went into the bathroom to get the children's bath going only to find a gigantic cockroach taking a walk on the sink. Opening the kitchen cupboards has become an exercise in conquering fear as more often than not, a small cockroach runs for cover as it is disturbed by daylight. And then, there are the ants.

We have small ants in the cupboards and enormous ants on the floor. I was sitting typing an email when suddenly there was a loud splat. A huge, fat, black ant was crawling across my computer. Splat, another one. I looked up. Where were these ants coming from? They appeared to be falling from the ceiling. I still don't know their source. I think it's the air conditioning unit overhead.

I have called pest control.

Now the difference between Jamie and me or between the Ingrams and Heywoods should you care to extrapolate, is that Jamie would have called this blog 'frangipani, mangoes and geckos'. The rats would have been an afterthought if indeed worth a mention at all. His blog would have been about the fact that our two frangipani trees are in bloom and that there are dozens of fat green mangoes hanging off the beautiful tree in the garden. A portly gecko in the living room is doing his best to combat the mosquitoes. Our area of Delhi is filled with trees groaning under purple, orange and yellow blossoms. The boys are learning to swim. We are in India.

Happy Holi

2008-03-31T10:21:00.003+04:30

Holi, the spring festival, that marks the end of the clement weather co-incided with Easter this year. On the day of the festival, India takes to the streets to play Holi which involves showering people with water, powdered paint and, I'd been warned, much worse things. Apparently, one of the reasons for this is that spring is considered to be the season when everyone gets sick so showering people with water is supposed to cleanse them of sickness.

"Don't go out of your house on Holi" warned the lugubrious man who owns the hand made paper shop in Jorbagh market. This man knows everything about me. He knows all my family. He knows when my mother is coming back to Delhi and which airline she is flying. In fact, he has an odd knowledge of flights in general and always informs me as to whether the flights from London have arrived on schedule that day. A man then who clearly knows what he is about. "Why not?" I asked. "It is madness, complete madness. Everyone is throwing everything. You will be targetted as a foreigner and don't accept milk from anyone". "I beg your pardon?" "No milk. Everywhere, people will be offering you milk. This milk has bhang (marijuana) in it". "OK, well I don't generally accept milk from strangers so I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime on Holi".

I asked around as to whether or not the man was exaggerating. A couple of the foreigners I asked said they had heard terrible tales of Holi in Old Delhi. The Indians almost universally agreed with Mr Paper Seller.

Duly warned, we prepared to hunker down for Holi. Jamie and Nikki and Ben who were staying had other ideas. They decided to venture out. One thing everyone was agreed on was that you needed to wear clothes you were prepared to throw away and cover your hair (girls). Armed with water pistols, Jamie, Nikk, Ben and Eliot set out. I stayed behind with Toby. An hour or two later, four very happy, very coloured people returned.

Apparently, in upmarket Jorbagh, they had struggled to find people to play Holi with. They had purchased coloured powder and pink spray and set out to find targets and be targetted. Although they passed plenty of technicolour people, they remained unscathed and eventually resorted to covering eachother to show willing. Finally, they turned into a lower rent housing area to find a group of people. They started spraying them with water and paint only to receive somewhat horrified stares. Eventually, the locals approached, dipped their hands in the powder paint, gently daubed them on the face and then gave them a hug. All much more genteel than we had been led to believe.

Euphoria

2008-03-28T09:58:00.003+04:30

Jamie launched Virgin Mobile in India at the beginning of the month and has had to take part in a large number of office parties around India. The first, the main launch party, involved Sir Richard Branson jumping down several hundred feet of the Oberoi Towers hotel in Mumbai and taking part in a live Bollywood movie. The Delhi party which I attended was, in keeping with the difference between the two cities, a more subdued affair.

In a hotel on the outskirts of town, we rolled up to a red carpet theme extending to red carpet interviews complete with paparazzi and then rolled in to a 1970s hotel function room. Dingily lit and brownly carpeted, it felt much like the disco at Sandbanks I went to thinking myself somewhat of a rebel aged 10 when on holiday with my friend Max and his family. Strangely, half way through the evening, we were joined by a couple who might have been from Sandbanks who were on holiday in India, had managed to end up staying in this rather out of the way hotel and wanted to join the party.

The air of excitement among some of the employees surely could not just have been about the party or the opening of the business. Big things were expected and Jamie said that apparently a really popular Indian band would be playing. As the name of the band "Euphoria" was announced, screams broke out from the audience. One of the girls ran up to Jamie saying "Oh my God, this is the best night of my life, this is my favourite band!". "Don't worry" said Jamie, who assured me that things had improved since the days when we took buses to the accompaniement of songs sung so high that a few notes higher and only dogs would be able to hear; "Indian pop music is quite good to dance to".

To great fanfare the band walked on. An ageing rocker with black curly hair down to his waist; a rather studious looking guitarist in little round glasses, and the lead singer himself wearing jeans, leather jacket, white string vest and clearly older than me. To applause, the singer took off the jacket to reveal biceps that told of long hours at the gym but with a layer of fat which suggested that even the work outs were failing to halt the march of time on his body. The band began to play not the cheery Hindi pop music we expected but hard rock at top volume. Somewhat stunned, we watched as Virgin Mobile Delhi took to the dance floor. Fist pumping, jumping, head banging. It was all there.

Leaving the crowd a little later, we were talking to one of Jamie's colleagues. "Are they really one of the biggest bands in India?". "Oh yes, I particularly like their Sufi music". "Sufi Music???". "Yes, they started out as a Sufi band and then started to sing in English. The lead singer is a surgeon by profession". Somewhat sceptically, we eyed the guys on stage thumping their way through the latest tune. A few songs later, however, (were they never going to take a break?) the music did tone down and became quite pleasant. Half an hour on and they had moved on to covers of 'Another Brick in the Wall' and 'We will rock you'. The hall's promise of a 1970s wedding was fulfilled.

If you would like more information about Euphoria, check out: http://www.dhoom.com/

Things that go bump in the night

2008-02-26T09:01:00.003+04:30

It is occasionally possible to forget that in our relatively civilised house, we are in the middle of Delhi. Unfortunately, those times do not include between dusk and dawn.

On my first trip to India, I travelled without the benefit of ear plugs. The result was that I slept on alternate nights. Every other night, I would lie awake plagued by mosquitoes, heat, the cacophony of rickshaw horns and, most frequently, the howling of stray dogs.

So far, it's been too cold for mosquitoes and heat; we are sufficiently off the main road for the horns to be unremarkable but the dogs are a different story. Everywhere in Delhi, there are mangy, pathetic looking dogs stretched out on pavements napping in the sun who look at you reproachfully but unenergetically if you presume to go near enough to disturb their slumber. At night, fuelled by a long day of inactivity, they all seem to band together to discuss their takeover of the city and the noise is infuriating. Even the earplugs don't entirely drown them out.

When we first moved in, still new to the sounds of the city, I was very puzzled to hear what I was sure was the sound of marching bands. Every morning around 5.30am, I would wake up to the sounds of souza, drummers drumming and pipers piping. Did Delhi really go on the march each morning? I was rather worried I was imaging it and took a few days to pluck up courage to mention it to Jamie who appeared not to have noticed it. It was only when I found out that Republic Day was about to happen that I realised what I could hear was early morning rehearsal. Fortunately, post event, the morning marches have ceased although every now and again, I feel sure I can hear them at it.

Once the morning marching stopped, wedding season began. Periodically, we are roused from our post prandial stupour by the astounding hullabaloo of the ramshackle wedding bands who march up the streets in their once white uniforms and red tinsel lined turbans. I assume they are paid by the bridal party to leave as soon as they arrive at their destination.

The last of the major sleep disturbers (if you leave out the children) are the peacocks who are rapidly losing their charm. The dawn chorus sounds like cats being strangled. They make so much noise that they invariably wake up Toby who can then be heard on the monitor saying "cats say miaow, miaow, Eliot, can you hear the cats?". Poor Eliot, woken up by his brother rather than the peacocks can never resist the opportunity of correcting the offender "No Toby, not cats, peacocks".

Water

2008-02-02T17:01:00.000+04:30

When we arrived in Delhi, we were staying in a guest house which, despite costing more around £100 per night, was little more than a glorified backpacker hotel. Hot water arrived only if the guest house staff had remembered to turn a tap on outside the rooms. If they had, you could stand under a dripping tea bag with one hand on the taps as boiling water came out for a few minutes and then got progressively colder as the small immersion heater supply got used up. If you were quick, there was enough water for two showers. Toby was bathing in a bucket before sunset in order to catch the last of the day's warmth in the unheated rooms (see above).

We were very much looking forward to moving into our house with permanent hot water and our own towels. On our first night in the house, our first night in our own bed for two months and after a day battling mountains of dust left by the builders, I started to run the bath for the children. No hot water. We filled the bath up a few inches using boiled water. Time for us to go to bed and by now we were very cold and very dirty. Jamie and I eyed the small immersion heater doubtfully. "That's not going to do two showers worth" I said, ever optimistic. "Well, let's see if we have hot water in our bathroom" he said. He turned the tap on. Sure enough, no hot water. By the time we had fiddled around with the taps, there was no water anywhere except in the kitchen. We couldn't even flush the loos.

The landlord was called in the next morning by an angry and unwashed me. He called the plumber and after they had fiddled around for a while, I was called in to verify that not only was there water but it was hot. I was told to switch on a pump on the first floor balcony which would pump water around the house and also told to switch on an overflow alarm outside in the ground floor courtyard and switch everything off again once the alarm went off. I was told I needed to do this for a maximum of 20 minutes each day. I took a shower immediately but by the evening, despite having switched the pump on, there was no water of any kind. I could hear that the pump wasn't working.

Landlord and plumber arrived next morning to fix the pump. By the evening, no water although I could hear the pump working away. I had switched it on for 20 minutes in the morning but the alarm hadn't gone off and worried I would flood the house, I'd switched it off again.

The landlord was called again. He promised to come over again with the plumber. The next day, he guided my use of the pump. Ah yes, as we had 8 builders living in the back of our house, we were probably using rather a lot of water so maybe 20 minutes wasn't enough. Also, had he mentioned that the timing of the pumping was crucial? No, that apparently crucial information had not been passed on. It transpires that municipal water is delivered twice a day in the morning and the early evening. If you pump all the morning water up, you can't pump again until after the evening delivery.

Fully informed, we now do have running water. The pressure is lousy and the immersion tank only allows the bath to be filled to a depth of three inches (I have no idea how the landlord thought anyone was going to fill the enormous sunken bath he had been planning to put into the master bathroom before we stopped him). I think the pressure will improve once it gets hotter as the water will already be hot by the time it gets to the shower without the use of the immersion heater so we can mix in more cold. By then, we are told, it will be impossible to take a cool shower and the water will be too hot to use. Wonderful.

Pictures

2008-01-25T12:24:00.000+04:30

Jorbagh Market - our local

Toby makes a friend in the Lodhi Gardens

Khan Market - the most expensive retail estate in India

Khan Market
Jorbagh Market - great bookshop and deli

INA Market Butcher - the real thing

INA Market imported goods

Veg at INA Market

Eliot in Lodhi Gardens

Our house

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker...

2008-01-23T18:17:00.000+04:30

Shopping for food in Delhi is quite an exercise. In Shanghai, foreign food was easily obtained and local goods could be bought at the same stores or other, equally accessible places. Shops were open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day - well , perhaps not but more or less.

In Delhi, you go to the market. In fact, you go to several markets and these are not markets in the nice, laid out, air conditioned or heated sense that the Americans use the term 'market'.

Khan Market is allegedly the 'posh' market for rich Delhiwallahs and foreigners. It is some of the most expensive real estate not just in India but in the world and looks to me like a ramshackle collection of shanty shops with dust covered store fronts and dark interiors. It has a toy shop, some book shops, a few extremely expensive imported food shops (£4 for Philadelphia Cheese!), some quaint home furnishing stores, electrical suppliers, a number of supposedly good cafes which I can't find the front doors to and a few rather oddly placed brand stores like Tag Heuer sitting in among the dust.

INA market is a full blown, medieval, blood running in the gutters market. This is where you go to buy spices, household items, fruit and veg, meat, fish (in the winter months) and yes, as you wonder past the Samosa stall, you find a couple of shops piled high with imported goods. The shops sell a remarkable variety of food but it takes a while to realise it. Instead of three shelves of different brands of olive oil, you can choose from three bottles of different brands of olive oil. You can buy French butter, English cheddar, sour cream, ricotta and mascarpone. They are contained in one very small fridge which holds no more than two or three of each item.

Imported goods safely obtained, next stop is the spice stall followed by the nut stall, the veg stall and, if you are feeling really brave, the butcher. Here men sit cross legged on wooden platforms, peering over their blood stained blocks and weilding an alarming assortment of weaponry. Obviously, you can't buy beef nor, it turns out, can you buy lamb but you can buy mutton. In order to ensure (as far as possible) freshness, you are supposed to buy a whole leg or two of mutton and get the butcher to mince it in front of you. You are then presented with one bag of minced meat and one of chopped bone and fat. In the cold weather, the smell is mildly unpleasant. I do not intend to go there once it gets hot.

As you go about your shopping, you are accosted by boys shouting 'coolie' at you. They will load your wares into their baskets and follow you around the market as you shop and then take the purchases to the waiting car for you in return for a small fee. My mother who has done much of the market exploration and is determined not to be taken for a ride, refuses to use the coolies and instead, gets each shop owner to carry her shopping to the car, thereby necessitating several trips back.

Finally, you have done the rounds and emerge blinking into the sunlight and then you realise you still have to buy fruit. The fruit stalls are in the car park. I have no idea why.

The last place we shop is Jorbagh Market, our local around the corner market. This is an altogether more tranquil market intended mainly for the small amount of people living in Jorbagh. It is, however, a boon as it has an imported food shop (I know I have now described three places with such shops but there are only five in the whole of Delhi so it is good to have one so close), an excellent butcher selling only pork and chicken (don't know why it doesn't do mutton), a convenience store, a chemist and a great book shop. It also has a nice handmade paper shop, a rather dubious gift shop and five different banks - another mystery.

This means I don't actually have to go to Khan Market too often and that is a good thing because it doesn't really open until 11am. As my only childfree time is between 9.15 and 11.45, that doesn't give me a whole lot of time to shop when you think about how many places I need to go to in order to fulfil our requirements. INA market is better. By 10.30, most of it is open.

The shopping hours seem to me to be extraordinarily illogical for a city which is so hot for most of the year. Why not start early, have a long siesta in the middle of the day and then stay open late instead of opening one hour before the sun hits its high point. Maybe things open earlier in the summer, maybe not. I suspect this is just the start of trying to understand Indian logic.

Peacocks and parrots

2008-01-14T12:03:00.000+04:30

Here we are in Delhi. We arrived and moved into not a five star hotel or even a serviced apartment but a guest house. Highly reminiscent of our backpacker days, it was rather odd to be staying in a relatively low budget place (albeit with hot water and adjoining bathrooms) with two children, my mother and Jamie going off to work in the mornings. With no cooking facilities, we were on Indian take away for five nights with the children eating re-heated tinned spaghetti for the princely sum of £2 per tin. The spaghetti was starting to look rather appetising after five nights of palak paneer from the same restaurant.

The guesthouse is around the corner from our eventual house where renovations were and still are going on but this meant we could explore our neighbourhood. We are a couple of minutes from the beautiful Lodhi Gardens where the children can play among three hundered year old Moghul monuments while the weather keeps its cool. Two minutes away, I was relieved to find a delicatessen selling imported food at massive expense, a great bookshop - something so lacking in Shanghai - and a reliable butcher. Importantly, the Jorbagh Association also maintains tennis courts for members so Jamie and Eliot were impressed.

Eliot has started school and we have moved in to the house (more about that later). Toby has also started at a small nursery group and we are starting to feel our way around.

The boys are charmed so far. We live in a relatively tranquil area protected from the mayhem of the city. There are parrots and peacocks in the communal garden outside and on the way to Eliot's school, we pass the Delhi racecourse and polo ground where the horses are exercising. Weekend activity has been focused around visiting the National Train Museum, an outdoor graveyard for defunct steam engines - paradise for the boys.

Here are a few pictures to whet your appetite for more to come.

What's for dinner?

2007-03-13T16:11:00.000+04:30

The lunar new year is the most important Chinese holiday and, of course, the Chinese (being similar to the French and the Jews in this respect as in many others or so the Chinese like to suppose) celebrate the great event with a special meal.

On New Year's Eve this year in a bid to escape from the never ending fireworks, we were on a plane to Melbourne along with 500 Chinese tourists. China Eastern Airlines is not famed for its food. The Chinese are, however, notorious for snacking at every opportunity. They arrived on board carrying huge suitcases. I had thought they were trying to avoid the queues at baggage control but it soon became apparent that what they had in the overhhead lockers was their food supply for the journey, their time abroad, and a few extras in case the plane crashed and they were forced to live in the wild before being rescued.

First to emerge were the sunflower seeds. Anyone who has done long journeys in China will know that the buses or train floors are always littered with sunflower seed shells and the plane soon followed suit. After that, the smell of tangerines filled the air as someone passed around the crate they had brought with them. A more pungent aroma followed. Could it be that someone was eating fish? I peered over my seat expecting to seem some dried fish when my head turned as I heard a loud crack. The man infront of me had started to break up a large and seemingly recently cooked crab. Legs were duly passed over our heads and the cracking, swallowing, crunching followed by the inevitable sifting and spitting echoed all around. Needless to say, as we landed some hours later, the sound of eating had been replaced by the even less dulcet sound of puking.

When you land in Australia, you have to fill out a form declaring any food you are carrying with you. I negleted to mention the packs of raisins I had for the children but I could see the diligent Chinese ticking the relevant boxes. At customs, rather than being waved through, a huge line of Chinese were unpacking their bags and bringing out their food supplies. After a 12 hour night flight with two children, this was not a happy sight. I must have looked desperate. A customs official came up to us: " do you have any food with you?" "er, yes, some raisins for the children". "OK, no worries, head this way" he said waving us through a side exit. A few days later, we saw a report on the news "delays caused at airports by Chinese New Year holiday makers". They are always searched because they always carry food. This was one situation where I was very grateful for racial discrimination.

We returned to our lane to find that the locals had also been celebrating. Some months ago, the guy who sells rubbish for recycling adopted a stray dog. The puppy as he then was, was cute and recycling guy carried him around with him in his bicycle basket. The puppy grew and ran wild in the local lanes but returned to our lane to be fed and in due course, became a smallish dog. We found out today that recycling guy had been planning to kill and eat the dog for Chinese New Year but a neighbour had found this rather distressing and had purchased the dog for 500 Y (£35) thereby saving its life and, presumably, giving recycling guy enough money for an excellent dinner.

Christmas comes but once a year

2007-01-23T15:06:00.000+04:30

Apologies for the long absence.

Christmas comes but once a year so the saying goes. The saying does not tell us when it's supposed to come.

Before leaving Shanghai to return to Europe for Christmas, I was feeling decidedly un-festive. The only signs of Christmas were the giant Christmas train set in the nearby Hilton which we visited at least once a day for over a month and copious quantities of poinsettias and tangerines. A search for Christmas cards proved fruitless and I resorted to buying postcards from the Shanghai Museum. Clearly, the Chinese did not celebrate Christmas and indeed, why should they?

We left for the UK on the 18th December and were back on 2nd January. Somewhat to my surprise, there were Christmas trees all around, pictures of Santa, lights, messages. Eliot was overjoyed. "Look Mummy, it's still Christmas in Shanghai. Will there be any more presents?".

I thought about it and wondered why, amidst the decorations, there were numerous pictures of pigs. I also noticed that the florists were selling bouquets not of roses but of individually wrapped stems bearing toy pigs and then, I realised. The Chinese are a pragmatic lot. Chinese New Year is in February. It will be the year of the pig. The Christmas decorations will double up as Chinese New Year decorations (let's face it, they're all made in China) and there is always the possibility that someone might give them a Christmas present into the bargain.

Data Protection

2006-12-17T05:34:00.000+04:30

Once upon a time, I spent rather large (probably too large) parts of the day considering the issue of data protection. The concept is about as foreign as I am in China.

It has become clear that my phone number is being spread far and wide. I regularly receive unsolicited text messages in Chinese which, I am reliably informed, offer information on a wide range of subjects including call girls - apparently the concept of targetted marketing is also alien here.

This week I received the following call on my China Mobile operated mobile phone.

"Hello, where are you from?" said a Chinese lady in English.

"You called me, where are you from?" I replied.

"I don't know how to introduce myself. I am from China Unicom". China Unicom is China Mobile's only competitor and the entity which Jamie is struggling to do business with.

"Do you know China Unicom?"

"Er, yes, I do." subtext, you're the bastards welching on your deal.;

"Good, welcome to China. Goodbye".

What was the purpose of the call? As a marketing ploy to get me to change to China Unicom, it was woeful and how on earth did they not only get my phone number but know that I was a foreigner. Better not to ask I think.

The rain it raineth every day

2006-11-26T15:15:00.000+04:30

For three months, we have had virtually no rain. The papers reported every day that summer had never gone on so long. You may remember the official declaration of summer. For autumn to be declared, the daily average temperature has to be 22 degrees or less for three consecutive days. The warm balmy weather lingered on until two weeks ago when the temperature suddenly dropped, the leaves finally started to turn brown and fall off the trees and we tested our heating for the first time. Cue for the Chinese to start wearing down jackets and wrapping their children in hats, scarves and gloves. The foreigners merely added a jumper. The drop in temperature was swiftly followed by rain. A great deal of rain. It feels remarkably like London.

The headline of the 'Shanghai Daily' last week was "Ten more days of rain" after it had rained solidly for a week. Clearly, the English are in their element as they are able to talk about the weather incessantly and sport umbrellas at all times. What was more of a surprise is how much the Chinese seem to enjoy discussing the weather.

"Do you realise" said our driver "that the weather hasn't followed this pattern for 130 years?" "Er no, we weren't aware of that" said Jamie. "Well, it's true. 130 years ago, the weather was just like this". "Not 131 years ago? Not 140 years ago?". "No, 130 years ago, just the same". We laughed patronisingly until it occurred to us that the Chinese probably do have detailed climate records going that far back.

On the way to school, Eliot said "Mummy, do you know, the Chinese don't have umbrellas. They put plastic bags on their heads instead". It must be said, a fair proportion do.

Cross over the road my friend

2006-11-12T17:21:00.000+04:30

Crossing the road in Shanghai. What can I say? I take my life in my hands (not to mention my children's lives) several times a day. There are a lot of junctions, all of which have traffic lights, not all of which are at convenient locations. Aside from the obvious perils of jay walking (do not try this at home), the situation in China is complicated by the variety of different vehicles you are competing with. Cars, buses, taxis, bicycles, electric bicycles, motorbikes; bicycles carrying heavy loads of - well, pretty much anything really; men dragging carts containing - well, pretty much anything really - bamboo scaffolding, entire contents of house, vast quantities of recycling. You get the picture. These contraptions all progress at different speeds which means that you need an extraordinary amount of skill and anticipation to weave between them when there is no convenient place to cross the road. I would try a rugby simile here but I don't think I can carry it off.

Jay walking is a risk free business when compared with trying to cross the road when the green man walks. When the traffic lights show green to pedestrians and red to traffic, all traffic turning right is allowed to continue. This effectively means that instead of looking left and right when crossing the road, you are actually in need of a fully rotating head or eyes in the back and sides of your head to enable you to monitor whether or not it is actually safe to cross. Then see above for perils of crossing. Jamie has taken to marching across the road when the lights are red to pedestrians on the basis that the most dangerous thing of all is to cross when they are green.

The most difficult crossing I have to do on a regular basis is, ironically, a fully pedestrianised overhead crossing which goes across the expressway a block away from where we live and which I need to cross to get to the local park and many useful shops. There are escalators on this crossing but you have to go up four steep steps to get to the escalator (which may or may not be working) and then, having got to the top, it transpires that there is no down escalator. All fine if I'm on my own but not much fun when wielding Toby in a pushchair. I usually inch my way down the first few steps very slowly trying not to be unnerved by the audible intake of breath from grannies all over Shanghai as Toby dangles precariously at the top of a very steep flight of stairs. If you can't get help on the London Underground when negotiating the stairs, what help could I expect in Shanghai? Quite a lot it turns out. Yes, I did have two men carrying bicycles push past me last week muttering curses under their breath but I am almost always given help. This is surprising in itself given the traditional 'me' culture which is supposed to prevail here but what is more impressive is that more often than not, the lifting of the pushchair is preceeded by an impeccable "may I help you?". If only Londoners were so polite and helpful.

Fish and other water dwellers

2006-10-22T13:07:00.000+04:30

Eliot has become very interested in fish recently. This is probably because in true Chinese fashion, every building seems to have an acquarium, every pond contains fish, practically every puddle has fish in it. The Shanghai acquarium has a rather good reputation so we set off to the 'dark side' of Shanghai - the newly developed area across the river - to investigate.

It really was quite impressive. Rays, otters, penguins and tonnes of fish but the highlight was the shark tunnel through which a conveyor belt made a stately progression. Eliot was fascinated by the sharks, almost as much as by the scuba divers swimming around, warped by the shape of the tunnel to seem like children. The Chinese, however, were mostly more interested in the two foreign children in their midst. "Look, there are two of them. Look how fat the little one is. Why isn't he wearing socks?" the by now familiar litany commenced. Jamie decided it was time to act. "Watch the fish, not the foreigners". Everyone laughed. Snubbed, the lady turned her attention to the fish. "I've eaten that one" she said to her grandaughter. "Oh, and that one too. At least I think I have. I've definitely eaten that one" she pointed excitedly. We jumped off the conveyor belt and left her to eye up the fish hungrily.

A friend of ours who lives nearby recently acquired an acquatic friend. His house has an enclosed courtyard at the back complete, of course, with fish pond. There is no access other than through the house or over a very high wall. On coming home from work one day, he went into the courtyard to find a rather large turtle sunning itself. He went to fetch his ayi who nearly fainted when she saw it. The mystery was how it found its way to the house. Juli, a turtle owner and mutual friend, was suspect number 1 despite swearing that she'd had nothing to do with it. Eventually, the mystery was potentially cleared up when an article appeared in the local newspaper detailing the theft of some turtles from the zoo. "Turtles are very easy to steal" the zookeeper was quoted as saying. "They fit easily into pockets and are unable to practice self defence". Our theory was that the thief was under pressure and lobbed the turtle into our friend's garden.

We spent a slightly surreal evening on Saturday on board a Royal Navy frigate in town to "promote UK plc". All well and good save that the only people invited to the reception were from the UK. Perfectly sane men regressed to childhood as they oohed and aahed at the helicopter on board and the guns. The Chinese stayed home.

Thailand 10 - China 0

2006-10-12T15:45:00.000+04:30

The coup in Thailand may have been frowned upon by the international media but the Heywoods in Shanghai were delighted. Not for political reasons you understand, but because we had been desperately trying and failing to book tickets out of Shanghai for the October public holiday.

Our initial plan had been to go and stay with a childhood friend of Jamie's who has a house on Lantau in Hong Kong but his generous offer of hospitality had obviously not been cleared with his wife who was expecting not only a baby but her mother the weekend we had planned to visit and the offer was withdrawn a couple of days after we had booked our tickets.

I had sat in the travel agent for several hours trying to find an alternative. Strangely, the agents are very keen to make sure you pay a good price for your ticket. "What about Vietnam?" "Fully booked" "How about Thailand?" "Fully Booked". "How do you know it's fully booked?" "Fully booked, waiting list only." "Can you check?" "Yes, fully booked waiting list only." "What, every day during the week long holiday?" "Maybe not on October 1st." "OK then, October 1st is fine." "No, not fine, ticket too expensive!" "How much is it?" "Too expensive."

I had given up and we had resigned ourselves to an uneventful not to mention dull week in China when those thoughtful generals decided to stage a coup. We called the travel agent again and a couple of days later, had tickets to Phuket.

We found everything about Thailand charming. Somehow, when we first arrived in Bangkok, we were surprised that everyone raved about how nice the Thais were. It wasn't that they weren't nice, they were but it didn't really seem to impact on us. Coming from China, however, the continual smiling, the gracious gestures, the politeness, the soft tones of the language, were so striking that within minutes, we had acquired that slightly befuddled, gormless grin that tourists in Thailand so often sport.

We had four fantastic days in a hotel which we would have poured scorn on pre-kids but which managed to be both child friendly and tasteful - open aired and lush with tropical greenery. The food was great, the weather was mixed but we didn't care.

We landed back in Pudong airport and were greeted by the unsmiling customs officials (OK, I know they are not the best representatives of a people) but I quailed. As we cleared customs, two girls in blue uniforms intoned "Welcome to maglev. Welcome to maglev. Welcome to maglev" - maglev being the super high speed train which goes from the airport to nowhere in particular.

As I said to Jamie, we will look back on our time in Thailand with sighs of nostalgia and on our time in China, with wry smiles.

Banking

2006-09-26T14:56:00.000+04:30

Jamie's salary is paid into an account at the same bank as his company bank account. For this account, we have been issued with a single debit/cash card. Cheque books are seemingly impossible to come by and presumably, wives don't often get to share bank accounts with their husbands (or, alternatively, they don't let their husbands have access to their accounts) so a single card it is.

Jamie then instructed his PA to apply for credit cards. Two shiny gold cards duly arrived. Strangely, however, we have been unable to use them. Jamie checked and re-checked the pin number but nothing doing. Eventually, as I have the single (working) cash card, Jamie went into the bank to find out what was wrong. "This credit card isn't issued by this bank". "Well, can I have one that is?" "No, we don't do credit cards". Of course not, they're a bank, why would they do credit cards? Jamie tried his luck at the bank which issued the credit cards. "I can't use this card". "That's because you don't have any money in the account". "But it's a credit card, I don't need money on account". "Yes, but we can only issue credit if we know you can pay". It's not bad logic for a bank but very unhelpful for us. Back to the original bank. "Can I transfer money to my other account with the other bank?" "No, you can't do that". "Well, how do I get funds into the other account?" "You can withdraw money from this account and carry it accross the street to your other bank". Again, you can't argue with the logic. Jamie wearily withdrew a largeish sum which the cashier attempted to put into a clear plastic bag. That you can argue with.

Cash is king in China. Everywhere you go where payment is extracted has a note counting machine as the largest denomination is a note equivalent to £7.50. To pay Eliot's school fees, I have to visit cash machines for a period of 5 days (maximum withdrawal on any day is limited) and then carry brick loads of cash to his school.

Today, I had to pay the new gardener who is about to re-vitalise our garden. I went to no less than six cash machines spending a total of one hour trying to withdraw £200. In the end, I had to resort to using our English account. Some cash machines only take foreign cards, most only take Chinese cards. Perhaps because there is a national holiday coming up, every Chinese card taking ATM was clean out of cash. Fuming, steam pouring from my ears, I was cursing China - stupid, backward place, novelty totally wearing off.

Five minutes later, I was walking across the local park and saw a group of women having a tap dancing lesson. China suddenly seemed more likeable and my sense of humour was restored.

A post script to last week's blog. I saw the following sign in a car - absolutely no hint of irony. Instead of saying 'baby on board' the car carried a yellow sign with a picture of a baby and the legend "Baby on Road".

And the winner is.....

2006-09-17T12:10:00.000+04:30

My return to Shanghai after a lovely month in the UK and France has prompted me to view the city with fresh eyes and I feel moved to announce the first 'Shanghai Absurdity Awards'. The categories and winners are announced below:

Award for the most useless street stall:
Winner: the lady who stands on the corner of Urumuqi Lu selling a single food protector dome net thing to keep the flies off food. She only has the one - there is no stock. It may be that she is content to sell one a day and replace her stock on a daily basis but I suspect she has yet to make her first sale.

Runner up: the lady I spotted at the end of our lane selling 10 inch long sections of white plastic tubing.

Award for the most unfortunate shop name:
Winner: the clothes shop on Julu Lu called 'Embellism by Clara'

Award for the most annoying remark by an expat:
Winner: the 20 something, blonde, very English girl working for a relocation company who told a bunch of expat women: "I don't consider myself to be an expat - I choose to be here". Yes of course, the rest of us have been abducted by our husbands and had their passports confiscated. Sorry love, you're blonde, white, English and most definitely an expat.

Award for the most pointless rip off:
Winner: the hole-in-the-wall hairdresser around the corner which recently stuck on it's front door the 'Toni and Guy' logo. Who are they kidding? They could at least have tried to get the bubbles out from under the plastic.

Award for the most incongruous smell:
Winner: the smell of roasting chestnuts when the temperature is in the 30s. Of course, it's September, it must be winter!

Moganshan

2006-08-02T11:05:00.000+04:30

Our first weekend away from Shanghai since arriving in May was planned for the day Jamie's mother arrived from London. We were going to the Shanghai equivalent of Simla, Moganshan mountain, three hours from Shanghai and allegedly 5 degrees cooler than Shanghai. The plan was to stay in a house let by an English guy and his Chinese wife who ran a cafe restaurant on the mountain.

After collecting Eliot from his last day at school before the summer holidays, we loaded ourselves up into the car with the ususal paraphalia - travel cot, pushchair, lots of bags.

As we drove through the outskirts of Shanghai on smooth roads, we passed landmarks such as 'Cambridge Town' on the outskirts of Shanghai which looked quite impressive with genuinely nice modern houseing, and a large lake. Our marvelling at progress in China was rapidly halted when we crossed the border into Zhejiang province, the roads disintegrated and we bumped along, the children waking up with the jolts. Three hours and several toilet stops in strange places later, we arrived at 'the Lodge'.

What Mark, the owner of the lodge had neglected to mention was that the Lodge - the restaurant - was some way from the house we were staying in and that our cottage was accessible not by road but up a 200 step climb or a walk through a woodland hill - negotiable in daylight but something of a challenge in the dark carrying two children and all their baggage. Trying not to have a sense of humour failure, I walked grimly through the woods with a heavy Toby in my arms. The cottage, looked fairly comfortable but had no fans and was swealtering. I settled the children while Jamie, Marcy and our driver went to have dinner. After failing to deal with the large amounts of flying insects, I retired to bed. It was too late for our driver to go to his guest house so he dossed down on the sofa bed.

We woke early in the morning to find there was no running water. Marcy coped with this news gamely given that she had not showered since boarding the flight in London. I was less impressed. Jamie found a spring and filled up some buckets.

I did cheer up when a 20 minute hike led us back to the lodge to a rather splendid cooked breakfast but we were at something of a loss as to what to do given the lack of puschair walking. At one stage, we filled up an old paddling pool we found which we assumed belonged to Mark's kids, only to find that the hose had been used for petrol. We attempted to explore the mountain, getting hot and sweaty and found, at the end of the day, that a bucket of water can be just as refresing a way of washing as a shower under certain circumstances.

To be fair, the scenery was stunning and there was usually running water but the recent typhoon had interrupted supply. Without the kids, we would have been enchanted but.... On Sunday, we went down for breakfast. "What are you going to do today?" asked Joanna, Mark's wife and chief fry-up lady. "We're going back to Shanghai" we said.

Please note, the blogger will be on holiday in Europe for a month. Service will resume in September.

Street Fashion

2006-07-26T06:39:00.000+04:30

We are in typhoon season. It seems as though there is one every week. You know it is on the way when the sky clears from grey to blue. This is followed by a couple of days of torrential rain and wind, and then a brief cool before the humidity and temperature begin to rise again. Last week's typhoon killed more than 300 people in Southern China - enough to make the papers but not the international press.

The rain brings with it some interesing street fashion. While there are plenty of cars in Shanghai, many people still cycle. When it rains, they wear diaphanous capes in an array of colours. These look rather like maternity rain capes as they are significantly longer at the front than at the back but the design is a good one as the fronts drape over the cyclists hands and handle bars. The hoods have a large peak which keeps off a lot of the rain and they are just the right length to cover legs but not get tangled in the wheel spokes. Not everyone has such appropriate rain wear. Yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a shower cap and another with a plastic bag perched precariously on part of her head. It wasn't big enough to cover her completely. The rain collected in a puddle on top of the bag and so served no discernable purpose other than to make her look like an escaped lunatic.

Speaking of escaped lunatics, at the end of our road is one of the largest hospitals in Shanghai. This very modern building exudes an air of western efficiency which is somewhat undermined by the fact that many of the patients seem to hang out outside it in their shabby striped pyjamas having a fag break or worse, wandering dazed and confused into the road, spitting within striking distance of me and my precious children or hacking into our faces.

The sun also brings some interesting street fashions. Lady cyclists wear white cotton capes which cover their arms and hang in a diamond down their backs as they weave their way bat like between the cars. I assume the purpose of these garments is to protect the skin from the sun and possibly to keep their clothes clean. Some of the capes are covered in multi coloured embroidery so that you think these women belong to some ethnic minority group which has updated its national costume to fit into urban Shanghai. Another favourite is the 'super visor'. These look like baseball hats with extended rims but for the fact that the rims do not point out but hang down covering the face and are made not of material but of tinted plastic. You can't help but admire their practicality if not their beauty as they act as sunglasses and pollution filters at the same time.

The Terminator

2006-07-19T09:40:00.000+04:30

This sounds like it's going to be about a scary Chinese law enforcement agent. Sorry, but the Terminator is none other than Toby. Having been the sweetest most laid back baby in the world, he has developed into a clingy, tetchy little being. I say little but for his age, he is pretty solid - broad backed, fat legged and now, completely mobile. Every time I put him down with some toys and sneak off to the kitchen to get a glass of water or something, I hear the relentless pad, pad, pad, tetch, tetch, tetch of Toby seeking me out. No matter how far I run, he doesn't give up. There is no stopping him. He is the Termiator. This persistence is also applied to any other of his seemingly nonsensical wishes. While Eliot was easily distracted, Toby is remarkably single minded for a nine month old. When he finally tracks me down, he climbs up my leg until he is standing, precariously clinging to my legs. In exasperation I pick him up and then he puts his head on my shoulder and smiles triumphantly and I am forced to forgive him.

Last weekend, we had brunch with some friends and put Toby down to sleep in their spare room. When he woke up, we found we couldn't open the door. There was Toby in a strange, dark room, screaming to be picked up and the door was not budging. Happily, manpower is not at a shortage in China. Skill, however, can be a different issue. Withing five minutes, a locksmith had been located. He knelt at the door for a few minutes with some impressive looking tools but seemed a bit stumped when Jamie explained that the door wasn't actually locked. A few more minutes and some prodding. "It's broken" he said helpfully. "Yes, we know, that's why we called you - can you open the door?" "I don't know" he said sitting back on his heels. "Well, could you try?" said Jamie through gritted teeth as Toby screamed hysterically in the background. "OK" said the locksmith finally and a few minutes later, the door was opened and Toby was liberated. Two minutes later, he was fine. I was still hyper ventilating when we left.

Eliot has not been short of a few adventures of his own, mostly involving attempts to knock himself out. In the space of a week, Eliot has had a door opened into his head; has opened a cupboard door on the same spot; has slipped and cut himself right next to his eye and fallen over and cut his head open against a table. I have tried to explain to him that if he falls over, he should put his hands out to break his fall but instinct seems to be failing him. I am slightly concerned that his nursery is going to call social services. At least I would be if we were in the UK. Yesterday, I went to collect him from school and was told that he'd fallen over and hurt his knee and had been very upset and then had a nosebleed. "I cried at school today" announced Eliot in the car. "Was that when you fell over?" "No, Jasmine pushed me". "Jasmine - are you sure?" Jasmine, the girl who wouldn't get into the swimming pool. Jasmine who is approximately half Eliot's height. I would be surprised if she were able to push a feather let alone Eliot. "Yeah" said Eliot in injured tones.

Eliot has a new friend from school called Flora or at least I have a new friend, Flora's mother so Eliot is now playing with Flora. We all went out for lunch last Saturday and Eliot wanted Flora to come home and play. "Another day" we said. Eliot got home and sat on the sofa. "I don't have any friends" he sniffed. "Of course you do". "Yes but I don't have any friends in my house" he continued, sticking out his lower lip. Slightly nonplussed, we were wondering how to respond when Eliot looked up and caught my eye and couldn't help a little giggle escaping. Cheeky person.

Swimming

2006-07-09T15:07:00.000+04:30

We have joined a sports club called the 'Ambassy Club'. Apparently, it was intended that it be called the 'Embassy Club' but something got lost in translation. Truth be told, it's not the best sports club in the world. Jamie was pleased that there was a squash court but it was only on trying to play on it that he realised it was the wrong size. There aren't many squash players in Shanghai needless to say. The club does, however, have a nice outdoor pool and a pretty decent indoor one which is about 10 degrees colder than the outdoor one.

To date, Eliot has not exactly been a water baby and was shamed by his younger cousin last summer when he refused to sit down in the paddling pool that she was happily splashing about in. Perhaps it is the stifling heat or the warm water or perhaps it is simply being a year older but Eliot is now a keen swimmer, or so he likes to think. In the space of two weekend visits, he has gone from crying when the water got in his face to jumping into the deep end and shooting down the water slide. Another contributing factor to his enjoyment is the purchase of some water wings which keep him afloat and lend him a very false sense of security in the water.

Last week, I took him swimming after school and told him he could go in the shallow bit (which is divided by a small wall from the deep end) while I took off my outer clothing by the side of the pool. I had turned my back for two seconds when I heard Eliot shout 'look at me Mummy'. I turned around to find he had jumped into the deep end and was afloat but with no ability to remain so and no way to direct himself to the edge of the pool. Clearly, the sooner he learns to swim, the better.

In my first week here, I had met a mother at Eliot's school who asked if Eliot would like to do swimming lessons. I said definitely and she said she would organise it. Two months later, she finally emailed to say that she had set up lessons with 'Johnson'. She told me she had spent some time finding out who the best teacher for little children was and then added that I would recognise him as he was the best looking of them. She wasn't wrong although I am not sure which of the two characteristics was the one which persuaded her to go ahead.

Anyway, last Friday, Eliot lined up with his classmates Killian (German, nearly 4) and Jasmine (Chinese, indeterminate age but miniscule). Oliver the child of the organising parent will join next week. It took some time for the children to realise that they were supposed to be having a lesson and then there was some crying when the strange man talked to them but Eliot was keen and duly put his face in the water to blow bubbles as instructed. Killian continued to cry and Jasmine refused to go in the pool. Eliot came out because he needed the toilet. Killian continued to cry, Jasmine refused to get in the pool. I attempted to find Eliot a toilet. In a brilliant piece of planning, the only toilet is three hundred yards and two flights of slippery stairs away. I assume most children take this as a licence to wee in the pool. Not Eliot. Clearly desperate, the life guard (who, incidentally, sits miles away from the pool facing the other direction) shouted at him not to wee in the foot washing pool. I appealed to Johnson 'he won't make it to the toilet, do you want him to go in the pool?' Eliot was then hurried towards the outdoor showers which to my knowledge are never used - at least not for showering.

At the end of the lesson, Eliot went under the water to pick up Johnson's watch from the bottom of the pool. Killian continued to cry. Jasmine had still not got in the pool. I call the lesson a success.

Death in the Lane

2006-06-26T07:59:00.000+04:30

Yes, this sounds like it's going to be an Agatha Christie novel but there is no mystery here. A few days ago, we were informed by Mr Guo, our driver, that an elderly gentleman who lived two doors down from us, had died in the night.

Relatives and neighbours wearing black armbands started appearing in the lane. The dead man's clothes were burned out in the lane in an oddly unceremonial ceremony and without much reverence.

We asked what it would be appropriate for us to do and it was suggested that we buy some flowers. This did not mean buying a bouquet but rather a huge wreath on a stand with a commerative plaque in the middle. One was duly presented and joined the others which lined as far as the eye could see into the house and snaking out into the Lane.

The previous occupants of our house were a French guy who worked for L'Oreal, his Chinese wife, their two children and their three ayis (one for each child and one for the house). Apparently, they behaved like lords of the manor and distributed largesse to the occupants of the lane for completing small tasks like collecting their mail when they were away. We were not really keen to get into a financial relationship with our neighbours but wanted them to know that they had our sympathies. It seems that the gesture of buying the flowers was appreciated and the widow and her son came over to thank us and told Mr Guo what a nice family those foreigners are.

Somewhat alarmingly given the high temperatures, we had been told that the body would remain in the house for three days and I took to rushing past the house in question with my nose held. As the days progressed, fortunately, the only smell which reached us was a pervasive one of incense.

On returning from a trip to the cash and carry which was located, unsurprisingly, in a far flung part of town which looked nothing like the parts of Shanghai I've become familar with but very similar to the other Chinese cities I've been to, Mr Guo attempted to get the loaded car as close to our gate as possible and ended up stopping outside the dead man's house. Unfortunately, this co-incided with the assembly of large amounts of mourners wearing the black patches and white sashes of the bereaved. Fearing that the body was about to be carried out, I glanced at the red eyed widow and hurried by. To my alarm, Mr Guo opened the boot to unload the car. No, I gesticulated, later. He looked surprised. I couldn't communicate that I didn't think my shopping was very important under the circumstances and wanted him to vacate the area to make way for whatever ceremony was about to happen but when I hot footed it into the house and closed the gate after one more gesture, he got the message.

When I re-emerged into the lane half an hour later, the only trace of what had happened was a chalk ring inside which had been another bonfire of clothes.

Ayi

2006-06-23T10:22:00.000+04:30

Our ayi (maid/helper/other politically correct term) 'Sally' speaks a tiny bit of English which is just enough to enable us to communicate the essentials.

Unsurprisingly (or surprisingly depending on your point of view), she is very enthusiastic about looking after Toby and is slightly disappointed that I seem to spend so much time with him, leaving her to clean the floors, do the ironing etc.

While I had no qualms whatsoever about leaving Eliot at nursery in order to go to work, I do feel irrationally guilty about leaving Toby with Sally while I indulge myself by going swimming or meeting someone for lunch although less guilty if I am taking Eliot to school or food shopping. This is doubly pointless as for much of the time when I am out, Toby is asleep. Nonetheless, I am not selfless enough to pass up the opportunity of some 'quiet time' so most days, Sally does a stint with Toby.

Yesterday, my landlady came round to pay some workmen. As soon as she arrived, Sally proudly scooped Toby off the floor and proceeded to extol his virtues. While I don't understand exactly what she was saying, there can be no doubt that she was explaining how far he had crawled, how he had pulled himself up to standing and his other many achievements. Well, she may have been saying 'look, isn't this child outrageously fat? And he's so backward, he can't even crawl properly' but I prefer to believe the former. Somehow, the fact that Mandarin (or Shanghainese) was the language of the moment, gave Sally what she felt was the right to appropriate Toby. For half an hour, she continued to hold him and elicit admiring coos from our landlady, leaving me to hover aimlessly in the background.

One of the main reasons to have an ayi is not one that I would have predicted. It is because the counters in the kitchen are about a foot lower than they would be in Europe and we are actually endangering our health and our backs if we try to cook or clean up in it. I consistently bang my head on the extractor hood which is at eye level and Jamie can barely see the counters they are so far away from him.

We assume that Sally is happy in her job. She spends a lot of time singing to herself as she works. Her favourites are 'Old MacDonald' and 'Jingle Bells'. Needless to say, this drives me insane but it would hardly be reasonable to ask her to stop and as Jamie says, if the biggest complaint you have about your ayi is that she walks around singing, you aren't doing too badly. My response is to crank up the music and sing more loudly than she does.

Summer in the city

2006-06-22T09:25:00.000+04:30

Some time after summer was officially declared to have begun, it has arrived with a vengenance. Last weekend when it was hot but pleasantly breezy, Jamie scoffed at those who warned of unpleasant times ahead. "It doesn't get that hot here - it's nowhere near as hot as Bangkok". It's 37 degrees today and incredibly humid. Even taking Eliot to school at 8.30am was an ordeal. This was as much due to the energy required to push Eliot as to the now overpowering smells which accompany any walk.

Given the Chinese propensity to dump all rubbish on the streets, Shanghai is surprisingly litter free. This is not because people put their litter in the waste bins which do actually line the streets, but because there is an army of street sweepers patrolling the pavements. Each lane has its own litter bins at the street end of it and these are kept remarkably tidy and are emptied regularly. With temperatures in the high 30s though, even regular emptying is not enough to keep the odours at bay and the street sweeper bins can now be nosed out at some distance.

The colourful open food stores which I walk past on the school run have turned into a gauntlet of overpowering smells which I dodge as quickly as possible. The fresh fish store is no longer so fresh and the entrails which sit in the buckets by the shop are stomach turning. The meat store which had no smell a few weeks ago can now be detected all too easily and I avert my gaze from the man stirring the chickens' feet with his hands. Even the fruit and flower stores are no longer so pleasing. If you add to this the pervasive, acrid cement dust, it is a heady mixture which leaves you feeling as though there is not quite enough oxygen in the air.

I collapse into my cafe with more relief than usual and bask in the air conditioning and the ever delicious aroma of cappucino.

Sporting prowess

2006-06-18T15:22:00.000+04:30

It was a weekend of sports tournaments. Yesterday, Jamie's office had organised a badminton tournament. Strangely, the address of the courts was a lane off Shanghai's premier shopping street. We headed, somewhat sceptically, towards it doubting very much that we would find a badminton court amidst the Vivienne Westwood and Chanel shops lining the street but, as is often the way in Shanghai, you turn the corner and suddenly the glitz disappears and you are back in China.

We headed down the lane encouraged by the people wandering past with rackets and then, sure enough, there was an aircraft hanger of a building with a dozen badminton courts inside. The paint was peeling off the walls and there was no airconditioning in the 30 degree heat but there were some pretty keen badminton players there. Jamie joined the somewhat out of condition office colleagues and tried hard to adapt his squash game to badminton - not entirely successfully. Some of the players on the neighbouring courts were, so I was told, professional players who, in true communist style, were playing side by side with the likes of Eliot who was determinedly hitting the shuttlecock over the net next to theirs.

Today, Jamie was playing in a charity tennis tournament. Not knowing what to expect, he headed off alone to find out whether or not it was worth the rest of the family turning up. Half an hour later, I got an excited call from Jamie. "Come down, there's a 250 seat stadium and a half hour opening ceremony. So we came. Centre court was almost the size of the one at Queen's. On it were 50 or so people waiting to hear the opening speeches and a very large sound system playing "The Ride of the Valkyrie".

After interminable speeches, the former mayor Shanghai (65+) tottered onto the court in his tennis togs and declared the tournament open by serving to the strains of the theme to the Magnificent Seven.

Jamie's partner was an elderly Japanese who, it became apparent within seconds of the warm up starting, was incapable of hitting a shot in court. Jamie's opponents were a senior party cardre and a young, rather sharp looking player. Jamie and partner were wiped off the court. It was then that it became apparent that the supposedly random pairings were not quite so random after all. The former deputy mayor was playing on the next door court with an extremely good partner who essentially won his match single handedly. I found out later that he was the club pro.

Photographers swarmed around making much of the tall foreigner and his two childre. "You are like an angel" said a Chinese lady to Eliot as he shouted "good shot Daddy". When I pointed to Toby in his pushchair, she said "Two children. Happiness". Happiness indeed.

Learning Chinese

2006-06-12T17:39:00.000+04:30

Eliot is learning Chinese or at least so he thinks. While the things he can actually say don't amount to much more than 'hello', 'goodbye', 'excuse me', 'thank you' and 'see you tomorrow', he believes that he can communicate and that people understand him perfectly. He realises that the sounds of Mandarin are different to those in English but he doesn't seem to understand that if you don't make the right sequence of sounds, the sounds don't mean anything.

This morning, Eliot opened the gate to our house on his way to school. "Ni hao" ('hello') he said in a very passable accent raising his arm in salute to the noodle maker, the bookseller, our driver and Master Worker Shen who were out in the lane preparing their wares for the day. Shema jzhe shema he added conversationally and completely nonsensically while maintaining passable accent. "Mummy, do you know how to say 'Mummy' in Chinese?" he asked a few seconds later. "No" I said, hoping I'd learn somthing "Mummy-ah" he said (incorrectly). I think he got this from our helper Sally (as she insists we call her). The sounds are coming but the words are not.

At the receiving end of Eliot's 'faux chinois' is Xiao Jun, Master Worker Shen's eight year old son. Eliot has a strange relationship with Xiao Jun. When they scooter in the lane, Xiao Jun is the leader and Eliot follows him enthusiastically. When, however, Xiao Jun comes into our front garden to play with Eliot, Eliot bosses him around endlessly. This doesn't help Eliot as Xiao Jun doesn't understand but he knows when he is being bossed around and the desire to play with Eliot's toys is usually outweighed by the irritation of Eliot's constant chatter in about ten minutes. "Eliot, you have to speak Chinese to Xiao Jun, he doesn't understand English" I say. "Xe Xema Xedze" says Eliot in reply to Xiao Jun, nodding encouragingly. Alas, Xiao Jun is still at a loss.

On saying goodnight to Sally today, Sally answered in Mandarin and Eliot tried and failed to repeat what she said. "I don't think that was right Eliot, try again". He repeated his made up words. Sally smiled. "You see" he said, "she understands me" and she did.

The Sound of Silence

2006-06-08T17:22:00.000+04:30

I woke up this morning with the feeling that something was wrong. A sense of unease permeated my sleep fogged mind. What was different? Something was definitely amiss. As I struggeld to full consciousness, I realised what it was. Outside, I could hear birds singing. Birds singing in Shanghai? I'd seen birds in the garden. I'd seen them in cages but I'd never heard them before. Apart from the birds, silence. Absolute silence. Of course - the construction ban was in place. Student exams had started and building had stopped. I took out my earplugs and stretched out. I could almost be in the countryide. Two minutes later, the banging of metal on metal. A stubborn builder was defying the ban. Then the noise of police sirens as government forces rushed to the scene of the crime.

OK, I made that bit up but I was impressed by the effectiveness of the ban. We hadn't been expecting that much from it given that the night it was supposed to come into force was the night that our neighbour Master Worker Shen decided to rebuild the interior of his house. Drilling started at 10.30pm. The next morning, we emerged from our house to find the lane strewn with the entire (albeit meagre) contents of the house which added to the outside fridge units, four chairs, 7UP umbrella, bird in cage, four kittens and their mother and druken friend who emerges from the house in his pyjamas no earlier than midday, all of whom habitually lurk outside Master Worker Shen's house.

Urban planning

2006-06-04T05:56:00.000+04:30

You may have noticed that construction is a recurring theme of these blogs. It is all pervasive in Shanghai. Building is going on everywhere from soaring tower blocks to small hole in the wall dumpling stalls. The noise created by these works (let's not even think about the pollution) creates a constant background orchestral accompaniement to the city right around the clock. The government, taking pity on its beleagured residents, has decreed that all construction other than on the most important of municipal projects, must cease between the hours of 10pm and 6am in the run up to the public university entrance exams in order to give the candidates a good night's sleep. During the days of the exams themselves, no construction whatsoever is allowed.

The city will also grind to a halt from 14-16 June. A big-wig conference is being held in town and various roads will be closed to allow the cavalcades through. Everyone is 'encouraged' to take a holiday but the pay-off is that they are supposed to work the weekend before. In order to help ensure co-operation, air conditioning is being turned off in the offices.

Working hours here are very flexible. On returning home from a Saturday night out at midnight, we came across a slightly sinister, lone figure in our lane wearing large earphones, a luminous striped jacket and a battery pack and swinging what looked like an oversized iron sink plug which was periodically rested on the ground, along the pavement . "What in the world are you doing?" we asked the man. With a remarkably cheerful smile (he was probably glad to catch a glimpse of a fellow human being), the man told us he was checking the underground water pipes for leaks. Quite why this activity had to take place at midnight on a Saturday was something we didn't have the energy to get to the bottom of.

Celebrity Baby

2006-06-03T08:24:00.000+04:30

In Shanghai, Toby has achieved the kind of celebrity status he could only dream of when competing with the glitterati of Primrose Hill. Cries of "bebby, bebby" follow him wherever he goes. As the imperial chariot makes its way through the streets, the crowds part to let him through (sometimes) and the indignation at having to move gives way to wonder when the realisation that a foreign baby is among them dawns.

Toby smiles graciously at the adoring public (fortunately, he is a very smiley baby) and I maintain a frozen grin on my face as people lean forwards to prod him. 'Can these thighs be so large? Can his face really be so white? Are his eyes really so blue' and no doubt 'is his nose really that big?'. Toby is poked and stroked on all available bits of flesh, but I have to face tirades from old ladies who are appalled that he is not wearing socks. "But it's 30 degrees and he's hot", I attempt to communicate as Toby sits in the pushchair with sweat pouring down his face.

When I take the boys out in the double buggy, people only realise that it contains two children as I go past them. "Wah, lianger" ("wow, two of them") say the amazed public pointing as if to let me know. I am tempted to stop and feign amazement - "really, two of them? Oh my God, how did that happen?".

Desertification

2006-05-31T06:50:00.000+04:30

One of the joys of the French Concession is that the roads are lined with large trees which bow across the road to create a green canopy in the summer. I was, therefore, mildly alarmed to read that Shanghai's council is to spend 3m Yuan on cutting down trees in Shanghai. This seemed particularly surprising given China's much publicised campaign to plant trees in order to stop the shrinking desert sands from invading the cities. This sounds like a contradiction but if I understand it correctly, the deforrestation causes the sand to blow away so the deserts are shrinking and the sand is invading the cities.

Visions of trees crashing down all over the French Concession as local government policy struck home did not seem too far fetched given that some London councils are allegedly going to cut down all the lime trees in their boroughs to prevent personal injury claims from people who slip on the residue. Further reading revealed, however, that only trees which were planted less than four metres from housing or those causing severe insect problems would be targetted. Apparently, in many houses and apartment blocks, people look out on a Jack and the Beanstalk like view where the foliage obscures everything else so they get no natural light through the windows. Whether this is due to expanding buildings or poor landscape gardening, I do not know.

On the subject of desertification, the key note speaker at a recent conference on desertification (is this a technical term?) in Beijing claimed that only 30% of the sand storms in China actually originated from China and the rest were "foreign invaders". He went on to say that despite being blamed for many of Asia's sandstorms, China only produces a third of the world's sandstorms - the other major culprits are Asia's near neighbours, Africa, the US and Australia. OK.

The gardener

2006-05-30T07:59:00.000+04:30

Our house has a small garden which has newly laid grass. We lovingly nurture the grass and, following Jamie's mother's instructions, water it every day (or ask the ayi to do it). The result is that the grass grows visibly by the second and needs to be cut quite frequently. We duly procured a gardener but I rather suspect he is a rich Shanghainese who just happens to have a lawnmower and is doing a favour for the friend who recommended him to us. He does not volunteer to come but has to be tracked down and begged. He will not come if rain is forecast any time in the next three days. When he finally arrives, he shows up with a lawnmower wearing blue chinos, smart shoes and a quite decent looking shirt and proceeds to cut the lawn, trimming the edges with what look like paper cutting scissors. This is all he does. Things he does not do include raking fallen leaves, weeding, watering or even disposing of the pile of twigs we had collected following last week's exceptionally windy weather. Approximately half an hour after arriving, he departs with lawnmower, scissors and smart shoes, leaving the ayi to tidy up after him and do all the jobs he has left undone. I have no insight as to what exactly qualifies him to be a gardener other than possession of said lawnmower. It's a start I suppose.

Steamy baodzi and hard hats

2006-05-29T07:47:00.000+04:30

The walk to Eliot's nursery takes us down a long, main road which is filled with flower shops, fruit stalls and snack stalls. If this conjures up images of quaint China, picture also motorbikes, cars, bicycles and builders. The whole of Shanghai is under construction. Every time I walk down the road, a different part of the pavement is blocked by temporary scaffolding and I have to launch the pushchair into the road, ignoring the cries of horror from the elderly ladies out for their morning constitutionals. If I can manoevre around the workers, we risk being struck by falling masonery or burnt by the sparks of the metal cutters so I am thinking of buying hard hats for the family or at least putting Eliot into his bike helmet.

As we get near the nursery, we hit the profusion of snack vendors. There are stalls selling what look like triangles of filo pastry sprinkled with sesame, greasy flatbreads, eggy bread with chives, baked savoury pastries, grilled dumplings and even a lady making what looks like pancakes on a parisian style crepe pan onto which she breaks an egg and then folds in herbs.

The most picturesque and typical stalls are the steaming bamboo stacks containing baodzi, steamed bread dumplings stuffed with meat and/or vegetables. Sinophiles and dim sum lovers will know what I'm talking about. Steam pours from these stalls in the morning but what should be a tasty breakfast snack stall is a scary sight for a small boy from England. Eliot has a love hate relationship with these stalls and I never know whether he is going to spend the whole trip to school moaning about going past them or looking forward to them. Today, we had the fear. "Mummy, I don't want to go to the steamy baodzi place" he whimpered as I wheeled him down the street. "But Eliot, they are just dumplings which people eat for breakfast". "But I don't like them". Well, if I buy one and let it cool down, will you try one and then you don't have to be scared any more?". "OK but then it will just be baodzi not steamy baodzi". "Yes, that's right" I said. As I got to the steamiest of the stalls, I checked again that he wanted one. Yes, he was going to try one. I purchased and broke open the dumpling. Steam gushed forth. Eliot shrunk back into the pushchair. "I don't like to try it. When I'm bigger, then I will eat one" he said. "OK, well, would you like to carry it in its little bag". "No" said my big, brave son but once the steam had stopped, he became more interested and demanded to carry the bag. He marched into nursery carrying it high infront of him and announcing to everyone that he had a 'steamy baodzi'. It was duly deposited in his favourite dump truck which he proceeded to drive around the playground and was not released when I left him. I wonder whether I will be handed it when I go to pick him up. Maybe tomorrow he will taste one.

House pictures part 2

2006-05-28T12:24:00.000+04:30

House pictures

2006-05-28T12:09:00.000+04:30

Summer is a comin' in

2006-05-25T11:19:00.000+04:30

"Officials likely to declare the first day of summer today" read the front page of the 'Shanghai Daily', an entirely objective English language publication with no government input whatsoever, which I amuse myself with while drinking my rather good coffee on the way back from taking Eliot to school. I imagined a designated office for the declaration of the seasons in which grey suited men debated whether or not to change the season. Could an especially persuasive civil servant have summer declared in January? Sadly no. It seems there is a prescribed formula. When the average temperature is over 22 degrees for five consecutive days, summer is deemed to have started on the first of those days. As the temperature rose to 30, summer was duly declared to have begun. Today, it is 16 degrees and pouring with rain.

Doctors and nurses

2006-05-25T11:01:00.000+04:30

Every foreigner who is resident in China has to have a 'medical' for which privilege they must pay $US 100. The medicals take place in an innocuous building bearing a plaque which states that it is the 'health inspection for foreign entry and exit persons'. Does this mean that you have to have a medical before you leave the country too? I wonder. On arrival, I was asked to present two passport photos. On handing them over, the receptionist said in polite English, "Excuse me, but do you have any other photographs with you?" "Only photos of my children" I responded, 'why?'. "Because this one is too small and this one is too big" she said, referring, I assume, to the size of my face relative to the size of the photograph. "No, that's all I have" I said wondering whether I was about to be deported but instead, I was given a metal tag bearing the number 90 and sent to the waiting room to sit with several other slightly nervous looking foreigners (after having paid the required fee).

"Candidate number 82 please come in" intoned a recorded message. Candidate 82, shuffled nervously forward and disappeared into a room from which he did not re-emerge. When my number was called, I went through the door. Forms were filled and I was ushered out of another door into a locker room. "Please remove upper clothing and put on this dressing gown. Please keep on pants" said a pink gowned lady. Doing as instructed, I was told to keep my shoes on but cover them with blue paper bags. I shuffled out in my dressing gown and blue slippers to join the similarly attired foreigners who now all resembled inmates of a lunatic assylum. "Room 110" I was told. I went towards it. There was a screen in front. "Go in please". I went in and had a few pints of blood removed. From there, I had a sight test in room 112, an x-ray in room 113, I was weighed, measured, had my blood pressure taken (all in separate rooms) and somewhat alarmingly, was hooked up to multiple electrodes in another. Orwellian images flowed through my mind but they were just doing an EKG. Finally, I had a conversation with a doctor. "Any operations?" he asked. "A c-section". "Please lie down and undo trousers". 'C-section scar present' I saw him type into the computer. What possible interest can the Chinese government have in that sort of information? I can understand that they might want to check you don't have any infectious diseases but can a c-section scar or absence thereof really be useful information? Will it provide clues as to whether or not I am an enemy of the state or a friendly alien?

My report will arrive 'between 9 and 12 on 29 May. Please pay 30 Yuan for delivery' intoned a further recorded message.

Pictures of the boys - Eliot 2yrs 9 months, Toby 7.5 months

2006-05-22T15:48:00.000+04:30

White goods

2006-05-21T17:16:00.001+04:30

I found a great way to spend Saturday afternoon in Shanghai. We have been suffering with a washing machine which doesn't drain and a (brand new) tumble dryer which doesn't dry. Desperation set in and we decided to invest in a new tumble dryer and persuaded the landlord to buy a new washing machine. Juli, our guardian angel, took me off to her favourite white goods place. First she harangued the sales ladies about the uselessness of the tumble dryer and then entered into protracted negotiations on our behalf as to which machine was the best. No sooner had she agreed which machine we wanted, we then had to agree a price. Everything is negotiable but I have no idea why some things are more negotiable than others. The tumble dryer went down in price from about £500 to £200 in the space of two minutes but the washing machine only went down by about £20. As soon as we had agreed a price, we then had to locate a chain of managers to sign off on the reduced price. Once this was done, we found out that they didn't have that particular model in stock and would have to import it from Europe. This was fine but it happened about four times. Nothing was in stock except the samples in the store. Undaunted, we entered into fresh negotiations for the samples. Two hours into the buying process and we were finally able to go to pay for the machines.

You would think they would have been happy to take our money but our troubles were only just beginning. For reasons which remain unclear to me, I had to go to another store out in the boondocks to pay for the drier so off we set with a sales lady in a taxi. When we turned up at the second store, a further chain of signatures and permits were collected and then....my credit card was refused. A hunt for an ATM which took foreign cards ensued and then, finally, we bought the drier. Total purchase time, over three hours. If you think this story is boring, you should experience the real thing. The pay off though is it gets delivered and installed the same day. Not even John Lewis would do that in the UK.

So, on to televisions. Those of you who have paid attention may have noticed that we had a rather small TV in London. During our negotiations for the house, Juli was keen to make sure we were fully TV'd up. She was rather puzzled when I said I only wanted one TV. What, nothing in the bedrooms, the study, the kitchen? Of course we would want a flat screen in every room. We finally settled on getting one new TV and keeping another that was already in the house. 'Don't get anything too big' I warned Juli. To no avail. On arrival we found a new flat screen TV about the size of our living room at home. We were so upset that it was so big that we considered getting rid of it and buying another smaller one. That was before we found out from Juli that it had cost nearly £1000. 'I told you not to buy a big one, I can't believe the landlord spend all that money on it' I said, stunned. 'But the landlord wanted to get you a 47 inch one. I had to talk him into the 29 inch one". Apparently, we are the only expats Juli has ever met who have required only one TV and have requested that it be small. This does not bode well.

Installation

2006-05-18T17:28:00.000+04:30

Our things arrived yesterday. At 9.30am sharp as promised, an army of workers descended, not, apparently, to unload the boxes but rather to direct the lorry as it attempted to reverse around the L shaped bend of our lane. 'Left' 'No right' 'Stop' came the cries (at least I imagine that's what they were saying). The beleagured truck driver eventually threw up his hands and turned off the engine refusing to budge until our driver Mr Guo saved the day by taking charge. Eventually, the truck had got as far as it was going to and the army began to unload the boxes, wheeling them down the lane on a precarious wooden trolley.

The move started well when we couldn't get the book shelves we'd borrowed from our landlord up the stairs to the study and when our altar table failed to fit into the pre-assigned alcove by a couple of mms. Things did not improve when we discovered that a number of our nicesest pieces of furniture had been damaged. Gradually, however, things came in, went up the stairs and got unwrapped. Since then, I have been moving things around from room to room, slowly finding homes for things.

The army moved on to furniture re-assembly. We went to IKEA on Saturday and as we were loading up our bits of kit, two guys came up and offered to load it all up, drive it back to our house and re-assemble it immediately for £20. If only they had been around yesterday. The bed was put together backwards, the filing cabinets have been put in upside down, the wardrobes had to be put together and taken apart three times before they got it right and the brand new bunk beds we'd bought in the UK for the boys got scratched when the ladder got put on the wrong way. As I harangued the workers, the foreman started to laugh. 'I don't see anything to laugh about' I frowned. 'Well the workers are too frightened to carry on' he said.
So much for my maintaining my sang froid and saving face.

Communications

2006-05-17T04:00:00.000+04:30

'Recover post' is one of the options when creating a blog. How pertinent as we don't seem to be receiving any sort of post at all other than local bills. This is particularly odd given we have two magazines which should arrive here every week and all our mail is being redirected from the UK. Maybe the Economist and the Week are banned here although their offices say not. In an attempt to stay in contact with the outside world, Jamie accosted the local postman as he cycled past us the other day. 'We live on Lane 351, are you our postman?' 'Yes' replied the somewhat bewildered man. 'Well, we haven't had any mail since moving in'. 'Well are you expecting any?' said the mailman. 'Yes' said Jamie 'If you get mail, I'll deliver it' replied the man, not unreasonably but clearly thinking Jamie had lost his marbles.

Having failed to solve anything by tackling the delivery point, we thought we'd go to the source so sent our driver Mister Guo to the post office to find out what was going on but he received more or less the same answer as Jamie. The Chinese post office now thinks we have no friends and are so desperate for mail that we have to beg for it.

A further problem on the communications front is that you have to apply for international direct dialling and it takes a month to come through. That means no international calls and no international texts for now. Not only that, but in order to get a contract rather than pre-paid phone which is what enables you to get idd in the first place, you have to go with a Chinese national who has to take out the contract on your behalf and hope you don't abscond with huge amounts outstanding.

Blog block and other bureaucracy

2006-05-14T06:58:00.000+04:30

Yesterday we went to register our presence with the police and get our 'yellow form' - something all foreigners living outside hotels have to do. I was a little nervous as Jamie had already done this but somewhat belatedly and he had told our general factotum Juli who helped us find our house, that due to registering late, he had had to take the policeman out for lunch and buy him baijio - strong alcohol. Juli, not realising that Jamie was joking, was outraged and called the police station to complain. The policemen were duly called in and questioned as to which one had been corrupt enough to take bribes from a foreigner. Fortunately, the event passed off uneventfully and we were given our....blue forms. 'But they are supposed to be yellow' Jamie said. 'These are the yellow forms. They just happen to be blue' replied our friendly police woman.

Hotmail is the latest internet site to fall foul of the powers that be. Strangely, another site which is impossible to access from here is our blog. While I can upload onto it, I can't actually access it. Is the name 'Heywood' on some internet block list? Who can say? Our blog stands shoulder to sholder with the BBC.

First impressions

2006-05-12T12:24:00.000+04:30

So, here we are installed in our large, empty house. The furniture should arrive next week but in the meantime, we are busy dealing with the house spirits who bedevil all the applicances and the internet connections. Why is it that when you speak on the phone, it picks up every noise in the house? Apparently, you need a special device on the phone connection to prevent this. Why is it that nobody can turn the stove on yet when the guy comes to fix it, he can do it straight away and is clearly thinking what a stupid bunch of foreigners we are because we can't even turn on a stove? Why, mysteriously, can we hear 'Staying Alive' by the Bee Gees every night at 9pm? Actually, that mystery was solved yesterday when we saw a promotional, open top, double decker bus advertising Robin Gibb coming to town with a dozen Chinese grooving away in afro wigs sailing past.

When it isn't raining, I brave the streets of Shanghai to take Eliot to his nursery drawing cries of amazement from the crowds when they see that there are in fact two children in the same pushchair. The pavement space is crowded and I play chicken with the motorbikes, bicycles and dumpling stalls (not to mention chickens) as I push my way through. At least I can collapse in an English speaking cafe on the way home.

On our lane is one of the most popular cafe/restaurants in Shanghai or so it seems. When we go in for a coffee in the early morning, we are lords of the manor but past 11.30 and you need a reservation. All the expats know where we live when we tell them and it's nice to have such a salubrious extension of our house so close. As you turn the corner of our lane to get to our house, the path becomes crowded with the neighbours bikes, outdoor kitchen, birds and other sundries and our car can't get anywhere near the gate. It remains to be seen how they will get our furniture in.

Eliot's nursery is on a rather charming tree lined avenue and he is thrilled with the large playground full of fun toys, so much so that he is reluctant to return to 'China' as he calls our house. I try and try to explain that China is all around us and not just in the house but this concept is just too much for him. It's quite a lot for me to take in so I'm not surprised he's having trouble. In other respects though, he seems not to have noticed that things have changed. 'Look' I said as I wheeled him out of the gate on the first day, 'everything is different, the people, the shops, the writing'. 'How are the people different?' he wanted to know. Ahh, where to to begin?

The House

2006-05-02T20:54:00.000+04:30

Here are some pictures of our house to encourage friends and family to visit. It is actually a 1930s house which has had a modern extension put on. You can see the master bedroom and the view of the extension from the garden in these pictures.

The move

2006-05-01T21:43:00.000+04:30

We are moving to Shanghai on Saturday 6 May. We have a large house in the former French Concession, a relatively (and I mean relatively) leafy and low rise area of Shanghai. Here is a picture of our Lane.