To be or not to be....a citizen

Last week I had one of those rare awkward moments where I truly feel like a foreigner. I have lived here for twelve years so this doesn't happen often any more. To be honest, folks around here seem to like having a Brit in their midst and have been kind and forgiving towards the gaps in my Texas upbringing.

I don't presume to know everyone in our wee rural hamlet (pun re. title unintended) but I know and am known by the folks in my everyday life such as our church, the school, the post office, the grocery store and the library.

It was in the library last week - where you might remember that they held the grand opening of the new building, that I had my rare foreigner moment.

Quite properly and with due regard to protocol, at the start of the ceremony everyone stood for the pledge to the U.S.A. Right hands over hearts they honored the flag that the boy scouts were holding.

This act of patriotism always both simultaneously moves me and immobilizes me into a frozen statue of embarassment. As a Brit, I don't say the pledge or do the hand over the heart thing. I am quiet and respectful during this time. I appreciate respect for the U.S.A but I am not a citizen here just a permanent resident. I have a queen. God save her and long live her! 

Thankfully no one has ever pointed out my apparant crass rudeness, but I am aware of the disapproving and questioning glances from those who don't know me. I squirm and push my dual citizenship children in front of me and make sure they are pledging appropriately!

This year I am eligible to change my immigration status from that of permanent resident to that of citizen. My immigration attorney tells me that I can become a U.S. citizen without it affecting my British nationality. Officially and legally that is. Mentally is a whole different ball game. It is a weird thought to consider being something other than the nationality one was born. It feels a bit disloyal really. Would being a U.S. citizen make me any less English? Would I suddenly hate tea and cake and cricket? Would I speak Texan and lose my British accent?

How would you feel?

When in doubt I make a cake. So here's a picture of my lemon sponge that I made with daughter #2 today. Once I get the hang of how to do a drop down menu I will add some of my English recipes!

Have a nice day y'all! (See! I'm more Texan already!)

Kids today!

AISD needs to wake up and smell the roses!!

Today I have been a derelict mum to my biological children and instead of doing all the usual weekend Mum stuff have been with my 'other' 37 kiddies at our Area Latin club competition. It has been a great couple of days and a reminder (as if I needed one) that today's youth are truly fabulous young people really and we don't hear enough about the good things that they do! Contrary to popular belief there are young people who study hard, set goals and are generally pleasant, courteous human beings.


Shocker I know!


So to redress the balance....


At today's Latin convention in Pflugerville there were 576 middle and high school students devoting their Friday and Saturday to their study of Latin and the ancient world. They have participated in a fast paced buzzer game that tests the ability to think quickly on their feet as well as show breadth and depth of knowledge. They have designed and made costumes of mythological characters, they have sung in Latin, painted pictures on a classical theme, given speeches in Latin and played Latin scrabble! That is just to name a few of the many different contests!

Best of all? It was encouraging to see these young adults passionately defending Latin as they rallied against the proposed elimination of Latin from three Austin high schools. These students are people who recognize the value and benefit of Latin to their lives and were willing to fight for it. Fox News filmed the rally so I hope it gets the coverage and support it deserves (and by the way the school with the orange shirts were the coolest kids and teacher! LOL  :)

Good for them! We'll see what unfolds!


Today's picture is of a paper bunch of flowers that was on a classroom wall where I was proctoring exams this morning. Not only is it appealing and fun but it was a hopeful portent to me that Austin ISD would wake up and smell the roses and keep Latin in our Austin public high schools! Youth like the ones I saw today and all the other great kids in Texas deserve a chance to learn it.

This is a Download from the BBC

"This is a download from the BBC".
Short of "You can go back to bed", these are my favorite words to hear at 5:30 in the morning as I start my long drive to work. With the exception of KLRU, the local PBS radio station from the university of Texas, podcasts from Aunty Beeb provide my only access to intelligent commentary on current events, history, food, gardening, religious programming, comedy, interviews and ...well, just about everything you could want to hear about.

At last count, I currently download 22 podcasts from the BBC. Seeing as I spend 11 hours on average in the car every week these downloads provide me with company in an English accent for a goodly chunk of my week. My kiddoes think it's completely normal to have these fruity voices as background to their squabbling and games in the back of the car as we drive from day care to home each day but on a recent trip home with a non-family member, this kiddo thought it was about the most bizarre thing ever. HER mum and dad listen to country music. The implication being that country music has much more to commend it than the BBC. Clearly that is true from her perspective. My kiddoes just squirmed with embarassment that THEIR mum had to be different! Tough luck on them!

Keep it streaming BBC! Those of us marooned in a foreign place (however happily marooned and however much we like our adopted countries) appreciate it! 

What is my favorite podcast? The lives and loves of The Archers! Ambridge is part of my cultural landscape if not my actual landscape and the theme music is so evocative of my childhood as my parents did the dishes after dinner listening to this drama series!

If you don't currently listen to any BBC podcasts - check them out!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts

Let me know which ones you enjoyed!!!

How to throw a Royal Wedding Party

Time to haul out the Union Jack bunting, send out the embossed invitations and show off the Emma Bridgewater china!

Kate and William are getting hitched and the children and I intend to hold a street party to celebrate the royal wedding!!

The last royal wedding that I remember celebrating was that of Charles and Di. Now THAT was a wedding! The dress! The ring! The Cathedral! Never mind the debacle it turned into. The event performance and all the accompanying jollities were a lot of fun! Loyal subjects camped out overnight along the processional route so that they could say they were there and for a chance to wave at our future monarch and his bride. Elsewhere there were community street parties with tea and cake and lemonade...and possibly something stronger although at age 11, I was not aware of that!

So how does a good English citizen in the U.S.A throw a royal wedding party for her closest Anglophile Texas friends?

#1: Handwritten invites. "Lord and Lady Long request the pleasure of your presence at a celebration of the marriage of Kate and William on April 29th 2011. Flowery dresses must be worn by ladies and something half way decent by any men brave enough to accompany their women."

#2: Beautiful and patriotic decorations - the aforementioned Union Jack bunting and lots and lots of red, white and blue paper chains and little flags to wave.

#3: Plenty of Veuve Cliquot for those who wish for something stronger than tea and cups of Earl Grey (obviously in your gorgeous Emma Bridgewater commemmorative cup as seen above!) for those driving home.

#4: Have one's humungous flat screen TV streaming in the Royal wedding live with loads of lace trimmed hankies at hand to delicately wipe one's eye as one weeps tears of envy that one savvy chick swiped a prince of the realm!

#5:Smashing eats such as smoked Scotch salmon, Russian salad, cucumber sandwiches and cake after blooming cake!

It's February. It was cold today and cheerless. We have 3 weeks until Spring Break. A girl has got to have something to look forward to! You'd better save the date and watch the mail for your party invitation!

So Soxy!!

A lady in HEB - our local supermarket - once recognized that my children were English just by looking at them. I was flabbergasted. "How on earth did you know?" I asked her. "They have absolutely no English accent at all." "But my dear", came the octogenarian and mellifluous tone of  the Southern counties of England (she herself turned out to be an elderley ex-pat) "They are wearing home knitted sweaters."

So true! You don't see m/any home knitted cardigans and jumpers around here and it is rather cosily English and outdated, alongside Enid Blyton books or the Chalet School books. And she didn't say 'sweaters', she said 'jumpers' but not many people here know they are interchangeable terms back home.

Still, knitted clothing is held dear to an English heart and the tradition for knitting runs strongly down the female line of my family. Children #s 1-3 and now husband all proudly sport their knitted socks especially as they slide so satisfactorily over wooden floors! I am a reasonably good knitter but the socks you see above are knitted by my Mum in Australia and sent up from 'Down Under' at regular intervals to remind us not only of her love for us but also of our British roots.

I've done my part to pass this part of our heritage down. I have taught daughters 1 & 2 how to knit and pearl and the look of ferocious intensity on their face as they grip the lethal looking knitting needles is priceless. I'm not adverse to teaching our boy child how to knit (for example during those evenings when his Dad's not around to give me the "What are you doing to my son?" look) but let's face it, pointy sticks and three year old boys are not a sensible combination.

Counting Sheep

I am a huge fan of the U.K. edition of Country Living Magazine. I happily fork over $8.50 a month for this publication and 'him indoors' (my husband) never raises an eyebrow because it's so much cheaper than therapy for my homesickness.

I digress.

A recent edition of CL had a pull out poster of sheep varieties as well as an article for the many uses for sheep wool. As we live on a modest portion of Texas I thought what a splendid addition sheep would be to our current livestock collection so that our offspring could enjoy the rare Texas sight so common in England of sheep blissfully and serenely grazing. I have vivid memories of holidays in a rented cottage in Herefordhire as a child where sister and I fell asleep listening to the bizarre yet soothing sound of sheep chewing, farting and coughing, not always in that order.

I duly emailed a sheep specializing professor at husband's alma mater who advised me as to which sheep breeds would be bonkers enough to thrive in this part of the world in a Texas summer. Sadly they were not the Wallace and Gromit fluffy variety, which incidentally hybrid Brit-American children adore, but rather pig-looking creatures with cross faces. Still it might be good fun to watch them roam wild and free against the backdrop of the neighbor's bison and llamas. No doubt they'll give the neighborhood coyotes a run for their money before I introduce the children to the delights of mutton stew or lamb chops with mint sauce. If ever they really do make their ovine appearance here I'll be sure and let you know! 

Does anyone have any experience of raising sheep in the Texas Hill Country? Please do let me know!

Sundays

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton,_West_Sussex

Today we went to church. We manage to get organized enough to do this most Sundays and the whole family likes it. To be honest church wasn't a big part of my life growing up in England. We occasionally went to church with my Dad or as part of a school function but we certainly were not members. Church was significant to my childhood memories as a place that you visited as part of a Sunday afternoon walk or to see some interesting old gravestones or a kissing gate. The church we liked best was Clayton Parish church (see link) which was really really old - about eleventh century and had the double benefit of having a park on one side and the rolling South Downs on the other where my imaginative sister and I (not so imaginative) used to play dragons by an old tree which really did look like a dragon.

Nominally my English family was Church of England and my hybrid British-American family is Methodist so today's very short talk with the kids was to describe a service I attended once as a student at Christmas time at King's College, Cambridge. Now this is not an ordinary C of E church by any stretch of the imagination but I think they liked the fact that they could imagine what it looked like thanks to the first few minutes of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie which features the chapel. Child #3 lasted perhaps 30 seconds into the memories of angelic alto voices bouncing off the Medieval gables of the roof before going off to play cars but the girls sat out the full minute and a half quick recollection of describing being in a place which has heard so much music and so many hopes and prayers over hundreds of years before they went off to more interesting diversions!

Perhaps had better stick to English cake for a while and watching Harry Potter or Avalon High for our daily dose of Englishness!

Cath Kidston arrives in Bertram, TX

Am so excited! New Cath Kidston bag has finally arrived after getting lost and touring the whole USA before it got here! It's a gorgeous saddle bag and I have already had loads of positive comments upon it - just like my other Cath bags. I know at least one other lady who has ordered a bag recently based on seeing mine. Soon there will be a load of happy Cath Kidston-toting ladies in this little corner of Texas! Wish she did an oilcloth Union Jack bag then I could really fly the flag here in the Hill Country!

I had a significant birthday yesterday and it made me both reflective and nostalgic. Even though I like it here I am really homesick for England and wish my kiddoes had more opportunity to experience English things and explore that part of their heritage. Seeing as my opportunities to return to Blighty are non existant in the future I have decided to spend the next year consciously raising their awareness of English things - food, art, books, history, traditions. "English Stuff" that I totally took for granted and didn't appreciate at all. I hope they'll have fun, learn a little and remember their batty mother doing this when they too hit their own significant birthdays.

So today on Day One of this English year we hit the ground running with breakfast. Robertson's Golden Shred marmalade on toast! They loved it as I would expect from discerning Marmite-eating children. Hope they don't want it every day though as it's jolly expensive and hard to find - might have to ask Mum how she makes her marmalade from Seville oranges. After basketball and the official opening of our fab new library here in our small rural Texas town, daughter #1 and I decided to continue with the foodie theme by donning our pinnies (aprons) and making jam tarts, Shepherds' Pie and her Great Grandmother's "Cut and Come Again" cake, a recipe brought over from Sussex. All turned out beautifully and the Shepherds' Pie in particular was wolfed down which caused stirrings of guilt for the less-than-home made food that my kids often have to eat as their Mum works full time. Squashing that thought quickly, I promise to become proficient on how to upload pictures of these English events as they unfold. Day 1 was lots of fun. Off to see what English programs we can find on the telly! More anon!