In search of The Good Life

I suppose I've always hankered after a little slice of The Good Life. In fact, I can remember watching it with my parents as a teenager, when I should have been more interested in watching Top of the Pops or Going Live! or Knightmare. (Actually, I loved Knightmare - which 80s child didn't want to don that ill-fitting, over-sized helmet that prevented you from seeing anything other than your feet? And who can honestly say that they weren't a tiny bit worried that the contestants actually dropped into oblivion and were left to languish there for all eternity?)

In our last house, I tried and failed to create a little bit of a country retreat. Technically, we lived on the outskirts of a town, but our secluded position down by the river in a quiet cul-de-sac known as 'the island', thanks to the river that looped around it on all sides, meant that we felt much more rural than we actually were. But our garden was relatively small, and I knew nothing about gardening. I planted a few fruit bushes down in a particularly shady and damp part of the garden, so they did nothing in the five years we lived there. I had two small fruit trees, whose reluctance to crop while kept in pots resulted in exactly zero pieces of fruit. And I had a small cold frame with which I managed to produce about three courgettes, and a couple of low planting beds that grew me precisely one beetroot and one twisty carrot - it wasn't exactly the Garden of Eden.

Here at Redhall we have more space. Lots more space. And the garden is in many ways much more amenable to growing things. There are a few things already established - a huge blackcurrant bush that gave me a couple of kilos of fruit shortly after we moved in last year (netting me 3 whole jars of jam - what is it with the disappointing fruit/jam ratio?), a few fruit trees that seem to decide from year to year whether they fancy producing fruit that particular season, and a huge section of unchecked land that we call 'the mound' and that I hope will eventually be home to a slightly more meaningful orchard, in which Andy plans to nestle a little music 'studio' (read = sound-proofed shed).

We also have a little wooded copse up the top, where we've added a chicken coop, and we can let the hens out to free range during the day. If one of us (Andy) forgets to close them up at night, however, a fox will come and take one away for his dinner, leaving us with three rather traumatised hens who will give up laying for at least a couple of weeks (that's one mark deducted from our Good Life tally).

But the best bit is round the side of the house, where the former owners used to house a large trampoline. It's a good size, south facing, sheltered on three sides by fencing/the house and is hence the perfect location for raised beds. At last, my dreams of becoming Barbara can come true...

The only snag is that to make raised beds, I was going to require some assistance from my husband. And Andy really doesn't care about gardening. I mean *really* doesn't care. Thankfully, his sister had a great idea: buy some great big, sturdy potato boxes from a local farmer and use these instead - bingo. That's exactly what I did. I sourced four 6' x 4' x 3' boxes at £15 a pop from a farmer in Larbert, had them delivered for about twice the price (a total palaver - let's not dwell on that bit), left them languishing on the drive for a few weeks and then, with a bit of help from a friend and her husband, got them into place in the aforementioned sunny spot.

The boxes were far deeper than I was going to need, so we* cut about a foot off the tops, then I lined them with permeable membrane, and filled them with top soil. Two tons of top soil. I'm quite proud of the fact that Andy and I managed to shift all of it in two 45-minute sessions on consecutive evenings after the kids had gone to bed. I dug in a bit of compost and - hey presto - raised beds.

A few days later I planted two courgette plants and some rhubarb, and sowed everything I could that the books told me I wasn't already too late with: salad leaves, rocket, spring onions, beetroot, carrots, chard, cabbage, radish, mange tout and green beans.

Two weeks later and things are starting to grow, so I'm hopeful that we might manage to eat something home-grown over the coming months. Given the outlay, something more than a single beetroot and a twisty carrot would be ideal.

So the morals of the story are:

1. Potato boxes are a cheap, effective and time-saving way of creating some raised beds
2. With a bit of grunt work you can do it all yourself, and don't even necessarily need your extremely helpful husband to do it for with you
3. Don't use the same people we did to deliver your potato boxes if you want to save yourself time, money and unnecessary spousal arguments
4. It's never too late in the season to sow some vegetable seeds (right? right??)
5. Don't leave Andy in charge of putting the chickens to bed.


*Ok, I admit it, I managed one corner. Andy and my Dad did the rest.

One year on - and a new home

It's funny how having two children, moving house and returning to work have seen 12 months elapse since the last time I wrote. I've just re-read my last post and I honestly can't remember writing it. Not a single word of it. I must have written it in those heady, sleep-deprived early days of Edith's first weeks when my world consisted of little more than the four walls of our house.

Our old house. Since I last wrote, we've moved. No longer the owners of an eighteenth-century chocolate-box cottage in Penicuik, we are now the owners of a rambling farmhouse in rural central Scotland, somewhere south of Falkirk and not very close to anything. It's totally idyllic. We have sheep on one side, cows on the other, and it's 2 miles to the nearest shop. We have chickens, raised beds, a big range cooker, off-grid heating, and a little bit of land with a copse - where the chickens live. Ok, so we also have foxes that steal chickens, an inconvenient tendency to run out of oil in the middle of winter and rather slow broadband. But let's focus on the positives.

Over the past 12 months, our view has ranged between this:

And this:

Our neighbours look like this:

And just down the road we have this:

There are downsides. We had to move away from some wonderful friends, although they are still only 45 minutes away. And we all now spend a lot of time in the car. The round trip to take Alec to nursery is 50 minutes, and my commute to work (on the 2 days I have to do it) has doubled. But Andy's has halved, and he has to do it every day, so that is a huge plus. And driving home down windy country lanes, gazing out over the hills, with little else on the horizon but lush green fields, forests and the occasional wind turbine, truly makes it all worthwhile. I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be right now.

And then there were two...

We're now seven weeks in to life as a family of four and, for the most part, I can say it's not too bad. Andy and I have each had one day when we wanted to scream and run away, but one day each out of 49* isn't so terrible is it?

For me, the thing that makes me want to scream is both children crying at the same time. One child I can deal with. Two, however, and I feel like I must be failing at parenting. And when one of those children is screaming because they're beyond tired but resolutely refusing to go to sleep is infuriating - it reminds me just how poorly designed babies are. Here's a small creature that needs around 20 hours of sleep a day, and yet it doesn't know how to go to sleep by itself, and even with all the help in the world it will often still resist it. That is simply poor engineering.

The other child is usually screaming for a more mysterious reason. Perhaps because I carried his dinner through to the table myself, instead of using my psychic powers to deduct that he wanted to take it himself this time. Or perhaps because I picked the bugs t-shirt instead of the shark one. Or because I gave him milk to drink when he obviously doesn't want milk (even though he asked for milk). Yes, I know. Reasoning is not a toddler's strong point.

There is definitely no Me Time anymore. Or any Us Time either, for that matter. In the tiny window between Child One going to bed and beginning the process of Child Two's (usually more protracted) bedtime, we shovel food down our throats as quickly as possible to give us sustenance for the gruelling night ahead. Then it's bedtime number two, after which I at least am so exhausted that I usually manage about half an hour of gazing blankly at the TV before I cave in and submit to sleep myself.

OK, perhaps I'm over-egging it a little. Edith has proved herself to be a reasonably good sleeper, given some very specific reuqirements which we are gradually beginning to discover. She's not as amazingly adept at it as her brother was. He, if I remember correctly, was basically sleeping through at 8 weeks. She still needs me every 2-3 hours. But waking up to feed her during the night seems like a strangely familiar process, and one that isn't nearly as disruptive this time around. I am just an automated milk provider: reach for child, feed child, return child, back to sleep. Repeat as required until Child One tells us the morning has arrived. She is also a better daytime napper, which allows me some sanity, although naps in the cot are still largely elusive.

But the challenge of having a newborn now seems puzzling - what was all the fuss about last time? They're so easy! As long as you give her sleep and food at the appropriate times, she's happy. The real challenge is managing the two of them together. Especially when one essentially wants to be static most of the time and the other runs around with seemingly limitless energy, is overflowing with questions and demands, and is liable to flick into tantrum mode at a moment's notice for an unguessable reason. Oh, you wanted the blue cup instead of the green cup today, did you? How silly of me!

To be fair to Alec, most of his tantrums took place during the 2 weeks that he was suffering from a really horrible heavy cold (which he kindly shared with the rest of us), and since his sinuses have cleared up, so too have his grumbles. He is a very loving big brother. Each morning he asks to see Edith and give her a cuddle. He brings her blankets, rocks her in her car seat and comes running to tell me as soon as he hears her crying. He picks up Peter Rabbit and holds him to his chest to rock him and pat him in the same way I do when calming Edith to sleep. And although he's slightly resentful of the fact that she takes up so much of my time ('Mummy, put Edith in the chair. Mummy, give Edith to Daddy... etc'), he's not at all resentful of Edith herself. In fact, he's started speaking to her like a friend: 'Look Edith! A gingerbread man!' I think the whole process may even have made him slightly more empathetic. On Sunday, as I attempted to navigate Glasgow's infuriating one-way system with a sat nav that wasn't up to date and Edith crying in the back to be fed, Alec piped up from the back: 'It's tricky isn't it mummy? I know.'

We're doing OK, the four of us.

*If you knew how long it had taken me to do my 7 times table and get the correct number there, you'd be pretty disappointed - a little glimpse into my addled baby brain.

Introducing Edith

Sometimes life surprises you. Two hours after I wrote the last blog post, my contractions started and seven hours later, Edith Mary Buckley joined us in the world.

Brand new

Although she was a week behind schedule, when Edith decided that it was time to come out, she didn't hang about. I arrived at the hospital at 5.30pm unsure whether I had come in too early, and after being poked and prodded by one of the midwives, they packed me off to the labour ward at around 6.45pm. That's when Edith decided she was ready for the world, and with a sudden surge of contractions it became clear that she was going to arrive sooner than any of us expected, and 45 minutes later she was born. It sounds easy, doesn't it? It definitely wasn't. But it was worth it.

She's now a week old, and we're settling in to life as a family of four. Alec adores her, which is a huge relief for us, as we'd expected him to be nonplussed at best and had anticipated some jealousy and bad behaviour. But instead he keeps bringing me blankets for her to make her 'cosy', and he loves to stroke her hair, give her kisses and he makes sure to tell me every time she cries. "I've got a sister now!" he proudly told us in the car the other day, as he looked across at his new friend in the back.

Alec meets Edith

Ok, our weekends look likely to be quite sedate for the foreseeable future, and getting everyone out of the house at the same time is quite a major operation that definitely requires four sets of hands - I can't yet envisage how it will all function once Andy's back at work or away for any length of time. But presumably we'll get used to it, as thousands of bewildered parents have done before us.

For now, Edith is still in that blissful sleepy newborn phase where a juggernaut couldn't wake them from their slumber, so we are making the most of these easy early days. Give it a few months and I'll be blogging about napping techniques and sleep training all over again.

Preparing for two...

As I write, I'm a week overdue. Or rather, it's not me that's late (I'm never late) but Baby Buckley 2.0, who was due on 4th May. So I'm hovering about in that strange space between nothing and something, waiting for something Very Important to happen, but having no idea when that might be. Baby B has been a tricksy little thing, having been in the GO position for ages now and giving me a few twinges about two weeks ago that left me convinced I'd deliver early. But here I am, many days later, with Alec at nursery, Andy working away at all the physics, and me with little else to do but watch Downton Abbey and bounce hopefully on the birthing ball.

The odd thing is that preparing for No. 2 feels no more real than preparing for No. 1. Yes, I know there will soon be another small creature in the house - and the readied Moses basket and tiny nappies suggest that it's likely to be a baby - but it's still impossible to piece together this information with my bulging belly and picture a brand new human being. I know what to expect this time, of course: there will be sleepless nights, hours sitting on the sofa unable to move because of the feeding/sleeping baby and many, many nappies to change. But there are still so many unknowns too: What will he/she look like? Will they have hair? Will they look like Alec? Will they be a good sleeper/eater? Will they have colic? Will this one turn out to be completely different to the first?

And then there's the prospect of two. Given how much time is taken up just looking after our fairly competent toddler already, where will the extra time come from to look after the baby? And of course there's the dreaded destabilising of our happy status quo: what will Alec make of the baby...?

Friends tell me that yes, having two is hard. That you will marvel at how much time you had before you had two of them, how you had it so easy and simply didn't realise. How sleepless nights are so much more difficult to manage when you have a toddler to get up for in the morning, and how no time will ever be your own again - if you aren't with one of the children, you will be with the other.

But if this were the full story, no one would ever have more than one. They also tell me that seeing your two children together is one of the most beautiful things in the world and that even though you thought there was no more love left in you after No. 1, somehow you find it all over again for No. 2. So we're going ahead and doing it. It's too late to back out now. See you on the other side.

Alec turns two

Yesterday morning, I went to get Alec up and found him sitting in his cot looking a bit forlorn and repeating the word 'messy' as he looked around him. He'd been sick. Everywhere. His carefully washed hair was entangled with bits of last night's dinner, Peter Rabbit was a subtle shade of orange, and there were peas in between the sheets. I hadn't expected it, as I had only heard what I thought was him coughing during the night, but now I realise it was bang on schedule. Alec is two today, so as toddler tradition dictates, he must be ill just in time for a special occasion.

This isn't quite how I'd expected to blog about reaching the two year milestone, but toddlers are unpredictable little creatures in many ways. In others, they're a little too predictable for our liking. Yes, we've already had the pleasure of discovering the Terrible Twos. They arrived a few weeks ago, unannounced, as though someone had simply flicked a switch on my adorable little boy and turned him into that wailing cliche you see on the TV. One morning, as we all did our best to get ourselves out the door and away to nursery/work, Alec threw himself to the floor and burst into tears at the injustice of being denied a showing of the Gruffalo film at going-out-time. Andy was there to witness the event and we couldn't help laughing - much to Alec's disgust. He pursued this line of behaviour - quite valiantly and with enthusiasm, I must admit - for about a week and then, like a switch once more, he flicked back into being a delightful little soul.

The language is coming thick and fast, and every day he surprises me by remembering things I had only mentioned in passing but which have stuck in his mind like glue. Like the fact that there will be a red fire engine ('nee-naw') birthday cake today (who could forget that kind of promise?) or that Daddy is 'away' for 'work' and that, adorably, a heart means 'love'. (It's best not to pursue the love thing with toddlers, I've found. While Alec admitted that yes, he does love mummy and daddy, when pressed he also told me that he loves a hedgehog and a cow.)

Alec's nee-naw cake

He loves the drums, and especially loves playing the drums with daddy. He loves to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep at every opportunity and shouts 'Yes Sir!' when I ask if he has any wool. He loves Baby Ballet, which he does on Wednesday mornings at nursery, and talks about for the rest of the week. He loves our Monkey Music classes on Friday mornings, but mostly because of the bubbles and stickers which come at the end, but which he always tries to demand from the teacher right at the start. And he is totally obsessed with the Gruffalo (known as 'Mouse' in our household), and will spoil any sense of suspense by telling you exactly which animals are about to appear on the screen before they've made their entrance.

Taking the drums very seriously

Ok, so he has Opinions now, this is true. Like taking an extreme dislike to his new dressing gown, which Grandma bought him for Christmas, which keeps him warm in our freezing house, and which he adored when he first clapped eyes on it on Christmas Day. And his new coat, which was a bargain in the Mothercare sale and is actually a better fit for him than the one he insists on wearing every day because it has stars on it. Oh and gloves - don't get me started on gloves...

See? No gloves. In fact, he's flicking the V-sign at gloves.

But otherwise the Twos have so far been kind to us and I'm hopeful that the next year will bring more moments of laughter than it will tantrums. We have lots to look forward to. Alec will be getting a new brother or sister in early May, and he already seems quite excited about that, gleefully pointing at my tummy, saying 'Baby!' and waving hello. Whether it will be a boy or a girl, though, he's not too sure. Some days it's a brother, other days it's a sister. And on others it's a brother who he plans to name 'Sister'.

3 months to go...

So happy birthday, Alec, and thank you for two amazing years of getting to know you. I'm getting a little teary as I write this (I blame the pregnancy hormones), not so much at the thought of you growing up and becoming a proper little boy, because that is wonderful to watch, but more at our miraculous fortune in being blessed with such an awesome and fun little child. I know every parent is deluded into thinking that their child really is the best one but... well, ours really is. 

Being normal

At the ripe old age of 31, it seems like I finally have the semblance of a normal life. Which isn't to say that until now I've been living life on the edge, fighting off bears and trekking across uninhabited wildernesses. But (and I'm sure a few other freelancers will relate to this) until now I have always dreaded that inevitable first question as you sit down at the hairdressers for a restyle: 'So, is it your day off today?' Well.... where do I begin...? I usually just say yes and be done with it. But if she (for usually it is a she) presses me with 'So what is it you do then?' I tend to um and ah and mutter something about being a musician. 'Ooh! What do you play! My brother's in a band!' (I'm not meaning to typecast hairdressers with all these exclamation marks. If you're a hairdresser, please don't take offence. This is just my hairdresser. She has a lilting Penicuik accent and always follows up anything remotely negative with 'Ooh! Wha' a sheeyme!')

'Oh, I'm not that sort of musician', I say. 'I don't play for a living'. Crestfallen face.
'Ooh! Do you teach then?'
'No.'
Confused face.
'I'm, er, doing a PhD. On Beethoven. I also manage a contemporary music ensemble. And I run a choir.'
'Ooh! You sing!'
'Not really, I just run the choir.'
Return of the confused face.
'It's a managerial sort of thing.'
'Oh! My brother's band needs a manager!'
Er...

But this time, when I went to the hairdressers, I assumed the role of a Normal Person. Behold.

'So is it your day off today?'
Firmly: 'Yes it is.'
'So what is it you do then?'
'Well I'm just back at work after having my little boy.'
Cue squeal of delight. 'Ooh! What's his name? Have you got a picture?'
I get out a picture, and we discuss his blonde hair (yes, I say, I was indeed blonde as a child too), his enormous eyelashes and whether or not he sleeps through the night (he bloody well does). She asks me about his eating habits, how many words he has, when he started walking, whether he gets up to much mischief, how many days he does at nursery, if I want another one, and so on and so forth. This all goes on for a good half hour, during which time my hair is lopped, coiffed and straightened. As she's just dusting off the stray hairs from around my shoulders she remembers to ask:

'So what are you doing for work now when Alec (she's on first name terms now) is at nursery?'
'I manage a record label.'
Her face lights up.
'Ooh! My brother's band are looking for a record label!'
'It's a classical music label.'
Sad face.