Oh my stars, it works again! Thank you Jebus.I may be very behind in realising that the 'Spill now works on IE7 again, and I'll admit I was too lazy to work out why/download another browser in the interim. But still. Man. It feels like it has been a LONG time. Hi.
Without having yet been back over recent posts, I hope everyone is still well and prospering. Me, Mrs and Mini Frod are rapidly approaching big events like leaving Ireland and embarking on new adventures (more of which nearer the time of said adventuring...) and everything is really very busy round here. Still, though, the last couple of weeks' RR have seen a debut for Ben Folds (yay me!) and a first success for Mrs Frod. And there's a fantasy football league, too. So all is good.
Anyway, with loads to catch up on and too little time to do it, I'll just honour this huge (for me, at least) occasion by putting up two of my favourite songs off two very very fine new albums by The Hold Steady and Conor Oberst.
Oh its nice to be back.
Tra.
09 Moab.m4a
05 Lord, I\'m Discouraged.m4a
22 comments:
It's good to have you back. I think of you as the voice of youthful reason.
Where are you going? Why are you leaving? Why were you there in the first place???
Can I admit to a fascination with why anyone is anywhere? I'm so curious about how people end up where they do, and I feel very nosy about it sometimes, so don't ask, but you brought it up...
it's odd isn't it? That for the most part we "end up" places. It really interests me too.....
Blimpy
He was there for the chocolates, cocoabean.com, (I don't believe it's exactly right but I'm close right?).
I wonder how I ended back here. By the way, Steen, next week I'll end up in NYC, trip is back on, I might want to visit that pet shop, or was it a cafe where dogs are welcome?
I was wondering that too, as someone that doesn't know the story at all...you've lived all over, (how many continents have you visited?) so you know what different places are like, so how do you choose?...Sometimes knowledge might be more complicated than ignorance. What the hell am I talking about?
It was a pet shop. But you don't like dogs. We're due for a trip to the city to meet my brother.
Ummm, "sometimes, the places choose you", he said in a deep wise-sounding voice. What the hell are you talking about? Knowledge is power, but the post-modernists say that power is knowledge.
Sorry sorry sorry. I was just thinking about how if you've never seen anywhere but the place you grew up, you don't have to think about it. BUt how does a north england girl who went to school in Edinburgh and vienna (I'm paraphrasing) end up in France. Or a kiwi end up with a romanian in Germany. Or, Mr. Steenbeck's Shopmate is very Irish, has a girlfriend from the philippines, and somehow ended up here. I'm sorry to anyone who's story I might have just paraphrased, but they're probably good stories...
I see what you mean, I'm curious about these stories too, and I like how they slowly reveal themselves over time on RR or the Spill, and those of us interested enough put the pieces of the puzzle together.
oh dear. I'm fretting about feeling rude and invasive. I'm NOT asking for anyone's stories...
I travelled quite a bit with my family growing up, and I could never just go somewhere and think "this is fun for a visit," I would always wonder, "what would it be like to grow up here? what would it be like to stay here forever?" And I tried and failed miserably at the ex-pat thing as a youngster, so...well, I am curious about where people live, where "home" is or becomes, where someone ends up... But I certainly don't mean to be nosy.
Can I just mention that I typed most of these comments while the boys were watching the Christopher Reeves Superman on 1/2 the screen. There's a dilemma-- home planet destroyed, you're misunderstood but you have super powers. Where to go where to go...
No worries, Steenbeck-it's all in the public domain..
Chance plays a large part, I think- there are so many extenuating circumstances which prevent you from just choosing the place you'd like to live, even if you were able to single one out. I'll probably never fully understand what made my scottish parents emigrate to NZ in the first place, and how that affected my own emigration, for example.
Only once have I experienced a strong desire to suddenly drop everything and settle where I was- on the island of Penang, in Malaysia. But I didn't regret not doing it, afterwards..
I find this whole emigration/movement thing fascinating. My dad was in the RAF so I grew up in an unstable environment where I knew I would lose my best friends every few years and have to start again. I suppose that might make some people tougher and able to handle change better, but oh no, not me. I've lived in the same area for over 30 years and I have no intention of moving until I retire. ToffeeGirl and I have lived in our present house for just over 5 years and before that we lived in a house just around the corner (literally a five minute walk away) for almost twenty years.
I'm sure a psychiatrist would have a field day with this but when I hear about all you globetrotters I feel nothing but a sense of dread!
Fascinating topic. I grew up in Surrey, so was of course desperate to get away as soon as possible and never go back for more than a weekend; so far, university and then jobs have led me into East Anglia, then Wales, then Somerset. Currently very happily settled in small country town with nice communal spirit, so could well imagine us staying put until they carry us out - but at the same time very attracted by the idea of living in Germany, to the point where I actually applied for a job earlier this year (but was then too busy to make it across to the interview). Suspect that I'm a confirmed European rather than anything more international - admittedly on the basis of never actually having been outside Europe...
Morning all. What a nice turn this has taken, eh?
Well, to explain myself a little better - yep, ejaydee is right, we moved from Manchester (home/university) to Limerick to set up the chocolate business (mrs Frod's sister lived there already and its their baby). Didn't think we'd stay long but slowly it developed to the point where we just couldn't manage it on our own and didn't really want to either.
As a result the business was sold to another company, down in the very West of Kerry. We moved here, have loved it, but now is the right time to get away before scholls etc come into the equation. The first move (in about a month or so) will be back over to the UK. The next move was ideally going to be wherever jobs took me, but jobs are seeming rather hard to come by at present, so we may decide to postpone tricky decisions for a while and take off for adventures in a motorhome instead. For real.
As you can see, life chez Frod is a bit up in the air at present but, like I say, at least I have the 'Spill back to keep me grounded.
Oh and Steenbeck: if you keep calling me youthful, I'll definitely keep coming back for more! Cheers!
Adventures in a motorhome!! You'll have to post a 'Spill journal of your travels.
Nilpferd, I think you're right about chance. When you think about how many seemingly insignificant decisions shape where you live, who you live with and what you do for a living--it's really quite amazing. And sometimes I look at my children and think that some random set of coincidences brought about these two exact lives, and these furiously-working little brains. It's overwhelming. Is this when we start the chance/fate debate?
Ejaydee, you picked a nice time for a visit. We've had a blistering hot summer, but now it's a crisp 80 degrees. Having said that we'll probably have a muggy heat wave next week.
Ah motorhomes: My fantasy was to retire and travel the world in one. I'd travelled extensively throughout Mexico, Central America and Jamaica in a VW Westphalia so I bought a small bus with an industrial diesel engine and spent every spare minute and $20,000 for two years stripping it and rebuilding it in the manner of a much larger and more deluxe version of the VW. The end result was fabulous, it was splendid, it was an apartment lined with teak and oak!
It had a bedroom befitting a yatcht, a shower/toilet, fullsized refrigerator/freezer, a flash water heater, a propane space heater, a kitchen and a dining area and extensive storage space. On top was an observation platform 8ft by 15ft with provisions for sleeping and more storage. There were several cooling fans inside plus of course a multi speaker music system, shortwave radio and a setup for my Mac. My plan was to drive it to one of the east coast ports and to ship it to Bremerhaven, from there we'd travel throughout Europe ultimately crossing the Med at Gib and then travelling down the West coast of Africa to Capetown and thence back up the other side to Egypt et al.
It didn't happen, we travelled extensively throughout the US and into Mexico but when the big day came Gina had strong reservations about leaving her career and her family so we ultimately wound up moving from LA to northern California. I even wrote the first several chapters of a book on the topic of the conversion and the travel fantasies.
But the topic of why we live where we do has always interested me, specifically for the expats. Why did we move and where did we go and was it worth it? I'm sure that everyone of us has a fascinating tale but we'd need a blog devoted to it to do it justice; I've given it a lot of thought and written reams about my exploits, far more than we could deal with here. I'm not sure how to deal with it, I just keep scribbling away.
Having grown up in the narrow-minded hellhole of Tamworth, I felt the need to go west until I was as far away from it as possible, hence spending 7 years in Aberystwyth, which I adored. My then-boyfriend suddenly got a job in south London and I immediatly got a job nannying in north London. The width of the Northern Line is about the smallest extent in which you can find loneliness, I reckon. Anyhoo, back to Aber to learn to teach, being posted to Llangollen for a spell in the process, then back to north London (Mill Hill, then Brent Cross, Hendon and East Finchley) before moving in with my now-husband in Hitchin. We decided impulsively to apply for jobs teaching in Japan, despite me not having left the country for 17 years and not actually owning a passport or a burning desire to see Japan. We got the jobs, moved to the outskirts of Tokyo and man, they really know how to spread those suburbs out, and worked in offices out towards Yokohama. We travelled around Japan while there, a trip to Hawaii, a few days in Beijing and an epic odyssey travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand in only 11 days with flu.
On returning to England we knew we couldn't afford the property prices in Hertfordshire, which was s ahem, as I have a real soft spot for that area (glaring omission: Stevenage). While cat-sitting for my parents the summer we came back we took a day-trip to Lincoln and just fell in love, as we are both geeky history buffs. We still have the travel bug, and we love travelling round the UK and Europe. We've been to Prague, Berlin and Krakow. Jon has been promising me since we met to take me to Italy, where he taught English in a small village outside Napoli for 3 months, so that's on our to-do list, but I do liek coming home. The miracle of actually owning our own house, which we have done since November reminds me that I'm a proper grown-up. As Stewart Lee used to say, "I thought I'd live and die in rented accomodation".
I just love all the stories too, considering it will be rare, if often, that any of us get to meet up, it cements us as a community even more.
Steenbeck: You said something that caught my eye a couple of comments back "When you think about how many seemingly insignificant decisions shape where you live, who you live with and what you do for a living--it's really quite amazing.
I started writing on a topic a few weeks ago, I titled it "Forks in the Road", I've been conscious all my life how what initially seemed like insignificant incidents or events turned out to be life altering. I made a list of 10 events that changed my life dramatically, some as simple as writing a friendly letter to someone I hadn't seen in about 4 years [which ultimately resulted in my living in California] and others as seemingly insignificant as seeing a film [The Harder they Come], which changed the direction of my life for 20 years. I'd considered at one point writing a piece for the Spill on the subject to see if anyone else was interested and had significant 'forks'. This is what I wrote for the outline of my initial thoughts.
Forks could imply a point where there are options, you could go left or right, you can look back at that point and consider what might have happened had you taken the other fork. Some forks may seem seem insignificant at the time but in later years they're seen as points from where significant changes began, a choice was made to write a simple, friendly letter, but it had life changing ramifications.
Events might cause significant changes without the participation of the individual,
some events may seem innocuous but may lead to major forks,
Obviously the first on the list is the most significant because without that event none of the others would follow, but later events may be far more significant overall. Also most events and forks have preceding conditions and events that cause them so where is the 'real' fork?
Each item on this list is only a heading, there's a secondary list of events that flow from each that constitute significant change and are often links in a chain leading to major changes. For any of them you could say "if I hadn't done...., then 'so and so' would not have happened". And if 'so and so' had not happened then 'such and such' could not have happened and so on.
goneforeign, I loved both your posts. I was hoping you'd chime in about the motor homes. Do you have pictures of your westphalia and your new small deluxe bus? I saw some pictures of a brightly painted VW among your Jamaica pictures, I think. Mr. Steenbeck is a VW fan. He had 3 VW Things before I met him, and his housemates when I first knew him had a bus and a bug.
And please please please post your fork post. It's very fascinating and this is certainly the crowd to supply the stories.
Also I wanted to ask you about growing fruit trees. I want to grow a quince tree and blackcurrant bushes and maybe some gooseberries. They all are or used to be native here, but their popularity has dropped off, and now the fruit is rare, hard to find and extremely expensive. I know you live in a completely different climate, but did you start your trees as little, or plant mature ones? Do you use pesticides? I'm very taken with this idea. We have a tiny yard, though. Could be a problem...
Steenbeck: Well as you might anticipate I did document the entire bus conversion with pictures so I'll find a couple and post 'em. Re. the garden, when we moved here about 12 years ago the 1 acre 'garden' was a slight incline that ran from the back fence down to the street; it was literally a combination of Mojave desert and 4ft weeds. I was recently sitting out there and I realised that I'd planted EVERY single green thing in sight, vegetables, plants, bushes, trees - the lot. It's generally all organic though I do use Roundup to keep the paths clear of weeds, I use lots of organic fertilisers every year. I have two orchards comprising many varieties of apples, pears, plums, pluots, apricots, cherries and persimmons plus several other areas where I grow red and black currents, gooseberries and grapes, and then there's the raised beds for vegetables. At this time of the year we live entirely off the garden, yesterday I brought in a colander of potatoes, about 5 lb of tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, a large bowl of pluots, ditto, beans plus hot peppers, basil and thyme, that was last night's dinner.
Everything I've grown started out as seeds or small plants, often in 4" pots, the fruit trees are all 'dwarf' category meaning they won't get above about 8ft, they all started as 3ft single stems.
This year we've been deluged with fruit, it started ripening in mid June and has been constant ever since and there's still two varieties of pluots not yet ripe; I've made 40 lb of various jams this summer. We went to two parties last weekend, a very rare situation, to each we took a basket of at least 20lb of plums/pluots. I wish you lived closer, I could supply you and all of the Spill with fruit for the summer, I don't know what I was thinking when I planted so many trees, I just got carried away. If you have specific questions re. starting a garden I'd be more than happy to help: quinces, red and black currants and gooseberries are all easy, please contact me by email and we'll take it from there....T.
steenbeck, my quince tree used to live in a 3' square tub (it was half an assemble-it-yourself compost bin) in a tiny backyard in Buckinghamshire. It grew and flourished and produced beautiful blossom and many large and delicious fruits. When I moved to Scotland I brought it with me and planted it in the real ground and it's never been happy since. Flowers still but positively no fruit.
Of course living by the sea might have something to do with it...anyway, if you get one I'm sure it will be just fine!
steenbeck, my quince tree used to live in a 3' square tub (it was half an assemble-it-yourself compost bin) in a tiny backyard in Buckinghamshire. It grew and flourished and produced beautiful blossom and many large and delicious fruits. When I moved to Scotland I brought it with me and planted it in the real ground and it's never been happy since. Flowers still but positively no fruit.
Of course living by the sea might have something to do with it...anyway, if you get one I'm sure it will be just fine!
hmm, I say everything twice...
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