Midi-Me gets Virtual and her mother gets a job.

Mummy on the edge Jan Feb 2016

It is the beginning of another new year and I have been getting creative with my use of the hairdryer, which I utilize in the warming of my bed before and while I am in it.

This is most definitely environmentally UNfriendly. Admittedly, I occasionally ponder a post-apocalyptic world where Midi-Me’s children’s children are hiding out in caves dimly lit by straw fires, crushing their tiny, six-legged, protein-packed dinners with de-powered tablets, foraged after a dangerous round trip in an acid-storm to the defunct-i-mountain, cursing their useless, selfish great-grandmother who deigned it necessary to blow-dry her bed.

However, this method of toastification of the self before bedtime is highly effective (and also very dangerous and not to be recommended).

Despite all that, I do care about the environment. Which is why I gave Midi-Me a gift made of cardboard for Christmas. Recyclable, innit. Mr Angelina came home with this flat-pack cardboard contraption which he had bought for himself off the interweb because he is tech-knowlegical (see what I did there).  Midi me - with her flat-pack-building expertise perfected during quality time with her dad at his furniture store in Vancouver - helped Mr Angelina put it together, while I sat on the sofa recovering from a bug under a blanket (without the hairdryer), entirely uninterested in what was being constructed.

When I saw what it was and how it worked once they had managed to put it together, I was very impressed. And also a bit scared because I feel sometimes I have been plonked about 50 years into the future. The Google have invented Cardboard (www.google.com/get/cardboard/) which promises to make virtual reality an experience available now to everyone using a headset made of cardboard that you can make or buy. The headset is basically a viewer that holds your smartphone or ipod on to which you can download free apps that can take you to different places in the country and indeed the world. You hold the headset to your face (or strap it on if it comes with a strap) and by moving your head and/ or spinning around, can achieve a 360 degree view of “wherever” you happen to “be” at that moment. You cannot move “forward” or “backward” but it is still pretty cool.

There was much collective “oohing” and “ahhing” from Midi Me and Mr Angelina and some giggling from her, too.

“I’m in Paris! I’m in Tokyo! I’m in Venice! I’m in space! I’m in a kaleidoscope!! Wow!!!” It works on streetview in some areas but thankfully Midi-Me could not locate our house as it doesn’t go as far as Bushey. 

I start January with a renewed appreciation for schools and the people that work in them. From November to December last year that was me, as I took a job as a teaching assistant for half a term in the reception class of a lovely little private school.

Midi-Me was happy; she likes telling me about her day and hearing about mine and when I was running Sing and Sign, she always looked forward to my detailed play by play. She’s not that interested in the plotlines of Real Housewives so it’s always a more gratifying exchange if I’ve been working. Also, since birth she has been used to hearing her mother speak in clipped tones in the morning and watching her mother run around the house looking for shoes and keys in a blind panic; that’s her happy place.

However, (you knew that word was coming, didn’t you…) it seems I am not the patient angel that my name would seem to suggest and years of running my own business teaching 3 hours a day and staying up late to do paperwork with only a glass of wine and Sky Player for company has spoiled me. I underestimated my body, brain and ears’ capacity for constant noise and talking and listening and overestimated my interest in the mediation of about a hundred truly life-unchangingly insignificant playground spats a day.

So, this January, can we all take a minute to think about the blessed teachers that teach our children and the assistants that assist them and the playground adults that listen to our children’s problems with each other and the lunch supervisors that keep peace in the lunch hall without the use of a full-size tambourine every 2 minutes to avoid shouting. Yeah, that was me. With the tambourine.

More at mynotesfromtheedge.blogspot.com and facebook.com/angelinamelwani and twitter @appleina.

Midi-Me spreads her wings and flies away

Mummy on the edge Nov/ Dec 2015 Families North West London Magazine

There comes a day in every child’s life where they have to spread their wings and fly away. University, joining the French Foreign Legion, whatever – all is possible when you reach the right age. This year, Midi-Me did just that. No, this was not some Dougie Howser moment where she was admitted to UCL at thirteen years old to study medicine. I mean she actually flew away from me to another country. On an aeroplane. Alone.

After we got divorced, Midi-Me’s dad moved to Vancouver and didn’t visit for lots of years. When he did start returning a couple of years ago, it was just for one short visit per year of one or two weeks, because he now had a life and wife in Canada. Midi-Me and I actually managed very, extremely well as a two-member family (as regular readers over the past 9 years will know!) and her dad kept in touch regularly via birthday cards, phone, skype and latterly face time. Naturally however, despite all that, the separation has been quite the emotional trial for her (and therefore me).

Last year, having somehow miraculously ended up with my own fiancé, we planned a trip that involved taking Midi-Me to Vancouver to see her extended paternals. We had dinner with her Dad and Stepmum in a lovely Thai restaurant (where we bizarrely met a waiter from Hatch End!) before going off and doing our own thing for two weeks, and then returned to pick her up and bring her back to London.

In the springtime of this year, Midi-Me’s dad came to visit and whisked her off to Centre Parcs and they had a jolly old weekend together, riding on segways and eating steak for breakfast. Of course, no matter how long the visit was, it couldn’t possibly be long enough. By the summer, she wanted and needed more but I wasn’t able to play FEDEX mum, with a thirteen-year old human package. And as much as I wanted to ease her emotional inquietude, there was NO WAY I was going to send her on an aeroplane by herself.   

It was my grown-up nephew who explained to me that it was the uncertainty that was the worst thing for a kid. Not just the “will I see my absent parent ever again” but “when?” And that’s when I realized that my being too scared to let her get on a plane alone was really doing her no favours at all. I knew she was perfectly sensible and trustworthy. I knew that BA take very good care of their charges. And I knew at that moment that although my preventing her from flying solo was me being a good, protective mum, actually it was not in her ultimate interest. For thirteen years I had made zillions of split-second single-parent decisions. This constant mental, emotional and physical cost/ benefit analysis had been honed over the years resulting in an automatic cognitive algorithm which I relied upon to help me with daily conundrums. From, at three years old: should I let her partake of fruit shoot (OCCASIONALLY but only in order not to be the odd one out at parties – never of own volition). To: should I watch this 15 Will Ferrel film Stepbrothers with her (ABSOLUTELY NOT …but we did anyway last week). Alighting on: should I let my baby scramble alone onto a large piece of metal thousands of feet in the air, flying over sea and land at great speeds with nothing except incomprehensible science holding it up?

The automatic cognitive algorithm was right about the Will Ferrel film but wrong about the aeroplane. So I explained to her that this was not a holiday but that she was going to stay at her other home for around three weeks. This pre-empted the boredom I knew she would feel from sitting in her dad’s furniture shop with him for days on end. But hey, she’s been bored with me, it was important to experience boredom with her dad too. She always wanted to know what my childhood was like and now she would gain insight, because I spent much of it being bored to death in my dad’s shop too.

I haven’t completely lost faith in my automatic cognitive algorithm. I will need it when Midi-Me decides wants to join the Foreign Legion.

More on flying solo at mynotesfromtheedge.blogspot.com and facebook.com/angelinamelwani and twitter @appleina.

Director's wife's blog - Merchant of Vembley

MERCHANT OF VEMBLEY - COCKPIT THEATRE 6TH - 25TH OCTOBER 2015

Director’s wife’s blog:

Today I visited the Cockpit Theatre in Gateforth Street down Marylebone-ish way to hang out with my (new) director husband, the actors, and around half of the creative team behind Merchant of Vembley, the brave, funny and thought-provoking new play hitting town NEXT WEEK!

I was there today to watch a run-through of MoV for the first time – exciting! And imbibe the theatrical vibe (although some might argue that I'm theatrical enough. No comment). I soon found myself getting stuck in, in my very specific and specialised role of Sort-Of-Production-Type-Person.

Anyway first thing was first and after my brisk walk from St John's Wood (it was a beautiful, sunny day and wanted some exercise) during which I paused only to marvel at the absurd sight of tourists causing tailbacks by posing in the middle of the Beatle's zebra crossing on Abbey Road.  It was important to pick up the Director’s lunch (and more importantly actually my coffee) from the fab and very cheap Lebanese takeaway around the corner.

When I got to the theatre, the photographer was in full flow shooting evocative stills outside, against a surprisingly pleasing brick wall. It was windy so it was good I was there to straighten outfits, smooth fringes and make helpful suggestions about heads on chests for young lovers and hands on hips for fierce teens (no, nothing to do with Real Housewives). 

I also did a pretty good job of helping Layla with her Hijab. I did consider going back to the Lebanese place to ask the nice lady who was waiting for a chicken kofta sandwich if she could come and help with this particular job but in the end we managed with the help of youtube and a selection of bobby and safety pins. I don’t want to say too much about costumes as I don’t want to give spoiler alerts!

The show is looking really very good and for me having been there with Ajay when he was auditioning, and having sat in on early readings, it is utterly fascinating to see, months later, how he has nurtured his talented cast and how, together, they are capturing us with the contemporary London story of Merchant of Vembley (based on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice) and making the effervescent language in Shishir Kurup’s funny, fiery and many-layered script fizz and crackle on stage.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/merchantwembley

Book now: http://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_merchant_of_wembley

Twitter: https://twitter.com/merchantvembley

SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2015

Angelina and Midi-Me get in a huge fight.

Ikea has served us well.  When I was overdue mummy-on-the-edge-to-be I would visit for mid-winter waddles, wending my way through the room sets and ending up in the marketplace, hoping the pretty colours of the plastic fantastic would motivate Mini-Me to finally peek out from under my bulging poloneck.

After she did, I binged on star lamps, toy hammocks and fairy bed nets – the poorly-put-together result of poring over storage porn in the freshly printed catalogue. This in itself was a treat to be stretched out over at least 3 tea-time sittings whilst Mini-Me was absorbed in the Sing and Sign video or Dora the Explorer.  Oh, I pined to no-one in particular, when will my house look like a cool, happy Swedish hideaway, full of tea-hued children and finger paintings strung on the kitchen walls and potted rubber trees and recycling neatly stacked in plastic, lidded containers and rugs the colour of nature?

Reader, it never happened.

There was one milky-tea-hued child and increasing amounts of stuff. Everywhere. Much of it the colour of dirt.

Over a decade later and we find ourselves back in that hallowed blue hangar. I am on a mission to find white pillar candles to plonk inside these pretty lanterns we have hired for our wedding.  After research on the interweb, I have ascertained that the ones in Ikea are cheaper even than Tesco! Mr Angelina has trusted much of the wedding planning to me and I know he is secretly worried I will source most of what’s needed from Lidl and Poundland. He’s more the Selfridges type. The yang to my yin, if you will.

In this blue paradise. Midi-Me likes looking at the roomsets and I am reminiscing about how I would bring her here when she was Mini and let her explore all the cupboards and corners and then let her watch in horror as I became increasingly trapped like a fly in a spiders web in the Marketplace, weighing up the pros and cons of unnecessary household paraphernalia and finally paralysed by indecision over whether to fill my yellow bag with klipthorps or udenblabs.

Suddenly, “Ow!” she shoots accusingly  (serious exaggeration, it was barely a tap…)

“Why did you do that?” I pointed to the name of the weapon, a 50p cutlery tray: SMÄCKER. I was just following instructions.

So I get the candles and we make our way to the tills. What? On a Wednesday, the queues are this long? Yeah, they are.  I begin to wish I had ordered from Tesco. I send Midi-Me to another line in case it goes faster. It doesn’t. We each inch slowly forward. I make my best humble smiley face and ask the people in front if they mind if I go ahead of them, being that I’ve just got a few packets of candles, and a set of bamboo chopping boards (and something else that I can’t remember which is probably currently languishing in the kitchen SMÄCKER by now) and I’m late to meet my soon-to-be-mother-in-law for the first time.  Kindly they accede. I shout Midi-Me’s name 3 times increasingly loudly in the vague direction of where she’s standing because she’s not answering her phone (why would she?) I don’t care that it’s embarrassing.  I have become my parents.

We wait a further ten minutes and then joy, it is our turn! But no. The guy at the till tells us to wait because in front of us have appeared returning customers who left a whole trolley-full of things behind because the guy forgot to zap them through the till. It’s hot. It’s tense. The stink of impending conflict pervades the air. The people behind us (formerly in front) are getting cross with the people in front of us (formerly not there). The people in front of us get angry with the people behind us. The people behind us get even crosser and louder and swearier with the people in front of us. The people in front get yet louder and crosser and swearier. There are arms swiping and flailing around us. We are actually and literally IN the middle of a huge fight and it’s not between the two of us! We are the sweet incongruous filling in a sweary, shouty angry sandwich. Like Nutella on a jalapeno nacho, we couldn’t be more out of place. Midi-Me and I stand there cowering uncomfortably until it is over, when we pay for our bits and run, run, run to the car, safely unsmäcked and drive the heck away from Neasden.

More at mynotesfromtheedge.blogspot.com and facebook.com/angelinamelwani and twitter @appleina.

July August 2015 Families NW London mag

Two go mad in Mersea

Upon returning from a long, childfree holiday three days into Midi-Me’s half term break, I owed her some uninterrupted mummy time. What could be better than a mother-daughter pampering trip? 

A few phone calls later and I found The Crowne Plaza Colchester Five Lakesin Essex that would offer some mini (or should I say Midi)-treatments to my thirteen year old. Plus it was near Mersea Island, a secret place (I almost don’t want to tell you about it) of seafood fantasies that I had read about years ago but never visited, where oysters are fresh, cheap and readily available. MMMM… ME LOVE OYSTERS! And so does Midi-Me. This was for her, after all.

After dropping our bags off to the hotel, we didn’t want to waste the sunshine so drove straight to Mersea to find a beach, experiencing the frisson of risk that the tide might cover the bridge and leave us stranded on the island for hours (this happens about two days in every month we were told). I had poor mobile signal so I simply followed the road until we couldn’t drive any further. It’s an island after all. Wherever we ended up did not look very pretty. It had suddenly turned cloudy and cold. Midi-Me gave me a geography lesson, pointing at different bits of coloured rock, earth etc and I nodded and enjoyed pretending that I understood what she was talking about.

The next morning, we ate a big breakfast, and grabbing a hotel map, went on a three-mile walk that led us to an exquisitely dilapidated graveyard and caused a dog (and ourselves) some alarm when we inadvertently trespassed onto its owner’s property. We found the path back to the hotel down the side of the golf course, executing rubbish cartwheels and greeting kind, lady-golfers along the way.

Back in the room, I realised I had left my swimsuit and underwear in a neat pile on my bed - at home in Bushey. Midi-Me had however brought extra everything; thank goodness, I didn’t want to go shopping. I was walking a bit peculiarly and sensed people were looking at me funny as I entered the pool but I wasn’t wearing my glasses so it didn’t matter. I was freezing as the external door was left open for the guy who had come to fix the Jacuzzi which had had conked out before we’d gone anywhere near it. Good-natured Midi-Me humoured my complaints and even yielded to my insistence that she come with me into the steamroom (-for all of thirty seconds).

Soon it was linner time. Linneris our world for late lunch that serves as dinner – it’s essentially a warning in our home that I do not plan to re-enter the kitchen for any purpose other than to replenish my wine, but it works equally well to ease pressure on my wallet whilst on holiday.)

The Company Shedis a highly regarded, no-frills restaurant serving delicious seafood – on a no-prior-booking and bring-your-own-bread basis. We ordered 4 gigantic oysters followed by the entire hot side of the menu including scallops, prawns, grilled mussels and grilled oysters. It was, in a word, yummmmmm. We followed this with dessert at the charmingArt Café and found out there was an Open Studio event starting the next day featuring local artists.

In the morning we visited Leafy Dumas, an artist of delightful work who happens also to be a single mummy to a teenage daughter, just like me. I admired her bohemian style and fantasised about turning the shed into My Special Place of Writing, Art and Mid-Life Crisis (…just like I did when I took Midi-Me to the Roald Dahl museum and Jane Austen country in Bath. At time of writing, my shed is still full of things that belong, along with my artistic aspirations, in the dump.) We visited more artists, ate crab chowder atThe West Mersea Oyster Barand then it was back to the hotel for Midi-Me’s first ever facial! Of course it was a superb Clarins Facial with a very kind therapist. A special moment for me to experience with her and great for her to get a lecture about skin care from someone who isn’t her mother. This was followed by a romantic joint pedicure which Midi-Me promptly smudged while checking if it had dried. “It doesn’t matter,” I consoled, “life’s about the pedicure, not the topcoat.”

More on this trip and others at www.facebook.com/angelina.melwani or atwww.mynotesfromtheedge.blogspot.com or on twitter at @appleina.