Camp has got to be one of the greatest inventions known to mumkind, especially in countries where the summer vacation goes on…and…on. This camp, I’m not so sure about, however. At Happy Camp, participants should maintain a general sense of anxiety at all times:
Thank you to Nina at Francey Pants for this photo.
“C’mon, let’s go in,” I said to DH, who didn’t need that much encouraging, to be honest.
We were about to ride the Emirates Air Line cable car, which crosses London’s River Thames at a vertigo-inducing altitude, when we noticed a small building housing the newly opened aviation experience.
I must have been feeling a bit homesick, because suddenly the idea of paying money (£3 each) to get a little Dubai fix seemed a good idea. It might even be air-conditioned, I reasoned (this was a few weeks ago, during the hot spell).
Inside the £4m attraction, we walked round a real-size replica of the A380’s nose and a 165,000-brick Lego engine. I tried an aviation-themed interactive game and decided we didn’t need to sit in the mock economy cabin and put the headsets on to watch the TV screens, as I’ve only spent, like, a MILLION hours sitting in those seats for real. (Now, if it was business class and they were serving champagne ….)
And, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the panoramic video following a suitcase’s journey, from check-in to the plane’s hold via a system of rollercoaster-like conveyor belts.
Luggage moves through an amazingly intricate behind-the-scenes structure, with slopes, bends and junctions. (Riding on your case would be so much fun)
But it was upstairs that DH and I had the best time. In one of the A380 simulators, where you can try your hand at flying a superjumbo (sort of).
Though nothing like what pilots actually train in (just the stick, rudder and thrust work), it allows you to take-off, manoeuvre the aircraft and land – or crash, in my case. The high-definition screen and advanced graphics simulate a flight between London Heathrow and Dubai, with weather conditions of your choosing. You could opt for drizzly rain coming into LHR, buttery sunshine in Dubai, or a starry night sky if you want to command a night flight.
My DH isn’t one to boast about what he does so as I took the controls he kept his job quiet, until the staff pretty quickly figured it out and left us to it. But let’s just say that, even with him coaching me, I’m not the most coordinated of pilots.
“Just small corrections,” DH instructed as I attempted to keep the plane on the glide path, while watching the landing lights. Half red and half white is the ideal. Nose up. Left a bit. The runway starts rushing up towards me. Those small corrections rapidly turn into clumsy lurches and I plunge the aircraft into the ground, where it bumps along noiselessly, magically passing through highly pixelated objects.
My second attempt is much the same, and I have to concede that, in the unlikely event that the entire crew of a 380 is struck down by a dodgy prawn, I’m not your hero.
After a while, I hand over to DH to watch and marvel. And then something occurs to me: “Try flying it under Tower Bridge!” Why, the worst that could happen is they’d have to reboot the software.
The simulator costs £40 for a 30-minute session. This isn’t a sponsored post. I actually did spend my birthday riding the Emirates Air Line.
The best thing about summer leave is, of course, seeing family and friends, and this year, more than any other, I’ve marvelled at how certain members of my tribe are becoming super fit. There’s my sister-in-law who went for a bike ride, and can now do 60 miles from London to Cambridge, and my cousin, who’s doing a triathlon this weekend.
But for us expat mummies, it’s not so easy over the summer, is it? Aside from being ‘on the road’ for 6 weeks or more escaping the Dubai heat, there’s the small matter of all that good food in your home country, the shelves of wine in the supermarket and the ‘holiday’ treats you deserve because you’re solo with the kids.
So, I’ve been having a little think, about some of the endurance contests that expat mums across the world are competing in this summer, so we can pat ourselves on the back too.
Ready, steady….GO:
Pole-position passport queuing: With a child desperate for a wee
Sprint to the toilets: Before the inevitable
The bath-book-bed triathlon: With wide-awake time travellers
The time zone leap: No napping
The sweat-athon (in a British heat wave): Where will you hide?
The cross-country: How many relatives / landmarks / toilets can you visit en-route?
Team-member down: When DH breaks away from the pack and streaks to the finish line a month before you
The last hurdle
The stamina test: After 5 weeks of children’s activities, August shows up with a wry smile and a “So, how will you entertain ’em for ANOTHER FIVE WEEKS?”
Hitting the wall: How long until the noisy / messy / hazardous things our offspring do to fill their days get too much?
14-hour cycle: Two weeks to go and too tired to go anywhere, the 14-hour cycle of front garden, back garden, side garden kicks in
The home straight: Just THE PACKING still to do [shudders]
Crossing the finish: And time to play beat-the-body-clock again
Good luck everyone – bonus points for putting petrol in yourself.
“LOOK out the window!”
I don’t know how many times we’ve said this to our children in the car, and in how many different countries, but however amazing the view, it falls on deaf ears.
Boring.com to my children. But, kids, you’re missing so much by not looking out the window!
I’ve long since learnt that if someone pipes up, “Sheep!”, they’re not looking at a flock of fluffy animals grazing on grassy meadows outside the window. There’ll be a pixelated sheep swimming across the small screen in whatever world they happen to be inhabiting on Minecraft.
And, another thing, the vast swathes of life that took place in our BC (before children) world? No interest to them. Whatsoever.
In Florida, we drove by the apartment we used to rent when DH and I were newlyweds. “Look, boys, that’s where mummy and daddy lived before you were born!” I said, pointing excitedly at the grey-timber building, nestled in lush landscaping.
There was a flicker of interest, a brief glance out the window, with one eye still on the square-headed sheep.
Then Son1 says, nonchalantly: “C’mon, let’s go! You don’t live there anymore!”
And returns to his electronic stimulation.
If my eyebrows had risen any further, they would have shot past the atmosphere.
Of all the many fun-filled, wallet-emptying attractions that Orlando has to offer, there were two my boys really wanted to visit: Legoland and Titanic: The Experience.
The latter was unsinkably brilliant, and I really recommend it; the former, we didn’t do, because they’d literally just been to Legoland in Windsor. But, kids, they have a short memory, don’t they?
Obviously, you can’t bring children to Florida and not take them to Disneyland, so we knocked out Animal Kingdom, and, because we used to live near Orlando and always enjoyed SeaWorld, we spent a day there, too. And it was here that Son1 experienced his first white-knuckle rollercoaster – completely by accident.
SeaWorld was heaving with visitors, and after deciding we didn’t fancy waiting 90 minutes to see some penguins (albeit in a whirly saucer thingy), we bankrupted ourselves further by purchasing two fast-passes.
“It’s only gentle. Really!”
We wandered over to the famous Kraken rollercoaster (guess what? No queue anyway! You should have seen DH’s face) and went to the fast-pass entrance, where we were told there was a short delay as the ride was experiencing a technical fault.
The staff were distracted. All no more than college age, they were busy testing the floorless, sea serpent coaster and not paying the waiting visitors much attention. So, when it was ready to go again, Son1 and I walked on and took our seats.
For a panic-stricken moment, I felt like the worst parent ever, because just as the ride was unleashed, Son1 decided he wanted to get off. “You can’t,” I hissed, imagining the scene I’d have to create to stop the ride mid-roll. “It’s very gentle,” I lied.
He went quiet, and the rollercoaster hurtled round at break-neck speed, flinging us down a 144-foot drop, through two loops, a dive loop, a zero-G roll, a cobra roll and a corkscrew.
“You okay?” I asked as we clamboured off, clutching each other’s hand and wondering which way was up.
“Yesssss!” he replied, eyes shining. “Can we go again, pleeeeeease!”
A little later, DH took him back, only to reappear shortly afterwards with a disappointed Son1 – who, this time, had been turned away by more-attentive staff for being quite a bit too short.
Ooops.
…They really do know how to make life easier. I spotted this vending machine at SeaWorld – definitely a ‘momvention’, it’s filled with all the kiddie essentials that parents on the go might need, from diapers, wipes and cream to formula, bottles, pacifiers, Tylenol and sunblock.
Desperately seeking diapers? No problem, Nanny Caddy to the rescue (and no junk food in sight). When my children were this age, this handy machine would certainly have helped ensure our survival away from home.
And, while at SeaWorld, I couldn’t help noticing that sea creatures aren’t the only things they keep behind glass.
She’s a pearl diver. Several ‘work’ the tank and dive for oysters pointed out by visitors
Note to SeaWorld: How about some mermaids next?
This is a stolen term, from a writer in the Times newspaper, but I’m borrowing it because she was talking about a six-week British school holiday. Anyone reading this in the US or expat-land will be thinking, ‘Six weeks? PAH! That’ll be over in the blink-of-an-eye!’
Try 27 June – 2 September for size, presently yawning in front of us like a gaping hole – a mind-bending vortex that needs to be filled with activities, every.single.day, to prevent my children’s boredom from toppling us.
Happy (long) holiday, kids!
And because Dubai is as hot as Hades at this time of year, many of these activities need to be planned in another country, maybe even two or three different countries, if you’re going to get anywhere near the romantic notion of happy, rosy-cheeked kiddies hanging off the farm gate.
So, right now, we find ourselves in the UK – then tomorrow, we head off again, for our annual trip to the US. This year, to Florida, where we lived as newlyweds.
Something tells me we’re destined to meet Mickey Mouse and his motley crew, and obv. this means peaking far too early in the holiday, because when we return to the UK, and DH disappears off over the horizon to the blue yonder of Dubai, there’s still another six weeks to go. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Grandparents rock!
There’s also the small matter of keeping my newly founded Writing Inc. going – it has to take a back burner, of course, but still demands attention, at times like a hungry child. So, I’ve packed my career in my suitcase and, this week, worked remotely from my parents’ dining room.
With this as the view (mum’s garden, a 20-year project that was a field when we moved here), and sausage rolls in the fridge, it’s been such a lovely change. Best of all, the ankle-biting whippersnappers can be thrown outdoors for lengthy and wholesome, energy-burning games of hide-and-seek.
Office with a view: And by the time we get back from the States, the British schools will nearly have broken up – playmates wanted.
I discovered a while ago that the A380 is the best plane to fly on with children, not just because there’s more space to move around, but because there’s even a staircase you could use as a naughty step.
Whenever we fly back to London for our annual leave, I always make sure we’re booked on a superjumbo, and it definitely helps the ole pre-flight nerves to know that the boys and I will be able to have a little wander around after hours of being wedged into our seats.
Of course, as all mums who have to fly solo with their kids know, there are other things that would help too – like a third or even fourth arm to carry all the luggage; the physical stamina of a pack mule; a basic aviation knowledge (so as to answer questions such as How does the wind move?); and double-jointedness to make assisting a child in the bathroom easier.
If only!
But, the single most important thing, I now realise, that makes a big difference is the passage of time. And by that, I don’t mean the slow, ticking of time that extends every drawn-out minute on the actual flight. I mean your children getting older – and easier to fly with.
While queuing at security, I got chatting to a mum with a seven-month-old baby, and as she struggled with all the baby paraphernalia, juggled her little one, took her belt and shoes off, then, at the other side of the x-ray machine, pulled it all together again like a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle, I have to admit I felt like punching the air with joy that I’ve left that stage well and truly behind.
This flight, I didn’t even have the usual two-tonne carry-on luggage – my laptop case, filled with my MacBook, an iPad, a DS machine and a Kindle, sufficed. And saw us through the flight. Just.
What I hadn’t bargained on, though, was the overexcited, unsuppressable second wind that my boys would enjoy on their jet-charged arrival. At 10pm (1am Dubai time), and after a 12-hour journey from door-to-door without a wink of sleep, they were almost impossible to get to bed (“But it’s still light outside Mummy!”)
Thank goodness for grandparents, who like highly trained reinforcements, had taken over well before I hit the wall.
A couple of interesting debates have come up this week – the first on whether the 10-week-long school holiday should be at a time of year when you can actually go outside in Dubai, rather than during the furnace-like summer when every cell in your body screams for water if you venture outdoors.
But the debate that piqued my interest was the issue of teachers’ presents. This is the week when teachers in the UAE are being gifted with all sorts of things, from expensive spa vouchers to Swarovski jewellery.
They deserve it. Of course they do. But there’s a growing body of opinion that this is all going a bit over the top in Dubai.
It used to be that children would buy a little something, perhaps pick flowers on the way to school, or even better, make something for the teacher along with a card and that was that. Of course, very few children walk to school in Dubai, and they tend to come from families in which Dad is something big in oil or banking. (I’m generalising, not everyone is rich in Dubai, but it’s true our children are transported to school. There’s far too much traffic, so we drive – ruling out hand-picked flowers.)
It was suggested in the media this week that what might be happening (and I’m just saying) is that parents are trying to outdo each other. Otherwise, how would you explain why teachers have been asked to pick out furniture? And why collections are running to as much as 2,500 dhs (£450) per gift – with a whip-round for the person who collects the money too.
One commenter, a teacher herself, pointed out that they do far more than teach these days (good point). Admin work, after-school activities and weekend workshops are all expected. “I think teachers are under appreciated by parents so any gift I can get from them is worth it!” she wrote. “I spend more time with and thinking about their children than they do.”
Ouch!
“Why is it OK for a business man to gift potential clients or customers with fancy dinners and presents, but not OK for parents to give gifts to the teachers,” she wrote, stirring the debate. “Let me know what a business client thinks of a hand-made card!”
No comment. But I’m guessing that, working in Dubai, she won’t be disappointed.
Personally, I’m so thankful to my boys’ amazing and altruistic teachers for everything they’ve done for my children over the past 10 months that I’m very happy to fork out for something thoughtful. Ask me again a week into the epic holiday, and I’ll probably be sending flowers and chocolates too.
[Dabs eyes with a tissue – is the school year really all over? Sobs.]
It’s the last week of term here, and despite searing heat and 85 per cent humidity, desert mummies are flinging themselves around attending end-of-term concerts, classroom parties and parent meetings.
To get an idea of what this is like, imagine what a giant sauna might feel like, and picture yourself jumping in and out of it fully clothed. Imagine the backs of your knees sweating and your hair plastered to your head. Then, add some extra diary dates to an already-jam-packed schedule, a couple of hot, quarrelling children and a car that burns you every time you climb back in it.
As you pick your way over a sandy car park, while mopping your brow and wiping your shades (they steam up the moment you step into the outside air, so heavy today it was almost too thick to breathe), you think to yourself, “My.God.it’s.hot.”
Although why it surprises us each year, I’m really not sure, because it’s no hotter than it usually is in late June. I think we just tend to forget over the 6-8 months of glorious weather.
We’ve reversed our taps – in summer, you can turn your water heaters off and get all the warm water you need from the cold tap (due to cold-water storage tanks getting microwaved by the sun).
And if one of the children opens a window in the car, I’ve noticed I’ll snap it shut immediately, even if it means little fingers get severed, so the AC air doesn’t escape.
It definitely gets to the stage here where everyone is ready for their summer leave, the boys included.
Son1 was looking at something on the iPad the other day and remarked: “Will we see these in England?” We glanced at the screen to see what he was talking about, and saw white, fluffy clouds. A rarity in the dusty, desert summer skies.
Not long now, kids!
On the upside, the lack of cloud cover made for a fabulous super-moon yesterday. Photo via The National