Diorama drama

Well, we did the diorama.

In the end it was surprisingly painless, because Littleboy 1, having moaned about it making it, suddenly decided 10 minutes into the project that he absolutely loved it and launched into it with his boundless enthusiasm. At the same time his brother, feeling left out, decided that he was going to make his own diorama - not for a school project, just because he wanted to. So they both spent a morning cutting out coloured paper and writing captions on stickers.

Thanks to those who commented on the former post for confirming that UK schools, indeed, also ask for dioramas. However, I wonder if this may be an American import (like "show and tell", "playdate" and various other kiddie terms that have crept across the pond).

"A diorama is a rite of passage for every American schoolkid," confirmed my friend K, a former teacher, who came round the other day and admired the shoeboxes and their contents. At some point, she said, every child is asked to make one, and as they get older they are required to be more and more complicated and impressive. (I'm glad Littleboy 2 got his moment, then, before we leave - he took it school and showed it to his teacher, who reportedly said "Wow!")

I must admit, I thought Littleboy 1's sea turtle diorama was pretty good.....until I was in his classroom this morning and caught sight of some other children's efforts. One had modelled animals out of plasticine, one had included real sand (why didn't I think of that?) and someone else had typed in the captions on a computer and printed them out, including the Latin name of his sea creature....oh, wait, maybe that was his Mum.

Clearly, in New York dioramas are a competitive sport.

Sea turtle, by Littleboy 1. (The pink blobs are jellyfish)

Tigers by Littleboy 2. Done just for fun.

Where I live: Indoors chez Nappyvalleygirl

A friend of mine is selling her house. For one reason and another it's been a little slow to sell, so the agent has now suggested that their house be "staged" to look better. The other day, a professional "stager" turned up with some furniture, strategically placed it in my friend's home, and put various "decorative" objects around the place (including a bowl of fake apples in the middle of a table, which made us all laugh).

They also took down my friend's own pictures and replaced them with generic, arty, black and white shots of waterfalls, flowers and the like. All very "tasteful", but somehow it annoyed me. I would much prefer that the art in a house should reflect something of the people who actually live there. My own house is not interior-designed. The pictures don't all match, and we have ornaments and photos in odd places - but it's us, and that's how I like it.

Anyway, all of that is a preamble to the latest entry in Michelloui's Where I Live series over at The American Resident. The subject this week is "Indoors".

Our house contains pictures and objects from all stages of our life, including my early years in Hong Kong. This cat is one of a pair that my parents owned; they sit on either side of our fireplace. They're a little chipped now, after several moves around the world, but they remind me of my childhood and they'll always come with me.

This picture is also one of a pair of Chinese embroidered artworks my parents bought in Hong Kong. The two pictures are supposed to represent sunrise and sunset, although there has always been debate over which one is which (maybe a Chinese reader can tell me what the characters say in this one?). I loved them as a child, and still do.

This black and white print of Siena was bought on our honeymoon in Italy; we had it framed with the purple border to match the then-purple walls of our dining room in London.

This painting hails from Cambodia; we bought it on our round the world backpacking trip in 2004, and had it sent back to the UK by courier. We think the elephant is carrying the builders and stones required to construct Angkor Wat, which you can see in the background.

This one was a wedding present, painted by The Doctor's cousin, who is an artist. The birds are pecking at a Mulberry tree; she has one in her garden in London.

 And so to Long Island. The Doctor bought this map for me as a Christmas present the first year we were here. Everyone always remarks on it when they come to the house (the one that made me laugh was the friend of Littleboy 1's who asked: "Is that England?")

 And here's our most recent acquisition, a wooden carving of a Cardinal that I bought last weekend at a local craft festival. These birds are always in our garden, so it will be a nice memento of our time here.

But where, you might ask, are the Littleboys represented here? Well, of course our house is filled with photos of them; but it would also not be complete without their own art. Here's just a selection of the many masterpieces that come home from school; I don't keep everything, but some of these will definitely be packed up into boxes for the trip back to London.

Bloomin' June...

At least the roses in the garden are blooming

The end of the school year is looming, and June is blooming....chaotic.

There's a delicious blog post gone viral at the moment over here, by American blogger Jen Hatmaker, called Worst End of School Year Mom Ever. It's hilarious and I'm sure applies to UK mothers just as well as to US, although I know it isn't quite End of School Year time yet in the UK. But just you wait.

Jen's rant has struck a chord with so many people, because as the last couple of weeks approach, we're being bombarded with requests for teacher gifts, final projects, special end-of-year celebrations, invitations to art shows and the like. The number of pieces of paper that come home in the school folder is simply astounding (Jen calls it a "tsunami of doom" - a fantastic description). I'm lucky that I work at home and have time to go through their bags when they come home, but for working mothers who arrive home at 7pm it must truly be a nightmare.

In the last week I've been asked (at short notice) for the following:

Littleboy 1 to make a "diorama"* involving sea creatures, with captions in full sentences describing their habitat, predators etc.

Littleboy 2 to write a story or poem for a scrapbook which will be presented to his teacher

A photo from every year of Littleboy 2's life to make a timeline (easier said than done when all your photos are digital)

Littleboy 1 to write/draw something about his teacher's forthcoming wedding, and me to go to a party in his classroom that the class moms are throwing as a "bridal shower", bringing plastic cups

That's not to mention remembering to get cards and gifts for both teachers, two piano teachers and the schoolbus driver....

At the same time the powers that be at my workplace have suddenly realised that I'm stopping in a month. Despite me asking them repeatedly for weeks what my role might be in London, it's taken them until now to think about it. The solution? Get me to do lots of extra work in the next few weeks so they might determine what that might be.

Oh, and it goes without saying that we're trying to prepare for the Big Move on top of all this.

Sigh.

How has June been for you so far?

*Are UK children asked to make dioramas? Or is this an American thing. Personally, I had never heard the word before moving here, but it might just be me. For those not in the know, it's a little scene, preferably contained in a shoebox, containing objects and things you've made, with captions.

Six weeks....

Six weeks to go before we leave Long Island.

Not long, is it? Three more weeks of school (which I am sure will fly by) and then three weeks when the boys are at summer camp, for The Doctor and I to start packing up the house.

I keep thinking of things I will miss; my friends, neighbours, the ease of the schoolbus, the little American rituals at school, the local restaurants and shops.

But it's also time to start mentally checking out of here. Looking forward, not back. Looking on estate agent websites at places to live; thinking about the boys' new schools; reconnecting with old friends.

And there are aspects of UK life I have missed. Things that I persuaded myself I could do without, at least on a temporary basis, but actually, am looking forward to having in my life again.

Waking up to Radio 4. I do like NPR (the American equivalent), really I do, but it just isn't the same. They're just too nice. I miss John Humprhies mauling people in the morning.

Watching the BBC. (Well, we can watch BBC programmes here, finally; we're currently enjoying The Apprentice. But you have to work out what's on when, rather than just browsing the TV listings or hearing about a good new show from a friend).

Summertime without mosquitoes.  Yes, they are starting again. I got my first bite last week and soon there will be so many we won't be able to sit outside without a forcefield of noxious spray.

A good British roast meal. We do make them here. But the right joint of meat, in particular lamb, is hard to come by.

Country pubs. Not a bar, not a restaurant, and you don't have to tip the barman just for getting a glass of wine.  And there's nowhere here where you can sit outside with a cider and a packet of crisps.

Safe weather. England's weather might be boring, but you don't have to worry every time they forecast "damaging winds" (which is about once a week). Hurricane season has alreadystarted again. We're just hoping the first one doesn't come along before mid-July. We've had enough of that, thank you very much.

London, London, London. I may have been a little tired of it before we left, but it's a great city and I'm looking forward to rediscovering all it has to offer.


What else should I be looking forward to?

It's my way or the Steinway

Last weekend we headed into Manhattan for Littleboy 1 to perform in a piano recital. His teacher was holding a private concert for her pupils, and had chosen to hold it in a piano showroom and workshop near Central Park.

Littleboy1 got to perform his pieces (which included The Snowman and I'd Do Anything from Oliver), on a nine foot Steinway in a recording room with the most magical acoustics, after which we had a small reception in the showroom. It transpired that the grand pianos in the showroom, a collection of beautiful Steinways and a few other less well-known brands, are lent out to concert pianists for performances at nearby Carnegie Hall.

As we sipped our wine and chatted to his piano teacher and her (British) boyfriend, we witnessed the most surreal sight of both Littleboys rushing around the showroom, playing all their different pieces manically on the various expensive pianos. At one point they were both banging out "We're Walking In The Air" on two different Steinways (Littleboy 2 has been learning it too).

Bizarrely, no-one seemed to mind; anyone who appeared to work for the showroom either ignored them or beamed in their general direction. We all agreed that this was unlikely to have happened in a similar venue in England.

Whether or not either of our sons becomes a professional concert pianist, I'll definitely take the time to remind them when they're older: you once played on a grand piano that had been played in Carnegie Hall. And not just one, but several.

The Gatsby Connection

Looking from "East Egg" to "West Egg"

When The Great Gatsby opened at our local cinema last week, The Doctor and I rushed to see it. Not because we are huge fans of Leonardo di Caprio or even Baz Luhrmann (although the fact that Luhrmann himself was in that very cinema the week before was exciting). But because our town has a direct connection to the Fitzgerald novel. The fictional East Egg of the story (where Gatsby's long lost love Daisy resides) was based on this very peninsula. Or at least, Fitzgerald himself lived in Kings' Point (West Egg in the story), and it is widely assumed that the two opposing coastlines in the story are Kings' Point and Sands Point.

Although the movie was filmed in Australia, Luhrmann had visited and studied the geography of the area before making it. If you see the film, you may think that Gatbsy's mansion, in the style of a French chateau, is way too over the top. But drive up to Sands Point, a few miles from here, and you'll see ridiculous houses in that exact style. There is one house where the original owner imported stone walls from a French Abbey to act as his gates; another resembles a Scottish castle, another a Spanish Hacienda.

In the 1920s, the North Shore of Long Island was known as the "Gold Coast". It was where New York's wealthy built their mansions, commuting into the city by boat or by road (via the "Valley of Ashes" in the Gatsby story: otherwise known as Queens). The area was the Hamptons of its day (back then the Hamptons, 100 miles from New York, was an undiscovered backwater and too far away for a weekend escape).

Now, the houses here are owned by modern-day Gatsbys - as well as bankers and lawyers, there are sports and TV personalities and company founders who live down their sweeping driveways. But the wild parties don't take place there nowadays; it's a quiet area, still dripping with money, but the only people you're likely to see as you drive around are landscapers, joggers and dogwalkers. The old distinctions, too, between the "new money" of West Egg and the "old money" of East have largely disappeared, although there's still a sense here in the East that the people "over there" are somehow a little ostentatious.

Living here, it's fun to think that the area has such a romantic history, particularly if you like F Scott Fitzgerald. And if you're interested in the film, don't let reviews put you off - yes, it's gaudy and over-the-top, but it's faithful to the story and beautiful to watch, and Leonardo di Caprio has the charisma required of Jay Gatsby. I'll think of him, staring at Daisy's green light at the end of her dock, whenever I gaze out at the bay in darkness, with the lights of the city glimmering in the distant sky.

Where I Live: Green

When I first visited America properly, it was on a trip to Virginia in 1995. And one of the things that struck me was how green everything was. Lawns seemed a darker, more vibrant green than in England and the trees more lush. The warm, humid climate and violent rainstorms that go with summer on the East Coast mean vegetation is rampant, and the type of grass that grows seems thicker and stronger than the delicate, pale green blades of UK lawns.

It's the same here - at least, in early summer. By August, everything is turning brown and dusty in the heat. But at the moment, everything is growing madly. The trees only came into leaf about two weeks ago, but they're now at their very lushest. Everywhere you go, you hear the hum of lawnmowers and smell fresh cut grass and there is new life wherever you look, from the goslings that came waddling up our drive one day to the little turtle we spotted in our local pond (top two right pics) The top picture with the huge oak is our front lawn, and the three on the bottom of the collage were taken at the new Native American plant garden at the New York Botanical Garden.

The prompt this week for Michelle's "Where I Live" blog at The American Resident is "Green". Michelle created a fabulous mosaic using Pic Monkey, so after fooling around and failing with HTML, I've tried the site out for the first time and created my own "masterpiece" in a slightly different style.